Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The Handmaid’s Tale begins fittingly with the end of the world as we know it.
It’s a visual that, surely intentionally, calls to mind the flight of refugees all across the world. It might make you think of women fleeing with their children from Syria, or immigrants crossing the US Border. Except in this case the protagonist (Elisabeth Moss), her husband and child are trying to flee from the US to Canada.
They do not make it.
The next time we see the protagonist she’s dressed in a pilgrim-esque dress and bonnet in a room outfitted with a bed, a desk, a chair, and a window, with white curtains. “The glass is shatterproof,” she explains, “But it’s not running away they’re afraid of. A Handmaid wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes you can open in yourself given a cutting edge.”
It’s a striking beginning perhaps because the room looks so peaceful. It does not look like a jail cell. It looks like a nicely outfitted bed and breakfast. It’s the first of many scenes where the beauty of the surroundings is a stark contrast to the horror of the women’s internal lives.
The protagonist goes on to explain that her name is Offred — a patronymic, signifying she is Of Fred. “I had another name once,” she says, “It’s forbidden now.”
We see her meet Commander Waterford and his wife, whom she’ll be serving. When she calls his wife, “Ma’am,” she’s reminded that her position is above one of the typical servant or “Martha.” However, when the Commander says, “It was nice to meet you,” upon leaving and Offred cheerfully replies, “you too,” his wife’s face hardens. Offred may be more than a servant, but she’s less than a friend.
We cut to Offred exploring the very lovely home that she’s residing in. Again, these sets are lovely. The house looks like something Samantha from the American Girl stories would live in, but with more reliable electric lighting.
How is their home so lovely? you might wonder, as you stare at the pile of laundry accumulating on your armchair. It is lovely because it is maintained by a troop of women confined to domestic slavery. The next scene shows Rita, a Martha, making bread from scratch (amidst so many copper pots!). “A return to traditional values,” explains Offred, “That’s what they fought for.”
The Martha hands her some coupons to go shopping with, with her companion, Ofglen, telling her she doesn’t “want to keep her friend waiting.” Offred thinks, “I kind of want to tell her that Ofglen is not my friend…that I think she’s a pious little shit with a broomstick up her ass.”
The swearing, again, provides a contrast that makes it impossible to ignore that this all takes place in the present. And also, it’s just a welcome, funny relief from the grimness of the world we’re being shown. As does the fact that when Nick, the Commander’s driver asks Offred is she’s going shopping she silently intones, “No, Nick, I’m going to knock back a few at the Oyster bar.”
It’s pretty different than watching Ofglen and Offred greet each other with “Blessed be the fruit” and “May the Lord open.” While it might seem nice that the Handmaids get a walking buddy – there’s at least a potential for female friendship in this religious theocracy! – it’s quickly revealed that they go everywhere with a partner so they don’t attempt to run off (or, more likely, as stated earlier, kill themselves.)
They pass by a girl’s school, which Offred stares at longingly, searching for her own daughter.
At the market, none of the bottles have labels. Instead, they have picture – a tomato for a can of tomatoes, a cow for milk, and so on. It soon becomes clear this is because women are not allowed to read, when a fellow Handmaid notes that she’s seen Offred’s commander mentioned on the news. She then hastily adds, “I didn’t read it, I promise.”
As Offred and Ofglen walk home by the river they see a Priest, and abortionist, and a gay man hanging. “I think I heard that joke once,” thinks Offred, “This wasn’t the punchline.”
If you are by this point wondering how the former United States of America ended up turned into this terrifying dystopia, well, good news! We immediately flash back to the Red Center where Offred was taken after attempting to flee the country.
There, an Aunt (an older woman, presumably unmarried but allowed a leadership role) reveals that birth rates have fallen horrifyingly low. The Aunt goes on to claim that as birth rates fell people made things worse with birth control pills and abortions (or “murdering babies”) “just so they could have their orgies, their Tinder!” One of the original criticisms of The Handmaid’s Tale when the novel was first released was that it didn’t seem grounded in the current world. The mention of those apps, like Tinder, really helps remind anyone watching that this is happening now.
At the Rachel and Leah Center Offred meets up with Moira, a lesbian friend from college. She also meets Jeanine. Upon hearing the Aunt proclaim that they are “special girls! Fertility is a gift from God… you girls will serve the leaders of the faithful and their barren wives. You will bear children for them.” Jeanine laughs, “Welcome to the freaking loony house.” They proceed to electrocute her with a cattle prod while proclaiming, “Blessed are the meek.”
“Ordinary is just what you’re used to,” the Aunt explains, “this may not seem ordinary to you right now, but after a time it will.”
This is one of the more terrifying proclamations in the entire show. It calls to mind every #ThisIsNotNormal hashtag you might have seen in the past year and is a reminder of how quickly we become used to situations we might have once thought intolerable.
That night Offred and Moira whisper together in bed. Moira’s lover has been “rounded up in one of the dyke purges” and shipped off to a radioactive wasteland called “the colonies.” As they lie there, Jeanine comes back, and it’s revealed that one of her eyes have been gouged out as a punishment for her disobedience.
The next day, the women sit in a circle while Jeanine (now with a patch over one eye) describes being gang raped by a bunch of boys from school. It’s a horrific story, made more horrific by the Aunt exclaiming “Whose fault was it?” To which all the handmaids reply, “Her fault, her fault.” Offred doesn’t say anything until another Aunt – PLAYED BY MARGARET ATWOOD HERSELF! IT’S A MARGARET ATWOOD CAMEO! IT IS VERY EXCITING BECAUSE IT IS MARGARET ATWOOD! – slaps her and Moira whispers, “So it.” You get the sense there’s not much room for friendship here at all, insofar as friendship means the freedom to sympathize with others sorrows.
Back in the present day, Offred performs “the ceremony” which is inspired by the passage in Genesis 30:1-3 which states:
When Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?
And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.
This is recreated by having Offred lie on the Commander’s wife’s knees while the Commander has sex with Offred. It is grim, joyless, nearly fully-clad, and entirely unsexy.
After it happens, Offred recalls again the Rachel and Bilah center, where Jeanine has, not unsurprisingly, had a mental breakdown. She thinks she’s a waitress again, and wanders around offering people coffee. You get a strong sense there is not a lot of coffee for breedstock in this world. Moira slaps Jeanine as hard as she can and tells her “all that’s gone.” Jeanine breaks down sobbing that she wants her mom, and she wants to go home. “That shit is contagious. You want to see your baby girl again? Keep your fucking shit together,” Moira tells Offred.
That seems like a really hard ask under the circumstances. Not everyone, surely, could have Moira’s certainty that all this would come to an end, that it was merely a time to be survived.
The next day, Offred goes to a salvaging. There she meets with her fellow Handmaids, and they trade information about who is posted where. She runs into Jeanine who tells her that Moira tried to run and was sent to the colonies, “So, she’s dead by now,” Jeanine reports, cheerfully. Jeanine then turns and it’s clear she is very pregnant. The purpose of the salvaging is for all the Handmaids to stone a man who is accused of raping a Handmaid. The penalty for rape is death. Jeanine looks super into this, and perhaps it’s one small consolation to the Handmaids for the rape they have to endure regularly. They don’t get anything else in this nightmare world, but occasionally, it seems they get to tear a man limb from limb. Which they do, with great, bloody fervor.
“I’m so sorry about your friend,” Ofglen tells Offred as they walk home. It’s the first sign that someone might sympathize here. Ofglen points to a children’s clothing shop and says it used to be an ice cream place, and their salted caramel “was better than sex. Like, good sex.” Both of them laugh at “how frickin’ pious” they thought the other one was. Ofglen reveals that she and her wife had a son, but that they had Canadian passports, and she didn’t.
As they part, Ofglen tells her there’s an Eye – someone reporting to the government – in her house, and she should be careful. In the last scene, Offred takes in everyone. Is it Nick, the flirty driver? Or the Martha, who does not seem happy about making all that bread? Or even Commander Waterson’s wife? I’m going to bet on Nick, since it seems unlikely that they let women be spies. But then, they let them be Aunts, so who knows?
The episode concludes with Offred declaring that she intends to survive, and that her daughter’s “name is Hannah. My husband was Luke. My name is June.”
Jennifer Wright is the author of It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Break-Ups in History and Get Well Soon: The Worst Plagues in History. Follow her on twitter @JenAshleyWright.
