Photograph: George Kraychyk/HuluĪfter their disastrous trip to Canada (more on that shortly), the Waterfords are as far apart as ever. Tenderness? What tenderness? Offred (Elisabeth Moss) and Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski). She then asks Lydia the same thing, cunningly inferring that the baby won’t be safe in a house that harbours domestic abuse. “I got you someone,” June whispers to her baby after asking Rita to show her daughter kindness after she has gone. If there was any tenderness left between the two women, this exchange is the cement in which it is buried. Serena, as a parting gift, tells Offred she is moving out straight after the birth, no breastfeeding, no weaning.
If that isn’t a pot waiting to boil over. In the greenhouse, Serena’s seedlings are dying at the same speed as her devotion to a higher power since that higher power beat her with a belt in front of the staff.
He is clearly pumped full of the required zeal, as we see when he viciously attacks Janine with the butt of his rifle. That is Isaac the teenager, led entirely by his penis, who has already snogged Nick’s virginal wife. Young Isaac will be minding the house (and baby) while Mr and Mrs Waterford take a trip to Canada. The review would say: “Some ritualised rape required”. As Offred rises to greet another awful day in captivity, she ponders that “this could be an Airbnb,” although only a middling one, she jokes. Gauzy sunlight, always with the gauzy sunlight in Gilead.
That was a bit hard to swallow, but the chance for Luke to meet his wife’s oppressors was too good to pass up. And what a coincidence that not only is it Fred who is chosen to visit Canada, but the exact bit of Canada where Luke and Moira live. How exciting to see the incongruity of Gilead set against the real world.
Please do not add spoilers from later episodes. Spoiler alert: this recap is for people watching The Handmaid’s Tale, series two, on Channel 4 in the UK.