This is Gilead, remember?
We can’t just have nice things.
No one looks happy to be in this unsexy threesome.
Credit: George Kraychyk/Hulu
Serena Joy just looks away, joyless per usual.)
Ofglen’s reply is stoic: “Blessed be the fruit.”
Yep, Nick’s outsideand we have no idea if he’s an Eye or not.
So, lucky her?
“They took down St. Patrick’s in New York City,” Ofglen remarks.
“Blew it up and dumped every stone in the Hudson River.”
They’re destroying artifacts of the civilization that came before.
But how does Ofglen know that, or that there’s an Eye in her friend’s house?
Before Offred can press for answers, a black van comes speeding down the street.
Something tells me that man will never be seen again, unless it’s hanging on the wall.
Something also tells me this is a frequent occurrence in Gilead.
“It’s OK to be relieved it wasn’t you,” Ofglen tells Offred.
She isn’t reassured.
“It wassomeone,” she says.
She hesitates, saying she’s not that kind of person.
“No one is until they have to be,” Ofglen says.
Waterford is important, and anything she can find out about him could be important.
Needless to say, this isn’t standard protocol.
Handmaids are supposed to just be “two-legged wombs,” after all.
“Have I been invited to my own ending,” Offred wonders to herself.
In any case, it wasn’t an invitation.
It was an order.
The driver also leaves her with another thing to ponder: a warning not to trust Ofglen.
Before she can contemplate it much further, a red van pulls up outside, sirens blaring.
The mother-to-be is Ofwarren, a.k.a.
“one-eyed, bats crazy” Janine (Madeline Brewer).
The hospital, eerily, is lined outside with people praying.
Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) is among those in attendance, holding her hand.
Touching Janine’s belly reminds Offred of newborn Hannah, her tiny feet and baby smell.
Later, Offred wakes up and Hannah isn’t sleeping beside herand Luke doesn’t have her either.
Another woman walks by, clutching the infant and referring to it as her baby.
Her own child, it seems, died, and she doesn’t want to believe it.
Luke and police corner her and manage to safely get Hannah back.
The woman is pulled to the floor and arrested.
“You shouldn’t spoil them,” another says as if she’s not even there.
Offred walks off, dismissed, and spits out the bite she took in a bathroom sink.
Even the joys of desserts are tainted here.
Janine gives birth to a baby girl, a tiny miracle that everyone is elated over.
The ride back in the Birthmobile is silent.
Ofglen says no one knew anything about what Commander Waterford might want from Offred.
She tells her not to trust Nick, and she says Nick said the same about her.
Really, Ofglen admits, he’s righttrusting anyone is dangerous.
Especially, she adds, “a carpet-munching gender traitor.”
At night, Offred sets off to meet the Commander.
“I guess there may be something he wants from me,” she thinks to herself.
“To want is to have a weakness.
That gives me hope.”
He wants to play a game, he tells her, and he literally means a game.
Which in Gilead is a dangerous proposal, since women aren’t supposed to read.
When they finish, their scores are within three points of each other.
“You’re good,” he praises.
He then suggests they have a rematch after he returns from a trip to Washington for meetings.
“I’ll check my schedule,” she deadpans.
In her mind, he does.
But when she gets to the gate, there’s another woman waiting.
Record scratch (but for realthe music cuts out).
