‘Do not let them grind you down… You fight.’
It’s this season’s penultimate episode, Gilead visitors.
How are you feeling so far?
Credit: George Kraychyk/Hulu
Janine’s reached her threshold for what she can take: This place broke her.
Not the most reassuring of sendoffs.
“Does she seem alright, considering?”
Offred asks Aunt Lydia, who responds that our girl is “tougher than you think.”
Alma plays dumb but brings it up again later when they’re away from potential eavesdroppers.
Thereissomething the resistance wants Offred to do: go back to Jezebels and help smuggle out an important package.
But they do get that encore, with Nick transporting them.
Free is an interesting word choice here, considering Offred’s total lack of control in this world.)
He’s not wrong, but he’s got the wrong Jezebel.
When he opens the door to their room, in walks Moira.
“I thought you’d welcome this little reunion.”
Moira demands to know why she’d come back and risk herself for some little spy games.
“Do not let them grind you down,” she tells Moira.
“You keep your fing s together.
Rita offers to make tea but then suggests what Serena was actually looking forboozeand they have a drink together.
Rita reveals she had a son who died in the war.
He was only 19 years old.
He died to build this world, and now mistress and “Martha” are both trapped in it.
When the Commander does come in later that night, she doesn’t question where he was.
It’s because of Janine, who is very much not well despite what Aunt Lydia may have insisted.
(At least Serena Joy barely hides her disgust.)
They’ll go out drinking and do karaoke and watch the sun come up.
“You have to give her the chance to grow up.”
Offred agrees, and then Janine plunges into the water.
The fall doesn’t kill her, but it leaves her in a coma.
Aunt Lydia, not surprisingly, has no sympathy for this poor woman’s terrible circumstances.
Janine’s accusations against Commander Putnam, however, do seem to have some consequences.
“We all know what happened with his first handmaid,” she says.
“Men don’t change.”
That, finally, sparks enough suspicion to send Serena Joy home to look in her husband’s office.
But what will she find there?
And all’s not lost for Offred’s foray into espionage.
“Praised be, bitch,” it says.
“Here’s your damn package.”
Praised be, indeedthere’s a rebellion brewing.
