'The Handmaid's Tale' Recap: 'Late'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

It's rare when a television show goes to a place so dark and so visceral that you're forced to sit in silence and ponder on what you've just seen for a few moments after a particular episode has come to an end. But that's precisely what happened to me following the shocking moments that the third episode of The Handmaid's Tale presented us with.

Sure, I knew that 'Late' was going to be dark and ugly as the series is wont to do, but I never expected it to pull off the proverbial shackles and provide us all with a vision if pure hopelessness in an episode that revealed so much. After all, we saw some of the side effects of when it comes to being a Handmaid, part of the formation of Gilead and just how far the people in charge in this awful land are willing to go to receive compliance from the masses and when you look at those three elements in that order, you come to realize that this episode played out like a downward spiral, one that drags the audience deeper and deeper into the darkness.

Take for example the first element in this episode, the consequences of being a Handmaid, since this particular story allowed for us to get out of the Waterford house and spend a little more time where we did last week, in the household where Janine gave birth and as it turns out...dear Janine was not doing well post birth. Because June/Offred was able to discover that Janine had bitten her Commander's wife and to make matters worse, she firmly believed that the baby was hers, even going so far as to give Angela a new name before expressing her belief that her Commander was now in love with her and was going to whisk her and the baby away to a new life and it was heartbreaking to watch Janine fall to pieces like this and it was evidence of how awful a Handmaid's life can be and it fully demonstrates that Gilead's desperate attempt to remove emotion from sex and procreation as a whole is a rousing and destructive failure.

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But the show wasn't done shocking us just yet. As June dealt with watching a pseudo friend collapse under the weight of Gilead's edict, her mind was wont to drift to the past, wherein she recalled the day a new law was enacted where women could no longer own property and the unfortunate, violent protest that followed where she watched innocent people die  in front of her by way of gunfire from Gilead's new army and man...this was just plain tough to watch. To see June lose her job under the watch of armed guards, and to see Americans gunned down for organized protest was bone chilling and sobering, yet that was not the darkest moment this episode had to offer, it truly saved the most painful...for last.

Because I think it's safe to assume that everyone was wondering what was going to to happen to the original Ofglen and we were able to find out that she was locked up for being a gender traitor and for having a relationship with her Martha and unfortunately, June was also subject to questioning to uncover more on the matter, giving us a fine introduction to the Eye and we learned that they are friendly but firm and more than happy to use violence to get their answers and we also learned, that the court has minimal mercy for the guilty. While Ofglen's lover was sentenced to death for her 'crime', Ofglen was spared thanks to the fact she can bear children and while it seems like that should be that, the land of Gilead is more than happy to hammer home its lack of intolerance to the guilty, by allowing Ofglen to watch her lover hang and to see to it that genital mutilation came into play to ensure that Ofglen would no longer have such urges. 

That's right ladies and gentlemen, the show went there, and what Ofglen witnessed, we witnessed, and it made for another uncomfortable but brilliant viewing of this show, and while I did indeed need a moment to collect myself after watching such horrors, I have to applaud the show for holding nothing back. It is never afraid to show us the darkest parts of what humans are capable of and what's equally amazing is that the true awfulness of this world is being revealed to us one episode at a time which means there's a fair chance that things are going to get far worse on this show before they ever get better and it may be best to steel's one self before every episode because it's clear now, this series isn't messing around and who knows what horrors await us from here on out. Until next time.

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