The last time June saw Nick was their tearful goodbye kiss by the bridge (these two have said more goodbyes than the hobbits at the end of Return of the King). Luke knows that Nick wasn’t just pressed onto June (after all, she named their baby after him), and tries to simultaneously understand and appreciate that she had someone to love her and care for her in Gilead, while also wanting to banish Nick from his mind’s eye. Finding Hannah unites them in their purpose, but using Nick presses a small sliver between them. Luke and June’s relationship has bounced around like a ping-pong ball since she crossed into Canada. But I’m glad she didn’t, that we had the chance to see this scene between them, as Luke darts between fury, desperation, and despondency when he presses June to visit Nick with Nichole in tow, all the better to convince him to help. Luke’s bid to use Nick as their point person in Gilead makes so much sense it’s a wonder June didn’t bring it up before. Anyone who’s read The Face on the Milk Carton knows that it isn’t as easy as just reuniting a kidnapped child with their long-lost family and waiting for the tearful, happy hugs. If America fell about five years ago, 8-, 9-, or 10-year-old kids might barely recall their mothers’ or fathers’ faces and smells, their voices and gentle hands. Plenty of other children from Angels’ Flight are struggling to see their real families as familiar or comforting. This doesn’t mean his point about Hannah perhaps being better off with her “family” in Gilead doesn’t make a small bit of sense. Think about it: Is there any chance his phone is not tapped? That a Commander recently released from prison for treason would operate freely in a society as watchful as Gilead? His over-the-top cruelty, however - insisting that he’ll happily return Hannah if June brings back ten kids from Angels’ Flight - must be the result of pressure from the other Commanders. So when June calls and begs for his help finding Hannah (she must know through some channel he’s been reinstated to the Council and isn’t dangling from the wall or rotting in a cell), it’s impossible to know how Lawrence will react. Through it all he’s remained blistering and sarcastic, unwilling even when he’s being helpful to do it with a smile. No one slides up and down that spectrum more than Lawrence, who single-handedly designed Gilead’s economy and then retreated to his Victorian-designed, Abstract-Expressionist-filled mansion to quietly enjoy the perks of the demonic society without stressing too much about its human-rights violations. If there’s anything The Handmaid’s Tale excels at, it’s pushing characters up and down a spectrum of kindness and cruelty perfectly in keeping with real-life mood swings, shifting priorities, and creeping and dissipating selfishness. The episode is anchored by three big dialogues, each with June and one of the men whose care, affection, efforts (and occasional cruelty) kept her alive in Gilead. With (most of) the ceaseless violence in the rearview, it’s turned back into a character-driven experience, and it’s all the better for it. But “Progress” makes it all appear so simple that I wondered why the hell Tuello didn’t just reach into Gilead last season and pluck June out himself.Īnd yet, despite this adamant refusal by the Handmaid’s Tale writers to simply obey the rules of their own universe, “Progress” proves that the back half of this fourth season is one of the best stretches of the show in recent memory. Presumably, he and other government agents have contacts on Gilead’s side, spy-craft methods for arranging such rendezvous. Tuello (despite Lawrence’s claim that the Americans “don’t have a pot to piss in”) can arrange any call, any visit. Now that June is across the border, it seems as though the line has disappeared. Nick too shimmies up into the land of eternal snow, taking what must have been an exhaustingly long car ride to meet June, without attracting any notice or suspicion. The Putnams - a high-ranking family and part of the leadership chain - not only jet into Canada, they also pay a little social visit to their friends in international war crimes jail, bearing navy blue baby sweaters and what I’m assuming are Cuban cigars. Boop boop beep, the numbers are punched, and there he is, ready to chat treason. June simply calls Lawrence on his desk phone. But in “Progress,” new lines of communication are set up left and right. Just a few episodes ago June was forging an NGO ID card to make it across Lake Michigan while American citizens wept on chainlink fences, desperate to storm the boat. The Canadian–Gileadean border is much more porous than we’ve been led to believe.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |