S06.E07: Shattered

[AngelaHunter]

2 hours ago, Black Knight said:

There were certainly other stories Nick could have come up with, but none that would make him look so good.

He could have said he was lonely and went there, feeling the devil tempting him, but ultimately, he couldn't break his vows and be unfaithful to his beloved wife, the Commander's daughter. Wharton would have been angry, given Nick a little talking-to, and that could have been the end of it. I really dislike it when characters are dumbed down to fit a plot point.

 

 

[aghst]

On 5/6/2025 at 7:42 AM, Brn2bwild said:

What I find ridiculous is that everyone acts like having handmaids there is fine and handmaids provide the perfect cover for insurgent action because they're so passive.  Does no one remember a few seasons back how one handmaid literally blew up a major public center and caused hundreds of deaths?  If anything, the commanders and their wives have the most to fear from handmaids.

I still recall the first season when Handmaids killed a  Guardian with their bare hands because they were whipped into a frenzy because he had raped a Handmaid or something.

So maybe the writers think it would be some kind of poetic justice to have the Commanders killed at the hands of the Handmaids.

But the  Guardians have automatic rifles and June and Moira smuggled in knives maybe?

Hope they make it plausible, they said they still have bombs stashed.

Why would    they have all the jezebels killed though?  You'd think the commanders aren't going to give up on their little club, just because this one was compromised.

Why wouldn't they build another one and just move the jezebels over?

 

[AngelaHunter]

1 hour ago, aghst said:

Why would    they have all the jezebels killed though?

For the "Holy shit!" shock value? When some conspiracy or plot is uncovered, I can't imagine the Jezabels not being interrogated to get as much information from them as possible, even if they were killed after that.

Janine's plot armour is just as thick as June's is, and although she's endured endless suffering, degradation, and cruelty since the first episode, she always manages to survive or be rescued in the nick of time.

 

[mytmo]

Maybe the poison will be delivered via a champagne toast so all partakers get the dose at the same time in quick fashion and not need to be digested and metabolized?

I think it was Wharton that had all the girls killed (except Janine) and the main reason that the thought Joseph may or may not have partaken and to avoid future temptation meant the end of Jezebel's.  Joseph spilling the beans about a possible insurrection was icing on the cake.  Janine cannot catch a break and I can only hope she can get sweet justice.  

Serena is Serena's biggest fan (June even said so when talking about her narcissism) and I cannot see her jeopardizing her big reward as the main Commander's wife and the crown that goes with it.  She has shrugged off way too many atrocities in the past and will shrug off any current and future.

[chaifan]

4 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

He could have said he was lonely and went there, feeling the devil tempting him, but ultimately, he couldn't break his vows and be unfaithful to his beloved wife, the Commander's daughter. Wharton would have been angry, given Nick a little talking-to, and that could have been the end of it. I really dislike it when characters are dumbed down to fit a plot point.

I totally agree.  He could have also claimed he was there on "Eye" business, that he can't discuss.  Or say he went to investigate the guy that June & Moira killed, of course not knowing he was dead until he got there, saying he was a suspected mole, or whatever.   Nick is smart enough to have an excuse in his back pocket at all times.  But nope, he just stared dumbly at Wharton, deer in headlights, and we're supposed to believe he couldn't think of anything on the spot and his only choice was to sell out Mayday?  It's lazy writing.  

7 hours ago, Black Knight said:

But I do, and it makes all this with Serena's flashes of empathy feel like a big retcon. We're supposed to believe that June's stories and the stories of the women on the train have gotten through to Serena, that she never realized before that how cruel Gilead really was to handmaids blah blah.

I've said before, I do not want a redemption arc for Serena, and I really hope they're not going there.  But... I can believe Serena could be (finally) seeing the light on the true treatment of the handmaids and is changing her perspective on this.  A real life comparison would be accounts of people who were once in extreme white supremacist groups, who have been "deprogrammed" and now renounce racism.  These are people who previously would have had no problem personally harming someone based solely on the color of their skin.  It's not that they just now realize that was bad - they always knew it was bad, but they were able to justify it based on their warped beliefs.  So I don't see Serena's progression (if there really is one) as a retcon.  

[Black Knight]

6 minutes ago, chaifan said:

So I don't see Serena's progression (if there really is one) as a retcon.  

The show's already explicitly tried a retcon of Serena's past in regards to handmaids - that episode that featured "flashbacks" to when a handmaid died giving birth. It was after June's arrival at the Waterfords' house and before Janine gave birth. Serena was shown sharing private looks with June at the ridiculous nature of the birthing ceremonies and then, afterwards, being sad over the death of the handmaid. But that was in direct contrast to S1 in which we saw Serena and June meet for the first time and what their relationship was like when Janine gave birth - chilly and distant, and certainly no shared looks over Gilead's ridiculousness (on the contrary, Serena was into the rituals), and Serena clearly didn't give a crap about any of the handmaids.

I do believe Serena's changed her position on handmaids now, but that's because she no longer has any benefit to derive from the handmaid system. She doesn't have custody of Holly, so there's no embarrassing child-from-a-handmaid in tow to show up her hypocrisy, and she gave birth to a child of her own. That's the difference between her and the reformed white supremacists you mention: It's a lot easier to recant awful beliefs when you no longer have anything to gain from them. For Serena, it's even more than that she doesn't have anything to gain anymore from the handmaid system, it's also what she loses if it continues, which includes but isn't limited to her husband's fidelity and her ability to think of herself as a good person and of what she's done in creating Gilead as ultimately having been for the best in the long run, even if there was a little collateral damage along the way.

Regarding Nick, Wharton explicitly blew the "confidential" thing Nick did try out of the water by pointing out that nothing is above his security grade. And if Nick had said he went to Jezebel's thinking of cheating on Rose and then deciding against it, at best Wharton would still have side-eyed him for even thinking of it, and at worst Wharton wouldn't have believed he didn't have sex with another woman. That's totally survivable, of course, as Wharton wouldn't have put him on the wall for adultery or anything, but a big aspect of Nick is that he's always looking for a father figure, and Wharton is the latest one in a line of men. He ultimately doesn't want Wharton thinking badly of him. So he picked the lie that made him look like a hero. He could have maybe reiterated "confidential investigation" some more, but even if Wharton bought that and didn't demand details, that doesn't make Nick look like a hero. It's just sort of eh, an investigation that so far hasn't produced anything of value (and ultimately never will). Blowing a plot to massacre Commanders out of the water? Hero.

3 hours ago, aghst said:

Why would    they have all the jezebels killed though?  You'd think the commanders aren't going to give up on their little club, just because this one was compromised.

In the words, sort of, of Walder Frey: They can always get another. None of the specific women were important to the Commanders, except Janine to Bell, and executing them sends a message to Jezebels in other locations and future Jezebels in Boston. Getting new women to re-staff Boston is easy. If there aren't any handmaids retiring soon, fine, then just pull some women who have committed crimes (or say those women have committed crimes). What is the average length of a woman's stint at a Jezebel's anyway? Probably not more than a couple of years before she dies or is sent off to the colonies for being worn out after having been raped and beaten daily. When you consider that, from a Commander's POV shooting them all now isn't such a big deal as they would have been replaced soon enough anyway.

[crashdown]

1 hour ago, chaifan said:

I totally agree.  He could have also claimed he was there on "Eye" business, that he can't discuss.

To be fair, that's exactly what he DID say at first, almost word for word: he had a delicate investigation there for the Eyes that he couldn't discuss. Wharton said that nothing was confidential to him.

[AngelaHunter]

1 hour ago, Black Knight said:

I do believe Serena's changed her position on handmaids now, but that's because she no longer has any benefit to derive from the handmaid system.

Exactly. IMO, it's the only reason. Serena does nothing that is not to her benefit. I know that Life with Fred was no picnic, and that in some ways Serena was just as subjugated as the handmaids - excepting the monthly rape session -  so she used what power she had left, and that was the power to severely subjugate others, so she wouldn't feel like a slave herself. And it was her idea for Fred to rape June when she was 9 months pregnant, not even treating her with the consideration one might give a pregnant cow or a mare.

As has been noted, Serena has no more interest in handmaids simply because she doesn't need or want them anymore and is couching her lack of interest in benevolence. She expected to be the revered wife of the great Commander Wharton, and now she's catching glimpses that her new life might not be so very different from what it was with ol' weaselly Fred.

1 hour ago, Black Knight said:

from a Commander's POV shooting them all now isn't such a big deal as they would have been replaced soon enough anyway.

Yep. The only annoyance to the Commanders would be waiting for a new batch of sex slaves to be rounded up and then whipped into shape and trained to behave appropriately.

3 hours ago, mytmo said:

Maybe the poison will be delivered via a champagne toast so all partakers get the dose at the same time in quick fashion and not need to be digested and metabolized?

I was going to Google poison that will kill instantly from a single sip, but I was afraid to in case my computer ever gets confiscated!

[crashdown]

7 minutes ago, AngelaHunter said:

As has been noted, Serena has no more interest in handmaids simply because she doesn't need or want them anymore and is couching her lack of interest in benevolence.

I see that as a plausible interpretation, but it's not mine. I go along with Lizzie and Yvonne and Bruce that Serena/June is the genuine love story of the show, albeit an obviously fucked up one. Serena loves June openly now, and she has for quite awhile. Loving June is the juice behind Serena's newfound tentative empathy toward handmaids, and that love is the only thing making empathy possible at all--Serena, as we all know, is not exactly gifted in feelings about her fellow human beings. Without June, she'd be just another version of season 1 Serena. But with June, she actually has the possibility of a genuine transformation.

I think the scene on the train with the women and June is a good barometer of just how much her feelings about June are a catalyst for actual empathy. When the women who weren't June told how they had lost their children and how they had suffered, Serena clearly wasn't wildly impressed: she said something like "Well, we've all suffered violence, haven't we?" At that point, June begins to tell her story, and Serena's entire demeanor changes. She gets it, finally, and she gets it because it's JUNE'S story, not the story of a stranger. That makes it matter to her.

This show gets a lot wrong, and there's plenty of criticism about the writing to go around, but Serena's halting, fumbling journey toward feeling for other human beings because of the transformative powers of love isn't one of them. She's running out of time, and her story is a tragic one--but it's a very compelling one, to me at least. I mean, few things are worse than falling in love with someone AFTER you've done unforgivable things to them for which you can never atone. Operatic!

 

[Brn2bwild]

2 hours ago, chaifan said:

I totally agree.  He could have also claimed he was there on "Eye" business, that he can't discuss.  Or say he went to investigate the guy that June & Moira killed, of course not knowing he was dead until he got there, saying he was a suspected mole, or whatever.   Nick is smart enough to have an excuse in his back pocket at all times.  But nope, he just stared dumbly at Wharton, deer in headlights, and we're supposed to believe he couldn't think of anything on the spot and his only choice was to sell out Mayday?  It's lazy writing.  

I've said before, I do not want a redemption arc for Serena, and I really hope they're not going there.  But... I can believe Serena could be (finally) seeing the light on the true treatment of the handmaids and is changing her perspective on this.  A real life comparison would be accounts of people who were once in extreme white supremacist groups, who have been "deprogrammed" and now renounce racism.  These are people who previously would have had no problem personally harming someone based solely on the color of their skin.  It's not that they just now realize that was bad - they always knew it was bad, but they were able to justify it based on their warped beliefs.  So I don't see Serena's progression (if there really is one) as a retcon.  

Plus, Serena went through her own situation as almost a handmaid, so she might realize deep down that she's vulnerable to being labeled one, too.

[aghst]

It would be going against how they've developed the character all these years for Serena to be even sympathetic to the rebellion.

Maybe she's drunk the Kool Aid on New Bethlehem but as Mrs. Wharton, she'd be somewhat insulated whether or not NB leads to real reforms for all of Gilead.

Sure Wharton can always turn on her, make her remember that she will always be subservient, despite this courtship.

So she wouldn't be happy to have her dream wedding disrupted in any way.

She didn't take much convincing to return to NB and now,  Wharton has prodded her out of NB over to Boston for the wedding.

Maybe she's being deceived but there has to be a part of her who realizes that the  Commanders can always assert their power and privilege and she's okay with  that possibility, despite the ordeal she went through.

Maybe she overestimates her ability to control Wharton through sexuality.  After what Fred did to her, she can't have illusions about being a partner to forge a new Gilead or whatever words Wharton used to gaslight her.

Still, it's hard to believe that she'd ultimately choose June over Gilead, since she's essentially doubling-down on Gilead with her eyes wide open -- given what happened to her.

 

 

 

[crashdown]

The thing always to keep in mind is how incredibly lonely--and alone--Serena is. June is the only person besides Noah that she loves, and June (even though love is one of the many things that June feels toward Serena) barely appears to tolerate her on the best of days.  Serena essentially has nobody, and that's the main reason why Wharton's romantic proposal was so appealing to her: she wants a person, and she wants a family. Because of that, she's gradually being sucked back into Gilead, piece by piece. It could continue that way on the gradually heated lobster slowly boiling to death metaphor, but it won't because apparently there will be some huge shock that makes Serena see everything for what it actually is. And when that happens, I have no problem believing that she'd choose June over Gilead; I think that ultimate choice has been pretty well set up for the entire run of the series. I hope that the writers have managed to stick the landing, but they (like Serena) are running out of time.

[AngelaHunter]

1 hour ago, crashdown said:

(even though love is one of the many things that June feels toward Serena)

See, I have a hard time with that. Although they do have a complicated relationship, I can't get to June loving Serena, who treated her with incredible cruelty, physically, emotionally, and mentally. For me, it's difficult to imagine that June can look at Serena without having horrendous flashbacks of the sadistic acts Serena perpetrated against her, the worst of which was Serena pressing her down on that bed, June's huge belly sticking up and S. encouraging Fred to whip it out and rape her. Sorry to keep mentioning that, but it was, IMO, beyond disgusting and so bad it was one of the few scenes I had to FF. 

Then, she had her baby snatched away from her and claimed by Serena, who seemed to enjoy torturing June by making her beg and grovel to touch her own child. I feel there's no excuse and no redemption for that kind of inhuman, callous, monstrous behavior. Unless TPTB say there is, I guess.

Sure, having a baby of her own has softened Serena, (although I doubt she cares about handmaids - just doesn't want any herself) and she was grateful for June's help when she gave birth (and no manger was available - ha!), but a leopard never truly changes its spots. I even think she hid June and Nick in her house only because if Wharton discovered them, it would mean devastation for Serena and for sure, no Royal Wedding.

[Kel Varnsen]

I wish the whole season could have been like the last 10 minutes of this episode. So much time wasted talking about plans that didn't happen. And so many Mayday people standing around. You don't need every attack to be an assault on a commander base. Blow up or burn down a Guardian building in rural Vermont or something. Or find a small time commander in upstate NY and kill him. There aren't enough guardians and eyes to lockdown everywhere. And for that matter I am surprised that on the way out of New Bethlehem, June didn't try to burn down Serena's house.

Although it would be nice if someone realized that handmaids attacking wedding guests with knives is probably a suicide mission for many of them. Which they are probably ok with at this point but it would be nice if it was discussed.

On 5/7/2025 at 3:18 PM, captain1 said:

I can't stand the fact that the writers ignore that there would have been security cameras covering literally every square inch of Gilead - instead Lawrence gets to stuff June and Moira into his trunk in the parking garage, etc. etc. ad infinitum with no one watching!

Who would they have to watch them? As I mentioned above (and before) there can't possibly be enough men to work in every job in every industry, and be eyes investigating any rebellion, and be police locking down every town and be actual soldiers on the front lines in the actual war and on top of that monitor CCTV footage from everywhere as it is happening.

Edited Saturday at 12:48 AM by Kel Varnsen

[crashdown]

2 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

See, I have a hard time with that. Although they do have a complicated relationship, I can't get to June loving Serena, who treated her with incredible cruelty, physically, emotionally, and mentally.

That's all totally true, and June certainly isn't likely to skip off into the sunset with Serena as her best buddy. But I think from the very beginning she's shown indications of loving Serena, usually when Serena is demonstrating some sort of vulnerability (Serena's vulnerability seems to be catnip for June). I could give a lot of examples, but this is an episode thread and I don't want the Wrath of Mods to come down upon me. Here's just a quickie. Fresh from killing Fred, June started out last season hating Serena, and that hatred was only magnified when Serena taunted her on international television with Hannah. A few episodes after that, June had a gun and a clear shot at Serena, who (visibly pregnant) stood there frozen at point-blank range. June froze too and didn't shoot her. A couple of episodes later, after Noah had just been born, Serena gathers her courage and asks June why she didn't kill her that day. Through tears, and with the kind of honesty and softness that she almost never reveals to any other character on the show, June simply says "I didn't want to." That's an "I love you" in Junespeak to Serena, and Serena seemed to know that. I think it's why she was so certain in the next episode that June had forgiven her. June hadn't, because flashes of love and actual forgiveness are two entirely separate things.

Regarding June's feelings, the show challenges us to ask two questions: Is it possible to love someone who has committed terrible atrocities against you? And if it is, could that ever be remotely healthy? I think the answer to the first is that yes, it's possible. As for the second, I just don't know. Many people who grant that June kind of sometimes maybe loves Serena dismiss it as a "trauma bond." I'm not a psychologist, so I'm not qualified to judge any of that. However, I will say that (1) June did not have any similar bond (trauma or otherwise) with Fred: she loathed him, wanted him dead, and was delighted when she succeeded at doing that. And (2) I'm not sure that the mere fact of a label like "trauma bond" should automatically invalidate feelings of love, anyway. But again, all of that is outside of my job description.

[AngelaHunter]

48 minutes ago, crashdown said:

the show challenges us to ask two questions: Is it possible to love someone who has committed terrible atrocities against you?

I'm no psychologist either, but from everything I've heard and read, the only time that happens is in the case of Stockholm Syndrome or abused children. In both cases, the victims are captives whose very survival depends on the person(s) who are abusing them, isolating them, and committing those atrocities against them.

When June was a handmaid, I can see that being the case. She was a captive to someone (Serena) who could, according to whim or mood, beat, imprison, punish, or reward her. The gift of a cigarette became huge. Any little kindnesses Serena showed to June would make her feel gratitude, and maybe even affection for her captor, who wasn't hurting or degrading her at that moment.

Now that June is no longer Serena's prisoner, she meets her on a more equal power basis and maybe feels some sort of weird bond. I don't think she would kill S, but I also don't think June likes her. At all.

Just my terribly amateurish observations!

[Maurina]

On 5/9/2025 at 7:50 AM, Black Knight said:

June's counting on that, actually. She talked about how Serena will pull security from elsewhere for her wedding. So while the wedding itself will be well guarded, it'll be much easier for Mayday to operate in and around Gilead setting stuff up and escaping afterwards.

Ah yes that does make sense  - yes that's a good point!