What I’m Watching: The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 1, Episode 7 “The Other Side” (B)

For some reason, I expected that this show was only going to show things from Offred’s perspective, though I guess we’ve already seen a good deal of Ofglen’s life away from her. After an episode that showed us some of Serena’s life before the rise of Gilead, here we had an installment that barely featured June. We got to know Luke a few episodes back when we saw his love story with June, and up until the Mexican ambassador’s assistant shocked Offred with the news that her husband is still alive, I think everyone watching presumed that he was dead. It turns out that the world outside the confines of a tranquil home with a handmaid is relatively chaotic and disorderly, and therefore it’s not all that much of a surprise that he didn’t get killed by the first people who found him and that he survived for so long. There was a quick flash-forward towards the end of the episode to a place in Canada that was a safe haven of sorts, and I’m still interested in how we got there and seeing what happened during the transition from a normal world into a terrifying religious dictatorship. This show seems to be more interested in highlighting the vast differences between the way things were and the way they are, presenting haunting flashbacks that fade away in an instant when the harsh reality of how far things have come kicks in again. If Luke comes to rescue Offred, I’d be pumped, but something tells me it won’t be nearly that simple.