The first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 featured a flashback in which Hannah became sick during the school day, and June was shamed by a nurse at the hospital for being a working mother. The implication was that June cared more about her career than her child, as though the two things are mutually exclusive. Gilead is born out of that idea, stripping women down to a single basic role—childbearer, wife, housekeeper—while erasing their professional identities.
Amidst all the horrors of Gilead, it’s easy to overlook just how traumatic it is to be robbed of the right to work, even for a privileged and complicit woman like Serena. This week's episode, "Women's Work," tackles this particular loss with an infuriating life-or-death situation that casts Gilead's hypocrisy in sharp relief. Here are six talking points.
1) June and Serena make a great team.
SO GREAT. As it turns out, rebellion suits Serena, and this episode opens on a truly delightful scene of the pair revelling in their new document-forging racket. “In another life, maybe we could have been colleagues,” June notes in voiceover, right before telling Serena that she’s a good writer. It’s a remark that seems to genuinely touch Serena, who’s been deprived of her identity as a working woman for so long. “I do truly detest knitting, to be frank,” she admits to June, in one of many conspiratorial moments of bonding. I could truly watch an entire episode of this.
Unfortunately, the fun is way too brief, because the commander is coming home tomorrow. “Praise be,” June says, in a line delivery that embodies the 😐 emoji. “Praise be,” Serena responds in kind. When Fred arrives home—walking with a cane and noticeably weakened—Serena and June both know their co-working days are numbered. If you’re not actively rooting for Fred to die a horrible death just yet, wait for it!
2) “Blessed be the fruit.” “May the Force be with you.”
I don’t really have a talking point here. I just wanted to write this exchange out and leave it here for everyone’s enjoyment. Bless Janine, who also appears to think that babies “push their feet out of your stomach like an alien” when they kick during pregnancy. So… it’s fair to say the Colonies haven’t exactly improved Janine’s grasp on reality. But June is comfortable with her eccentricity at this point, and she’s protective of Janine, which becomes important later in the episode when the Putnams’ baby Angela—aka Janine’s baby Charlotte—falls seriously ill.
3) Fred’s refusal to help the Putnam baby is a painful reflection of far-right ideals.
Gilead is all about making babies at all costs, but good luck getting healthcare for them once they’re born! Being both pro-life and anti-universal healthcare seems contradictory, but isn’t uncommon at all among conservatives, and Fred’s stance here feels uncomfortably familiar.
June tries to get a panicking Janine into the hospital to see her baby, and asks Serena to pull some strings with the Putnams. Serena succeeds—kind of amazing, considering Janine tried to jump off a bridge with the baby last time—and there’s a heartbreaking scene where Janine tearfully talks to her dying baby daughter, telling her about the curly hair she’s going to have.
But Serena has bigger ambitions. One of the best neo-natologists in the world is currently working as a Martha, and Serena wants to bend the law to get her a temporary pass so that she can treat the Putnam baby. Fred says “we cannot question the will of God,” and at this point the whole “rationale” behind Gilead is called into question. You’ll go to such insane lengths to get any woman pregnant at any cost because the fertility rate has plummeted so far, but once the baby is born and it falls ill, your response is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “Will of God, y’know?” It’s almost as if the men of Gilead use childbirth as a smokescreen to justify enslaving women!
4) Serena directly defies Fred for the first time.
It’s amazing how quickly my feelings about Serena have developed from “what a true sociopath I want nothing but the worst for her” to “YAAAAAS QUEEN.” After Fred says no, Serena forges his signature on the transfer anyway, and Dr. Hudson, the world-class physician currently being wasted as a Martha, is allowed to come and treat the baby. There’s an incredibly emotional beat as Hudson puts on her white coat for the first time in years, and a telling one as the male doctor on staff reveals just how starstruck he is by her presence. “We actually met at a conference in 2012… you probably don’t remember,” he stammers, revealing that she actually trained his mentor. So, just to be clear: the best doctor Gilead could find to treat this baby is two professional generations lower than Dr. Hudson.
Serena makes a point of telling the bewildered Dr. Hudson that they want her professional opinion. Again, Serena is wildly privileged and absolutely complicit in Gilead, but she also had her work taken away from her, and she understands the power of this moment for Dr. Hudson. But the doctor can’t find any medical explanation for the baby’s illness, and so can only recommend taking her off life support and letting nature take its course.
In the end, the miracle cure comes not from medicine, but simply allowing the baby to be with its mother; after a night of being held by Janine, Angela is smiling and gurgling and seems to be in perfect health again. It’s a lovely moment, punctured by the looming fact that Janine will probably have to give her up again soon.
5) Emily could become a problem for June.
This is what’s being hinted in that grocery store scene, right? We haven’t spent much time with Emily since she came back from the Colonies, but her rage is palpable, close to boiling over. When Janine sunnily says that “only” having to deal with the Ceremony is like a blessing from God, Emily snaps that “being raped is not a blessing.” She’s right, of course, but her anger at Janine feels misdirected, and prompts June to wonder how Emily would react if she knew that June was working with Serena. “Would she want me dead too?”
6) Fred responds to Serena’s defiance by flogging her.
And now I need him to be murdered, preferably by June and Serena together, preferably in an extremely painful way. This scene is pure, skin-crawling fury, starting right when Fred tells Serena it’s not her fault, really, because “it was unfair for me to burden you with so much responsibility.” And then flogs her with his belt and forces a horrified June to watch.
Maybe the most upsetting thing about all this is that despite the clear affection that now exists between June and Serena, this punishment ends up driving a wedge between them. June goes to Serena’s door after it’s over, clearly desperate to help her, and though Serena’s in tears behind the door, she composes herself enough to coldly tell June, “Go back to your room.” Serena is left alone with her bruises, while June goes crawling back to Fred to apologize like a good little girl. It’s nauseating, especially after Fred’s hypocrisy has already been laid so bare: when Serena says “I did it for the child. What greater responsibility is there in Gilead?” Fred’s response: “Obeying your husband.” And there it is.
Given that this is Fred’s response to learning that Serena and June went behind his back… do we think Fred knows that he’s likely infertile and that June’s baby is not his? And if so, does he know that Serena concocted this plan to get Nick to impregnate her instead? In any case, I would not remotely put it past Serena to Phantom Thread him, and Rita and June would happily help her chop the poisoned mushrooms. But if Fred dies, does Serena lose the societal protection she has? At this point, it might be worth the gamble.
