The Handmaid’s Tale – Season 4, Episode 4

Janine’s motivation is empathy instead of anger, which makes her June’s equal: diametric, but no less resilient.  In “Nightshade”, June assured Mrs. Keyes that some good men still exist within Gilead.  The fascistic theocracy acts as a slow poison, making it difficult for anyone to remain uncorrupted by it.  Janine’s inherent goodness despite her brutal oppression flies in the face of this thesis.

Alma and Brianna are dead, crushed by an oncoming freight train while desperately trying to escape.  In a heartbreaking twist, Janine and June make use of the nearby loading station, hiding inside a refrigerated tank car hitched to a train on its way Chicago.  It’s filled with milk; they almost drown before June locates the drain and empties the container from within.  Although it was June who took action, Janine buried her fear when circumstance demanded it.  Her stoicism isn’t as coarse as June’s, but her days of blind panic are behind her.

Held at a cushy facility in Canada, Serena Joy attempts to use Rita’s love of children to her own advantage by wielding her surprise pregnancy as a weapon.  Accustomed to playing others like fine-tined instruments, Serena overlooks Rita’s incriminating deposition; an alliance brings her a step closer to avoiding severe legal consequences.  However, she no longer holds sway over those who she once abused.  Rita can only hold the facade of friendliness for so long.  As she leaves, Serena gifts her a sonogram photo.  It’s a rare overplayed hand by a woman desperate to regain control.

Back in the milk tanker, Janine resents being kept the dark.  June’s anger has made her an island; she shoulders the burden of leadership alone.  Like Serena, she’s driven by a need to be in control of whatever modest domain she can grab hold of.  Unlike Serena, this impulse is in response to the violent oppression forced upon her; she never had a hand in the rise of Gilead.  Her greatest shame is that she gave up the location of her fellow handmaids when her captors threatened her daughter, Hannah.

Janine, constantly underestimated by her peers, deduces how The Eyes located their safe house.

“They all loved you.  A real, real love,” she laments.

June’s betrayal is easy to judge, but she’s a blameless torture victim.  When Janine claims she could’ve sustained worse without giving anything up, it’s obvious even she doesn’t believe what she’s saying.  But, it’s too late to retract the pronouncement; June lashes out, berating Janine for her own previous “weaknesses”.  It’s easier to blame each other than their abusers.  The two women shiver in the darkness, risking hypothermia instead of sharing body heat.

A flashback sequence reveals that pre-Gilead, Janine was a waitress juggling a grueling schedule and single motherhood.  Changing clothes in the confines of her tiny car, she begs a co-worker to trade shifts so she can make a time-sensitive doctor’s appointment.  Already stretched to her limits, Janine wants to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.  However, what she thought was a medical clinic is actually a “Crisis Pregnancy Center”; a religious organization luring in unsuspecting women with fear-mongering and outright lies.

With a comfortable ambiance and gentle propaganda, it’s easy to see how they could offer a false comfort to so many wrestling with fear and uncertainty.  In this moment, we see what mettle Janine is really made of: she recognizes the deception and immediately extricates herself.  Resourceful, she finds a legitimate doctor, who confirms that Janine’s experience—fueled by internet misinformation and misdirection—is far from unique.

Janine and June evade an armed checkpoint when its guards are killed by members of the resistance.  Possessing no clear political agenda—except remaining outside of Gilead’s control— the group operates out of a repurposed, bombed-out factory.  Comprised predominantly of disenfranchised minorities; their leader, Steven (Omar Maskati), tells Janine and June that they can remain in their fold, but only if they pay their way.  June assumes he means for them to fight Gilead’s forces at the front; Steven assumes that they should be “used to” his desired quid pro quo.  “Actual fucking sex slaves in America”, he comments—without irony—mere minutes before motioning to his fly.

Janine offers herself up to Steven in June’s stead, aware that her companion’s trauma response to sexual coercion is more severe than her own.  “It wasn’t so bad,” Janine gently assures her, afterwards, “he thinks my eye patch is cool”.  It’s not that she’s experienced less trauma, or faced it with more bravery – to put it simply, she’s resilient because she doesn’t internalize the way that June does.  Janine doesn’t let things fester inside.

Vastly underestimated by June, Janine’s sacrifice humbles and stuns her.  The moment represents a significant turning point in their relationship, but it’s unfortunate that the show fell into the trap of using a character of color to emphasize Janine’s strength and compassion.  The decision to make Steven a brown man questionable, especially considering the sociopolitical reality of America and how systems of oppression work.

The imagery of white women sexually assaulted by “darker” (aggressive, hyper-sexual) men has a very real, insidious, and damaging history in this country.  This misstep invokes early criticism of the show of how Gilead wouldn’t erase or suspend systemic white supremacy, especially since the violent ideology inexorably links to radical American evangelicalism.

The powerful white men behind the ascent of Gilead – a fascistic theocracy – would never allow non-white Handmaids into their highly regulated and ritualized breeding system.  It’s a regime that worships power and considers their acts of exploitation, oppression, and brutality to be a regretful necessity ordained by God.  Commander Lawrence said so himself, “Gilead doesn’t care about children, it cares about power.”

Evangelicalism and white supremacy intertwine like a thicket of weeds, feeding off the myth of patriarchal benevolence.