TV Review: THE HANDMAID’S TALE: Season 4, Episode 1: Pigs [Hulu]

The Handmaid’s Tale Pigs Review

Hulu‘s The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 4, Episode 1: Pigs TV show review. After the sensational build-up and conclusion of Season Three of The Handmaid’s Tale, the TV series had two directions in which it could take itself in Season Four.

The Two Directions

First Direction – The Handmaids can carry June Osborne / Ofjoseph (Elisabeth Moss)’s bleeding body back to Commander Joseph Lawrence’s house, into his basement. Mayday brings in a clandestine doctor and the bullet is extracted. Then everyone in the household acts as if they don’t know anything when Guardians come knocking, asking if they have heard or seen anything out of the ordinary. Since no children live in the house, Commander Lawrence, Ofjoseph, and the Marthas would just have to “play it cool” when the searches happen and suspicion is leveled on the household. In other words, a standard black-ops operation behind enemy lines that goes a little awry during the execution and in its aftermath.

Second Direction (the direction actually taken) – The Handmaids don’t take Ofjoseph back to the commander’s home, but out into the wilderness, into the arms of the Mayday network, with sights and sounds not seen before in A Handmaid’s Tale.

The viewer can obviously see the attraction of the latter choice, especially to eager TV show writers, and though it is the direction chosen, it is the wrong direction.

Here’s why.

Imagine the tension of pulling off an operation of that magnitude (getting the children on the plane to Canada) and still being right under Gilad’s nose, and everyone in Mayday knowing about it. Ofjoseph was looked-up to and respected by fellow handmaids before the operation. Ofjoseph would have been renowned after its successful completion. After that, everyone, some-possibly grudgingly, would have been looking at Ofjoseph as the de-facto leader of Mayday for all of the former United States.

The tortures and executions conducted by Gilad, trying to ferret out who carried out the operation, would have been monstrous, far more so than any previously seen, including the mass execution almost perpetrated at the beginning of Season Two of The Handmaid’s Tale. Gilad would have gone from nightmare to surreal nightmare in a heart-beat.

Furthermore, the First Direction would have created in Pigs an exercise-in-tension episode (like the final episode of Season One of The Wheel of Time or The Walking Dead: Season 7, Episode 1: The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be e.g. (to paraphrase) “Rick, cut your son’s arm off.”).

Instead, through the Second Direction, the viewer is given a somewhat interesting but ordinary on-the-run episode where Ofjoseph was indeed in-command but there was no tension. The viewer just watches the machinations of Handmaids and an extremely young wife on a farm.

Do you know what’s unfortunately humorous about this sequence of events (i.e. an oversight that wouldn’t happen in real life) and bespeaks of the aforementioned Two Directions – not once after Ofjoseph regains consciousness does she ask why the Handmaids didn’t carry her back to Commander Lawrence’s home.

Questions

Many questions swirl around this episode with its haphazard ending.

First set of questions – if a Commander is incapable of coitus because of age and / or infirmness, why get married to a wife, especially a extremely young one? Some Commanders get Handmaids as status symbols, not wives. And if Commander Keyes (Bill MacDonald) wanted a wife, and he was incapable of sex, why not get an older wife, one past child-bearing years, a widow perhaps? He could have requested that. Instead he gets a wife that he has nothing physically or mentally in common with. Why?

Second set of questions – why would a Commander loan his wife out to be raped? What possible purpose does that serve? If Esther Keyes (Mckenna Grace)’s husband is a sadist, yes, he would be capable of that, might think of that, but for all intents and purposes throughout the episode, the viewer doesn’t understand why he would do that (his motivations are never established). Why he would get married in the first place? Just to sexually torture whomever was unfortunate enough to be assigned as his bride? Again, possible, especially for a sick mind, but to a sane mind, the logic behind it is incomprehensible.

The Revenge

Once on her feet, Ofjoseph-in-command in Pigs is awkwardly handled. It seemed that a far surer writing hand was behind her positioning and command dialogue in Mayday than in Pigs but the same writer, Bruce Miller, wrote both episodes.

Esther Keyes’ anger, her rage, is palpable and later in the episode, the viewer finds out what generates it.

Esther is, at moments, the best aspect of the episode until confronted by one of her sexual assaulters in Pigs‘ third act.

From this moment on, the episode descends into melodramatic nonsense: the rapist is trussed up from the ceiling, and Ofjoseph, like a demented coach, says “Make me proud” and her fan says in somber reply “I will.”

This is horrendous writing for a badly staged and executed moment in the episode. You’re already on the run. Killing and disappearing Guardians while on run will complicate matters, possibly drawing unwanted attention to that sector of the country. Why risk it?

This is not a shrewd command decision by someone who has grown into a leadership position. This is sloppy, self-satisfying revenge seeking, and for a guerilla-commander on the run, it is egregiously idiotic. In addition, it sets a bad conduct example for the people underneath her, that look to her as a role model, for guidance, and for leadership.

This is not the Ofjoseph from Season Three of The Handmaid’s Tale that had matured through three seasons of trials, hardships, acquired knowledge, respect, and experience. This is a watered-down, lesser version of that character who speaks one way but acts another.

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