The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 Episode 1 Pigs Recap and Review

Check out our previous season’s analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale. Its time to start the next season of The Handmaid’s Tale. I hope you are ready for The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 Episode 1 Pigs.

June is on the run. Stuck in the belly of a truck. Shot to hell. Janine is a now ramboo janine. Which is cool. 

Bleh the Waterfords. They suck. Our CIA agent is laying some wood. He tells the two about the kinder jailbreak. He also discusses with The Waterfords the children have been reunited with their real families and that it was June who made it all happen. Boom. Their brains melt and dribble out of their ears (Not really but it is definitely a gut punch).

June and her not so merry band of Handmaids have been walking through the snow towards a farm. They are too chicken to approach. June is sick of this shit and walks into the farm. He is a friend. She passes out because she was shot a long ass time ago.

Aunt Lydia is back and pissed

Aunt Lydia is on trial and looks beat to hell. She has been tortured for 19 days and looks like it. They are letting her go because she is frail. She obliges but not before yelling at them to get June. Payback will be a bitch when she catches her.

Speaking of, June is healing slowly. They are all living out on the farm but healthcare isn’t great out that way so its a slow going process. June and a young girl in a severe dress are fighting/discussing how to strike back at Gilead. Wife dress reminds June she is the mistress of the farm. Very bitchy.

Commander Joseph is still playing games

Nick and Josef are talking about Gilead invading Canada. Josef wants Gilead to use the children as a way to gain diplomatic pressure. Nick ain’t hearing it. He thanks him for his service and they lock him up in a cell.

So Janine has this pet pig and the TLDR of the episode is that the farm had to kill the pig to feed everyone. But the fourteen year old wife makes her eat it and Janine tries to spit it out but the wife appears pretty evil and covers her mouth. June puts a stop to it while the mistress runs away. June tracks her down in the stable and reminds her what handmaids have been through. The mistress confesses she has been raped a bunch (like a lot, a massive amount). There is some real solidarity shit going on. Did I mention that this girl is really young. June tells her its not her fault. “God is going to make those men pay”. June is turning into Anti Lydia in that vengeance and violence seem pretty ingrained in her now. 

She is now pissed at the handmaids that let it happen. She demands to know where Janine is and we discover her in a barn dance that is more grateful dead than Dolly Parton.

Meanwhile back at Gilead Gitmo, Looks like old Commander Joseph is gonna get the ax, or in this case the chair. Time for some old fashion torture. Nick is there. Woof, its not torture its a deal with the high command. They want/need Joseph’s help.

Being a Wife sucks too

June and the old man have a deep conversation and then the wife calls her outside where she has caught a guard. He tries to run and the handmaids beat him until June tells them to bring him to the barn. In the barn one of the farmhands offers to take the guard to river and drown him. June recounts how he raped the mistress. She gonna do it herself. She is judge, jury, and executioner. 

The wife comes in and June tells her that she was right. That they needed to fight. June gives her a knife and tells her to make her proud. Yikes. We hear the wife stab the shit out of the guard. June walks away. 

June is moving very poorly. She sits down on her bed and appears to be in a lot of pain. She lays back as the exit music starts. Before she can sleep The Mistress comes in covered in blood. She lays beside June. Its bonkers. June is clearly manipulating the hell out of her. You make me feel like a natural woman finishes an opening episode that is starting to paint June in some not so positive lighting.  

Now What??

1. So, I think the issue all of us have as we switch to a new administration here in the United States is what comes next? How do we move from resistance to leadership? June clearly is moving into a leadership role and I don’t love it. So now what is she going to do?
2. So the Waterman’s are pissed. So what? Like their plot has been stagnant for a while and all of the action in Gilead threatens to make this plot line perhaps the most boring. I don’t care if they are fighting. So now what for the Waterford’s.
3. So the handmaid’s have all taken up residence in this farm. It sure doesn’t feel like a long term solution. I mean what happens when they ain’t wanna work on Maggie’s farm no more? So now what for people on the farm?
4. So Joseph is clearly the cat with nine gazillion lines but the lack of consequences for him and June continue to trouble me. If Gilead was harsh enough and violent enough to overthrow the United States than why is it neither when dealing with June or Joseph. They almost feel like mascots or worse yet, Mary Sue’s. So now that Joseph is back in the game, now what?
5. So we learned in past seasons that children are one (If not the only) resource that Gilead can brag about. With the return of some of those children to their parents, now what for Gilead? Its not like you can export rape which seems to be the only thing they have mastered and produce a lot of.