What I liked:
+ Camerawork again. I cannot overstate the praise of the work the crew puts into filming the scenes. Full glass room, with lots of reflections and tricky light conditions, but they still did a spotless job.
+ Finally, June faces consequences. And halfway through you even start to feel sorry for her. A refreshing change after the previous episodes.
+ Editing. The jump-cuts between the various lighting conditions really helped in portraying June's descent into madness, the "skipping" of time, as her mind and sanity starts to crumble.
+ Whoever cast Rose's actress. For that tiny scene in the end, she was an excellent choice due to her striking resemblance to Eden from the previous season. Tells almost without words what happens to the innocence in Gilead.
+ Music and sound editing. It was constantly great throughout the show, but here they did a really memorable job, on par with "Women's Work", where Janine sings to her baby in the end. It was the second time I watched the credits, because of this.
The downs:
The sad:
The downs:
- Stupid writing still present. Speaking of vows of never doing harm... Someone attempts murder with a scalpel she normally couldn't get. How did she get hold of it in the first place? You really don't need Sherlock Holmes for this mystery, just common freakin' sense. And if you have it you won't throw said scalpel back into the bin, just so she might give it a go again!
- You have guards at the doorstep of every commander's house. You have guards on the street. You have entrenched HMG posts on riverbanks. You have two armed guards for each aisle in the supermarket. Where you don't see a single guard present? Inside a hospital, where the most valuable subjects are being kept in their most helpless state. And don't tell me about infections. They let someone stay in an ICU 24/7 with open wounds right beside a comatose patient, and allow to have numerous visitors (Janine among them with an active infection).
- We had asphyxiated baby last week, now we have pre-born baby, nearly dying. That still didn't fill out the misery porn quota for this episode, so what about showing June getting her finger skewered by a discarded needle? Oh, gosh, it will be such a powerful symbolism of hurting herself while trying to hurt others! The audience would not get it otherwise!
- The obligatory up-close face**** screen-time. You know what our viewers like and help their immersion in the story? Seeing Elisabeth Moss staring awkwardly straight into the camera from the very beginning.
The sad:
- It was a by-the-books barrel episode. Nearly zero outside scenery, and 90% of the episode is being played out in a single ICU room, just so they can cut costs. It's all cool, and it ended up giving June some new, long-awaited drive and resolve after the disappearance of her daughter. Also, it channeled her frustration and rage from lashing out to quasi-innocents to lash out against those who did her real harm. It is one of the most meaningful episode in terms of character development in the season so far. The only problem is that you should have given it to her (us?) a good 6 episodes ago. June stayed in Gilead to save her daughter. It all went awry, now she decides to go all out on revolting. Cool, but that had already been hinted in S1 - " They should never have given us uniforms if they didn't want us to be an army." Almost 2 seasons are gone, and we're still standing the same place where we started. Patience is a finite resource, especially for series viewers.