Emily Hard at Work - The Handmaid's Tale
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Recap

June is on the move. She's at another warehouse awaiting what's next.

She can't stop saying things like under his eye even though she's fighting to be free of the world in which she's living.

When she hears sirens outside, she runs and hides, grabbing a hammer for protection.

At the colonies, guards are wearing gas masks while women dig into hillsides filled with gas and hazardous waste. It would seem more effective to have male criminals doing the work, but nothing about Gilead makes a lick of sense.

During a prayer break, Emily recalls her life before. She was a professor.She asks her students to smell their armpits. A student tries to show up another and Emily offers him a reading list. Emily was a women's advocate even then.

Emily discovers she will no longer be teaching and will be doing lab time exclusively. Her boss, Dan, wants her to look at it as an opportunity. He tells her it's caution. The new board of regents doesn't think she's maintaining a healthy learning environment. It's due to the photo she just showed her student. Her family. She's a lesbian with a little boy and Dan's worried she will pay the price. Dan did the same in his office, hiding photos of his boyfriend or husband.

Emily refuses to step down. Dan welcomes her to the fight.

The colonies are no different than Gilead but with manual labor, horses and a Little House on the Prairie vibe. The torture is the same and women are still worthless.

Emily is sitting outside when a wife appears to her clubhouse. She immediately takes to her bed to pray.

June is still examining her new living space, which appears to be a former office building. She's entirely alone and the place is as it was left the day people moved out with purses strewn about and coats still on hangers.

There are photos of families, "I Love Mom" drawings children made their parents and even a misplaced show ripped right off of a woman's foot. She's in the building that housed The Boston Herald.

Something down a few levels causes June to avert her eyes. Nooses have been hung across the printing room. While the bodies are gone, they still bring her to tears. Cement walls are riddled with bullets and covered in blood. Signs of executions are everywhere. The second shoe, making a pair, is in front of the bloodstained wall and covered with the red stain.

Just as June has found her bitterly angry spot, she hears someone walking, opening a door to where she is now. Someone calls her name. She drops the hammer. It's Nick.

She doesn't want to be held this time. She just wants to get out. He tells her she can't go, but she doesn't want to stay. It's a slaughterhouse. He wants her to calm down and in a few weeks, things will be OK.

They begin to argue. She wants to get Hannah and go north. He will not. But he still gives her the keys. He also gives her a gun. If she's not interested in safety, he will not hold her against her will. When she gets into the car to drive away, looking at Nick before her, she calms down and stays. She cannot go.

They decide to have a passionate quickly against the wall that turns into a long lovemaking session and they're still going later in one of the offices. Nick can't, can't. Try, she says.

Marisa Tomei is digging in the dirt, talking about god. She gets electrocuted for being sloppy.

Women's nails are falling off from the manual labor ... or infection from the gasses.

Emily offers to help the woman, who is also the same one who came the night earlier. She had an affair. She hopes that falling in love means god will be good to her.

In the past, Emily sees a rope hanging from the school and people fretting over the word faggot on the pavement. She runs outside to see Dan hanging.

An attempt to get to Canada goes awry when the laws change the morning of their departure. Emily is the only American in the family and even their marriage doesn't guarantee a provisional stamp. By the time they get to the other agent, they learn their marriage is forbidden.

In the present, the wife is suffering. Emily gave her something to kill her, not help her. Emily spits in her face that every month she sat back and watched while a girl who was a prisoner in her home was raped and she did nothing. When she asks Emily to pray with her, Emily says she should die alone.

The next bus delivers Janine, just moments after the wife, who has subsequently been hanged on a cross, is verified as dead.

June is watching the Friends DVD she found on the executed woman's desk. Maybe it's not so bad being where she is. She collects other items from around the office and puts them into a box. She creates a memorial to them at the shooting wall downstairs. Through it all, June has retained her faith and prays that God will bless this place and all that departed for his side through it.

Show:
The Handmaid's Tale
Season:
Episode Number:
2
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The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 Episode 2 Quotes

June: Under his eye.
Driver: After a while, crocodile.

They can't scare us back into the closet.

Emily