The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 Episode 5 Review: Janine

Warning: contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season six episode five “Janine”.

Of course New Bethlehem was a lie. The Sons of Jacob have a good thing going in Gilead: unchecked power, privilege and pussy – who’s going to give all that up in the name of international relations? 

In episode five, Lawrence learned the truth. The High Commanders are only paying lip service to New Bethlehem while they fill up on Mercedes and Rolexes, and it fills up with credulous marks like Rita. The plan is to give it a few years, and then turn wolf on those sheep, put Lawrence on the wall, and carry out coup number two. New Bethlehem and its offshoots will become old-school Gilead. Lawrence, Nick and Serena’s assurances about the repatriates’ safety will be dust in the wind. And the Sons of Jacob will celebrate with scotch and blowjobs. Unless Mayday’s bombing plan comes off and turns that frat-bro cabal into dog food, which is better than they deserve. 

Imagine being considered a misogynist jerk even by other Gilead commanders; the extent of Bell’s hideousness is almost an achievement. You’d like to think that his boorish cruelty would only be tolerated in The Handmaid’s Tale, but in our world, Bell probably have a hit YouTube channel and millions of followers on Instagram. Hell, he’d probably be president. 

In just one of this episode’s moments of Shakespearean drama, Lawrence learned about the plot against him through eavesdropping. Now his goals and those of Mayday have come into unexpected alignment: to save New Bethlehem and salve his conscience, he also needs the Penthouse commanders gone. Does that mean he’ll work to get the Mayday plan back on track with the two freedom fighters currently hiding in the trunk of his car?

As June predicted, it didn’t take long for Mayday’s plan to go awry. A lone Guardian, emboldened by his country to treat women as property, saw an opportunity and went for it. Unluckily for him, he’s the latest in a line of assholes June and Moira have beaten their way free of and it was into the incinerator he went. 

There was nothing celebratory about the violence this time; director Natalia Leite didn’t include a shot of Elisabeth Moss or Samira Wiley staring into the camera post-kill and splattered with the blood of their attacker, because this murder wasn’t a watershed character moment for either of them, it was just another damn day in Gilead. 

The important character moment happened before the Guardian entered, when Moira and June reached an instructive conclusion about not forgetting who the real enemy is in the fight for gender equality. “If we start comparing our suffering then those fuckers have won,” said Moira in a line from screenwriter Ubah Mohamed that feels like a verdict this show wants to broadcast: rather than in-fight and play misery one-upwomanship with each other, let’s unite against the thing hurting us all. 

June said it right when she told Moira that she would never understand what she’d been through (though she left unvoiced the extra part about her being a straight white woman talking to a Black lesbian, which, granted, might have turned the scene into a stagey educational video instead of a real-feeling confrontation between friends). Speaking of real feelings, the shift of tone from intensity to ironic humour in that exchange felt particularly well-observed. Nobody can joke about degradation like abuse survivors can. 

On the subject of surviving degradation, Janine – who gave her name to this episode despite not being its main concern – remains a wonder. Instinctively heroic and somehow still capable of both hope and love, she refused to save herself before the others. Madeline Brewer has always been a thousand-watt bulb in this show, and she continues to burn bright.

Speaking of lighting, should we take it as foreshadowing doom that Commander Wharton’s proposal to Serena took place in this show’s traditional spotlit-evil-commander-dinge instead of, say, the sparkling New England sunshine of her meeting with Aunt Lydia? Probably. Wharton is saying all the right things, but his apparent progressiveness just doesn’t tally with his status as a Gilead high commander. Can he be another Lawrence, responsible for atrocities but, next to men like Bell, comparatively… good? 

Wharton didn’t seem friendly in the scene in which he warned Nick about the Guardian shooting, the whole plot thread of which was freighted with dramatic irony. Like a Shakespeare villain, Nick was repeatedly told of his great honour while we knew he was the one who’d pulled the trigger. Young Toby’s confused mumblings about his dog almost bought him a pass, but ultimately, safety-seeking Nick knew the risk was too great to let him live. 

Nick, Wharton and Lawrence make three commanders at once on this show with complex inner lives. A rarity. The question is, in what direction will each of them turn now?

The Handmaid’s Tale season six streams on Tuesdays on Hulu in the US, and will begin on Saturday May 3 on Channel 4 in the UK. 

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