As the final series reaches its halfway point, long-held certainties are ripped away from key characters and life-and-death risks proliferate for both Gilead’s enemies and its loyal emissaries.
A tightly focused ‘mission’ episode, Janine is arguably the strongest yet of the final run – its impact enhanced by the suffocating claustrophobia of its setting. Most of the drama plays out in the confines of the Jezebel’s club: a repellent symbol of the cruelty and hypocrisy of Gilead’s male leaders.
With all three determined to join Mayday’s next reconnaissance raid, Moira and June arrive at Jezebel’s, hidden in the back of a regular delivery truck driven by Luke. Tension mounts as June and Moira sneak through the facility disguised as maids, narrowly avoiding discovery by some of the building’s despicable ‘clients’, to arrive at Janine’s dormitory.
Commander Nick learns that one of the Guardians he shot in no-man’s-land in Devotion has survived, and could implicate him in the killing. After encouraging the wounded Guardian’s mother to pause her hospital bedside vigil, he decides to take matters into his own hands to avoid exposure for his crimes. Aunt Lydia continues to lobby for better opportunities for ‘her girls’ in retirement, and is excited by Serena’s suggestion that former Handmaids could become birthing attendants at the New Bethlehem fertility clinic she is considering.
An uncomfortable Lawrence, obliged to mingle with a group of Commanders visiting Jezebel’s, engineers some alone time with Janine. She is resentful and hostile at his intervention, dismissing his delusion that he’s a ‘good man’. The dynamic between these two individuals, both trapped at opposite ends of Gilead’s power pyramid, always generates fresh sparks. While Janine continues to show resilience against the odds, Lawrence overhears devastating news in a conversation between the other Commanders, which shocks him into rethinking where his loyalties now need to lie. It’s a brilliantly conceived flip of expectations, as Janine embraces the power of her rage, while Lawrence shrinks in the face of his peers’ threats.
June discovers that Janine refuses to countenance escape unless the other women imprisoned at Jezebel’s are freed too, such is the steel of her resolve. The fact that she’s willing to endure further exploitation and abuse at the club is a wholly selfless impulse – and one that Moira is appalled by, because freeing Janine is central to their mission.
The rescuers’ own fate is nearly sealed when they are interrupted by a Guardian, who forces himself on Moira before June turns the tables on the attacker. Still in disguise, the pair move through the building, disposing of incriminating evidence in an incinerator. Director Natalia Leite amplifies the tension of their high-stakes flight through the bowels of the club with relish, building the tempo of the jeopardy as the minutes tick by.
When a Guardian is reported missing, the alarms sound and the premises go into lockdown. Luke’s attempt to collect June and Moira is thwarted, and the pair have to retreat and find a different escape route. Their options are few, and the solution they latch onto is as audacious as it is foolhardy.
With the showrunners committing to a reckoning with Gilead’s rulers worthy of a series finale, there are only so many small-scale reconnaissance missions they can offer up before they need to deliver the main event. But Janine works so well not just because of the heightened tension of the Jezebel’s raid, but because so many characters are torn out of their established discomfort zones in a world where deeply-held convictions threaten to exact a heavy price from all true believers.
Episodes of the sixth and final season of THE HANDMAID’S TALE screen weekly on Channel 4 in the UK
Read our previous reviews of the sixth season of THE HANDMAID’S TALE below:
Season 6, Episode 1, TRAIN
Season 6, Episode 2, EXILE
Season 6, Episode 3, DEVOTION
Season 6, Episode 4, PROMOTION
