The Handmaid’s Tale: Everyone in Gilead Seems to Be Losing It in “Seeds”

So, Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is experiencing a little moment, and depending on your interpretation you might call it a “dissociative episode” or a “guilt spiral” or a “bottoming out” or a “revelation.” She has realized she is in truly deep shit, in ways she wasn’t even connecting with before, and she has realized that trying to fight the system has cost not only her, but a multitude of other people, freedom, sanity, body parts, marriages, lives. At the end of Season One she was starting to see her red cloak and white wings as a military uniform. Now, she’s experimenting with the idea that her anonymity, sameness, facelessness, is her only hope. She even starts burning the packet of letters she’s been hiding behind the bathtub, as if by destroying them she can somehow escape the whole idea that there is someone else she used to be. Luckily, Nick (Max Minghella) finds her and stops her. “I’m worried about the Handmaid,” he says to Serena (Yvonne Strahovski). “Her mental state.”

“The Handmaid is not your concern,” she says, a little too firmly given that they both know exactly why he’s concerned.

This episode has plenty to say about Offred, but just as “Other Women” was about Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), “Seeds” both is and is not about the protagonist. A lot is going on in this episode, much of it an investigation of power hierarchies in Gilead and in the Waterford home in particular. As Aunt Lydia examines Offred and asks her questions, Serena oscillates between answering for her about when “their” last bowel movement was and staring thirstily and confusedly at the pencil with which Lydia is making notes. The lady of the house is finding that vicious imperiousness is not giving her the pole position with anyone. Offred is “The Lord’s Chosen Vessel” and carries the currency of fertility, possibly the scarcest and most coveted commodity in Gilead. Lydia has not been denied the ability to read and write, and though she makes a Serena-soothing moue about it being “a burden more than anything,” they both know it’s not: That pencil is all but throwing sparks. The Commander (Joseph Fiennes) is awfully busy with work, and getting his attention takes a reference to Nick’s position in the household to force her husband’s eyes away from his laptop. Commander Waterford knows his wife probably wasn’t lying when she said Offred’s baby wasn’t his, and he presumably knows who actually impregnated her. You’d have to be pretty damned blind not to.

The fascinating thing is that now that Offred has become docile and silent, it turns out that Serena can’t deal with that, either. “Yes, Mrs. Waterford, no, Mrs. Waterford: What is the matter with you?” she asks after repeated failures to engage Offred in gossipy chitchat on a walk. One could almost be forgiven for thinking Serena’s frightened by the change in her previously bright, defiant and rather household-threatening Handmaid. Now, why would she be afraid?

Everyone can see that there is something wrong with Offred; she’s practically catatonic. What they don’t know is that she’s losing a disconcerting amount of blood. A smear. A spreading stain. A bathtub full of scarlet-tinged water. If you’ve had a miscarriage, you’ve experienced the uniquely helpless hormone-tailspin a non-viable pregnancy leaves in its wake. If you’re six weeks pregnant it’s messy and emotional. If you’re far enough along to be showing, it’s a terrifying shit-show. Offred’s looking at what I believe in medical circles would be known as “a crap-ton” of fresh, red, oxygenated blood. It can’t be good. Yet she does nothing, says nothing. It’s hard to tell if she’s scared, or sad, or numb, or something else. She has pretty much, at least for now, lost it.