Poison and Bad Decisions
The Handmaid's Tale 4.1 "Pigs"
June and the other fugitives are now disguised as Marthas on a farm owned by a highly oblivious Commander.
It's his young wife that's the one sheltering them...another teenager married off because she's fertile, but married to an impotent man who has been passing her around to anyone willing to attempt to impregnate her.
The pig of the title is literal...there is a pig. It dies, by the way, just so you have the content warning...and metaphorical, referring to those men.
Oh and the kid now has a crush on June. Brilliant. And June isn't exactly discouraging her...perhaps a little bit more oblivious.
Try Janine, kid...
Meanwhile, Lawrence is released from jail to help plan war with Canada...which he agrees to in the hope he can talk them out of it.
And Aunt Lydia wants June dead...is she about to snap or is she about to turn? I can't tell which...
The Handmaid's Tale 4.2 "Nightshade"
June sees a rare opportunity. All of the military commanders involved in invading Chicago are gathered at a brothel for one last party.
And it turns out the young wife has been poisoning the commander...and knows a lot about poisons.
Moira, meanwhile, is dealing with the fact that not all of the Angel's Flight children are happy to be out of Gilead. They're scared kids...and some of their families aren't dealing too well either.
Serena wants a divorce...or does she? Turns out they are both capable after all; Serena is pregnant. Whether it will end well is open to interpretation, but...
And now June has been arrested...but Janine got the others to safety first. She might be fragile, but she's not incompetent.
The Avengers 2.10 "Death on the Rocks"
This show loves diamonds.
I love the trope of the cinematic spy who, no matter how many missions he does under the same name is never recognized by the bad guys. Nope. Not ever.
The episode itself is a pretty standard blood diamond caper...a band of smugglers who are hoping they can topple the Diamond Federation and take over distributing both gem quality and industrial diamonds.
And they're doing it by threatening people's families if they don't buy from them.
Cathy pretends to be Steed's wife so she can be bait.
Not the best episode, to be honest, but Blackman does her best with the material she has.
The Handmaid's Tale 4.3 "The Crossing"
Sometimes a plot is driven by bad decisions. This episode is driven by everyone's bad decisions.
June betrays the Handmaids after they threaten to hurt Hannah. But then Aunt Lydia's solution for recalcitrant Handmaids is a "Magdalene Colony" where the handmaids will live together on a farm, seeing their Commanders only for the ceremony.
This was when I yelled Bad Decision at the screen the first time. They're going to put all of their problem handmaids in one place?
The second time was when they decide to make a run for it when the red mobile carrying them stops at a level crossing. No. Wait until you get there.
It ends...badly.
Very badly.
The Handmaid's Tale 4.4 "Milk"
We discover Janine had an abortion...after ending up at a crisis pregnancy center. She's pretty clueless - I felt the show over-explained, but at the same time, pregnant people fall victim to that particular scam frequently and I'm not the target audience there.
June and Janine hop a train to Chicago, but fall in with some people they think are resisters...but they're actually just desperate people stealing to survive. And they can only imagine one use for the former handmaids. Can we say eww?
In Toronto, Serena tries to manipulate Rita into taking her side against her husband. Rita is a bitch and tells Fred about the pregnancy. Fireworks are going to ensue there.
After all, Serena's plan is to throw Fred under the bus, divorce him, then vanish with her kid.