The Handmaid’s Tale Review: Unknown Caller (Season 3 Episode 5)
On The Handmaid’s Tale Season 3 Episode 5, “Unknown Caller,” the series shows signs of fatigue as it veers further and further off course without the source material as a guide.
On The Handmaid’s Tale Season 3, all signs have been pointing to a revolution led by June with the aid of an emotionally battered and embittered Serena. But no sooner does the smoke clear following the twosome’s poolside powwow does The Handmaid’s Tale take an unexpected and tiresome turn.
In this dystopian world, babies are a precious commodity, but viewers are supposed to believe Nichole is such an integral cog in the wheel that keeps Gilead afloat, it’s all Commanders on deck to retrieve her from another country? Gilead is at war with enemies from within and outside, the fledgling republic is on shaky ground economically, rationing food to its inhabitants.
Despite being immersed in the political quagmire of running this new government and a general lack of respect for females at any age, Nichole becomes the hill the Commanders are willing to die on.
Put all the plot holes in this storyline aside, and you’re left with a bunch of entitled men who just want their toy back. Or Nichole is simply tangible proof that stripping women of their reproductive rights and using them as breeding stock is the only way — the right way — to deal with a waning population.
So now that Nichole’s whereabouts are no longer a secret, why is June still walking around? Why are the Commander and Serena not suffering the repercussions of lying about the details surrounding their only child’s disappearance?
It’s supposedly an unhinged Emily who steals Nichole, but now the baby is with June’s husband. This couldn’t occur without June’s intervention. Once again, June escapes an awful fate for reasons that are becoming increasingly impossible to fathom.
We expect Aunt Lydia to be torturing June at the Red Center, but the Handmaid is doing her usual daily shopping. Handmaids with far less rebellious transgressions are disfigured, and even the most fertile can still be sent off to the Colonies.
Serena decides she just wants to say goodbye to Nichole, and June complies. It makes no sense for June (basking minutes earlier in the afterglow of learning her daughter is with Luke and far from Gilead) to put her daughter at risk. It’s difficult to know if June’s endgame is simply to tell Luke to move on while raising her child, or if she’s solidifying her always shaky alliance with Serena.
We all know this isn’t going to end well because while other Gilead wives seem to view parenting as a duty or a chore, Serena is motivated by a pathological nurturing instinct; one she lacks in every other area of her life. Her concerns about Nichole growing up female in Gilead evaporate as quickly as many of her convictions when they become inconvenient.
This entire episode demonstrates there isn’t much difference between June and Serena. These women who are supposedly devoted to their children constantly act in ways contraindicative of this assertion. Serena is the dog who bites June whenever she extends a hand, and it’s difficult to feel pity for June when she keeps making the effort.
Nobody wants to watch a custody battle between Canada and Gilead anymore than they want to see Luke’s face as his wife needlessly hurts him to … clear her own conscience? Give him permission to go out and get laid? One episode June is a revolutionary, and the next she’s a cheating wife with bad judgment.
We have been promised a war on the patriarchy. June stays behind to save her daughter and to do her part to dismantle Gilead. That’s why we forgive her for not leaving when she has the chance. But instead of resistance, we get an intercontinental Kramer vs. Kramer.
If the goal of The Handmaid’s Tale Season 3 is to Instill in viewers a confounding and unabating sense of complete futility and frustration, it’s working.
What did you think of this episode of The Handmaid’s Tale? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Handmaid’s Tale airs on Wednesdays on Hulu.
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Jennifer Lind-Westbrook
Jennifer has been working as a freelance writer for six years, contributing to BuddyTV, Screen Rant, TVRage, Hidden Remote, Gossip On This, and PopMatters. She prefers binge-watching old episodes of The Office (British and American versions) to long walks on the beach. She's still holding out hope that Happy Endings will get a revival.