3x08 "Unfit"

[DawnFae]

The Handmaid's Tale 3x08 Promo "Unfit"

[Dee]

Oh dear lord. This is not going in a good direction right now, is it? June is truly beginning to lose the plot. Her walking partner truly lost her mind, and then her life, and it's not just the system that was at fault here. June's manipulations have also contributed, without a doubt. Chicken or egg, who cares. Our heroine is crossing over to the dark and unstable side, and it's hard to watch.
Janine is the purest soul, but also mentally unstable.

Lydia's back story... well, I was expecting something like this, and it makes sense. Rejection fuelled and set her on a journey that led her directly into becoming an Aunt in Gilead. Yet occasionally we see some compassion breaking through her harsh exterior. Still, Aunt Lydia is the rejected, sour spinster, the one who felt deserved better. She feels she knows what's best for everyone, in the eyes of the lord. And that's all she has decided to care about. When she dared to veer off the righteous path, she was severely punished by a humiliating rejection. So she is determined to stay on the righteous path and keep everyone else on it, no matter the cost.

I can't say her backstory has added much if anything to her character. It was a fairly predictable and low key story, though still interesting to watch. On the whole it has left me a little underwhelmed, I was hoping for something a bit more shocking, I guess. It proves the point though that it doesn't take much to push someone into becoming a real bitch. There were interesting parallels between Lydia and June taking out their frustrations on someone else.

The final scene in the shop was shocking though, and it could have gone in so many directions, edge of the seat stuff. In fact it went the least challenging way in the end. But still we are left with plenty to worry about, when it comes to June's mental health spiralling out of control.

[Lori]

Well - is that it? Rejection from a man being the final straw that led Aunt Lydia to entertain her dark side? It was rather interesting that Lydia expected so much on a first date with a nice man. His 'rejection' was not rejection at all, given that his wife had died and he wasn't quite ready. He still wanted to pursue a relationship. As we say in our household, he 'dodged a bullet' getting rid of her. Yet, her pre-packaged damage saw it as such. It wasn't enough for me to attempt to justify her behavior. She was a damaged shit from the beginning. Go figure.

June....ah me. She will suffer from her lapse in humanity. However, she will also turn it into motivation.

There is some repetition issues beginning in this series for me. Close-ups of June's pissed off eyes are losing their efficacy, but I still love-love the series. Onward, PICs!

[Dee]

I think you're so right to point out that there has already been some "prep-packaged damage" here with Lydia, prior to the incident we saw here, and I wonder if we will ever get to see how and when that happened. It was hinted that her first marriage was a disaster, he left her for someone else? Seeing this story unravel might have given us a better understanding of Lydia's path then just showing us the last straw. We are kind of left to put a few pieces together and get the picture.

[DawnFae]

Hey Ladies !
The kid's mother encouraged Lydia to be a woman again and dare to hope in a new love relationship. When the man rejected her, all her old demons and old wounds about being a woman who obviously had been treated badly by a man resurfaced and she probably got some damaging religious guilt to struggle with, so she lashed out at the "whore" whose fault she let herself be treated as a "whore" by the man who gave her "hope" in a new relationship. I think that Lydia had to destroy the woman she thought pushed her / tempted her in a bad way into a situation where she got rejected. The kid was a proxy for her to exact her revenge on his mother.

What Lydia did back then (take the kid away from his mother) made her the ideal candidate to breed hordes of Handmaids and make them obey Gilead. In season 1, she told them that they used to be "whores" and now they serve a higher purpose bla bla.
It looks like people who serve Gilead blindly were all damaged people or really creepy, power hungry ones who are taking advantage of their power.
The hypocrisy of the commanders is mind blowing!
Do the wives know about Jezebels? Some of them must know imho but in their sickly privileged positions, they have to shut up about it otherwise they might end up there themselves.
Perhaps the show will explore what happens to the "not so good" wives? Well, we've seen what happened to Serena because she dared talk about educating the new generation of girls in Gilead, but what about bigger "sins"?
Also what does the Gilead "catalog of sins and their punishments" look like?

[Lori]

As par usual, reading your comments makes me realize there is so much undercurrent with this character, Lydia, that my respect for the writers has intensified. I revise my 'is that it?' statement, knowing like the rest of you highly-evolved women that the unholy river runs deep.

This is an extremely damaged woman incapable of love, incapable of receiving love, and a prime example of someone who can only exhibit highly-conditional faux love. That she systematically destroyed everything positive in her life by decimating the only humans who had shown her love and care in one fell swoop depicts her wire-tight line for breakage. I think her personality-type is ripe for the religious zealot overlay. She reeks of mommy or daddy or preacher issues. Someone so very good at abuse generally has to have had a prime example to emulate somewhat.