‘The Testaments’ Episode 2 Recap – Loose Lips Sink Ships

If you squint a bit, The Testaments at least resembles a YA drama, a coming-of-age tale about a teenager navigating the perils of adolescence. It’s not, obviously — it’s a very bleak dystopian drama about systemic misogyny and oppression and religious extremism, but the ways in which it adopts, contorts, and subverts the expectations of a teen show are part of the pleasure of Episode 2, “Perfect Teeth”. Even that title is a trick, evidence of good oral health being deployed as a leering reminder that men in Gilead are divinely ordained to see women as their property, and that ageing into adulthood is a process of increasing vulnerability.

Thanks to the development at the very end of the premiere, Agnes finds herself having suddenly crossed this transom, from child to adult, from off-limits to fair game. Despite the framing of a menstrual cycle as a “stamp of approval from God himself”, Agnes is both ecstatic and scared to death in equal measure, as well she might be. It is, as she points out, hard to tell one from the other.

Mother Dearest

In the premiere, Paula was presented as a pretty uncomplicated Cinderella-style wicked step-mother, but “Perfect Teeth” plays with this idea a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t trust Paula as far as I can throw her, but do I detect a little bit of genuine contrition here? In Rosa’s absence, it’s Paula that Agnes turns to for help and advice with her period, and she provides it, explaining how wings work and how Agnes’s responsibilities are morphing, and passing on a thoughtful gift from Agnes’s adoptive mother, Tabitha, which isn’t the kind of thing you’d expect her to do.

Don’t get me wrong, Rosa’s temporary absence made me worry that Paula had ordered her death, as she had implied she might in the previous episode, thanks to her dodgy leg making her a “lame horse”, so we mustn’t lavish Paula with praise. But Amy Seimetz is doing something interesting with the performance. It’s like she has seen the future, which in a way she has, and knows what’s coming for Agnes now that she has come of age. Undeniably, though, there’s a sense of warmth between Agnes and Rosa, who took care of Tabitha while she was dying, that isn’t there in Agnes’s relationship with Paula.

Loose Lips

Aunt Lydia’s school makes a massive deal of Plums becoming Greens. The student rings a bell to inform the rest of the school that they have flowered, and they’re lavished with attention and praise. Agnes is so eager to do this that she blows off Daisy’s attempts to cling to her, which backfires pretty much immediately. Right after receiving her badge, Agnes is dragged to the Corrections department in the Aunt’s Wing, where a gagged Daisy is being held after confessing to having used the Lord’s name in vain.

We know this, of course, since it happened in the previous episode and Agnes was privy to it. Annoyed by Agnes blowing her off, Daisy had confessed her sins to an Aunt. And sins need correction, which in this case takes the form of the other girls viciously chanting “dirty girl” in Daisy’s face, with Agnes leading the charge since Daisy was her responsibility. In her narration, Agnes confesses to feeling shame about how much she misses this process; like the punishment of the man in the previous episode, which was cheered on with almost animalistic frenzy, the girls are framed as monstrous here, their viewpoint so warped by the rigorous standards of Gilead’s conservative dogma that their only outlet is extreme bouts of punishment and violence.

Once again proving that she doesn’t quite fit in, Daisy rats out Agnes, telling the Aunts that she heard her blasphemy and didn’t report it. As a consequence, both are forced to clean their teeth and wash their mouths with soap, which Agnes is fuming about. Her reaction highlights her naivete, much like her confusion about Daisy’s disgust over the premiere’s punishment did.

Daddy Issues

The best scene of The Testaments Episode 2 is subtle. In it, Paula takes Agnes to a new dentist, Dr. Grove, who happens to be Becka’s father. Initially, he seems kind and supportive, asking Agnes to support Becka through her own transition, since she has “always been so mature for her age”. Naturally, he’s creepy about Agnes’s “tender breasts” and sexually assaults her under the guise of medical necessity, not in a way that she could ever prove, but in a way she definitely knows happened.

Given that Becka has become increasingly morose ever since she became a Green, I don’t think it takes Hercule Poirot to work out what might have happened to put her off the idea of adulthood. Interestingly, in an earlier conversation, Shunammite, who is lagging behind the other girls in terms of her development, mentioned that her own father had always said she was “blessed” in the breast department. It’s worth remembering that these students are the daughters of Commanders who have oftentimes been forcibly adopted from other families, so one imagines, as grim a thought as it might be, that sexual abuse in the home is a pretty common occurrence.

Understandably, from this point on, Agnes begins having nightmares about a faceless husband forcing himself upon her.

Baptism By Green

In the middle of the night, Agnes is awoken by Aunt Lydia and taken to a creepy ceremony presided over by the Aunts and the hooded Greens, a kind of baptism to symbolize her transition from childhood to adulthood. Agnes seems, initially, a little happy and proud about this, as she has been conditioned to be. In the changing rooms after, she mentions to Becka that she had been worried she didn’t want her to become a Green. “I didn’t,” says Becka. “I didn’t want this for either of us.” Becka doesn’t want to be a Green, to get married, or have a husband. Given how her own father behaves, this is understandable. “But what else would you do?” asks Agnes, showing her naivete once again.

At the end of “Perfect Teeth”, we see Daisy secretly drawing a map using burnt match heads and hiding it in the hidden panel of her bed, though she’s being watched, worryingly, by one of the other Pearl Girls. She doesn’t get a great deal to do here, but Daisy’s potential ulterior motives aren’t far from the surface of the episode’s drama.

Elsewhere, Agnes takes a lingering look at one of her home security guards as her narration mentions “things to be wanted”, and I imagine we can all work out where that particular angle is going. But the real climax is a deeply uncomfortable scene in which Agnes tells her father, who is home from business and in the parlour surrounded by other men, that she has started her period. She does so on her knees, submissive, while the other men smugly watch on.

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