June experiences the fallout of her decision to try and help the Resistance Cell of Marthas. She finds that her usual methods of manipulating Fred provoke the opposite reaction in Commander Lawrence. As punishment for her mistakes and assumptions, Commander Lawrence takes June to a make an impossible choice.
This episode provides examples of:
- A Degree in Useless: Lawrence takes a lot of joy in pointing out that June knows nothing about how to run a country's economy or any other "useful" higher learning, for that matter, and insults her intelligence. She just knows how to edit books that no one would bother to read.
- A Million Is a Statistic: The policy meeting at Lawrence's household with all the commanders would seem like any other board meeting if one wasn't paying attention to the fact that they're discussing building work camps that will kill untold numbers of people.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The mention of children separated from their mothers in the time of Donald Trump's families separation in immigrant detention centers - images of which also seem to have inspired the cages were the imprisoned women are captured.
- Lawrence mentions having “binders full of women”, just like Mitt Romney once did.
- Foil: In an episode with the title "Useful", there is an apt comparison. For June, she is trying to figure out what she can do to contribute to the Mayday Resistance cell and does so by recruiting 5 people to work as Marthas and saving them from certain death. But for Serena, she is finding herself less useful as she is staying with her mother and cannot do anything more as her mother puts her on the spot for her daughter's marital issues and Nichole's abduction, and Serena is forced to be the center of the prayer circle her mother has set up.
- He-Man Woman Hater: Lawrence's interaction with June during the policy meeting. Making her pour wine for the guests and fetch books off the shelf (all while making quips that "women can be useful for something") is played for laughs among the other Commanders.
- Rich Bitch: Serena's cruel and overbearing mother appears to be well off, living in quite a lavish home near Cape Cod.
- Sadistic Choice: Lawrence takes June to a processing facility for prisoners of Gilead, calmly informs her that all of them will be going to the Colonies... all except five, who will work in Lawrence's household as Marthas. And June gets to choose who deserves to live. When June refuses to make the choice, Lawrence flippantly responds that they'll all die then.
- Take a Third Option: Lawrence intends to break June by making her play God and choose who will live from the prison camp, showing her she doesn't have the intellect to make any sort of resistance movement and that she should be happy with his small mercies. June picks five individuals - a reporter, an engineer, an IT specialist, a lawyer, and a thief, with key skills to form their own resistance cell. Becomes a Chekhov's Gunman when this cell is instrumental in helping June escape from Jezebel's while disposing of the body of a high ranking commander and removing all evidence.
