Everything bridal in Gilead unfolds according to a meticulously scheduled timeline. First come the engagement announcements, delivered by Aunt Lydia in the school cafeteria as if she’s announcing the results of a student-council election. Jehosheba will marry a powerful man; poor Miriam will head to the agriculture colony. Sweet Hulda is promised to Commander Thomas, who says they can get a dog. Becka’s parents let her pick her own husband, and she sensibly chooses Garth despite Agnes’s outrageous objections. And Agnes is betrothed to the formidable Commander Weston, who runs the Eyes and has a secret history of domestic violence. In Gilead, of course, all men are cops and abusers, but some cops are coppier than others.

Around the same time as the engagement photo shoots, the brides-to-be start mending their porcelain plates, which were ceremoniously shattered so the brides-to-be could mend them. It’s never too soon to start serving your FH.

On the highly choreographed whistle-stop tour to early marriage, there is one event the eligible Plums are genuinely eager to attend: copulation class. Aunt Vidala separates the Greens from the prepubescents, namely Daisy and Shu, to teach them what happens on the wedding night. Except she doesn’t. Vidala draws a rough sketch of a uterus on the chalkboard and tells the girls they each have a vessel inside them, which God will fill with a baby if they are good and obedient, as they always have been. On their wedding nights, their husbands will tell them the rest, and that’s all they need to know about that.

Surely by this point, some of the girls must know something about sex, even if they’ve never heard the word before. They will have walked in on their parents doing it or overheard a ribald joke between Marthas. Some of these girls must understand that, a couple of times a month, something happens between their parents and the Handmaid who lives upstairs. Then again, who could believe the insane truth of copulation if it came out of nowhere? When Daisy tries to earn Shu’s trust by telling her about penises, erections, and ejaculations, Shu decides the Pearl Girl is as ignorant as she. Men have secret flesh rods? The liquid swims up? The Plums were told the truth would bring them closer to God, but Daisy’s explanation hits the ear with all the gravitas of Scientology’s space opera of Xenu.

Before the girls’ parents can even host their engagement parties, the child brides are forced onto the bullet train of wedding planning. Their “to-do before I do” lists include seating plans, cake tastings, and flower arrangements, oh my. The brides don’t choose their grooms, but they can weigh in on the critical topic of raspberry-compote versus lemon-curd filling. When Paula presses Agnes to use ranunculus centerpieces rather than calla lilies, Weston does well to silence the evil step-MOB. For the first time since she became affianced, Agnes cracks a smile.

“Broken” is a comparatively slight episode of The Testaments, and to some extent, its smallness can be traced back to Agnes resuming narration duties. Her blinkered perspective is consumed with semi-realized introspection and self-reprobation. She reminds me of that one friend who is halfway through a therapy journey that will ultimately end with self-forgiveness, and frankly it’s a little boring to listen to her hobble along. For example, when she encourages Hulda to tell the Aunts that Dr. Grove molested her, the narration is consumed with what a “shit” Agnes is for not disclosing that she’s a victim too, when the show would be improved by sticking with Hulda. Hulda is where the action lies.

But when the young girl tells Vidala that Grove abused her, Vidala insists she’s confused. And when Vidala calls Agnes in to explain that we need to keep Hulda’s “confusion” a secret to avoid endangering her engagement, Agnes still doesn’t confide what happened to her. Vidala is clearly protecting Hulda, but Agnes is protecting herself, which isn’t that complicated. I would rather be in Hulda’s head listening to someone so brittle and brave make sense of her newly revealed world.

Or I’d rather be in Daisy’s head. Because in Daisy’s head, the action of “Broken” would be far from slight. She’s still reeling from the underexplained disappearance of Thalia, the Pearl Girl the Eyes took last week. Does this mean Daisy has evaded their discovery? Or should she be more frightened than ever amid this Mayday witch hunt?

Maybe it’s the clean water, or maybe it’s the chronic stress Daisy has been living under lately, that finally brings on the menstruation that never arrived in Canada. Instead of running up the spiral staircase to ring the bell, however, Daisy washes her soiled underpants before anyone can see. She doesn’t want to be a spy at all anymore, but at least she’s in the safety of a school in the middle of suburban Maryland. If Miriam, who merely spilled some tea, can’t find a husband in mainland Gilead, what chance does a profane, tatted-up Pearl Girl stand to make a good match?

So Daisy hides the truth from everyone but Shu. “You lucky slut,” the Plum tells her. Rowan Blanchard is scene-stealingly good, and the writers seem to save all their best lines for her punchy deadpan. “Have you girls seen any caviar?” Shu asks later at Becka’s engagement party. “Mrs. Grove always overcompensates.” But in “Broken,” we finally probe the desperation behind her bluster. Shu’s little brother was one of the 68 stolen American children recovered on what Gileadeans call “the Night of Tears.” (Handmaid’s viewers will remember it as June’s famous Angel’s Flight.) Shu needs to get her period and get married and have a baby so her family can stop suffering that loss.

Most of the Plums are on the same terrifying walk down the same short aisle, but they’ve never been further apart. Becka and Agnes are estranged. Hulda is curling in on herself. Shu, the group’s connective tissue, has been left out of the proceedings altogether. While early episodes relied on scenes of the girls smiling together and slighting one another as teenage girls do, in “Broken” it takes an engagement party to get them in the same room.

They’re gathered to celebrate the future Mr. and Mrs. Garth and Becka Chapin, though the house has a terrible flow for parties. It devolves into a series of stand-and-chats. Commander Mackenzie, who rarely makes an appearance, looks visibly pained to be there. “You’re all so young,” he tells his daughter, who must have no idea what he’s talking about when he starts justifying the horrors of child marriage. The birth rate is falling, and the world is ending. “You have to go with the science,” he says pathetically, before vanishing again for the rest of the episode.

In fact, the engagement party provides Testaments with the opportunity to introduce several characters who are often discussed but rarely seen. Penny, looking like death warmed over after her recent miscarriage, briefly stops by for old time’s sake. And we finally meet Commander Chapin Senior, who seems to be quadriplegic as well as aphasic. He was poisoned by Mayday, we learn, maybe by one of Rita’s cakes? This explanation may not square with what the girls have heard — that Chapin played a heroic role in the battle for Boston.

Chapin Senior is so incapacitated that Garth tells Daisy it’s okay to speak freely in front of him. She explains she has gotten her period and needs tampons. Garth has enough book learning to know who Freud is, but he’s never heard of a tampon, just like he’s never heard of June Osborne. After weeks of placating Daisy, he finally lays out the brutal truth for her: There is no escape from Gilead until there is an end to Gilead. If she has her period, then, praise be, she needs to figure out how to use it to her advantage. That’s the job she irrevocably signed up for.

Even Lydia, who I imagine wasn’t on many guest lists before the revolution, drops in for a slice of cake. Agnes, avoiding the party for fear of making small talk with Dr. Grove, approaches her in the garden. She confides in Aunt Lydia that she knows Hulda is telling the truth. And despite not being able to name what Grove did to her, Agnes communicates, subtly and efficiently, how she knows Hulda is telling the truth. Lydia struggles to reassure Agnes. She promises her the wicked will be punished but dresses it up in religious imagery that no teenage girl can be reasonably expected to decode.

The rest of the episode progresses something like a game of telephone, with messages changing meaning as they’re passed along, getting harder to trust even when they’re the truth. Agnes is nursing a mocktail when Daisy notices her alone, which is convenient because Agnes has some menstrual pads to give her. Shu knew Daisy needed help, and she knew Agnes had what Daisy needed. “You don’t turn on your friends, ever,” she tells Daisy. “Not here.” When Daisy suggests heartbroken Agnes is doing exactly that by avoiding Becka’s engagement party, Agnes comes clean about Dr. Grove’s assault. “It’s not your fault,” Daisy assures Agnes, who worries this happened because she has been fantasizing about her best friend’s assigned boyfriend.

“I couldn’t possibly have known what Daisy was going to do,” Agnes cryptically tells us in voice-over as “Broken” comes to an end. It feels safe to assume that Daisy, still wracked with guilt over Thalia’s removal, isn’t content to sit by and let the universe bend toward justice on its own time. Agnes must have confided in Daisy for a reason, right? Well, maybe not. But perhaps that’s what Daisy heard when Agnes whispered, “You don’t turn on your friends, ever.” And perhaps when Garth tells Daisy the only way to leave Gilead is to destroy it, she hears him encouraging her to do more. In a world where most conversations take the form of cautious whispers, information degrades quickly. A secret can become a confession and then become a call to action all in the time it takes to pass the hors d’oeuvre.