kitkat343

This episode was perfection for Ava and she nailed every hysterical line. She was also used the perfect amount in this week's episode, since last week's Ava-centric episode showed that too much Ava is like too much Jacob (good for Jacob on getting the scratch off tickets, and going to spend the holidays with his boyfriend).

This is a very common perception among certain circles in NYC. An ex is in academic medicine and his wife is an estate attorney, and her career is the primary one in the family. The one thing that I don't think they got right about upper class NY life was the son's camp. That poor kid looked like he'd hate a traditional sleep away camp; there was no reason to send him to one. There are academic sleep away camps for kids starting at age 9, and the son seems like he would really love to be with other bright kids studying science. This family has the money but not the parental time right now, so they could have easily bought him a summer he would have loved. It really pissed me off to see that child going off on the same bus as his sister (who would love traditional sleep away camp) when there were options that could have kept him happy. I'm assuming by the fact that the dad was miserable about sending his son away that he was sending him to a traditional sleep away camp which was a poor option for him, especially when there are so many alternatives.

I quite liked it. It's pretty frustrating that so many shows are across so many different platforms, but maybe I'll just switch them around once my deal on Hulu ends (I got a year for 99 cents a month last Black Friday).

I really liked the Halloween episode and this one. Glad to see the writing improving, and it's always a good day to see Estelle Parsons.

Ah, yes, but who was the most stupid: - Nick, for hitting Commander Lawrence publicly instead of making Tuello an offer to defect to America and provide information conditional on the Americans protecting June and Nicolle. He didn't want to leave Gilead for his wife's sake, but hitting another man over his girlfriend publicly is going to pretty much end their marriage. And he may not love Rose, but he genuinely cares for her and trusts her a lot, so the fact that he hit Lawrence publicly is really humiliating and stupid. He also has a ton of information that could help take Gilead down and get revenge on the people who tried to hurt June, but instead he takes a swing at Lawrence and gets himself thrown in jail. -Rose, for not quite realizing that there is no way out of her shitty marriage (unless she is planning to go full Naomi and request that the council salvage her husband for his crimes). She's definitely not the stupidest person here, since everyone else seemed to make terrible decisions that directly caused their own problems, and she's just reacting to Nick's stupidity. - June for not realizing that Luke couldn't possibly get on a train right now while being tracked down by the canadian authorities -Naomi for treating Janine like garbage one minute and then telling her how happy she was to have a friend in Commander Lawrence's home -Janine for throwing away what was probably the safest posting for her, which would also have hopefully given her some access to Charlotte. (although in her defense she may not have realized how much safer she is in Commander Lawrence's home than any other commander, and Commander Lawrence may have had her arrested so he can force her to come back to his home where he will protect her) I'd personally select Nick as the dumbest person here, but the fun thing about this show is there are so many options! At least Serena showed some intelligence and resilience (this woman has the resilience of a cockroach) in throwing herself at Tuella the first second she could.

If you google NY times and Hasidic schools, they recently did an expose of the Hasidic schools in which the schools are putting so much emphasis on learning the Torah, that students are graduating from the schools nearly functionally illiterate in English and unable to compute basic mathematical equations. The potential wives are only about 13, so "advanced schooling" is for children who here in the US would be middle school aged, and for the Wives it would be training for running a household. I would imagine there would be a lot of emphasis on memorizing the Old Testament, especially passages on how wives must obey their husbands. Plus gardening, painting, and drawing classes to give the Wives something to do all day while the Marthas cook, clean, and raise the children. In the Testaments, Aunt Lydia discussed her concern that their "sex education" program at Wives School which was intended to make sex sound terrifying and awful to scare girls into remaining virgins prior to marriage and later to not cheat on their husbands might be terrifying girls into not wanting to get married, and there were some girls who attempted suicide when they were engaged to men old enough to be their fathers.

All of this. The cast is really good. The premise is interesting - a tough, successful mother and her son trying to turn his life around. But the writing is a disaster. All airplane crashes are investigated, and if a pattern of crashes are discovered, the type of aircraft will be grounded. It's unbelievable that the victim would have to choose between getting a settlement and exposing the company. There's actually a lot of interesting plot that could be explored with this show. Todd explained his mom wasn't there for him when his dad died because she was finishing up law school. That's actually a really interesting conflict to navigate - the mom, who had to be tough to support her family as a single parent, and the kid who needed her to be there for him when she couldn't. How do they view this conflict years later, and how can they work through it? That's a whole lot more interesting than following a silly court case that doesn't make any sense.

They can legally take her anywhere they'd like, but part of the reason why courts allow children Hannah's age to have a say in custody is that otherwise they'd keep running away. It would be pretty hard for Luke and June to keep a 12 year old in Canada against her will given the weird no man's land thing that's going on right now.

Having Hannah rescued and brought to Canada would be interesting because she is old enough to have potentially accepted her new family and truly not want to return. We saw that with some of the older children who June rescued on the plane- they missed the Gilead elite parents who stole them from their biological parents. Hannah was scared of June last time we saw them together, and I'm not sure she would want to leave Gilead. Hannah's adoptive parents seemed to truly love her, and they were portrayed as the ones responsible for June's convenient plot armor since they stated they didn't want Hannah to be devastated when she found out that June was killed. And if Hannah doesn't want to go how on earth would June handle being rejected by the daughter she sacrificed everything for? And how can they keep her in Canada against her will? Or would they have to let her choose to go back to Gilead? These are much more interesting plot lines than watching June stare endlessly into the camera (I'd also like to see more of the experiences of Naomi Putnam and the other wives to see if they regret the society they live in but I'll take whatever interesting plot I can get)

The teachers aide absolutely should have been fired, but unfortunately even before covid, it was near-impossible to find enough good people to work as aides so schools mostly just waited until the terrible ones quit on their own. Hardworking, dedicated aides are wonderful but since they are earning near minimum wage in most districts it is incredibly hard to recruit and keep them. There are lots of terrible aides in the schools who do absolutely nothing all day except keep the district from getting sued because legally they have to provide some students with disabilities an aide - and even the worst aide who spends all day on their phone can probably keep the district from getting sued or keep the district in compliance with a union contract that guarantees teachers aides under certain classroom conditions. The intro where Jacob tried to not describe the person who stole his bike as black was really funny, as was Ava's reaction to it. But Janine is starting her third as a teacher year this season (she was a second year teacher during the first season of this show). Stunning incompetence on her part isn't funny anymore and its just tiresome to watch. This show has so many other wonderful directions it can take (we'd all love to learn more about vacation Barbara losing her shoes on the cruise or see more of her family, we'd love to learn more about the lives any member of Melissa's family or underworld connections, or see Greg growing as a teacher and how he is resolving his conflict with his dad) that this show needs to stop wasting airtime on insipid stories about Janine trying too hard and failing. The actress is just too charismatic and likable for this to be the direction the audience would want to see this show go in.

As others have noted, she may have important information left. If she has truly realized the mistakes of Gilead, then she would be valuable as pr against their society. And the fact that her husband stood by and watched as the Commanders decided to cut off her pinkie and spanked her in front of others makes a compelling argument for her as a victim of domestic violence (she participated in the design of the society and in many ways wasn't a victim, but I think if she were willing to cry on camera she would be able to portray herself as having done terrible things because of her husband). Serena as a victim isn't true - her hitting Rita after the baby shower when Rita was just trying to help her was an example of the monstrous aspect of her personality, but I think she could at least make a decent case for it.

I think they really nailed Tariq in the zoo episode last season. At first, him singing to the kids and having them sing back just seemed like a playful, fun exchange but he was the first chaperone to notice when a kid went missing. He confirmed the child was missing by having the kids sing back to him and he realized they were down a bass). Of course, he also expected Janine to drop her career and life to follow him to NYC without even discussing it with her (or figuring out how on earth they would pay for rent in NYC) so that also captured his personality pretty well.

I've had 3 kids. And honestly, I was extremely lucky and being pregnant wasn't a particularly difficult experience for me. For some women, it is truly awful - especially those with serious, life threatening complications or conditions like hyperemesis gravidarum. But for others pregnancy isn't nearly as difficult, and I'm sure if you offered all women enough money you'd have volunteers from the women who have easier pregnancies. And even from women who had harder ones - this could be a path to survival for themselves and their children in Gilead, which might make a lot of women sign up. You could offer to provide a small livable stipend for 10 years and housing for women who agree to be surrogates or undergo IVF to be egg donors (I also underwent an IVF cycle, and which wasn't too bad for me luckily, but is much harder on some women). There are even women who would "volunteer" if they saw that children from "unfit" homes were taken away, and they knew if they "volunteered" as a surrogate their own children would be protected, because it would show enormous allegience to the state. That would still be really traumatic, but less so than what the handmaids are living through. I really don't believe this kind of situation would need to be adopted even in the face of a massive fertility crisis.

Sharik's dad seems like a genuinely good person, so I was rooting for them to keep it together today also. I'm really glad he'll get to see Jordan before heading out. I don't have anything against Rich, but he chose Dom, and I haven't seen much personality from him (aside from doing a reasonable job crazy wrangling his girlfriend to keep her from totally melting down.) Dom and Rich better hope they have backup careers handy because I'm not seeing great success in motivational speaking in their future.

My reasoning here in stating that an older child of color would be unlikely to be adopted into a commander's home is a little confusing. In the Hulu show, Hannah was born in 2009, and the US government was overthrown in 2014 (at least according to the wiki page. I can't remember if this is true). That would put Hannah at about 5 when she was placed for adoption. I'd believe that's probably about the limit as to how old of a child would be adopted by a higher ranking family who has alternatives like Handmaids. Usually, adoptive families want infants or young children, so I'd think it would be unlikely most of the older children (especially those of color) in the orphanage would go to commander's homes, but I would think that given the overall shortage of births and adoptable infants, the older children we saw at the orphanage would eventually be placed at "fit" but less powerful homes like Nick's first wife's home. Hannah was "lucky" enough to be young enough she was more likely to be adopted into a commander's home but I don't know if that would have happened for an older child. But that is purely my speculation. One of the protagonists in The Testaments was a child taken from her birth mother who had been reassigned as a handmaid; the child was young enough to have no memory of her birth mother and found out she was adopted after rumors spread about her in school.

I agree with this completely. And given the fact that the cast is all really good (even the cast I didn't expect to be good like Johnny Knoxville because I wasn't familiar with anything but Jackass) it's a real waste of an enormous amount of potential. the show is still good thanks to the cast, but it could have been amazing, and I hope they go back to this dynamic next season.

If Serena wanted to adopt one of the older children of color, she would have done so. We saw Aunt Lydia fawning over her when it was time to select a handmaid so the people at the orphanage would have happily handed over any child she selected. Serena said something like the poor dears they really need a good home - meaning someone else's good home (families less powerful and privileged than hers). She totally supported ripping the traumatized children away from their parents and having them adopted by "fit" families - families like Nick's first wife's farm family. An older child of color would be unlikely to be adopted into a Commander's home and raised to be a Wife; these children were probably adopted by families loyal to the state religion but lacking in power. The Commanders would adopt infants/younger children who won't remember their biological families well or have handmaids (the handmaids are all white in the books; ethnically diverse in this series, but we've seen some families refuse to accept handmaids of color).

It absolutely would be something, and I think that's what would happen to Serena if she doesn't establish herself as a valuable unofficial ambassador for Gilead. The tragic, heroic infertile widow miraculously becoming a beautiful mother could potentially be quite valuable as an ambassador for Gilead, and if Serena is smart she will fight like hell to make that happen (or she will run away and accept asylum in Canada or America or anywhere else she can be safer). If Serena turns on Gilead and fights it publicly, maybe June will chose her family over revenge. But if Serena cannot establish herself as an asset to Gilead, then I'm sure they will be happy to snatch her child away and turn her into a handmaid. I'd almost feel sorry for her given the fact that she was shot before the revolution and now there is no path to safety for her, but given the fact that she was shot for preaching about taking away women's rights and participated in forming a horrible society that took away all of their rights my sympathy is quite limited.

We know Commander Lawrence's wife strongly opposed how women were treated in Gilead, and we also saw Emily in a posting with a genuinely kind Wife, who fell conveniently ill each month at the time of the Ceremony. It would be quite interesting to explore the experiences of women like these more, and the show can certainly cut down air time of June staring at the camera in order to introduce their experiences.

They have - for reasons totally unknown to me - chosen to make Kate the heroine of this story, with her international curriculum and two men completely in love with her. And the unfortunate thing is that if the writers hadn't tried to put Kate on this ridiculous pedestal, she could have had a really nice and reasonable narrative arc. She started the series as Kevin's assistant, who was still trying to find herself and her path. And then she could have become a wonderful music teacher for blind children, and a loving, devoted mother to her children. That would have been a nice arc I could have supported. Instead, every time they try to mention a ridiculous accomplishment of hers or have her ex husband talk about how wonderful she is, I roll my eyes and want to throw things at the tv. And Toby could have had a nice arc, as an ex-husband who came to honor and pay respect to his former mother in law, Rebecca, at the end of her life. I think that would have been an appropriate ending for him, not for him to be chasing after Kate.

As terrible as this will sound, there are many universities where one can earn a degree online (or in person) fairly easily. Kate could have completed her bachelor's degree online at a less competitive or for-profit university, and there are a lot of online for profit master's degrees in education that offer lots of courses asynchronously or during the summers or evenings when teachers are free. I had tuition reimbursement from a state university system and earned an online master's degree in education, and it was literally just something I did while watching television. I could believe that someone like Kate could earn a bachelor's and master's degree from a less competitive university, and it also seems reasonable for Kate to be chosen to create a music curriculum for visually impaired students. According to my cursory search on the internet there are 3 schools for visually impaired children in California, so there probably isn't a huge pool of people competing to create a curriculum to study music for visually impaired children. I would find it very difficult to believe that Kate would be chosen to create a general education curriculum in music for the entire state, because unlike Toby I do not have a particularly high opinion of Kate and believe there would be far more successful music teachers in California. Her students seem to really like her, which is great, but the showrunners need to stop trying to sell her so hard. Phillip turning from hypercritical boyfriend with his ex to a puppy dog who chases after Kate is totally unbelievable. Toby talking about how wonderful Kate is and "joking" about their getting back together is ridiculous (I'd be happy to see them getting along, but that phone call was totally over the top given their relationship).

I was glad (and a bit surprised) to see Lilly's mom grow a backbone and go out and enjoy her life and be too busy to take Lilly's calls begging for help. As for Emersyn's mother, it makes her crazy that everyone hates her and prefers the drug addict MIL to her. But she's such a negative, critical person that it is unsurprising that everyone hates her. It really did seem to be an incredible amount of liability the midwives were taking on by letting an underage girl leave with that moron. If I understand correctly, they were in contact with her parents, which means they should have had a written release from Kyleen to disclose medical information to her parents. Why didn't one of the three of them leave to call Kyleen's parents to tell them that their daughter was in danger? They clearly understood at that point that Jason was a complete moron who refused all reasonable medical interventions and controlled his underage girlfriend. The midwives should have delayed kicking them out until Kyleens parents arrived in the parking lot. If Kyleen's parents were in the parking lot of the midwife center after they were thrown out I think she would have gone with them straight to the hospital when her idiot boyfriend insisted she wasn't really in labor. Now we do know he eventually took her to the hospital, but we don't know how delayed this decision was, and I really think it would have helped her a lot to see her parents in that parking lot as they left the midwife center. Even Jason's parents would have insisted on taking poor Kyleen to the hospital at that point so it might have been helpful to have them there too.

I'm not entirely certain. My personal belief is that he was rooting for Nacho to kill off some of the cartel before dying, but I don't know for certain.

She genuinely understands that for as long as she is financially dependent up Aiden she won't be free. That's more insight than I think we've ever seen anyone display on any of the Teen Mom or Unexpected franchises. It does seem as though there is a chance of her achieving financial stability but given the fact that she was raised by two incredibly awful parents her path isn't going to be easy. Her dad had the nerve to state "it's not normal to be that toxic for such a young relationship." He's not wrong about Jenna and Aidan's relationship, but a man who spent his grandchild's baptism whining about his ex wife sitting in the front pew really needs to shut up and not judge anyone else. And speaking of people who need to stop talking, Tiarra chose to ignore her doctor's advice when she didn't take iron supplements. It's too late to whine now about how dangerous this is for her and the baby.

Tiarra claimed in an earlier episode that her lack of a physical social security card was why she could not sign up for health insurance in her current state. I was assuming that she was claiming she needed that for Dee's military insurance. But Dee's interpretation that Tiarra was flying home because she wanted to makes a whole lot more sense, since a routine prenatal visit at a planned parenthood would cost a lot less than 3 round trip plane tickets. Irregardless, she found the card on air a few episodes ago, so hopefully they can put that issue behind them and focus all of their attention on the all important issue of which teenage mother came up with the original design for their second nursery.