Trillian

It’s rather a relative term, though, is t it? I almost posted “not far, only about 25-30 minutes”. 🙂. And that’s only if they landed at Pearson. They could’ve gone to Billy Bishop (quick hop to downtown). If I were deciding where the plane landed, I’d have sent it to a military base, maybe CFB Trenton, where any danger could be contained (our intrepid heroes have never heard of the Trojan Horse, apparently). If it had to be Toronto for some unknown reason, I’d pick Downsview (former military airport, now leased by Bombardier for testing) within Toronto. That’s 10-15 minutes from Emily’s house, assuming the house is near Dufferin station where she met Sylvia. I have no idea why I’m talking about this as if it made any sense at all. They either knew there were refugees or they didn’t. If they didn’t, the first people on the plane should have been armed border guards and/other police. If they did, the first people should’ve have medical personnel accompanied by police. In fact, they shouldn’t have gotten on the plane at all, but made the occupants come out one by one with their hands up. Like so much about this show, poignant scenes only remain poignant if you don’t stop to think about how absurd they are.

This article sums up so many of my own thoughts: We Just Have to Accept That The Handmaid's Tale Is a Fantasy Show Now https://io9.gizmodo.com/we-just-have-to-accept-that-the-handmaids-tale-is-a-fan-1837031128 “This is the world The Handmaid’s Tale lives in now. It’s a fantasy. Granted, it’s a fantasy that makes you feel good, like our heroes are doing something worthwhile, but it’s a fantasy nonetheless. It’s okay to enjoy the ride because it’s hopeful instead of depressing. But it does mar the series. The fear that made it so powerful and palpable is gone, replaced by James Bond in a red cloak and wings. Blessed Be the Fight, because we already know who’s going to win”

Serena was an eyewitness - not to mention accomplice - in Fred’s crimes. There is no witness in Canada to Serena’s. Even Rita didn’t see anything other than Nick and June making googly eyes and that’s something that suggests their relationship was consensual rather than coerced. Anything June may have told Rita, Moira or Emily is inadmissible hearsay (and we’ve seen nothing in the show to suggest she did tell them). Serena could easily say that June snuck out and slept with Nick and that she, Serena, covered it up to protect June and there’s not a shred of evidence to contradict her. Or - she would have been cautioned as to her rights and afforded access to a lawyer who would have told her to keep her mouth shut and the authorities would’ve figured out on their own that they don’t have enough evidence even to charge her, let alone convict her.

I think I my have wandered away from The Practice before the head in the bag incident, since I don't remember it. Or maybe I wiped it from my memory in disgust. I try not to get too upset about small mistakes, because I know where they come from. A friend of mine was once legal advisor for a tv show, and told me she tired of it really fast because they wouldn't listen to her. She told them, for example, that Canadian judges don't use gavels, but gavels look "cool", so into the show they went. And that was a minor one. We all have different breaking points and I think our tolerance is dependent on what we think of a show overall. I recently rewatched the movie In The Name of the Father and still loved it despite a couple of glaring errors (eg, even though the real life lawyer played by Emma Thompson was a solicitor and not a barrister and would not have been in court, if she was going to be in court, she should have been wigged and gowned; the final verdict is pronounced in such a way that it actually means the opposite of what the writer intended). On the other hand, I can't ever rewatch the mildly engaging Devil's Advocate, because the ending is premised on (keeping it vague for the spoiler-sensitive) what I consider to be a shocking breach of legal ethics that the audience is supposed to applaud. Mileage varies.

You’re very kind, thank you. I was expecting simply to be told I was wrong. I’m happy to debate the issue, but would prefer that the debate be based either in reality or the script. I think, if the situation were reversed, if a Canadian cop arrested someone in the US and held that person without a lawyer or bail while American authorities stood passively by, more viewers would’ve noticed the dissonance. In other words, my national pride was engaged and I don’t like how they present my country as bumbling idiots on the world stage. It was so unnecessary. Tuello could’ve said “you’re now in Canada and you’re under arrest you son of a bitch” and the Canadians stepped forward and made the arrest. Certainly, A Few Good Men didn’t suffer for doing it that way. I guess it’s heresy to compare the screen-writing brilliance of Aaron Sorkin to this hot mess. I’ll go cut off a finger now and sit in the corner.

Nope. There is no legal mechanism for Canada to give a foreign government permission essentially to kidnap someone and hold that person without due process of law. Well, if he's in Canadian custody (contrary to all appearances), he's lucky because Canada doesn't extradite where someone would face the death penalty. This is the problem with plopping a dystopian society into a "normal" world. Atwood didn't deal with anything outside Gilead, except in brief vague references, in keeping with Offred's (when referring to the book, it is not correct to call her June) POV. The writers have presented a perfectly normal Canada, where there is no reason to believe that the concepts of territorial sovereignty and civil/constitutional rights don't apply. And it doesn't work once you start thinking about it, at least not without a lot of mental gymnastics that are not explained or warranted by the script.

I still giggled when Luke yelled “ I hope you rot in jail”, which I heard as “I hope you rot in this luxury hotel. “ It was silly. I can suspend disbelief only so far, and it doesn’t help that, in my case, I work in the Canadian justice system, so I zero in on things others might not notice. Like the fact that, if Fred’s detention is actually lawful in any way (and I’ve expressed my doubts elsewhere on this board) he’s entitled, not only to a lawyer, but a court appearance within 24 hours of his arrest. Minor points- annoyances, in fact - but they detract from my ability to “buy” the plot.

It’s briefly (ie, a one-liner) addressed in the epilogue. The Professor says that, in the “middle phase” of Gilead, the sinning women taken for Handmaids were eventually defined as anyone who married outside the state church. That line is just one more example of how the series has departed from the book and how it can’t be said that the series is depicting what’s in the epilogue. It’s really clear in the epilogue that Gilead lasted a long time: long enough for historians to refer to the early, middle and late periods of the Republic - that’s a lot longer than 5-10 years. Ofglen (she most certainly was not June in the book) is clearly placed in the early period and couldn’t possibly have been part of whatever events brought Gilead down. With the series, we’re really not in the book at all anymore

I’ll bite. In Margaret Atwood’s hands, it was never June’s Tale, at least not how I read it. She was totally anonymous and could have been any woman trapped in the system. She had no name. She had no agency. She wasn’t a freedom fighter and she certainly wasn’t a leader of the resistance. One of the main themes was how women’s voices and experiences are lost to history. They couldn’t have gotten multiple seasons out of that theme, so they made it June’s Tale. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a different thing. IMHO.

I was so very thrilled when the Martha (sans muffins lol) said “you jumped onto a train that was already moving and now you’re Che fucking Guevara”? I actually cheered out loud. But I’m with you that they gave in to her bullying for no good reason. What I really wanted them to say was: ”Hell, yes, we’re going to stand in your way, because your stupid plan is not a plan but a crazy dream. Don’t you think if it were feasible we would’ve done it by now? We don’t care if you kill yourself, but you’re risking the lives of anyone who helps you, risking the children’s lives, and very probably going to destroy the network we’ve carefully built up and undo years of resistance efforts. There is no magically-unattended yellow brick road where you can just drive into Canada”. But then they gave in to June’s piercing glare and squared jaw, Fred finds the magic road and my dream died. I don’t think anyone else has mentioned this, but I was also really annoyed by Jezebel’s. June is sauntering around chatting up the bartender as if it were not Gilead and she was there to enjoy an evening out. Um, that’s not what the women at Jezebel’s are kept alive to do. And the ambiance? I half expected Humphrey Bogart to sidle up with the Letters of Transit that she needs to get out.

Neither the only one who remembers nor the only one old enough to remember. I’ve had Echo Beach running through my head every time I think about that muffin scene. I guess it’s a break from Heaven is a Place on Earth ....

For sure. I kept thinking during that scene that I wanted one of whatever kind of vacuum cleaner that was. I have a pretty powerful steam cleaner but there’s no way even fresh protein stains come out like that with just one swipe. Fred cannot just come and go at will but he can drive himself (and let a Wife drive) without anyone in this police state noticing or caring. And good thing the cool car didn’t have GPS to tell him he was crossing the miraculously- undefended border. When I first saw (in the preview) the scene of Fred pulling up in front of the hotel, I thought it was a car commercial. Cool shades too. Also bugged: how do American officials have any authority to arrest someone on Canadian soil? The image of the one Canadian jeep standing passively by, apparently ceding sovereign authority to the brave Americans, really stuck in this Canadian’s craw. Also internally inconsistent within the show’s universe. Remember Moira’s saying to send out the Marines to arrest Fred and being told “we have no authority here. We’re guests of the Canadian government”? It’s things like these that take me out of the show. Details do matter.

It’s a Bradley Whitford thing.

I thought this was such an important an insightful post. I can’t believe it got no response. Maybe it was because it was in the new June thread. There was another post, which I now cannot find, that pointed out that this is the Handmaid’s Tale, not June’s Tale, which I thought was equally insightful. Kudos to you, poster whom I cannot now find. I gave you a like but I can’t find you again to quote. I think this latest episode really explifies the issues so many have posted here. This is not longer Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, featuring an anonymous (she didn’t even have a real name) woman in a terrifying new world. Our June is not afraid of anything - because she knows nothing will happen to her. She isn’t unafraid of death - she knows she’s the executive producer and will not die. She is the smartest and most capable person around. Even the existing organized resistance bows to her will. No one in the existing resistance ever seems to have considered the possibility of rescuing children. Really? I wanted to slap that maniacal smile off her face as she said the single most obvious thing to people who should realistically have already known it. I would so much have preferred that she’s a Katniss Everdeen, co-opted, semi-willingly into an existing resistance movement. June as the saviour isn’t cutting it for me. Im not saying this is a bad story. I’m liking it well enough (although I expect to go apoplectic next time they try to get into Canadian law and politics). But it’s no longer Atwood’s the Handmaid’s Tale and it’s cheap explotation to pretend that it is.

Same thought went through my mind. Whatever happened to the Wall anyway?

I didn’t hate this as much as the rest of this season, but I think it’s because have cracked and am numb to the pain. The glaring inconsistencies just passed through my mind but have lost their power. Why is The Most Dangerous Loose Cannon of a Handmaid Ever unguarded and unrestrained? Why is she allowed to go anywhere near a conveniently unchaperoned child? Why, if they are letting Natalie die now that she’s delivered, is she still hooked up to machines (any reason other than that the beeps make a poignant counterpoint to June’s monologue)? I didn’t even have the strength to want to slap June as she looked beatifically down on the woman whom she herself got killed. For me, June’s realization that she isn’t the only person in this world who’s hurting comes too little too late. Last episode, any residual caring I had left for her crossed into absolute hatred. And not even the incomparable Belinda Carlisle can change that.

I feel your pain. Once upon a time, The West Wing was my absolute favourite show, as in I woke up the morning it was on with a song in my heart and couldn’t wait until it aired. After Aaron Sorkin left, cracks started to appear. Then, in Season 5, something happened that I found so ridiculous that I snapped. I walked out of the room and didn’t watch another episode until many years later when I’d calmed down and found another love in The Americans. The fall is always harder, and more personal, when the initial viewing experience was so great. I really enjoyed THT’s first season, but I didn’t love love it. I thought both the Mexico and the Canada plots were bad. But the thing I really disliked (the first major crack) was June’s voiceover “if they didn’t want us to be an army, they shouldn’t have given us uniforms”. I didn’t feel it was true to the book or to the spirit of the show. The Handmaids’ experience in the book and most of Season 1 is claustrophobic and isolated. They have no one to trust. “She is my spy and I am hers”. And that’s where I think so much of this season has gone completely off the rails. These handmaids run around barely supervised, openly having conversations amongst themselves and their captors are powerless to control them. Aunt Lydia can’t do anything except tell June to tell her friends to cool it? Book and Season 1 Lydia would’ve shocked them with cattle prods for speaking, and had June forceably removed from the store and beaten. They wouldn’t have had a chance to shun OfMatthew. They would’ve hated her but she would’ve been protected by Lydia and held up as a model prisoner. Some handmaids would've followed her example for their own protection. I’ve been trying to think of an example from history, art or literature where these kind of shenanigans happened. Something to justify what’s happened to the plot, because, yeah, these things happen. Somewhere else where the prisoners rule the roost; where they have multiple chances to escape but don’t so they can undermine the system from within; where their captors are powerless to control them and have to rely on their leader to get any sort of cooperation. And the best I could come up with was Hogan’s Heroes.

Don’t be shy @AnswersWanted. How do you really feel?

“I was godmother to my sister’s child. He died when he was four days old .... “. It stuck in my head because I remember thinking at the time that fundamentalists usually don’t baptize infants. It’s usually more of a Catholic thing. The quotation is at 2:14:

But how can that be, when she said specifically that she was godmother to her sister’s son? Unless they now baptize the kid or something, the godmother comment doesn’t fit. Joining the conga line here. I swore, when I tuned in this week, that I was going to watch with an open mind and try to like it. When June sassed off to Aunt Lydia without even a slap, I just lost that happy thought and it kept getting worse. You know what, Lydia? If June really is the only person in Gilead who is completely untouchable (and seriously, WTF?), make her watch while you beat the shit out of someone else in her place. Maybe poor Janine. That would alienate her from all the other Handmaids, even if it doesn’t teach her that there are consequences to her foolhardy actions. Geez, even Tony Soprano had a conscience. June has become the most unlikeable protagonist ever. The only thing that can redeem this show for me now is that if they kill her off and that they won’t do.

I didnt know whether to like your post - the beginning of which I agree with, especially the part about extradition to face the death penalty, or to give it a “funny” face for the above. So I opted for a “like” and this reply to tell you that I spit out my coffee laughing over it and now can’t get the image out of my head. In fact, so many of the “clever” deaths on this show could fit that meme (eg Eden’s) that I think I’d prefer the spin off Survivor: Gilead to what’s being done this season.

The show made it very clear, I thought, that Fred and the rest of the Boston gang were in charge of the whole of Gilead. And then they changed their minds, probably to justify the shots of the desecration of Washington. Perhaps in a few seasons we’ll find out the capitol was actually in L.A. all along, with the Hollywood sign changed to HolyWood. It’ll be fun watching Toronto stand in for all three as well as itself.

Where indeed? In fact, where is any representative of the original American government? They are obviously still around, since our refugee characters met with them briefly. Why didn’t they accompany Emily to her interrogation by the Swiss? I was thinking about this when I was thinking about the geography of filming location v real Toronto, as the American Consulate General is about a block away from where they filmed this week’s hanging. It’s a honking big building with blocks on the sidewalk to prevent anyone’s driving up to it and its own opaque glass guard security booth containing, I presume, armed guards or marines or something (or maybe it’s empty and that’s what they want us to think!). There’s got to be hundreds of people who work there, unless most of it is vacant, and it’s a far cry from the cramped dark rooms where Moira goes to get news. What happened to them, and to the thousands of other embassy and consular staff around the world? Presumably, those with loyalty to the original government would seek asylum in whatever country they found themselves and those loyal to Gilead would - what? Be thrown out? Be recognized as reps of the new regime? Atwood didn’t have to answer those questions because she wasn’t world-building, but, if the show runners are going to venture out of Gilead and June’s POV, then I think they have to address international politics to tell a coherent story. Instead, they’ve had the original U.S. government kinda disappear, despite passing reference to it’s being still in existence and been unrealistically vague about whether Gilead is recognized or not.

Minor point addressing some of the comments here: that was not the Prime Minister whom Emily and Moira approached, but some random Cabinet Minister. My guess is the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship. What said Minister was doing in Toronto, which is not the capital of Canada despite how the show presents it, is not made clear. I guess there’s nothing preventing a federal Cabinet Minister from being in Toronto - I myself have had occasion to meet federal Ministers in this fair city - but the show does seem to meld Toronto and Ottawa when it suits them. It’s a shame this show airs in Canada on the Sunday following the Hulu drop, as most of my compatriots are only posting after the discussion has been mainly exhausted. It’s not just the strangeness of seeing Toronto stand in for Gilead and then, in the next scene, be Toronto again half a block away (a disconcerting viewing experience), but the whole take on Canada itself. Sure, Canada could be afraid of a highly-armed neighbour (with a “u”) to the south and want to appease it, but that’s not the Canada the show presented when the Waterfords were unceremoniously turfed in Season 1. Canada is almost a character in and of itself in this show, and it as ill-formed and thought out as just about every other character. It doesn’t make sense that Canada would set up what seems to be a highly organized system of taking in refugees and then just turn around and consider sending any of them back. It doesn’t fit with anything else we’ve seen of the country in this show.

I have a crazy theory, based on very little, that Emily used to live in Canada with Clea Duvall and that Oliver was born there. He’d be a Canadian citizen even if born in the U.S., of course, since one of his mothers is a Canadian, but it’s a grasping thought that helps keep my head from exploding over why Gilead let him leave. As for international relations in Gilead, I’m still finding it ridiculous to think that only U.S. citizens are trapped in Gilead. I read a stat that, at any given time, there are over a million Canadians in the U.S.. There are other foreign nationals as well, of course, probably also in huge numbers. And who knows how many Americans married to foreigners, with children who are dual citizens. What happened to them? Did they all get out? Surely some were killed or forced into servitude and their children stolen. There’s your international incident right there. While Fred is appealing to the world for the return of one of Gilead’s people, how many countries should be saying back : “fine, then. Give us our people back”. I just can’t with this silliness.