AllyB

I really don't buy the way everyone reacted to what happened at the end of the last episode. These are jobbing actresses, with the exception of Debbie, this is the best job acting they have ever had. They would be ecstatic to have the show extended and if they were annoyed with anyone it would be Debbie. She tried to sabotage their chances of continuing employment just because she wanted it to end. She could have left the show as a wrestler and even found a way to continue as a producer back in LA while Liberty Belle was recast. Instead she tricked them all into trying to tank the show and their chances of 9 more months of work. That's pretty despicable. Bash might have been an ass about it all but he blew up at her because she tried to underhandedly ruin their run. In real life most of the women would have been on his side.

That's what I came on here to post. I love Toby Huss and rooted for Boz more than anyone on Halt and Catch Fire. But I do feel a bit uncomfortable that we've now come to a place in this woman centric show where both female leads are being pushed into relationships with men nearly 20 years older. I've really never liked Sam and Ruth anyway, he was repeatedly emotionally abusive to her at the beginning of their working relationship. So while I'd be happy to watch Sam learn to respect Ruth, accept he was a total dick to her and for them to form a friendship, the power dynamic between them is way too off centre for them to ever be in a relationship. Watching the show lean more and more towards them ending up together while at the same time seeing Debbie paired with another older man feels doubly unnecessary. It was definitely a Top Gun call out. Is the right year in that it's 1986 but right around the time the film was released. So those 'pilots' were probably Tom and Val off to do a magazine promo shoot!

She looked older in THT because she was made up to be a disgraced wife sent to the colonies. Even before she was dying she was stressed, dirty, scared, underfed, etc. She's May Parker in the MCU and she looks about as old as she did in My Cousin Vinnie.

She's 54 and she has a time machine or something because she honestly looks about 35.

I have to confess that while everyone else was either moved by or rolling their eyes at Lawrence reading a story to the lot more than 52 kids and their accompanying the Marthas. I was thinking about how utterly, utterly stenchy that room would have been. When people are sitting around in nervous anticipation of a terrifying, life threatening journey they are utterly trapped into having now committed to, it tends to affect the bowel. That room would have been full of so very, very many truly eye-watering farts. It would have been grim.

I enjoyed Nick and June's moments in season 1 because they were a necessary break for June. A snatched hour or two of pleasure and humanity in a life that normally consisted of long, long periods of monotony interspersed with horror, terror, grief, humiliation, rape and torture. I hated that just as she had found that release she was given the news that Luke was alive and trying to get her out because we all knew he wouldn't be getting her out and I was worried that her sense of love and loyalty to him would stop her from continuing with the tiny part of her own life that she had managed to carve out. So I was glad when she took the pragmatic approach and continued her 'relationship' with Nick. I never felt that it was about Nick in any real way, it was 100% about June choosing to steal moments where she could be June again. She didn't even fully trust him, and rightly so. This was very much how Offred was written in the book. It continued into season 2 in the aggressive sex scene after June's first escape. She was using Nick as a release and Nick understood this. He had come to believe he genuinely love her but whatever June felt for him was always just a side effect of her being a terrified prisoner. (And his feelings would also have come from their unnatural circumstances, his guilt and pity, his desire to save someone suffering in front of him, etc.) The first time I felt June ever had genuine feelings for Nick the person was at the end of Smart Power, when Nick told her he gave the letters to Luke and that Moira was living with him. Nick had achieved her greatest wish at that point, which was to get those letters out. And then he told her about Luke, knowing it could end their relationship, because he respected her enough to tell her the whole truth no matter the cost to him. I still didn't feel she was romantically in love with him but I think it's where she first saw him as a whole person how she really could trust and formed a genuine affection for him. And from there all of the subtlety of their relationship ended. There had been hints up to this point of the writers looking at them as star-crossed lovers (the sneaky kissing scenes in the hospital after the bombing and Eden's insertion to the plot). But overall their scenes mostly held true to Atwood's original intentions. But ever since Smart Power they were continually written just like teenagers having a forbidden love in spite of constant dog legs been thrown their way. It destroyed the subtlety and genius of the relationship Atwood had crafted because that was always mainly about how humans survive. Not about fan baiting 'ships.

My theory is that the pilot has a playful sense of drama, so he told the refugee program that he was carrying a large number of refugees but kept just how very many and the fact that it was mainly children a secret. He probably filmed Moira entering the aeroplane and the other volunteers as the children exited. The reaction video is now the most viral clip in the show's universe. He wasn't expecting the Kiki/Rebecca and father reunion scenes but that kind of gold has ensured him a luxurious retirement from youtube monetisation. I also have a theory on the sandwich scenes. Last year Bruce Miller was taken aback by how critical viewers were about June's decision to hand NicHolly over to Emily without a thought for how a newborn would feed on the long treacherous road and foot journey to Canada. He didn't want to make the same mistake twice, so he made damn sure we knew that all of those older children had nutritious sandwiches and fruit to call their own on the short flight over the border. (This isn't actually snark, I have absolutely no doubt that this really is exactly why we spent so long on sandwiches.)

I honestly found the episode really, really boring for the most part. Just so many long, long scenes of June moving slowly and close ups of her face as she emotes. As has been said, the initial scenes were good, bringing back the sinister feeling of the first days of Gilead. The nastiest part being that the first prisoners June saw being moved were mainly disabled people and undoubtedly this was for a Gileadean version of the Nazi's Aktion T4. Then we had to move on to June and her handmaid fans being really, really obvious that something was up while her one on one "ruthless" guardian was entirely oblivious. Aunt Lydia knows something is up but settles for berating June a little while June mouths off and Aunt Lydia just lets it all slide. Then we get 10 minutes of soap and sandwiches. Entertainment and tension building at it's absolute finest. I don't know about everything else but I really was worried about how the kids would manage if they didn't have healthy snacks on the short flight and I just really, really needed to see long scenes of sandwich making, lunch wrapping, bottle filling and 50+ backpacks being packed and stacked. I also thought it was just great that Beth had the prescience to tear up sheets to use as route markers on the walk they didn't yet know they were going to be taking while Sienna watched her portentously. The lamp in the window may be a nod to the underground railroad but it's just great that none of the Guardians or Commanders could figure that out while searching for a missing child. And what sense it made for Beth to light the lamp, as June smiled on, hours before they were ready to start gathering and then get annoyed that after they lit the beacon the first Martha and child showed up. How badass of June to wait until the day itself to figure out how she'd get those kids to the airport, and again, lucky that Beth had the torn sheets ready to go. And obviously, the morning after the Pied Piper has seemingly danced through Boston despite a Guardian lock down, 6 handmaids can meet for an unsupervised walk in the woods near the airport that a plane just flew out of and a guard went missing from. So little of it even makes sense. That's before we get to the fact that as of Smart Power, Canada isn't supposed to be trading with Gilead even though Gilead is desperate to and the flight was initially set up to be an unsanctioned Mayday flight. Then last week the Commaders are threatening to cut off trade with Canada because of the Waterfords' arrest and Winslow's assumed abduction so Lawrence has to use Eleanor's death to make the other Commanders feel sorry for him (a totally legit way for Gileadean leaders to act) and continue trading for one more week so the flight, which is now a part of Gilead's official trade agreement with Canada, will still happen. I hate this show.

I’ve just been substituting heartache with Gilead. Except we get June VO stating that she is the warrior right before the song starts.

Just been watching Glow, so knowing THT’s fondness for ‘borrowing’ from better shows, my money is on The Warrior.

I'm just wondering if they are going for a full Breaking Bad homage with June allowing someone to die. If even one of the 52 kids carries a teddy bear onto the plane I'll be expecting to next see it floating charred and one eyed in a pool.

Exactly. When Fred was telling Luke he saved lives while Luke ignored the fertility crises, it would have been so easy for Luke to laugh in his face and say "I might have done nothing but at least I didn't wilfully pretend the problem was with the women when we all know it was the men, so that I could enslave and rape women to make myself feel better about my useless sperm. Oh, no wait, I did do something, I fathered a child because my sperm isn't useless like yours. And I would almost certainly have fathered another if you hadn't destroyed our family you delusional little tosspot." And then much as it would have hurt him a bit but he's had time deal and know it would hurt Fred more, he'd have rubbed Nick in Fred's face and mocked him for being such a useless gimp that he even had his wife name June's baby after her biological father. Instead we got Luke looking down and feeling bad about how Fred has a point about him saving lives!!!!!!! WTAF!!!

Think it or don't think it but facts are facts. Prospects for the average person in Colombia changed dramatically for the better over the course of Maritza's lifetime. And the odds are significant that Maritiza's mother would be living a better life than the life she lives in America because the average person in Colombia has a better life than the life she has as an undocumented person living on the fringes of society constantly aware that one wrong or unlucky move will remove her from her life. As for the chances of upward mobility for the poor, I'm from a country where university education is free for all, subsidised for those on lower incomes, where people out of work for whatever reason are entitled to a weekly payment that provides a comfortable standard of living and medical care is either heavily subsidised or free depending on your circumstances. It isn't perfect but upward mobility for the poor is unremarkably normal.

Of course poor countries still have wealthy people, that's not what being an Upper-Middle Income economy means. It's an official designation given by the World Bank based on criteria that looks at the functioning of the whole economy. The Colombia Martitza's mother left and the Colombia of today are two completely different places and prospects are utterly different for people. Maritza's mother would almost certainly have a better life now if she had stayed in Colombia because people in Colombia now generally have a much, much better life than poor illegal immigrants in the US. Colombia has world class affordable healthcare for example, at a standard above Canada's never mind the US's. It has free education and university is paid for on a sliding scale depending on your family's income making third level education an option for far, far more diverse a population than it currently is in the US. Obviously Maritza's mother wasn't to know that her long term prospects would have been better by staying where she was. For all we know her life could have been in danger at the time and she may have needed to leave urgently. Colombia in the 90s would have meant a tough life for most people and moving to the US would have felt like the better move. It's just that as it turns out, it wasn't.

A lot of the time it's a case of the grass just seeming greener. People are chasing an ideal that just won't exist for them. Maritza's mother was cleaning floors in some empty building. Odds are she has terrible wages, no or at least incredibly limited health insurance. I doubt most forms of third level education were a realistic option for her children. Did she live in New York like many of the characters? She probably doesn't have a great home in a great neighbourhood. And for all that nothing, she has lived, a sort of half life not entitled to participate fully in the society she lived in, all under the Sword of Damocles which eventually fell on her daughter. She could potentially currently have a better standard of living in Columbia. A country which is now classified as Upper-Middle Income and expected to soon meet the Higher Income classification standard. She might have had a harder time in the past if she'd stayed in Colombia, and perhaps she was someone who would have fallen foul of the Farc civil conflict so needed to leave. But if she wasn't, the life she's carved out for herself in the US really doesn't seem like it would have been worth sacrificing so much for.