AllyB

I was legit a little in love with him back in the mid-90s when he was 1st Lt. Cooper Hawkes on the far too short Space Above and Beyond.

I didn’t hate it. Probably because as other posters have mentioned, my expectations have been lowered so the many plot inconsistencies didn’t bother me as much as they should have. Also because I enjoyed seeing Billy for the first time since Ally McBeal.

That's the biggest problem with the show, much as it has many problems. The handmaids' isolation of Ofmatthew needed to be incredibly subtle. Them deciding she was an outcast and removing from her any small acts of solidarity they may previously have shown her would be believable. Her slowly crumbling under the loss of a connection that she didn't think she'd miss until it was gone as she struggles to deal with her 4th pregnancy and her fears the baby would be a girl, and possibly her gnawing guilt that the Martha died, would be believable. June and her red dress gang visibly bullying her in front of Aunt Lydia was ridiculous on every level. Aunt Lydia taking June's accusation against Ofmatthew at face value and forcing her to be berated by all the women she knew were bullying her just after she had already told June to stop them from bullying her, was ridiculous. Lydia may have taken the accusation seriously and dealt with Ofmatthew's feeling privately, but she wouldn't have played right into June's hands like such an utter ridiculous dupe. Then even more ridiculous, in the supermarket when June is told by Lydia that she will move her from what is a relative sanctuary with the Lawrences back into a household where she will be ritually raped again, June zones out of this important conversation so she can turn her head to the side and angle it so Ofmatthew can see her crazed smile. Somehow knowing that this will break her. She smirks her way through Janine's beating and just makes a big Skeletor smile face when a gun is pointed at her, before psychically conveying that Ofmatthew should shoot Lydia, and Ofmatthew tries to comply. WTAF was all of that supposed to be??? It broke the bounds of any form of storytelling and was just an insane sequence of events that followed no logic and for once even the cinematography was as awful as the "plot." It was just awful on every level. As for June being someone who has finally snapped and no longer cares for anything but hurting Gilead, that would be a fine story. I'm watching the new Das Boot series and Lizzy Caplan's Carla is a character who's resistance to the Nazis and experiences under them has brought her to such a state. And by being in this state she's not a likeable character. She is doing what we understand to be a good thing in resisting Nazis but it has cost her so much in terms of her humanity and compassion and it leads to bad decision making. But she is a believable character. If this is what we are supposed to be seeing in June, we aren't. We're just seeing a pouting teenager thumbing her nose at her oppressors. She's literally right in their faces, flouting her "resistance" and openly sneering at everyone. It's ludicrous and stupid and utterly boring to watch.

I don't know. These nuggets just highlighted the complete lack of thought that went into the world building of this episode. Just a few lines stuck in when the writers remembered they had to do something to show that Gilead was sneaking in. I wanted a better idea of when this episode was set and as we aren't given a clue my guess is that it was obviously before congress was blown up but after Hannah's birth. I have no reason for assuming the latter, so perhaps it was earlier. If it was after Hannah's birth there is obviously a severe fertility crisis already under way. Apart from the fact that there are many good couples who'd love a child, this is never mentioned, nor is there any feel of this being a world under fertility and environmental pressure. Despite the main three characters in the flashbacks being a mother and two people who work with children there is no sense of unease about the shortage of children. A school principle would be dealing with significantly lowered pupil numbers leading to class consolidation and making teachers redundant. Or if this was a religious school of the right flavour, sopping up the pupils from the surrounding areas as their school closes. This could be a part of Noelle's problem with being late as her son had to move schools and the commute is difficult. We also have a situation where Lydia has moved into teaching around the time an oversupply of teachers would become obvious. She came from family law which would be far too intellectual a job for a woman in the eyes of the Sons of Jacob. Wouldn't it have been interesting if she had a pastor/religious advisor/former boss who had nudged her towards teaching in this 'proper' school as opposed to working in a less womanly field. If she was told her work as a teacher was a better opportunity to do God's work and that's why she switched fields. While in reality she was being groomed as an aunt. We could have the same story beats where her human side first interprets her role as someone who attempts to make things better for a struggling mother and her child and eventually her shame at her sins warps itself into the beginnings of someone who wants to punish sinners and she reports Noelle for her failings. None of that backstory would need to be done so explicitly that it feels 'overly on the nose' but it could be done in a way that gives a real sense of the beginnings of the change that people are sleepwalking into. And the unease about the fertility rate that we should have been made conscious of. But this show almost always forgets the world has fertility issues apart from the few occasions where it goes so very ott with them, (Hannah's birth where all the other babies died overnight & no babies in Mexico.) While in Canada, in the episode where Hannah started nursery, at Moira's lamaze class, here at the school, nobody ever acts like children are rare and potentially fragile. Also, I don't believe for one second that even this crushing on her boss version of Lydia would be choosing Thomas Edison for her 20 questions game. A freethinker scientist who believed in nature as his version of a god. Sure! She'd have been teaching the kids that people like him were the beginnings of the world's problems and choosing someone like John Cotton for her 20 questions game. Eta; I mean come to think of it Edison, inventor of the freaking lightbulb. A device the Commanders of Gilead are almost allergic to! No way would he have been picked!

To be fair to the group hangings, that is lifted directly from the movie. The scene is on youtube if anyone is interested.

Three times if you count the magic wolf episode, which I do. Three different times in 13 episodes, the audience was shown the possibility of June escaping and failing. Three times now we've had to watch her readjust to Gilead after a brief taste of freedom. It's so, so, so very stupid. I would have been alright with watching 3 seasons of June stuck in Gilead, if it wasn't for the constant dangle of escape and reset. And if the writers feel unable to write June permanently in Gilead, there are plenty and plenty of options besides escape to Canada. Lets see her escape in the opposite direction and get stuck into the the war against Gilead.

I don't know, that article also contained this line; "Moss uses that expressive-as-hell face to chart the ebbs and flows of June’s drive, guilt, self-disgust, and determination, and it’s especially compelling when they co-exist." And I've got to say I just don't see it. I've had no problems with Moss' acting before this season but for the last 7 episodes I've pretty much just seen 'sneering; defiant' and 'sneering; self-satisfied.' That's it. I'm sure it's a weird direction choice rather than her own lack of skill but if my only introduction to Moss was these 7 episodes, I'd think she was an awful, awful, extremely limited actor.

It was such a laughable scene. A waltz was playing. It was not near the end of the waltz. Fred walks in, everyone parts. Fred, amazed, tells Serena how beautiful she looks. Never mind that Fred and Serena have just been to dinner together and come to the ball together and Serena has not changed in the 4 minutes they have been apart. They start to waltz. Everyone else stops dancing and stands to watch them. They make sexy eyes and segue into a tango even though the music would not have changed. Everyone admires them greatly. They finish dancing to great applause!!! WTAF!!!!!! Clearly this scene was written and directed when everyone was on LSD. It's the only thing that makes sense.

I think in a 'real world' scenario, Emily would have been allowed to stay as her marriage would have been considered valid. She's the wife of a Canadian citizen and as such would have been given leave to stay and allowed to apply for a spousal visa. Anyone who escaped to Canada and had citizenship rights to another country (a lot of Boston residents would qualify for Irish citizenship, for example) would probably have been given temporary leave to stay while they applied for their non-US passport or at least safe passage through to the country they have rights to live in.

Well she did survive a brutal stabbing! Off topic, but that's most certainly not true. The RCC still pulls that crap wherever they can get away with it. And in the places where they have been stopped, they are still actively covering up for perpetrators. Just read up on Magdelene Laundries, the Tuam babies or the RCC's part in the lost children of Francoism.

The "Nick is a bad guy, dun, dun, dun" plot is just stupid. Nick could have been a bad guy who just liked June right up until he gave Luke those letters. We already knew there was lots more to him, that he was never really a driver but an Eye working for Commander Pryce and spying on other Commanders. The fact that he was driving for Fred, meant that Fred was under suspicion already. We knew early on that his double agent work with Mayday could have actually been triple agent work where he was intent on bringing them down. That June's early second season escape and recapture could all have been organised by him in order to catch people like Omar while he enjoyed a few months of have June to himself. But then he went to Canada and gave Luke the letters. And that was that, whatever his past allegiances may have been, by handing over those letters he was undeniably working to bring down Gilead. There was no ulterior motive in that. He handed over the letters, destroyed Gilead's chance of a necessary trade deal. And to top that off he came home and told June all about seeing her husband and him living with Moira, knowing that by sharing that news he risked his relationship with June. We also know that his attempt to get June and Nic-olly to Canada, where she would almost certainly be with Luke and never see him again, were totally genuine as Emily and Nic-olly really did make it out. Nick has been genuinely a good guy from the latter half of S2. Trying to reignite the questions that once hung over his motives is just ridiculous now. It's also really stupid that the Swiss won't talk to him for all the reasons outlined already by other posters. But also because the Swiss would know damn well that it was Nick who gave Luke all those letters. They would be damn intrigued to hear everything he had to say even if just to try and find out what he is playing at. I assume that we are going to eventually discover that Nick is a US agent and possibly has been from the start and they just don't want to blow his cover within Gilead. (Or I would assume that if I had faith in the writers.) But trying to make the audience suspicious of him is just stupid at this point.

Ok, so here is the thing with the lip piercings. They wouldn't mute anyone. Try it. Press your lips together and then make a tiny, tiny gap. There isn't a single sound you can't make. Not one. You won't speak super loudly, but if your lips were pierced together, rather than you holding them in place, once the piercings heal (6 weeks-ish) you'd be even more able. You'll never shout but you'll be well able to quietly converse with the Marthas and other handmaids. It's just stupidity for no reason.

I know. All that people in Canada/the world would think is, 'crap, don't ever send that baby back to that creepy hellhole!' But we're supposed to believe that Fred's eye for dramatic shots is so great it's making the world think of Gilead sympathetically.* And it's redundant anyway because Luke and Nicole would be repatriated to the existing US as soon as this nonsense started and Canada would just shrug their shoulders because it's no longer their business. *I think it's a meta commentary on the show. Bruce Miller oversees great dramatic shots and thinks it will make everyone overlook the crapness of the show.

I thought this episode was meant to be a gamechanger where something big and important would happen. Instead it was just more stuff and nonsense.

The only part of that trailer that intrigued me was the Swiss(?) diplomat saying "I don't think you know who Mr Blaine is." The thought of getting some more insight into Nick and who he really works for is appealing. Is he known to the US as a spy for them and the Swiss want to keep him exactly where he is for the eventual overthrow of Gilead. Maybe he was always a spy for an agency like the NSA and his very first run in with the man who became Commander Price was deliberate? It's either that or he is actually a very bad person who just happens to like June enough to bend the rules for her, but I think that him handing over the letters to Luke puts paid to that possibility.

All I could think was that Trish has been intensively training in Krav Maga for years and years and now has superpowers, why can't she just cross the monkey bars on the first try? It's a child's play thing not something a super powered martial artist should need to train to master. Whatever about her having to train to wall flip, which as something humans can do still leaves a lot of questions about her powers, the monkey bars should not be a challenge of any kind to someone with her training regimen.

There should be absolutely no issue with Nic-olly's custody anyway. Babies are in short supply. As soon as Luke got custody of Nic-olly (which would have been a bigger deal than Emily just randomly handing her over to him in a post-office) he would have been encouraged by the US authorities to relocate to Alaska/Hawaii and keep her safe and fully claim her as a US citizen. He and she (and Moira and Erin if they'd wanted) would be kept in a degree of luxury, in a safe place. Even if Luke had turned down the offer, wanting to stay as physically near to June and Hannah as he can, once this whole custody nonsense had started, he'd rethink that and head immediately off to safety. Canada would be more than happy for the four of them to slip off north/west quietly, washing their hands of the issue with Gilead. 'Sorry sad Gilead Commander and Wife, we don't have "your" baby, you'll have to take it up with the US. Good luck now.' And the rest of the world would be able to just shrug it off as an 'internal issue' of sorts. And regardless of where Luke is, he's not going to have to pay most of his income on baby supplies. The state of whatever country he is in is going to be helping him look after one of the world's few babies. This show often seems to forget that babies are a massive big deal in this world.

Commander Lawrence wears glasses.

When did June save Emily's life?

It was a joke.I don't really think June is quite so messed in the head to do that. But I do think it was so very, very weird for Serena to call the child Nicole and for Fred to not react incredibly badly to it.

Perhaps June, like me, was just slow on the uptake and realised that Nicole is a feminine version of the baby's father's name right at that last moment. And she saw a dark humour in sending the baby to Canada where she correctly guesses Luke will raise her and unknowingly call the baby by the name of her lover.

That always seemed to be the ultimate ending for the show. Ravi has always been working toward a cure. Right from before the show started that was already part of his backstory. And his main arc throughout the series has been continually coming very, very close to a cure before being thwarted in some way (so the show could continue). Him finding a proper and plentiful cure has always been his likely endgame. Until Renegade. Liv's arc for the last two seasons has been saving people's lives with zombie virus. So Ravi curing everybody no longer serves the same purpose because it undermines Liv's lifesaving missions. If a cure is found, no government in the world will tolerate people going around with an infectious zombie virus just because they don't want to die. They'd either be cured of the zombie-ism and allowed to live out their remaining time with their original illness or just shot in the head.

So I'm seeing Jennings in disguise everywhere. Watching Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile and every time Carol Anne Booth showed up I couldn't help but wonder exactly why Elizabeth was in disguise and what the KGB wanted from Ted Bundy. And in the trailers for Hot Zone and Rocketman I keep seeing Topher Grace and Taron Egerton as a disguised Philip.

I agree with the criticisms of the movie. Having read that it would be from Elizabeth's point of view I thought the movie would show their relationship progress from what would have felt like a good relationship to Ted's behaviour as he started to commit the murders. To Elizabeth's suspicion as the clues started to point to him. To her horror and guilt as he was arrested. How he gaslighted her, the abuse that was present in their relationship, the time he did try to killer when she slept. I think Zac Effron would have had plenty of room to do the same amazing job he did but the movie would have had a stronger structure and told a more interesting, human story. One where the audience would have experienced the horror of his actions without any need for gratuitous graphic depictions but where we could feel the consequences of the awful things he did through the eyes of someone who had loved him.

The really annoying thing about the Baby Daddy Drama is that it's been quite some years since a prenatal DNA test posed any risk to the fetus as fetal DNA is detectable in the mother's blood from 14 weeks. They'd have their answer from a simple blood test in days.