nycapa

I live in Brooklyn (in fact, quite close to Ben and we've seen him in the neighborhood on multiple occasions) so thought I'd chime in to answer some of the regional questions people have asked. Regarding Namaste and the low-income housing - that is absolutely a thing and Greenpoint is a target neighborhood for it, with several building conversions that turned factories into condos or high-end rentals. Many of these buildings have a low-income quota which affords the owners massive tax exemptions, and it's very common for the low-income residents to not have access to the luxury amenities or, as Jesse noted above, an actual "poor door". Also, non-smoking buildings have increasingly become the norm. As for Regine, looked like Fort Greene or possibly Bed-Stuy to me, which would be less than a 30-minute bike ride from Greenpoint, it's maybe 5 miles. I've seen every ep of the show including the pre-HBO ones and I believe he's only ever delivered in Brooklyn. Predominantly north Brooklyn (Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick) but that could have as much to do with convenient shooting locations as anything else. Lots of shows like that part of Brooklyn because it's logistically easier to deal with production than, say, brownstone Brooklyn (Girls is almost exclusively shot up there). I've also seen multiple locations in my area (Brooklyn Heights/Cobble Hill/Downtown/Carroll Gardens/Boerum Hill/Park Slope). I used to live in Williamsburg and frequently biked to my brother in Cobble Hill and it's an easy ride. He's also been around Sunset Park/Bay Ridge (I think the park Beth takes Grandpa to is one in Bay Ridge) and of course there's the Ditmas Park ep, but doesn't he actually comment about how deep into the borough that hood is? I seem to remember him commenting on it like he had never been there. It makes complete sense to me that he would pretty much cover the bulk of the western part of Brooklyn. Oh, at the end of Grandpa they are actually in Tompkins Square Park, which is in the East Village in Manhattan, but he was clearly not working in that scene. Regarding Baruch - people leaving the Hasidic or ultra orthodox community is definitely a thing. Not a huge thing but it happens and there are non-profit groups that work to help people who are trying to leave that life and integrate into the rest of society. They are completely cut off from their families and it makes complete sense that friend groups with that common background would exist, how could they not? They are so culturally isolated that entering the larger society is a massive shock. That Baruch would be looking for a kosher job suggests that although he does not want to live in the ultra orthodox community anymore, he is still a practicing and religious jew. My husband used to do some work with a non-profit legal group helping people leaving those communities and it is far more common that they remain religious than completely reject that. We've been to passover seders with exactly these types of people - they reject the extreme isolation of ultra orthodoxy but choose to remain in a wider religious community.

I wanted to chime in about the choice to make the show's version of Gilead "post-racial". I agree that it is very problematic to suggest an extremely misogynistic world would not also be extremely racist, it does not make logical sense and I don't think ignoring race was the only way to avoid ending up with an all-white cast. They are, after all, making the flashback scenes much more elaborate than the book, and could have included plenty of diversity in those scenes, even if they felt that delving deeply into the Children of Ham story was out of the scope of the series. But now that they've made this decision, I hope (and feel they may) use this diversity to add nuance to these characters and perhaps the showrunner was downplaying the impact of the casting on the story. For example, Moira has been portrayed from the beginning as being more cynical, more politically aware, bolder, and with much more of a rebel's spirit than June. She has a personality that could inspire resistance, and clearly she does inspire this in June. I see this part of her character being very tied to having lived a life fighting prejudices even in normal society in a way that June as a cis white person never did. That contrast could be very compelling to explore. Ofglen/Emily is similarly portrayed, she has a lifetime of being a marginalized person to draw from. For June, though she is a woman and obviously the evil of the patriarchy is the heart of story, she still lived a life of relative privilege. She had probably done fine in life just going along with the status quo, not having to think much about oppression, hence why she did not wake up until it was too late. She is obviously not a willfully ignorant person, but perhaps allowed herself to be a little blissfully ignorant. Making Luke and therefore Hannah POC is fascinating to me, because I want to know more about how June perceived their experiences as a person who never had to personally deal with racism. And what does that say about June that the two people she was closest to in life - Luke and Moira - were people of color? Did she consider herself colorblind? Or did she recognize how their experiences of the world were different from her own? When you take a look at the palette of different characters this adaptation works with, they do in fact represent a large spectrum with no two major characters occupying exactly the same status in this world. From highest privilege - Fred, to lowest - Moira, and multiple levels in between. Where would a black man like Luke fall in the spectrum? Of greater privilege than Aunt Lydia because he is a man? Or of less because he is black?

I first started watching TM2 when I was pregnant with my daughter because it was oddly comforting. I figured if these dumbasses could be parents, I would be fine! Of course, now that I've been a mom for a while, watching these people infuriates me.

Ha, this scene was actually shot 2 blocks away from my house (in Brooklyn), and that whole scene my husband and I were yelling "you can come here Elizabeth! We're right around the corner!" Especially weird because Keri Russell actually lives very near here and we see her all the time around the neighborhood. I actually just saw her at a neighborhood bar a couple weeks ago - kissing Matthew Rhys - and as I was completely out of touch about the fact that they were dating in real life it was a very surreal experience...