[S05.E04: Dear Offred]

1 hour ago, chaifan said:

But in THT they only do the "ceremony" once per month.  Not all three days.  

Yes, all three days, as they've said throughout the series. Here's June's testimony, for one example, from 4.08 (the italics are mine):

Quote

I came to the Waterford’s house in 2017. It was my second posting. A few days after my arrival I was summoned to the drawing room where I was asked to kneel in front of the Waterfords, as witnessed by their housekeeper Rita Blue and their driver Nick Blaine. Mr. Waterford read a story from the Bible, about Rachel and Bilhah. After that I was taken upstairs to her bedroom. There Mr. Waterford raped me while his wife held me down. This happened for three successive nights every month while I was ovulating. These were the legally sanctioned rapes. There were others. 

[S05.E04: Dear Offred]

1 hour ago, chaifan said:

Yes, they're monitoring cycles, but it's still sex only once a month. 

Not sex once a month—sex three times a month, every night during ovulation. It maximizes pregnancy potential, not minimizes it. 

[S05.E04: Dear Offred]

59 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

Is the woman who met Serena at the refuge house the same woman that approached June in the park? 

No, different people, different actors. The woman who approached June is much younger than Mrs. Wheeler.

[S05.E04: Dear Offred]

9 minutes ago, dmc said:

Serena is not concerned with the human race continuing, she using the concern of the human race continuing for power.  There are people who use others fears for their own gain and she's one of them.

Maybe. Maybe not. Serena is complicated. I don't think we've seen enough of her pre-Gilead life to say with confidence what drives her.

[S05.E04: Dear Offred]

17 minutes ago, Redrum said:

Seriously, I can see it being done "nicer" but I find it hard to believe other countries haven't implemented enforced fertile women insemination rules. (it can be done without whippings and eye gouging - its still brutal but this is being portrayed as an extinction level issue. )

I think that was always Serena's point, that we're talking about the extinction of the human race. That was going to be the main thrust of her next book, the one that never got written: fertility as a moral imperative. The only reason other countries are interested in Gilead at all is the fact that apparently Gilead is the only country in the world where the birth rate is growing instead of declining.

[Beyond the Wall: The Culture of The Handmaid's Tale]

One of the things I really love is just how important names are in this show, particularly in the world of the handmaids. There are certain scenes that are extremely effective just because first names instead of the handmaid designations are used. Off the top of my head, here are few that I really like:

• Serena has called June "June" twice, as far as I recall. The first time was transactional--she wanted something from June (she was trying to convince June to call Luke so Serena could visit Nichole). The second time was an involuntary expression of real concern when Serena saw how sick June was in her hospital vigil for Ofmatthew. 
• The handmaids told each other their real names in Loaves and Fishes when Janine and Emily returned from the Colonies. That was the real beginning of their working together as a quasi-Mayday.
• When June is leaving Lawrence's house before setting off with the Angel's Flight kids, she calls him Joseph and he calls her June.
• June switches from "Mrs. Waterford" to "Serena" to help her express her feelings--she's "Mrs. Waterford" when June wants to project disapproval and/or distance, and she's "Serena" when they have an actual connection or when June is trying to reach her.
• June never calls Waterford "Fred," ever.
• June tells Aunt Lydia that "You know my fucking name." Aunt Lydia is always careful to keep "June" and "Offred" separate: June is an unredeemable fallen woman, but Offred has a chance to be useful. However, when June is holding the gun to Aunt Lydia, she says "Don't do it, June," and that works. 
• When June is attacking Aunt Lydia during the post-capture torture scenes, June ultimately calls her "Lydia." That rattles Aunt Lydia enormously, more than anything else that June has said or done.

Anyone else interested in any of this?

[S05.E03: Border]

6 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Let's say they even let her out of custody and she's free to establish some sort of base in Toronto. How is Gilead going to supply her with those things? Would Canada allow it?

Well, sure--it's a free country, after all. Citizens are free to set up whatever bat shit information centers they want to set up. Individuals are free to give money to those bat shit information centers if they want to. That's the flip side of democracy: crazies can have their part of the town square. Why wouldn't Serena be able to set up her organization?

[S05.E03: Border]

14 minutes ago, Redrum said:

Worse, the whole Serena hates June, June hates Serena stuff kind of buys into some of the worst stereotypes about women - they're over emotional and focus on petty bitchery when they should be looking at the big picture. I hope this goes beyond Serena and June literally and figuratively pulling each other's hair. 

I have confidence that it will. I agree with you that superhero-versus-supervillain is not particularly compelling or helpful.  But it won't remain there; it can't. It's obvious to me that this current bitter enemies phase is just a resting point before the Serena-and-June relationship twists off into something new and unexpected. I'm very interested to see what that "something" is going to be.

38 minutes ago, steph369 said:

But you can only tell the same story for so long. If they’re going to go past the original material, they have to develop more interesting storylines. I agree with iMonrey, they keep rehashing the same thing, over and over. 

That's just your opinion, and I don't share it. To me, they've gone beyond the original storyline by centering everything around June and Serena's relationship. Here are two women who are really so fundamentally alike in so many ways, who have very different circumstances in and opinions about a totalitarian government. Complicating all that is the fact that they have a peculiar sort of bond that makes them want to protect each other despite the fact that they also want to attack each other. I don't see it as the same thing over and over, I see it as something constantly shifting and changing as the power dynamics shift and change. It's an unusual story, and I'm really into it. You disagree, and that's fine--you'd rather see more of an ensemble, more complex, realistic world-building, or whatever it might be. That's your right, but it seems odd to assume that the creators are obligated to tell the story that you personally would like to be receiving, or that your view is universal.

[S05.E03: Border]

8 minutes ago, Shermie said:

Gilead is too recent to have women not able to read, or are they not allowed to read, hence the pictures on the grocery store products?

They're not allowed to read--nobody has claimed that they can't read. If they're caught reading, they lose a finger. Pretty powerful incentive to avoid doing it!

[S05.E03: Border]

8 hours ago, iMonrey said:

The idea that we're expected to believe Gilead believes she's some innocent bystander is sheer nonsense and a lot of hand-waving to keep up the tiresome Serena versus June narrative they've been hitting the reset button on since Season 2.

I find this sort of sentiment so curious. The June-versus-Serena narrative IS the story here. You might not like it, it might not be the story for you, but criticizing the writers for carrying on with what is obviously their primary intention in the first place seems odd. 

[S05.E03: Border]

1 hour ago, chocolatine said:

If she's in custody, she should have never been allowed to go back to Gilead in the first place.

Says who? She's not in Canadian custody--she's an ICC detainee. I don't see why the ICC can't decide that it's ok for her to visit her country of citizenship to bury her husband. Why would you think otherwise? They make the rules, and their rules certainly aren't restricted to one particular country or other.

[S05.E03: Border]

5 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Back in the first episode of the season there was some dialogue between Serena and Tuello about her applying for asylum so maybe they were prepared to let her go free. But if that's the case, why did Tuello need to accompany her to Gilead for the funeral? And why is she being taken back to the detention center upon her return to Canada? 

So just to waste more of my time, I went back and rewatched all of the Tuello/Serena episodes that would shed light on Serena's status. The upshot is that she's still in custody of the ICC, but there's every expectation that the judges will ultimately rule to give her back her immunity because Fred withdrew the rape, etc. charges that he had made against her when he decided that they needed to present a united front. (That was the only reason that she was arrested by the ICC in the first place, since the Nick/June sex setup was outside of the laws of Gilead and therefore not at the behest of the state. Serena had no choice but to follow the laws of Gilead about the handmaid stuff, but this wasn't that.) Since she's still in custody, it makes sense that Tuello has to babysit her. He explained the lavishness of everything as an apology for the fact that Fred's "change of itinerary" was improperly communicated to her. So that's all within the bounds of "acceptable" in the world of television. What doesn't work at all is the fact that Serena apparently thought that she could just remain in Gilead, and Tuello didn't question her. If she's in custody, she's in custody--she can't just leave if she feels like it. I wish they hadn't been quite so sloppy there.

[S05.E03: Border]

7 minutes ago, Baltimore Betty said:

I would love to know why Nick's wife is okay with what she knows about her husband and June, etc...she seems dedicated to the cause so what is her angle, why does she limp and was it Nick's decision to marry her?

Apparently she limps because of congenital hip dysplasia. My working theory about her is that she's part of Mayday. Nick has been shown to have Mayday ties throughout the series, although they haven't really been emphasized (and it's been hard to figure out just exactly where he stands with them--he wants to help June, sure, but does he want to help take down Gilead from within?). He's a very circumspect guy, and I find it hard to believe that he'd spill his guts to a stranger that he's only known for a couple of months about something that would get him put on the wall. We've seen a Mayday underground of Marthas and handmaids. I think we're going to see that there's also a Mayday underground of Wives and Aunts, and that's going to be extremely interesting.

[S05.E03: Border]

45 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

The more I think about it the less sense it makes. She asked for a budget but how would that work? Does Gilead even have a currency? I doubt there is any kind of standard exchange rate between milk coupons and Canadian dollars. And even if they still have bank vaults full of US dollars, or I guess gold, are they going to by flying her money deliveries every month, because if the rest of the world wants to isolate Gilead it's not hard to cut off their banking system (like they did with Russia)  It's kind of a small thing that will probably never get explained but it's just another weird annoying thing.

I think it's been well established that the political world building in the show is shaky at best, and that goes back to the source material. Margaret Atwood wasn't really interested in fleshing out a world; she was interested in playing with a concept. It didn't matter much in the book, since that was a smallish story with a limited point of view--it was forgivable that the narrator wasn't fully explaining the politics and economics of Gilead to us, because she was one person with a certain subset of concerns. It matters more now that the show is somewhat of an ensemble, but we'll never be able to escape the fact that Gilead itself makes no sense at all: you simply can't get rid of half of your workers by enslaving and subjugating women and have a functioning economy. 

For myself, I just choose to bracket all that out, because it's obvious that these storytellers are interested more in emotional truths than in political ones. There's not much political and economic truth in Serena's demands for a budget and a staff for all the reasons that have been pointed out. But there's plenty of emotional truth there: she's scared, she's humiliated, and she's trying to act powerful and in control when she knows that she is anything but. I can enjoy that without thinking too hard about how she's paying her bodyguards.

[S05.E03: Border]

2 hours ago, Redrum said:

And in the real world, why didn't June just take her shot and blow Serena's head off *right there*.

Because June is conflicted about Serena and doesn’t *really* want to kill her—that’s why she buried her gun after the “dream, dream, dream” sequence of Serena’s greatest evil hits. Whether that ambivalence is due to some wisp of emotional attachment or simply because murder in Canada would have actual legal consequences is impossible to say with confidence. 

[S05.E02: Ballet]

6 minutes ago, Haleth said:

If a wife has the choice of a nubile 18yo or over the hill Serena, who would she choose?

Hmmm. Serena is smart and beautiful--evil, sure, but I could work with that. I think I'd choose Serena! :-)

[S05.E01: Morning]

23 minutes ago, Anela said:

And how does he get away with not getting a hand maid?

He only would get a handmaid if his wife is "barren." That hasn't been demonstrated yet.

[S05.E02: Ballet]

54 minutes ago, Redrum said:

3 hours ago, Haleth said:

Serena is probably too old to be shunted off as a handmaid.  She was dang lucky to get pregnant at her age but what commander's wife is going to want to take a chance on someone her age?  More likely she'd end up in the colonies.

This is honestly a problem for June as well. 

They're both in their mid-to-late thirties. How old do you think they need to be to bear children?

[S05.E03: Border]

Not the most exciting of episodes, but one in which certain chess pieces are being moved into place. Here's what struck me:

• Serena wants so badly to BELONG somewhere, to feel comfortable and secure. Somehow, she manages to convince herself that she can feel that way in Gilead: her fantasy is that she'll marry Lawrence, who will be much more amenable to letting her have behind-the-scenes power than Fred ever was. Because Lawrence is so powerful, the other High Commanders will accept her voice. She'll be back in Gilead, safe from June, in a comfortable life, with more power and influence than ever. Unfortunately for her, it's a fantasy bordering on delusion, and it all comes crashing down on her in the end.  That bluster about how she wants a large budget and staff is just to whistle around her real fear and disappointment. She's totally alone, without any real allies and with little power.
   
• Speaking of Serena, a highlight of the episode for me was her conversation with Lawrence, in which she said she had always liked Eleanor (which seems to have been true--she was extremely compassionate to Eleanor during that awful bearing-witness-to-the-ceremony episode) and he responded that the feeling had not been mutual. Serena tells him that women don't usually like her, which certainly tracks. In my head canon for Serena, she's never had a female best friend, or even a moderately close female friend at all. If she'd had a Moira in her life, she might not be quite as willing to sell out other women for her own goals.
   
• Speaking of Moira, I have a horrible feeling that she's going to die by the end of the series and that her death will be devastating. i hope I'm wrong about that!
   
• MacKenzie is being set up as a villain to both June and Nick. He's an easy guy to hate right now!
   
• The bare bones sketch of Mayday in Canada was really interesting--these are clearly June's people, and June will end up being deep in this operation sooner or later. I'm wondering if originally it had been Emily, and not Moira, who was supposed to tell June about it and go with her to them: Emily makes a lot more sense than Moira in that role. If so, probably by the end of the season Emily was supposed to decide to go deep undercover in Gilead. That would put her in Gilead at the beginning of season six, which is where she theoretically is right now. That way, whatever narrative purpose they had for Emily in Gilead will still be possible if they can get Alexis back, but it would have seemed a lot less abrupt and more organic if she'd gone through learning about Canadian Mayday with June.
   
• I try not to get sucked into these Doomed Romance convos between Nick and June, but this was a particularly nice one. Their romance is really pretty easy because it never needs to move beyond conversations, longing glances, and sighs--they both have other lives and can't possibly be together. It's nice love story junk food in the show, but it's not more than that.
   
• Nick's wife continues to delight. ("It was love at third mutually-attended gala." Hee!)
   
• I'm trying not to think too hard about how "Wife School" might differ from a school of the domestic arts. I hope they don't take sex education to a horrific new level in Gilead!

[S05.E01: Morning]

I rewatched the episode, and this time the scene that really struck me was June's demeanor on the porch with Tuello. She is at her most vulnerable then--all the euphoria is gone, and she's completely flummoxed by the fact that she's not in jail, that there's not a punishment to be handed out for what she did. June's headspace before this point has been very Old Testament and transactional: she wants those who have hurt her to be hurt, and she seems to have accepted the idea that hurting them would cause some reactive hurt back again to her.  In her mind, that's how it's supposed to go in the "eye for an eye" world in which she assumes she lives. But that didn't happen, and the fact that it didn't unmoors her, at least for the moment.

What's really interesting to me is that, in this particular emotional state, when she asks Tuello about Serena she's asking much more as someone who cares about how Serena is, how she took everything, how she's doing, than as someone who should be relishing the story of her enemy's unraveling. The teeter-tottering she has between caring about Serena and hoping her baby gets taken away before she is turned into a handmaid and ultimately put on the wall is just fascinating.

[The Testaments (sequel)]

2 hours ago, Redrum said:

It's also disappointing because in order to even reasonably "take it into account" - Hannah doesn't get rescued and spends her entire childhood in the clutches of Gilead. Any plot line surrounding rescuing Hannah or getting Hannah to Canada? It will fail. It has to. Hannah is the hingepoint of The Testaments.

I agree that Hannah's not going to end up in Canada, but it's really important to the story that they're telling that June *is* reunited with Hannah. What I'm expecting to happen is that June gets Hannah back and then has to give her up because Hannah is miserable and wants to go back to her "parents" in Gilead. That will be a devastating twist and will also put Hannah back where she needs to be without harming the integrity of TV HMT. I think it's also going to be the impetus for

Spoiler

June to go with her to fight for New Bethlehem to make sure that the Gilead her daughter will be growing up in is at least a more palatable version of itself.

[S05.E02: Ballet]

16 minutes ago, circumvent said:

Speaking of little finger, she dared to read and lost a finger. Now she waltz into a room full of men and all she gets is a "wait outside" warning. 

She didn't READ, is the point. Waltzing into a room full of men is not a punishable crime in and of itself. But speaking of that waltzing, they did a great job of showing Serena's own PTSD on entering that room--she has traumas of her own, even if they're not anywhere close to June's demons.

[The Testaments (sequel)]

3 minutes ago, Redrum said:

Unlike Handmaid's Tale, its also a fairly complete story - Baby Nicole goes into Gilead, finds her sister Hannah and they both escape with critical intelligence that leads to Gilead's downfall and they get to be with their mom.  Thats a nice ten episode season and then what?

Yes, you're right. My impression is that Margaret Atwood and Bruce Miller collaborated enough so that whatever she wrote and whatever he planned wouldn't contradict each other, but not necessarily more than that. Bruce Miller has said that he's taking The Testaments "into account" in the final two seasons of THT and in the upcoming The Testaments. I don't personally think it needs to follow the plot of The Testaments slavishly, but I think it'll have its bones: the two sisters (now young adults) in different countries, ultimately fighting against Gilead together; Lydia as a lead character; June off fighting on her own, separate from both her daughters. I expect Serena to be part of this story (and she wasn't in the book), just because Yvonne is too popular an actor for them to let her go prematurely. I expect June to figure more into the story than she does in the book, because Elizabeth Moss is also pretty popular and because she seems to be having a creative say in the direction of the sequel.  A lot of how it goes is going to depend on

Spoiler

what happens with this New Bethlehem that Joseph is proposing--if it's Old Gilead versus New Gilead, that's different from Gilead versus the US and Canada.

As far as will-they-or-won't-they make it at all, I think Hulu would be crazy not to make it. The Handmaid's Tale was the making of them--it was the first streaming series to win any Emmy at all, let alone multiple Emmys.  I think they'd have tried to milk more seasons out of THT if they didn't know that The Testaments was waiting in the wings.

[The Testaments (sequel)]

17 hours ago, Redrum said:

I personally have no expectation that we'll ever see a show based on the book and I strongly suspect it will be significantly different than the book if it is made.

Bruce Miller has said that they've already started on The Testaments in the preliminary writing phases I don't think there's any doubt that it's happening.

[S05.E02: Ballet]

13 minutes ago, Redrum said:

genuinely doubt Nick had the authority to do that without being soon executed. It can be suggested that Gilead might take the position that Fred was not properly handed off to people with genuine authority.

It wasn't just Nick--it was a whole truck full of Eyes. I think we can take the statement that the Eyes have jurisdiction at face value. They seem to be as close to "genuine authority" as anything we find in Gilead. But that said, I'm not defending the world-building of Gilead's command structure, which is whack.