mamadrama

I think I have figured out the formula for this season: Open on June's face June is going through a ROUGH TIME Cue random handmaids to add more color for a moment Aunt Lydia does something bitchy Janine (aka the whipping boy) is kicked while she's down Serena Joy does something bitchy June lashes out at someone showing her kindness A tense scene is a fakeout June's plot armor protects her from something that would kill Janine Aunt Lydia does a 180 June experiences A MOMENT and vows to take action against...something End with closeup on June

It seemed to be a multi-faceted issue. On the one hand you had women who were focusing on careers and delaying pregnancies and those who didn't want any children at all, and then there seemed to be a problem with men being sterile. In the book they explain the biological issue. I think it stemmed from some kind of tainted food. (It was always blamed on the women, but it's the men who are sterile.) Serena Joy's platform was built on how women needed to fulfill their "biological destiny" and have children. Birthrates are actually down right now as well. There doesn't seem to be one exact issue that's causing it.

Or that he didn't remove the ham and processed cheese from the Lunchable in the correct order.

I get what you're saying, but people are going to draw their own conclusions from what they saw. My conclusion was that the episode was contrived, lacked logic, and (worse) verged on boring. When my reaction to someone getting shot, someone being bullied, and someone beating up a mirror in frustration is to laugh then I have a real problem with the material.

Perhaps Gary isn't a "real" police officer with "a salary and benefits" but that does not change my feeling that he would be perfectly fine if the show stopped filming. He's shown himself to be mature and industrious throughout this whole thing while Amber has not.

Unfortunately, yeah, that's pretty much where I'm getting to this season.

Gary owns rental properties and works in law enforcement.

Seriously. Characters generally have arcs-the grow, change, and adapt to their situations. But that's not what I feel is going on here. These people are bouncing back and forth from Personality A to Personality B faster than Forrest Gump playing ping pong. There's almost zero nuance. And worse, the writers have the characters continue to do the same thing over and over so that the audience can "get" how the character feels; only, it's coming across almost like they're trolling us at this point. For the last 3 episodes I've felt like someone was hitting me over the head with a hammer while telling me that they were hitting me.

At this point I don't think the showrunners give a flying fuck about plot or characterization-I think they're more obsessed with cinematography. Admittedly there are some beautifully shot scenes here and there but good holy golf balls I'm starting to rage watch it.

If they'd simply cut the number of times they close in on June's face in half they'd have time to insert an actual interesting subplot here and there.

I wish the rest of the episodes would go ahead and get leaked so that someone could spoil the season for me. Because I don't know how much longer I can watch.

Well that was weird. I love Anne Dowd, loved seeing her acting in her backstory. However, I'm having a hard time seeing it in the context of the show. That's what I'm having trouble with period this season. I feel a real lack of consistency and it's driving me crazy. My son and I are currently binging LOST and though they managed to screw up a good deal of it, in the early seasons the flashbacks were amazing and gave the characters lots of interesting characterization. But some of the stories feel like they belong to totally different shows and different characters. June is seriously my least favorite character at this time.

This whole episode simultaneously bored me and had me enraged at June. The only interesting part was when Serena and NotBenson toured the house in Nazi fashion. That whole sequence was disturbing, but just seeing the baby's name ("Phoebe") over the crib was a reminder of how not even THAT would be allowed by Gilead's standards since girls don't read. I was half expecting some Marvin Gaye when NotBenson lead Serena into the master bedroom... I clearly remember living through the Elian Gonzalez fiasco and have no interest in watching it play out Gilead style with Hollychole. I'm still angry over the original. None of these people are making good or even interesting decisions. Looking into my crystal ball, though, I'm theorizing that one of two things will happen: June will get pregnant and have a baby for her commander to make his wife happy and, as payment, he'll get her and Hannah out of Gilead. OR Joe Fiennes will knock up Serena Joy and they'll bring June in to pretend that SHE is the one who's pregnant. As payment, he'll get her and Hannah out of Gilead. Neither one of these scenarios make any sense, but that hasn't stopped the story writers so far so...

I can't believe they had such horrifying images in this episode and yet STILL managed to make it boring. The whole Elian Gonzalez/Hollchole storyline is something most of us saw coming within minutes after Season 2 ended. It already feels old. I'm not understanding the timeline, either. They act like Gilead's been in formation for decades, yet Hannah hasn't aged more than a few years. Also, what are they going to do when all the current handmaids age out and can no longer bear children? Where's the next crop coming from?

The same for me. It's Yvonne's acting that I appreciate out of the role.