mamadrama

I actually have a good feeling about this commander. I think this promo is just meant to throw us off a little. It is my hope that things will not be completely as they seem at first. But yeah, the wife seems to be a real winner, huh?

I'm perfectly happy with them expanding it and showing it on a bigger scale. What they're doing right now isn't working for me. I am just kind of tired of them using "it's the Handmaid's story" as an excuse for some of the other things they're doing that aren't working.

I'm sure that these will be given some sort of explanation, but I am a little concerned that they'll wind up being dropped plot points like some of the other things that have happened and then merrily moved on from with little more than a passing reference.

For sure. And they can't have it both ways. On the one hand they're saying "it's the Handmaid's Tale, not Gilead's Tale." Fair enough, except they DO show stuff from other people's perspectives when it suits them: we've seen an episode from Luke's perspective, seen Moira & Company up in Canada, followed the Waterfucks on their jolly jaunt up north, skipped over to the Colonies (which, granted, could still be considered a Handmaid's tale if not THE Handmaid's tale), etc. The inconsistency kills me. Personally, I'm ready to see some expansion.

Thank you. I really do feel like if this had happened earlier then it would've affected me more. I think I'm just becoming desensitized to all the bad shit that's happening. I hate that.

Yes, June found a picture of Hannah with her "new" mother. It was in a frame on a desk. That was Oprah. The show asked the podcasters and reviewers to wait before sharing anything because Oprah's appearance was meant to be a surprise. I could see Oprah dividing her time between Canada and Europe. I think she's one who would get involved in at least the publicity side of what's going on.

I've given birth 3 times. My second went into a complete placental abruption with a full-on hemorrhage (that looked very much like the bloody delivery scene of June) that required immediate delivery (several weeks early) and 3 blood transfusions. My son died 8 weeks later of a heart attack. I'm only sharing that because, with those things said, I felt no kind of feels while watching this episode. Ordinarily baby things make me all gushy and sentimental. I am so worn out from all the dark crap and bad shit that's happening in this show, however, that I'm kind of over a lot of this. Had this happened in season 1, I'd have been tearing up and hugging my kids. This time around, while she was lying there holding Holly immediately after birth, I wound up pausing it to see how much time was left and then called out for my husband to bring me a cupcake. This is not good for the viewer in me.

There is very little sublety left. I LOVED season 1 with its subtle references to imprisonment: no television or books, "wings" to keep the Handmaids from being seen, children's meals, etc. Yeah, life can suck and bad things can happen even in the depths of despair there are usually *some* wins here and there. This is playing out more like Les Mis-one miserable thing after another after another. It's like the show writers sat down and said, "Let's think of every terrible cliched thing that can happen to a woman and throw it in the pot!" (Without realizing that some of the *real* horrors come from the small reversals of freedom.

I'm an author and that's one of the cardinal sins of playwriting/screenplay writing/book writing: every scene should have a purpose and somehow move the story along. If we were to take this entire episode out and simply have June give birth at the Waterfords and then have Aunt Lydia step in and say, "But you have to let her live here until the baby is 6 months old", would it have made a difference? I really don't think so. I don't see any of what happened in this episode as being necessary; just more drama to put June through and another fake out escape. I am starting to look at this show as a simple collection of scenes rather than as one that has an actual ongoing storyline.

My kids watch this with me and we were all pretty fed up by the end of the episode. It felt like more melodrama to us. Our favorite scene was the Waterfucks trying to out-delusion each other.

Ah, okay. For some reason I thought she'd sold it. I've heard of other people doing that, wouldn't have put it past her.

That makes sense in real life, but in the show world things happen and are then never referenced, or only partially referenced again. Things just seemed to be happening to get the characters from point A to point B without any real sense of plot cohesiveness or being true to the character.

Once she got to the campsite, though, the thorns were not as much of a problem. They could have cleared out a spot around the campground using a makeshift broom, as others who have dealt with thorns have done, and then she could have spent the next 2 weeks working on some makeshift shoes for extraction. The training we saw her getting on TM was not that conducive to N&A reality, it was conducive to basic camping, which N&A is not. The skillset for N&A differs from what folks need even from primitive camping. Maci gets no pass from me. She tapped out after around 24 hours out there. I thought that her harping on others who tap out after a day or two and swearing that SHE wouldn't quit was perfect karma.

You should roadtrip over to my small, isolated, totally conservative mountain town for the finale. There are approximately 7 of us here who watch the show and even though some of us have never met in "real" life, we're all gathering at my house to watch the last episode together. We're wearing our Wife teal or Handmaid red outfits and eating/drinking "red" food (red velvet cake, bloody marys, strawberries, red wine, watermelon, etc.)

The only useful thing Maci did during her "training" (what we saw on TM) was learning to make a fire. She should have been out there in her yard, at least, walking around barefoot and toughening up her feet. Sleeping in a tent under a sleeping bag, possibly on a sleep mat or cot, has nothing to do with being out there in your birthday suit, walking over thorns and sleeping on tree branches.

God, the delusion is strong with these people. I had a book hit the USA Today bestsellers list, as well as the NYT list, about 4 years ago. It is still one of my best-selling books and continues to sell a handful every day. To date, I have sold approximately 115,000 copies. For each ebook sold, I make around $1.85; each paperback nets me around $3. And those amounts are GOOD. I get 70% of my ebook sales when most publishing companies only pay out 15-20%. Definitely not close to $25 million. I wish! So Farrah? Sure Jan.

I've been hanging out on The Handmaid's Tale forum (and let me say, I REALLY miss and appreciate you guys with each passing day over there) and Farrah/Michael remind me of Serena Joy. I WANT to root for them and despite the shitty things they've done, I WANT to like them. But God, all the stupid shit they pull just makes me want to hide my face.

I think selling your followers to someone else is totally skeevy. I know you have the option of unfollowing someone but that basically just helps back up the fact that Mack Truck is just into all of this because she's an attention seeking 'ho like the rest of them. She thought of her "followers" as a commodity and sold them off to the highest bidder. (And I get the fact that social media followers are necessary these days because they're essential for your brand/platform but that's still low. My subscriber list for my newsletter hovers around 22,000. They all signed up because they either like my books, want to troll me, or are hoping for freebies. At any rate, they follow me because of ME; I would never turn around and sell my mailing list to an author in a totally different genre, much less someone who's not even in my field.)

In one of the filming notes about episode 11, the location is referred to as "the lake house." Now it could be that the big, abandoned mansion that Nick/June/Hannah were at is by a lake (we just don't see it) and that's just what production referred to it as. However, since future episodes say that June "returns to a familiar place", could she perhaps find herself at the little cabin that she and her family hid in earlier? That house was also by a lake. Food for thought. Another thing...They've said that "motherhood" plays a big role in this season but it seems to me like fire does as well: June burned her Handmaid outfit, Serena Joy burned her matches, June burned the letters from the other Handmaids, Aunt Lydia burned the Handmaid's arm, the Red Center was bombed, etc. I am wondering if some sort of fire will figure into episode 13. In my favorite theory, the Waterfucks' house catches on fire and Nick gets the baby out and smuggles her to Canada with June.

Stubbs is doing great and gaining a lot of weight! We call him "Tubby Stubby" a lot. One more surgery and he should be finished. A little spoiled, of course, but he (actually a "she") really is the sweetest cat.

Doesn't look like it. When you pause the scene and watch it closely it doesn't even appear that he was shot, just hit with the gun.

Stubby goes into his TEEN MOM watching position.

Here's a spoilery article about episode 11: https://www.hypable.com/the-handmaids-tale-season-2-episode-11-hints-holly/

I'm not going to watch this as it airs next season. I binged season 1 and that worked much better for me. I prefer my misery to be all at once so that I can get it over with and move on. This frustration and speculation week after week is dragging me down. (Probably another reason why I like spoilers.)

We speculated forever on who that couple might be, but as soon as they showed Issac and Eden with the strawberries it was like, "Oh, okay! That settles that then..." In the case of this show, which doesn't always make narrative sense, it makes total sense to introduce a new character totally for the sake of proving a point and then eliminating them. Poor Issac. His sole purpose, it seems, is to serve as what is probably a soft plot reset.