LordOfLotion

I'm going to have to make some food at the commercial break. I'm starving!

Yeah I know everyone hated Steven but that was riveting to me.

OMG... It's not bigotry, Whitney. It's because you're BIG!

I can't believe I forgot about this cruise. I probably have about 50 pages to catch up on right now.

You can have anything pre-printed. I just don't think this is. I think there might be something more involved about getting stuff on and off the vent, or maybe they just didn't want to bother with it. The other thing is that the kind of petty criminals who do things like this don't do clever word play like blacking out letters and words to make other words and phrases like what's been done here. Most of them can barely spell or read, and again, they're not going to take the time even if they can. They're also not going to stay between the lines on the text, and they're not going to stop with the decal. They're going to damage the actual paint job on the RV.

Just chiming in to say not a rando on the graffiti case. If you're going to do a tag and run on somebody's property in a neighborhood like that, you're not going to take the time to sit there and play with it underlining this and blacking out that, and adding punctuation. You've got to get in, make your letters, and get out. You don't have time to make sure you don't cover her face or get paint on the air vent-- there isn't a drop on that vent. It's like it was covered or taped. Here's are close-ups of the IG pic at 400%. Multiple strokes on each letter, absolutely no dripping, the vent hasn't been touched. Ain't nobody got time for this.

You're right. There are no guarantees that they will make it that far, or anywhere. But there's a guarantee that Emily is going to have something horrible happen to her in Gilead, and it won't be much better for Nicole. Should they sit there and wait for it, or should they try to escape?

This is like the debate about the car seat a couple of weeks ago. This is war, not a garden party. When you have the opportunity to escape, you take it. The kid is not going to die in the back of the truck on the way to Canada. OTOH you can keep her right where she is and she can grow up to lose a body part, never learn to read, maybe get drowned in a pool, get sent to the colonies, be married off to an old man when she's still a child, or all kinds of other horrific things. If it takes longer, improvise. Get a bottle of milk. Put some honey on a pacifier. Figure something out. Or you can keep waiting for the perfect time when you have everything you need and everything is perfectly clear-- that's never going to happen. There's always a reason to stay mired in misery, but there are a million reasons to run to freedom.

This is how you put it together: Aunt Lydia is the woman wearing a mumu and chain smoking Parliaments who was running LemonLyman.com on The West Wing. Then the USA fell, Josh became Commander Lawrence (he assumed a Christian name to avoid being purged as a Jew) and they ran into each other again in this horrifying alternate reality where Nazi Germany won. So when he says "super" and "glory be" to Lydia right before kicking her out, it's extra funny.

With Lawrence we've seen him actively helping someone, whereas with Serena we've seen her let someone go without doing anything. So it's a little harder to say Yay Serena! I also kind of felt like Serena might be in a little mental shock from having had her finger cut off, and from the fact that some punishment actually happened to her. That, along with maybe being a little tipsy from whatever they gave her in that prescription bag. She's flip-flopped too many times for me to think that she's going to join the rebels or a book club or anything like that. She might change her mind next season and decide that she wants to rain crap down on whoever has ended up with the baby in Canada and cause a bunch of legal drama trying to get Nicole back. And she might scream bloody murder the whole way. That's if Emily and Nicole make it, though. June got out of the back of a van at the beginning of this season, too, and look where that ended up. The writers don't want to go to Canada, and we've seen a lot of people go in circles. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So I have to wonder if Emily and Nicole will even make it out of the district.

Just a couple of things... Lawrence told Emily "I'm not doing that with you," when she was on her knees for the pre-ceremony prayer thing. So he's done ceremony rape before. It's easy to get caught up in the escape and Lydia stabbing and have that little nugget slip by. I get the impression we're not going to see him again, though. I find this series guilty of criminal under-use of Bradley Whitford. Also this is a terrible screen shot, but check out the map Waterford was looking at on his desk during the fire. Maybe someone can get a clearer image and see the text.

Try that

These are all part of decisions made by the showrunners as part of something called "artistic license." I find it helpful to imagine that the Sons of Jacob have a replicator in the basement of the Rachel and Leah center where they churn out pool weights and guardians 24/7, as well as perfect-looking oranges, limitless teal and red material for that Christmassy uniform look for the wimmins, and tons of fresh white paint for the hospital walls so that Gilead can achieve a certain creepy biblical aesthetic in a post-revolution society still at war with pretty much everyone. This helps things like logic and limited manpower and resources make a little more sense.

That's what I'd guess too. But if it ever got out that Canada was even thinking about sending refugees back, or even after the first round got shipped back, I would think that there would be a lot of them making a run for the Alaska border. This being before anything like that I was wondering how many without families left were going all the way to Alaska and if they were letting them in. I wonder if you just walk up to a checkpoint and say "Civis Romanus Sum" or if there's a secret handshake. I imagine Canadians would get pretty tired of seeing Americans walking on their roads in handmaid dresses trying to hitch rides to Anchorage. Of course that's a whole show we'll never get to see.

My question about the refugee situation would be: Is Alaska slap full at this point? Why aren't some of them going there?

All she needs is some of that Faye Dunaway face mask and to have her hair in rollers the next time she pitches a coniption fit.

If this were a real situation, everything you're saying would be completely true. However, this is a situation controlled by THT writers. It's entirely possible that the baby will be dropped off with Luke and Moira, Erin will become the primary careetaker and we may never hear about her again.

Everybody on this show seems to be pretty dumb. I'm talking strategerie level witless here.

Well, a lot of times when people have been in the monkey house too long they don't realize how bad it smells in there.

This totally. He'd be a full blown hoarder if the martha wasn't there to pick up after him. They hate it when you move their stuff because in their heads they know where everything is. He probably got started with a few banned items and it snowballed from there as the wife went downhill and reality of the new regime set in. The martha didn't trip over that stuff because she didn't see it with only one eye. She tripped because it's a narrow passageway filled with junk.

Could it be Nick's ring? He still had it on in this episode.

I have the impression that Lawrence got her with the eye already missing. The way he bickered with the martha over her moving his stuff around could have been anyone. She cussed loud enough for everyone to hear and dared him to try to beat her because she knew he wouldn't do it. All of the others keep their heads down and quietly go about their business. This martha is not afraid of him the way other marthas and handmaids are afraid of their commanders. On commanders and wives with children, I don't think they would have an opportunity to show handmaids much in a household that already had kids. That doesn't mean there aren't any. It's something else they can't address because they waste too much time needlessly dragging out some of these scenes.

I get that she's afraid that they'll kill Hannah, but they're going to kill Hannah anyway. Staying behind is a mistake.

I didn't get from the spoiler that Emily and Bradley Whitford (can't remember the character name) actually made it out of Gilead, just that they were on their way out. They could come back next season and have them all running in circles again, which would be a disappointment, but it would be par for the course with these writers.

I think they were goat heads. I saw a guy buy them at a butcher shop on an extreme cheapskate show once. He boiled them whole and served them as dinner for himself and his wife. The wife wouldn't eat it. If that's what they're serving in Gilead, all the border patrols in the world wouldn't be able to keep me in there.