JoeyB

Just watched the end of Season 3, don't want to bump weeks old threads now so some musings here of what I'd like explained in season 4, some as core aspects of the storyline, some as flashbacks etc, say during the trials of Serena/Fred.... Sounding like a broken record as I see it's mentioned so much but PLEASE do something more than this being the June show. There's literally an entire world to explore, such as... 1) More on Gilead's international relations, at first we saw the Mexicans visit, who seemed reluctantly supportive of the regime, at least in the interest of the handmaid system. What about other nations? We have nations right now who have quite conservative religious rulers in place. A few Middle Eastern nations in particular I'd have thought might express a willingness to adopt a Gilead-esque model, albeit not Christian rooted, especially if the worldwide birth rate collapse allows for more radical leaderships to take charge, which it would. I'd like to see more envoys etc. Then there's trade in general, they seem to trade to a degree with Canada, what about the rest of the world? I know they mentioned a huge reduction in fossil fuel usage, mainly due to going back to the "olden days", but are they totally self-sufficient? I assume not completely. 2) The resistance, for the love of God please take us to the front lines. Exactly what is it made up of, is it mostly civilian, are there swaths of US army personnel here? The US has an enormous military presence around the world, what happened to this during the Gilead uprising? Did many defect? Was it somehow ensured all high ranking military officials were on-side and thus troops were all called back to the US just before this occurred, warning signals to the rest of the world here? What weaponry is being used? We don't see much in the way of military hardware, say helicopters tasked to hunt down missing handmaids, children etc. But if Gilead does still have access to them the resistance should be annihilated within short time unless they themselves have a vast array of hardware. There are radiation zones, so there was some intranational nuclear weapons usage, flashback to this? 3) How is the rest of the world doing birth wise? Obviously we assume there hasn't been any great "cure" for this infertility as of yet or Gilead really would start to collapse I feel. Is research into this gaining any ground? Are fertile women/men/couples being encouraged to have as many children as possible via extremely generous state aid? Are fertile women being voluntary "handmaids"/surrogates in some nations, maybe lauded as heroes? 4) Where's the real leadership of Gilead? I refuse to accept what we've seen thus far, which seems to be casual gentlemen's chats over golf/wine on occasion, is what's running a new nation composing of a significant portion of the USA. We've seen DC seems to be very much a hardline/pious version of the Gilead system, to the extent the characters we follow, even Aunt Lydia etc, seem bemused. But is that the model much of the other states/regions are now following, or is every state doing things their own way, to small degrees at least? We haven't really seen any clashing between Commanders, alliances within alliances etc, it seems Gilead is rather corrupt and clearly these founding Commanders do not really see eye to eye at all, but stumble along with some "well we somewhat respect each other" mantra. What about the general running of the country? Energy, agriculture etc? Do they have entire new government departments? I mean to a degree everything seems to be following reasonably smoothly when it comes to power, food, running water, access to petroleum etc. We clearly aren't having situations where agricultural workers, likely slaves, are full on revolting against this regime etc. I could go on, but sadly I feel these things don't matter, because you can't have a close up of June's vacant or smirking expression every 30 seconds or so if you explore these actual themes a serious drama might consider doing...