S05.E01: Morning

[Redrum]

28 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Even if you ignore the outside world I am pretty sure Gilead couldn't exist. The us workforce is about half women, and if they all become Marthas, Aunt's, Wives and Handmaid's (or worse) that would tank their economy.

This absolutely. 

I also can't see this accomplished in such quick time frames. And the anti-literacy for women isn't really workable. It also assumes that every son, husband, brother and father either is pro Mom, Sis, Wife and Daughter being raped on demand or is killed. 

I like to think that the killing of men unwilling to damn their female relatives would be disruptive.... but this show rarely depicts any family in Gilead that isn't pleased as punch to immediately turn on the family females. Really if protestors are executed I like to think at least half the men would be dead.... but this show has a very low opinion of men. 

[Anela]

Is No Man's Land, where the Gilead refugees have been running to get to Canada? Because I am confused, if it isn't. 

[Redrum]

6 hours ago, Anela said:

Is No Man's Land, where the Gilead refugees have been running to get to Canada? Because I am confused, if it isn't. 

No, see when Gilead refugees are running, the border between Canada and Gilead is *strictly defined* and closely guarded by both sides..

This weird, never defined no man's land territory is somewhere easily drivable from both Toronto and Cambridge Massachusetts and also completely avoids the prior closest border which was the St. Lawrence river. 

[tennisgurl]

I have no idea if it was supposed to be funny, but I cracked up when June all dramatically goes to confess to killing Fred and the cop had zero fucks to give, but the best part was when the other cop told her that she could pay her fine for transporting Fred's finger into Canada online. All the while June continues to mug away at the camera. At this point I can recognize Elizabeth Moss's pores more than my own. 

I was about to be pissed if we had to sit through June going back to Gilead, it seems like everyone is going back just because the writers have no idea what to do now that most of the cast has left Gilead and they are forced to try and do different things with the story. 

Agent Tuello needs to take his kid gloves off with Serena, especially when she had the balls to actually suggest Canada reinstate the death penalty just for June. I still cant tell if he is actually sympathetic to her or is just doing his job, but I did really like his last scene with June. May he rot in hell indeed. That might have been the best part of the episode. 

I guess they are walking back all of that "June can never come back from murdering Fred and can never touch her child" stuff from last season, which I am fine with because it was melodramatic even by this shows standards. Screw Fred, I don't care that June and her squad killed him, even though I still wish they had let Gilead execute him, which I think would be more karmically fitting. Not surprising that June has no desire to go after the other former handmaidens tormentors, June has always been about June. Although to be fair to her, running off to Gilead to kill people is not exactly a great plan, unless she can get them all to no mans land, which is basically the Purge apparently. Everything goes. 

I hate that they made Emily go back to Gilead, what a shitty way to write out such a great character just because Alexis wanted to leave. Why not give her a decent goodbye and have her and her family start over somewhere else in Canada? Its completely out of character that she would leave her family, without even saying goodbye to her son, after everything she went through to get back to them. 

Of course we start off with yet another super close up of June starring at us while making constipated faces, that's basically all this show is now. How weird is it that Elizabeth Moss has really been typecasted as "woman victimized by evil men now fighting against her abusers" in so much of her post Mad Men filmography? Its a very specific thing to be known for. 

[Haleth]

50 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I was about to be pissed if we had to sit through June going back to Gilead,

I have no idea where this season is going but I’m assuming June will sneak into Gilead to rescue Hannah?  I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t. 

[crashdown]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

I hate that they made Emily go back to Gilead, what a shitty way to write out such a great character just because Alexis wanted to leave. Why not give her a decent goodbye and have her and her family start over somewhere else in Canada? Its completely out of character that she would leave her family, without even saying goodbye to her son, after everything she went through to get back to them. 

Yeah, I didn't like it either, but I assume it's all in the service of foreshadowing June's struggle with the tug she feels from Gilead (not a great reason, because that tug is kind of dumb). Hopefully we'll see Emily back again, if Alexis gets her life back together enough for it.

One thing that I *did* like about it, however, was the great scene between June and Syl.  I think Sylvia was actually an early mouthpiece of what the theme of this whole story is going to be: the whole "your fault" finger pointing that we've seen throughout, the whole desire that the right person is punished in the right way at the right time, is all just sort of moot. Things are what they are, and making sure that we hate the right people doesn't really help anything in the end.

[Cinnabon]

32 minutes ago, crashdown said:

Yeah, I didn't like it either, but I assume it's all in the service of foreshadowing June's struggle with the tug she feels from Gilead (not a great reason, because that tug is kind of dumb). Hopefully we'll see Emily back again, if Alexis gets her life back together enough for it.

One thing that I *did* like about it, however, was the great scene between June and Syl.  I think Sylvia was actually an early mouthpiece of what the theme of this whole story is going to be: the whole "your fault" finger pointing that we've seen throughout, the whole desire that the right person is punished in the right way at the right time, is all just sort of moot. Things are what they are, and making sure that we hate the right people doesn't really help anything in the end.

I’m not sure what you’re saying. It’s very clear who the terrorists, rapists, and oppressors are in this world. They won’t be punished or stopped with a “things are what they are” attitude. People have to continue to fight.

[Redrum]

Sure but three or four ex handmaid flush from a kill that was essentially a canned hunt are not going to free Gilead by taking out some abusive Wives. Frankly they'll be lucky to be killed crossing the border. 

I absolutely agree people have to continue to fight, but gestures don't win wars. Even Fred's death so far has accomplished nothing but a media opportunity for Gilead.

And Fred's death prior to him revealing any Gilead intelligence 

[crashdown]

1 hour ago, Cinnabon said:

I’m not sure what you’re saying. It’s very clear who the terrorists, rapists, and oppressors are in this world. They won’t be punished or stopped with a “things are what they are” attitude. People have to continue to fight.

I certainly don't mean that I think the message of the show will be that we should all roll over in the face of societal decay and oppression--far from it. But that's very different from endless cycles of retributive justice. Did June hunt down Fred because she honestly thought it would make things better in Gilead, or because she wanted him to suffer horribly as she had suffered horribly? Obviously, it's the latter: she wanted to punish him. We might all say that he "deserved" it, that we "understand" June, but there's really no moving forward ethically from "your fault"/BAM!/"your fault!"/BAM!.  That was the primary difference between the Old Testament (around which Gilead has built a dystopian society) and the New Testament (which had its own moral problems, but which was certainly an improvement). I think moving beyond the idea of revenge and punishment is pretty important, and I'm interested to see if that's where the show is going thematically.

[aghst]

On 9/14/2022 at 3:16 PM, sadie said:

And Serena all of a sudden romanticizing about her beautiful romance with Fred, doing the tango was a complete WTF moment.

yeah my memory of previous seasons are hazy.  Did Fred and Serena reconcile while in Canada, because of the pregnancy?

He still had her finger cut off and she still lured him to capture.

But the only memory she has of Fred is them doing that dance while dressed up?

June is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.  She decides she wants to wear Fred’s blood stains than shower and then smears some of that blood on her infant daughter?

Again my recollection of previous season is cloudy, Nicole is Nick's daughter, not Fred’s?  It would be something if she smeared Fred’s blood on Fred’s daughter bUt it’s still messed up.

Then the breakfast scene, I saw that hearty appetite coming.  Only surprised they didn’t have her eat some large piece of meat holding it by the bone or maybe just some raw meat or extremely rare steak.

The symbolism was that crude.

Now that her first goal of being locked up didn’t happen, you know she’s going to do the same thing Emily did, go back to get more revenge, especially Lydia, as well as try to get back Hanna.

And They will find some conTrivance to get Serena back with her demanding to take Fred’s remains back to Gilead.

That way theY can get the old gang back together for some more vengeance and torture porn.
 

Now the former Handmaids are raging with anger and blood lust.  It appears the show is going to give it to them.

[bluestocking]

June sure seemed to be channeling Lady Macbeth in the washing her hands scene.  I was expecting her to say "Out damn spot!" at some point.

The sideplots are well done.  Wish they could just scale June WAAAAY back and let the rest of the cast carry the show.  I know I know, not happening.  

[Anela]

13 hours ago, bluestocking said:

June sure seemed to be channeling Lady Macbeth in the washing her hands scene.  I was expecting her to say "Out damn spot!" at some point.

The sideplots are well done.  Wish they could just scale June WAAAAY back and let the rest of the cast carry the show.  I know I know, not happening.  

Yes, it may have started out as one handmaid's tale, but we've been introduced to more, and I'd like to see things from their perspectives, too.

[circumvent]

I didn't read the thread so maybe it was already said: June has reached a point of no return. She is completely lost in her own trauma and became a completely unhinged person.I would not trust a child with her. She had no self-control and she does't care about anything, not really. She is obsessed with getting Hannah back, and she cannot se anything else in front of her, only hate and revenge. Making others pay is how she believes she will get the kid back - if you read Testaments you know how things end. I am not blaming a mother for fighting for a kid but I am pretty sure most people don't act like sociopaths in the process. Of course, with the writers, she will be more Dr. Jekyll than Mr. Hyde, so we will keeping getting Super!June!Unhinged!Hero! 

They butchered Atwood's book and vision. The series should be called Dirty June - with all the lingering close ups on the eyes rolling up, all we need is a caption -  "go ahead, make my day" - and she will beat someone up, bloody herself all over, look in the mirror, not wash up, enjoy the moment and run away from a possible life for her and her baby. I was never a fan of Elizabeth Moss but the show just ruined her for me (actually Scientology did that first but I cannot even watch a trailer of anything with her. Each close up I see is a "crazy" June memory)

Luke is the passive submissive husband who cannot even see that June is lost to insanity. But again, the writers are going to make her the hero that can overcome even the deepest trauma and come out pretty much ok on the other side. With so much real CPTSD all around us, it is pretty dismissive of the writers to decide that all June needs to do is to find a mob to fight an empire and she will just fine.

[aghst]

Luke is such a wuss, he couldn't keep June from driving away?

Just block the driver's door.

Great that he accepted Nichole as his own.

Wait until Nick defects and they have to do some kind of joint custody arrangement.

[crashdown]

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.

[Cinnabon]

On 9/18/2022 at 4:04 PM, aghst said:

Luke is such a wuss, he couldn't keep June from driving away?

Just block the driver's door

Using force to do so would be considered violence, imo. No one has the right to do this.

[aghst]

I don't mean pulling June away from the car against her will.

I mean getting to the driver's door first and preventing her from getting in the car.

If she got violent to move him out of the way, don't fight her but at least try to dissuade her from driving away to meet those other hardcore maids, though he probably didn't know where she planned to go.

[Bluesky]

On 9/14/2022 at 4:13 PM, Helena Dax said:

Yeah, that's the only thing I really liked about this episode. Not that I hated the rest, but it was a bit boring, tbh.

Is Tuello (or the US government) really going to let Serena go back to Gilead? It seems very stupid. 

So Nick is married again and his new wife seems to sympathize with June's situation! That's interesting and I wonder if we'll learn a bit more about her.

What happened to his first wife?  This wife seems like a good person, I hope he at least cares for her.  And how does he get away with not getting a hand maid?

[Anela]

9 hours ago, Bluesky said:

What happened to his first wife?  This wife seems like a good person, I hope he at least cares for her.  And how does he get away with not getting a hand maid?

Wasn't she executed? Drowned with the man she was having an affair with.

[crashdown]

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.

[Anela]

4 hours ago, crashdown said:

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

I think you quoted the wrong person.

[ctmd]

On 9/14/2022 at 10:32 PM, chaifan said:

I actually liked June turning herself in, just to be told, nah, you're good.  I accept the "no mans land" as what they say it is - neither Canada nor US/Gilead, so Canada has no reason to want to pursue a murder there.  I'm sure they really don't want to pursue Fred's murder, and this was an easy out. 

Totally agree with this, especially together with Tuello's comments to June at the end. Canada isn't even a little bit sad that Fred is dead- they just couldn't diplomatically do it themselves. Like the US wouldn't have been hard-pressed to convict someone of murder had they killed Bin Laden in International Waters. "Oh gosh, the terrorist is dead? Sure sucks it didn't happen on our soil or we TOTALLY would have done something about it..."

[Cinnabon]

20 minutes ago, ctmd said:

Totally agree with this, especially together with Tuello's comments to June at the end. Canada isn't even a little bit sad that Fred is dead- they just couldn't diplomatically do it themselves. Like the US wouldn't have been hard-pressed to convict someone of murder had they killed Bin Laden in International Waters. "Oh gosh, the terrorist is dead? Sure sucks it didn't happen on our soil or we TOTALLY would have done something about it..."

[Scarlett45]

On 9/14/2022 at 11:42 PM, chocolatine said:

Emily going back to Gilead would make sense if she still had a child there, like June does, but I don't believe that her desire to hunt down Aunt Lydia was so great that it would have made her leave Oliver and Sylvia. I really wish the show had had all three of them quietly move to Europe or somewhere else far away, since last season we saw them talk about the risk of Canada sending handmaids back to Gilead. Emily could have left a letter for June; we didn't need Sylvia to explain what happened. Emily deserved a happy ending after everything she'd gone through.

Small nitpick about Serena calling Fred's killing a salvaging, since, by the book's definition, it was a particicution. In the book, Offred did say that particicutions always made her ravenous, so the diner scene was a nod to that. I also liked that, when Fred's body was shown, we could see that the handmaids had literally torn strips off of him.

Yes. I would’ve preferred if Emily had been offered a teaching position in Europe or something (or another province of Canada)- that would allow her, Sylvia and Oliver to make a fresh start, but allow Alexis Bledel to come back if she wanted to.

Serena/Yvonne’s hair looks different- did Serena not have access to her colorist in prison?

[chocolatine]

27 minutes ago, Scarlett45 said:

Serena/Yvonne’s hair looks different- did Serena not have access to her colorist in prison?

I think Yvonne was pregnant IRL while filming this, and many women choose not to dye their hair during pregnancy.

[Scarlett45]

2 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

I think Yvonne was pregnant IRL while filming this, and many women choose not to dye their hair during pregnancy.

Oh thank you. I thought she had her baby before filming stared for this season. Of course she’s still gorgeous no matter her hair color I just noticed a difference- and shows like this use continuity. 

[chocolatine]

11 minutes ago, Scarlett45 said:

Oh thank you. I thought she had her baby before filming stared for this season. 

I'm not sure of the exact timeline. It's also possible she didn't want to dye it while breastfeeding, and/or that she got used to not coloring it during the pandemic and doesn't want to go back because it's time-consuming to maintain and not great for hair health. Either way, I think it makes sense that Serena would choose not to dye her hair while pregnant (and that she wouldn't have easy access to a colorist, like you said, though I'm sure if she wanted to, Tuello would make it happen). Aesthetically, I think the darker blond looks good on her.

[Beatriceblake]

We got this in the UK this week.

At the end of last season, I felt a bit like the show had run out of road. Didn't see anything to contradict that in this first episode. I think Moira is the most relatable character by far, I could totally understand why she was freaked out by June and didn't want to leave Nichole alone with her.

I didn't really like the way they've written Emily out, I would have preferred it if she and her family had just left to make a fresh start elsewhere in Canada. I don't think Emily would go back to Gilead voluntarily even if she was having a breakdown or had snapped in some way, she consistently tried to get out and unlike June isn't driven by wanting to go back for a child.

Something else that is also bugging me is the lack of any sort of reality with everyone's situations in Canada. Serena keeps being housed in a series of what looks like luxury apartments and I wish they had chosen to do more of a realistic representation of where June, Luke, Moira and Nichole would be likely to be living as refugees. It feels like they haven't even slightly attempted that, it's wild that they are living in this big detached house that looks like you would need 2 incomes and probably to come from money to own or rent.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Beatriceblake

[paramitch]

I liked this episode, and was relieved to see June come back somewhat from the darkness. Although I am devastated that Emily evidently went back into the darkness -- for good. (Nooo!!!!)

But I mostly wanted to highlight one small moment -- the speech Sylvia gives June when June goes to find Emily. June, at least, seems to be sobering up to what she did in involving Emily in Fred's killing, and then starts to blame herself and says it's her fault Emily left.

Then Sylvia -- to me -- does this amazing thing. She talks about her gratitude for getting Emily back again, for however short a time. And when June doubles down again on it being her fault, Sylvia says:

"I don't care. She's gone. I don't need it to be someone's fault. Why does it matter whose fault it is? So I can hate the right person? So I can hate you? What good is that?"

It's just such a beautiful, surprising thing to say, and such a lovely moment for Clea DuVall (who has been criminally underused on this show).

And you can see that revelation really sink in on June's face. 

For me it's the core of the show at this point -- an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. Especially when you're talking about Gilead (where that is a literal thing).

Hate and violence will get all these people nowhere. I like the idea that some of these characters might finally learn that.

Edited November 21, 2022 by paramitch

[crashdown]

9 minutes ago, paramitch said:

For me it's the core of the show at this point -- an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. Especially when you're talking about Gilead (where that is a literal thing).

Yes.  I’ve thought about that speech a lot, because it’s (as you say) part of the main theme of the show as a whole. On the one hand, there are the religious concepts of “Your fault! Your fault,” punishment, and forgiveness (or failure to grant forgiveness). On the other hand, there’s the possibility of putting all that aside, of building something new or walking away entirely. Syl’s speech is an articulation of that second way, and I was really happy that the writers used her to articulate it.