In the middle of Ep 6-- took a break to get a drink and check this board (can’t be away from it for more than 30 minutes or some new piece of political shit hits the fan).
Lots of background on the Commander and Serena Joy. Apparently they were key planners of the New State. Serena even wrote a book! They seemed to be really in love in the beginning and felt like equals.
This is a more interesting turn than I expected. I didn’t just want more oppression, robot sex, and public hangings.
I guess the thing about Fascism is it kind of works. No one would have lifted a finger if Hitler had kept it within borders; Germany would have been a world leader and millions would have died or been enslaved.
Some countries were happy enough trading with Nazi Germany and, had they developed advanced technology, the world would have held its nose and done business. Maybe look at Apartheid South Africa and the willingness of US and UK banks to do business.
There is obv. a resistance out there, in Gilliad and outside.
I guess I’m kind of interested in June’s quest for her family to be reunited but that isn’t getting me to tune in every week …
I liked this episode because I find the character of Serena Joy to be really fascinating. What is someone like Ann Coulter got what she asked for? No votes or careers for women. But they always think “I’ll be different. They will see that I’m as smart as they are and not force me to remain silent”. Serena Joy found out that she will be held to the same standards as any other woman. I wonder if she’ll be brought over to the resistance?
I wonder if Serena didn’t really think it’d go this far. I mean even the Commander seemed a bit taken aback when the government guy said we made a mistake when we let women into academia, etc.
Though I will say they really fleshed out the world to indicate why someone else may find this situation even remotely ok when the Mexican Ambassador said there hasn’t been a kid born in her hometown for 6 years. Which made revealing the children when they did at the dinner a political masterstroke.
Good post. Re the first paragraph, I agree. It reminds me of the speech Michael Rennie makes at the end of the The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 1951 version). He said there was warfare and destruction among the planets so they created the race of robots as policemen, and “gave them absolute power over us.” When your creature takes over, it might not be exactly what you had in mind.
I agree with your second point, too. When the Mexican ambassador said to June/Offred, “I can’t help you” and explained why. It seems like there ought to have been a humane way to ask the still-fertile women to help repopulate the world without turning to fascism. Although if women **were **seen as chattel, slaves, and possessions… maybe not.
Did y’all think that the informal time the Commander was spending with Offglen is what loosened him up enough to make love to Serena Joy, i.e., it reminded him of the loving partnership they once shared? I really liked that scene. I liked finding out more about them as a couple.
I just realized that this last episode (with the Mexican ambassador) was IT for the season! Wha…? That sure went by fast.
No it isn’t. Episode 7 is this coming week. Ten have been filmed.
Oh?? All-right! Thanks.
Serena Joy’s a Founding Mother of her own Hell, even more so than I thought. I assumed she was a modern day [Phyllis_Schlafly](Phyllis - Wikipedia Schlafly), but this is even more ironic. She’s didn’t even get to be the Magda Goebbels or Gertrud Scholtz-Klink of Gilead. They don’t have any equivalents. The Third Reich was a feminist paradise compared to this regime. I loved the little details in the flashbacks; like now contraband clothing & books being thrown out.
The reveal about Mexico was certainly intriguing. I assumed Handmaids being up for trade was just a rumour, but the Ambassador confirmed Mexico is at least considering it. At least it demonstrates that “it’s not just the men who are sterile”. I wonder if Canada is really all it’s cracked up to be (it’s hopeful that the Toronto Star is still open publishing exposes on Gilead). Presumably most countries, lacking Gileadean religious ideology, would be embracing scientific & technological solutions Granted that doesn’t mean things couldn’t still be unpleasant for the remaining fertile women (& men), but it still wouldn’t be as bad as Gilead. Mexico presumably has fertile women of it’s own, and Mexican women can still hold important positions in the diplomatic service.
Also it’s Her Excellency didn’t believe a word of anything she was being fed about the Handmaids; it was all an act and she knows dirty truth about the system. Either her own assistant is part of Mayday, or the Mexican intelligence services have contacts with them. Pretty good contacts if they already knew the Offred’s real name & backstory.
On episode 2. Still baffled about the casting for the Commander and Selena Joy. Why are they so young and attractive?
Don’t understand the question. Why are you assuming they wouldn’t/shouldn’t be? I’m interested in your thinking.
I tried to watch Episode 6 today, but wasn’t interested in the backstory, so I mostly fast-forwarded through it. So sue me.
It’s a rather significant departure from the book though I don’t know if book talk is allowed here.
Oh. Ok. I’m sure it is allowed. I read the book when it first came out, but don’t remember much. How do you think it changes the story for them to be young-ish and attractive instead of old-ish and what…unattractive??
Well it makes Offred more of a direct competitor to Serena Joy than in the book. Also since Serena Joy acknowledges the possibility that her husband is sterile she’d feel even more anguish since she’s still of reproductive age, but she dare not try sleeping with Nick (or any other man herself) since adultery is a capital crime. So if she was caught she’d either be hanged, sent to the Colonies, or (if she actually got pregnant) made into a Handmaid herself.
Watched ep 7. More back-story, but it was a very tense episode. My wife keeps telling me “That’s not in the book.” I finally had to ask why that was relevant, since this is a TV series, and screen versions are almost never true to the written versions.
Oops, I meant episode 7, the one where they’re escaping through the woods, etc. I’m interested in Offred’s story, and if she gets reunited with her family, fine, but didn’t want all the detail of her husband’s experience. Not for a whole hour anyway.
Before I bailed on the episode, I was reminded of something that has bothered me all along, and that’s pacing. Some of the scenes are unnecessarily long and slow. In that escape episode, okay, the ambulance crashes, very exciting. Then he gets away, he’s in pain, stumbles, cries out, walks some more, stumbles, cries out, breathes hard, stumbles, falls, gets up, cries out, and on and on. It just seemed like filler.
Other episodes have done this-- shots of Offred staring, walking, Serena staring, the long hallways in the house–and these scenes go on for too long after they’ve made the point. It’s not that the tempo drags exactly, just that the length of the scenes slows it down too much.
Episode 7 demonstrates the conditions in Canada; coffee is being rationed, so clearly the country is not doing all that well. Which makes sense; Canada’s economy would be dire if the United States collapsed.
The “Little America” ghetto of American refugees and the apparent presence of a United States government-in-exile (or possibly the embassy of a U.S. government that still exerts control over western parts of the USA) would also suggest that Gilead and Canada are in a state of, at best, uneasy ceasefire and possibly limited war. You don’t host a government in exile and maintain friendly relations with the occupying government. So Canada’s major trading partner is a failed state, and Canada has likely vastly increased its defence spending. Such a state of affairs would mean Canada would be a MUCH poorer country.
The question that popped into my head right away of course is how Canada could be in a state of war, or even a refusal to recognize Gilead, and not be overrun, but really it’s kind of answered in the show; Gilead is hollowed out. It doesn’t occupy all the land the USA did, and the civil war has killed a huge percentage of the population, and it’s no longer the U.S. Armed Services that carries the guns, but rather gun-toting thugs who seem preoccupied with shooting their own citizens, a different skillset from maintaining a conventional armed forces that could attack and occupy a large, hostile country. For all we know half the U.S. Navy took off to Britain.
I guess I’m kind of losing interest somewhat. I could really do with a basic structure like what caused the infertility, is it worldwide or continental, does the Gilliad administration have any friends or does the world blockade it (Mexico aside), what ‘colonies’, where are the police and military, how come they have fertile women and Mexico doesn’t, has the world economy collapsed …
I also didn’t need his backstory to anything like that extent. Not sure what kind of show this is now.
You don’t want the backstory of the protagonist’s husband but you want details as to Gilead’s foreign affairs? 
I think they’ve provided as much detail as needed; Canada won’t recognize Gilead as even being a country and Europe may not, either. Mexico’s relations are tentative and seem to be out of desperation; in addition to infertility it’s mentioned their agriculture is in bad shape, and even then one of the four or five diplomats we’ve met is a spy. (Granted, a lot of diplomats are spies, so that’s normal.) Gilead is a pariah state, and the world is for shit; we’ve physically seen two of the richest countries in the world and they’re not looking fantastic in this universe. Fair enough; that sets the scene. You don’t need to know a lot else. We’ll find out later, in all likelihood, what the Colonies are.
The story of June’s husband is to my mind much more important, because it presents a plausible hope for her to escape and find him and her daughter. His relationship with her is a defining part OF her.
His story is important, and I would have been okay with a condensed (time-wise) version of his backstory. But did it have to be practically the whole hour of him struggling through the woods with his gunshot wound? Some judicious editing of *each *episode could have shrunk the series to 9 or even 8 episodes. It reminded me of Diane Keaton’s interminable trek across snowy Russia on foot when she went to rescue Warren Beatty in Reds.