You know, I’ve been feeling this too about the whole season, but I didn’t really have the words to articulate it, it was just a vague feeling. But here you have described it exactly. Yes, it’s ironic, and it’s evidence of the show-writing falling apart.
Emily is severely traumatized; she’s been enslaved, tortured, repeatedly raped by multiple men, and subjected to female genital mutilation. The FGM was a result of her cheating on her wife with a Martha and it’s not clear if she’s even told her wife yet. Her wife & son spent years in a horrible limbo where they didn’t even know if she was alive or dead. Her son doesn’t really know here. Emily was an accomplished university professor before Gilead and now she can’t even get through an eye test or reading a children’s book without getting overwhelmed.
Yes, June isn’t nearly as smart or as strong as she thinks she is. She repeatedly makes very stupid decisions without regard to the consequences to herself or others. She’s gotten at least one person sent to the Wall before, and she had dozens of people risk death to not only get her out of Gilead, but to get her out of Gilead with her newborn, and she basically shat on them when she decided to stay. And she has been called out on this by Cmdr. Lawrence, but I think the writers really are setting her up to become some kind of resistance leader. It’s hard to believe that her and the Waterfords constantly covering for each other has worked this long. I’m actually starting to think it hasn’t worked and the Eyes know a lot about all the shit that’s gone down, but it’s just doing into a file to be used against Fred if the Eyes want to blackmail or purge him.
I’m still enjoying the show and I’m going to continue watching but last night’s episode had me saying “oh come oooooonnnn” over and over.
So, what? Nick was this great military leader and his reward was to be a chauffeur? Not made a commander, given a big house, a wife, a handmaid of his own?
Why would the handmaids be leading prayer for the return of a baby - wouldn’t the “mother’s” aka the commanders wives be leading prayer? The handmaids aren’t “mothers” they’re “vessels”. And if Serena really wanted to see Nicole, wouldn’t she have just stayed in Canada where Nicole is and the husband she hates isn’t!
Uh oh! Is the commander going to catch teh gay?
Either High Cmdr Winlow is gay, or that was a truly massive red herring. I wonder if he’s sireing his own offspring or if Mrs Winslow is pimping out her Handmaids. Gileadean DC was worse than I thought, I was not expecting the Handmaids to “silenced” under their gags. And it’s apparently the norm for Handmaids in the capital. Even Aunt Lydia, who’s had Handmaids mutilated was appalled. As for Nick, he was never just a chauffeur; he was an undercover Eye who’s main job was to spy on Fred. And apparently he was one of the gunmen who attacked Congress too. I can’t tell who I wanted June to shove down the steps more.
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It’s funny because until this most recent episode I thought the Commanders we have been following were the highest echelons of power. I knew there was that one higher guy who showed up in the flashbacks but besides him I assumed Fred was part of the council that ran things. He was in the inner circle that carried out their revolution after all and Joseph supposedly created their economy. Those sound like they would be high up guys.
With regard to Emily, maybe I am way off base but I thought the awkwardness was because her former wife was with someone else now in Canada.
Is she? I hadn’t noticed that.
The season continues to plod along at a snail’s pace, with endless scenes of two people talking very quietly and very slowly in a bunch of very dark rooms with just barely enough ambient light to see their faces. There are approximately 19,000 close-ups of tears running down cheeks. Opportunities for interesting expository dialog are thrown away in favor of further discussion of the fate of Nichole, an unseen character. We’re introduced to Christopher Meloni and we get to see him for all of three seconds. Then Fred’s prayer, which I would at least expect to be interestingly reflective of his sociopathic mind, is just a small handful of boilerplate blather. Then the episode ends.
Other than that, it was awesome.
I always thought it was clear that we were seeing the local elite of Boston, not the national elite. Granted it’s confusing because of stuff like Fred being so involved in foreign trade negotiations. I think Pryce and his role in designing the Handmaid system was just the national authorities solicited proposals from local Commanders and their proposal won. I’m enjoying the glimpses into Gileadean high society like the Waterfords dining out a fancy restaurant complete with menus Serena Joy can’t read or a ball where all the Wives are wearing a variety of ballgowns in different shades of blue (some even showed cleavage). Or house hunting were the [del]Jewish[/del] Baptist owners “left in a hurry”.
If I were a refugee in Canada I’d really, really being trying to get resettled outside of North America now. The very notion that Canada is even considering something that could remotely be considered an extradition treaty is terrifying. Emily stabbed “her supervisor” in the back? :rolleyes: Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it’s extremely telling that the government minister’s reflexive talking point is that “the birth mother already surrendered her rights”. Also in the preview for next week…
…it looks like we’re finally get some insight into Aunt Lydia’s life pre-Gilead. 
Welp, another episode full of stage whispers, grimacing, slow motion, and nothing happening. Glad to see that the show is at least consistent.
We need far more explanation of how Canada would possibly even be considering sending a baby girl back into slavery, especially knowing that her birth mother was the one who sent her out and clearly stated she wants her to be safe in Canada. And they do know that Gilead treats women as slaves - they’ve had plenty of refugees telling them.
We need far more explanation about a lot of things, but the show creators have apparently deemed us unworthy of learning it. There’s plenty of interesting material that could be explored - for instance the leverage that Gilead presumably holds over other countries in the world, due to their (presumably) having nuclear weapons or some other magic death card up their sleeve. You’d think they would at least have some characters talk about this stuff, second or third hand, if not outright showing scenes of the inner workings of the Gilead government…but they have other priorities, clearly.
I was thinking more about the scene with the Swiss people telling June why the Canadian government is even considering giving Nicole back, and none of it rings true to me. We have already been told that the rest of the world has economic sanctions on Gilead, and that is the only power that Gilead would have over Canada. If the US/Gilead and Canada aren’t huge trading partners any longer, Canada would just walk away from any demands to return a female refugee baby to a place where they know she will be a slave.
The idea of Gilead marching an army on Toronto to get a baby is ridiculous; sure, go ahead. Give the rest of the world an excuse to vaporize your part of the country. The only thing that makes any kind of sense would be the spies that have obviously infiltrated Canada taking the baby under cover of night, and they don’t need official talks to do that.
I was also thinking about June refusing to take refuge in Canada at the last minute, and the only way that makes sense is that the writers need her to remain in Gilead to continue the show. Bad, bad writing!
Well June is getting a lot more dark than I expected. :eek: As for Aunt Lydia the theories about her being a schoolteacher were correct. Did not expect her to have been a lawyer too. Interesting how even pre-Gilead she changed careers into something more in line with traditional gender roles. It’s also quite disturbing that even before the coup privatized child welfare agencies were using religious piety as a measure of parental fitness and could quickly move children through foster care to more “worthy” families. We’ve seen signs of the Sons of Jacob’s growing early influence in other flashbacks, like June suddenly needing her husband to sign off on her birth control.
I also liked the glimpse into the inner workings of the Red Center. The Aunts discussing Handmaid assignments over drinks was so banal it was almost black comedy. Apparently some Commanders are allowed to be picky about the race of their Handmaid without be removed from consideration. Also even the Aunts use the given names of unassigned Handmaids. I’ve been wondering how that worked; it seemed like it would be too awkward to constantly revert to serial numbers when they’re between assignments.
Wow. That was actually a good episode. I daresay it was the only good episode in the past two seasons, in my opinion, but at any rate, it was a good episode. Every episode should be like that, and every episode COULD be like that, if the show creators were not so relentlessly stingy about utilizing flashbacks, world-building, and scenes that humanize the characters.
Well it looks like that’s exactly what she’s going for; we’ll see how that goes. It seems Gilead is undergoing a crackdown on the ruling class; in the book from was one of the Commanders who ended up purged for not following their own laws. And now Serena is tempting Fred to commit high treason. This “morality drive” does not bode well for the Jezebels. It was interesting how Aunt Lydia was interacting with High Cmdr. Winslow; it almost sounded like she was a peer he’d have to negotiate with instead of someone he can simply around.
It was an interesting turn to see a Ceremony that was harder on the Commander & his Wife than the Handmaid, but I don’t really give a shit about how Lawrence felt about it. Is it that Mrs. Lawrence can’t her medication because it’s simply either unavailable or forbidden in Gilead, or because they can’t trust a psychiatrist to tread her without reporting to the Eyes? 
Cmdr. Lawrence was able to get birth control pills when pressed hard enough.
I feel like this show is becoming more like Salo every week, with a few minutes at the end of A New Hope to keep us on the line. I’m pretty close to jumping off completely.
Yeah, it’s a bunch of bullshit. The writers are running it into the ground.
The lighting design continues to drive me crazy. We’re repeatedly shown rooms that have as many as three or more different lamps and fixtures of various kinds, all of them emitting just enough of a dim glow to let us know that the bulbs are in fact there, but not throwing out ANY ambient light whatsoever, so that the room is essentially a black void in all of the areas that are more than a few inches away from the lamps. I get that they’re trying to be dramatic and create a Caravaggio-like “camera obscura” effect, but it pulls me right out of the scene every time because it’s so blatantly stage-lit and not remotely like real life looks.
So I have a couple thoughts about this week’s episode. Jezebel’s has really fantastic maid service; just how many Commanders have never left there? :eek: The swastikas in the woodwork were a bit over the top though. And apparently Gilead has isolated unfortified border regions where people can pass back and forth with ease? :dubious: Still I loved the look on Fred’s face when he realized what Serena did. 
Hulu’s renewed the show for season 4; does June get out or not? If she does then that’s a pretty drastic change to the show’s narrative; if she doesn’t then she’ll have to go completely underground. Like WWII partisans hiding in the forest underground. She’s not going to be able to pull off “being kidnapped by heretics” again.
I was able to overlook the glaring detail of the unprotected border because finally a good episode! I haven’t enjoyed an episode in so damn long. Yes, it’s still not near as good as it was but I loved that something actually happened. I knew that she’d have to kill him as soon as she kicked him. She can’t survive attacking a commander. It was good to finally see someone actually die who needed killin’.
Although it’s nice to see something happen to Fred, he’s not going to end up on the wall because Canada isn’t going to execute anyone.