Fred’s deal with the Americans may not be satisfying, but it makes sense in a brutally utilitarian way. Anyone else think Fred may have left Serena out of his deal? She does down for rape in Alaska; he get’s to start a new life in Hawai’i with their son. After all; that’s basically what she was planning on doing to him.
I don’t understand how Serena doesn’t get out of all of it. Just say that whatever she did in Gilead that as a woman, she was forced to do it. So sorry for what happened, but as you can see, I am missing a finger. It would have been far worse had I not said or did what I did. I think a first year law student could get her off.
ETA: Canada has great prisons with nice furniture and beautiful views. I know where to commit my future crimes. 
Well, Rita and June’s testimony would undermine that line of argument. Not to mention that what she’s accused of, forcing Nick & June to have sex, was also illegal under Gileadean law and Fred didn’t play any part in it; it was all on her. Also she’d be facing a military tribunal in Alaska, not a jury trial.
And Serena also wrote one of the polemical works that was a precursor to the entire takeover, when she got shot and was presumed to have lost the ability to bear children herself. She was an active rabble-rouser for the cause, so her argument to being entirely a victim is a lot more difficult to construct.
As a lawyer, I’ve been in Canadian prisons. You don’t want to ever be in one. They’re not pleasant.
I thought as much, but on the show, they are fabulous!
No, she suggested that they have consensual sex, which they did, and might indeed do again. She suggested that so that the rapes from Fred would stop.
She was in favor of it in broad strokes in the beginning, but in practice she didn’t support the rapes. She was forced to go along as much as June or anyone else.
I’ll assume you’re looking at where Janine is incarcerated. That would be Scarborough College, at the University of Toronto. I took a few courses there, in rooms like you see Janine incarcerated in on TV. They are not fabulous. They are bare-bones, concrete, brutalist structures. They were not fun to attend lectures in.
A Canadian prison at least has a coat of paint on the cinder-block wall. Scarborough College doesn’t even have that, as the show demonstrates.
No, in the show Janine is not in Canada at all. Perhaps those scenes are filmed in Canada, but Janine is in Gilead which is the northeastern US. Fred and Serena are incarcerated in Canada in the show, and wear their street clothes, have a studio apartment, and a giant glass window to the outside.
They are, as is the entire series. Janine is incarcerated in Scarborough College, University of Toronto. Sure, she’s supposed to be in Gilead, and the filmmakers are doing their best to make it look like she’s in Gilead, but the filming took place in Canada.
Like I said, I took courses at U of Toronto Scarborough, and I can recognize those rooms, hallways, and the Meeting Place a mile away.
And U of Toronto Scarborough is still more dreary than a Canadian prison. 
I don’t doubt your word at all. You have been there and I have not. But when I was commenting on “Canadian prisons” I was describing the show as they were depicted. I meant Fred and Serena and not Janine.
They’re not in a normal prison. They’re in VIP accommodation in some kind of immigration or CIA/CSIS facility. Note Serena was living there even before she was arrested.
So I can kidnap & rape a woman, but if I “suggest” that if she has sex with a 3rd party I’ll stop raping her myself that’s consensual intercourse and perfectly legal in Massachusetts? 
Well that was actually pretty satisfying.
Poor Serena; even in Canada she’s not even allowed to open her own mail. 
I get the whole satisfaction thing but did that scene have any chance of happening in reality? What happens to Nick when he has no Waterford to show for the 22 women they traded? How did June and the other women get on the wrong side of the border (and seemed to feel 100% safe doing so)? So many questions, I feel this season has asked for too much suspension of belief.
Nick and Discount Bill Murray (aka Commander Lawrence) seem to be covertly running things behind the scenes, so I’m guessing they’ve already got a justification ready for how things went down with Waterford.
As with any real life totalitarian regime that came to power in a coup, Gilead’s leadership seems fraught with divided loyalties, miscommunication, and internal sabotage. That part of it doesn’t really seem implausible.
Gilead obviously wants Waterford dead. Nick just has to show the body.
My impression is that they took Waterford across the border into Canada. He said something like “Are we even in Gilead anymore?”
And I also got the impression that the “trade for Fred” was not to get him home, but to kill him for running his mouth and to get him to stop talking.
Well, that was satisfying to watch.
I was kind of hoping Serena would open the mail herself.
Ok, thanks, that makes more sense. I thought he was in Canada and being brought into Gilead.