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The catastrophic event is actually a terrorist attack (or something to that effect) that enables what is in essence an opportunistic military coup by right-wing religious fanatics who have been infiltrating different levels of the government over a longer period. I’d have to rewatch it, but I think that we learn from the episode before last that said terrorist attack was orchestrated by that same political group — as a kind of provocation.
I disagree. There was a terrorist attack, but that was, from what i understand of what is happening, a reaction to the catastrophic event which is that people are unable to have children. The rise of the cult was a reaction to the catastrophic even, people’s inability to have children. This caused the creation of this cult that is not right winged religious anything. They showed them destroying all the churches. This is a fanatical violent cult.
The inability — or difficulty — to have children is not an “event” per se, it’s a slow catastrophe, and humans generally react differently to slow catastrophe. We get a sense in the show that it’s the thing that gets used to justify the system put in place, but it’s not the catalyst for revolution. Though I agree that because we actually don’t know how much of the world is affected, it feels a bit too vague. As in, is the entire world affected or just the US (the first problem is a “species level” problem, and the argument can be made that since humans are severely overpopulating the planet, a decrease in fertility might not be a bad thing; if it’s localized, then it’s a geopolitical problem more than a global catastrophe).
It is a global issue. Their child is around 8 years old at the time they ran. It has been 3 years since then. At the time they gave birth to their child, the inability to have children was already happening. Their child was the only child on the ward and someone tried to steal her. That would mean this event has been happening for at the very least 15 years. The ambassador from that other country said that there hadn’t been a birth in their country in 7 years.
In some senses, the point of the story is not so much that this could happen, but that it’s already here in some form, and has been actively and obviously here in very recent history (in particular in relation to slavery and US racial politics more generally), with some women bearing the brunt of patriarchal power structures that seek to control their bodies, sexuality, and intellect, and others benefiting from it, but always only partially.
I don’t really want to go down the political rabbit hole in here. I just think that disagreement about issues is reasonable and the attempt to use the proper channels of politics to voice people’s will is reasonable and that discussion is of the highest value and all of the rhetoric in the United States right now on both sides of these debates that tries to quash discussion is just out of line. The world has changed in our lifetime. The language being used by a bunch of old men who don’t seem to understand that the world has changed does not scare me.
For me, i think, as i said, that discussion is of the greatest value and i think the discussion is alive and well and that part of that is that people get to think and say and try to push laws that i don’t agree with. That is their protected right, a right that i think is alive and well, and a right that i think needs to be protected above all else. We don’t protect it to protect the old white men; they don’t need our protection. We do it to protect the persons of color and the LGBT community and women and religious minorities.
To get back to the show, i just think there is a huge jump between rhetoric i find problematic and disagree with to a violent fanatical cult that has millions of people in it, has infiltrated the government, wants to destroy it through terrorism, and has these bizarre ritualistic sexual things going on that seem to have nothing to do with these people’s beliefs before the took over the government.
If they are trying to build a world where this could happen then they have to build the world and, as far as i am concerned, they have failed at that.
I take the show to be a meditation on power. As to the possibility of something like this happening in the US? If you look at the historical records of revolutions in different cultural contexts, it turns out that while historical hindsight it 20/20, contemporaries usually expressed the sentiment that “it could never happen here” until, inevitably, it did.
If they were suggesting that this cult blew up congress and took control of Boston and was now oppressing or murdering the people of a small area, i could accept that. But the show is suggesting that this cult took of the United States except for a couple of pockets in like Chicago and, i think they said, Alaska. They must have taken control of the army.
There is just a whole lot of world building that would be necessary for this world to exist for me and from what they have shown of the world before the event, there were less babies, protests about that, women lost their right to work, men took their money, their were protests, people shot in the streets, and they blew up the government and took over and yet the world before all this happened people were still doing normal things going out to dinner, writing books, working, going to the movies as if nothing was happening. I don’t see the place back in the past where this world is the United States. There is too much of a disconnect for me.
[adrotate group="5"]I disagree. There was a terrorist attack, but that was, from what i understand of what is happening, a reaction to the catastrophic event which is that people are unable to have children. The rise of the cult was a reaction to the catastrophic even, people’s inability to have children. This caused the creation of this cult that is not right winged religious anything. They showed them destroying all the churches. This is a fanatical violent cult.
My point is that the inability to have children on the show is not an “event.” It’s a condition of the show’s world that, as far as we can tell from the story, had a progressive onset. Like, say, climate change or some other slow environmental or social transformation. So while I agree with you that a collapse in fertility underpins the turn to religious fundamentalism and leads eventually to the establishment of Gilead, it is not the cause of the political take-over (in the sense that it is not the event that then precipitates a series of political maneuvers which culminate in a theocracy).
What do you mean that it is not right wing or religious? It is religious insofar as it explicitly based on taking literally Biblical scripture, and it is right-wing insofar as we use that label to talk about conservative values. If you mean that it is not economically right-wing, then that’s an interesting point too, and I’d have to think about that more. But just because they destroy churches does not mean that they are not religious. They are simply eliminating the competition in the name of what they perceive as the only correct interpretation. For historical analogues we might think of the Crusades. Or the Thirty Year’s War (Catholics vs Protestants). Etc etc etc.
don’t really want to go down the political rabbit hole in here.
In saying that “it’s already here”, I was paraphrasing one of Atwood’s statements about the book, where she says that she wrote it not as a hypothetical future dystopia, but as a mishmash of actually existing practices, pulling eclectically from different societies and historical periods (some quite recent). I don’t disagree with anything you write below, though I’m not sure how my comment got us to the question of free speech and protecting established political institutions and principles. But yes, I get what you’re saying — there’s something missing from making the coup realistic. Either we need a sense that more people are secretly on board and that there is a huge but as-of-yet unarticulated social support (as with, say, the Russian revolution), or you need a foreign power orchestrating/supporting/financing it (as, say, the CIA backed 1973 Chilean coup d’etat). In the absence of that, one does wonder where all these people were hiding. Revolutions need money 🙂
It is a global issue. Their child is around 8 years old at the time they ran. It has been 3 years since then. At the time they gave birth to their child, the inability to have children was already happening. Their child was the only child on the ward and someone tried to steal her. That would mean this event has been happening for at the very least 15 years. The ambassador from that other country said that there hadn’t been a birth in their country in 7 years.
That only tells us that this is a North American issue. Do we actually know this is global? As in, does the show’s text confirm this? I’ve only seen part of the last episode, so apologies if something to this effect is mentioned there, and I haven’t gotten to it. But just because it’s in North America (say, Canada, US, and Mexico), it doesn’t mean it’s global.
If they were suggesting that this cult blew up congress and took control of Boston and was now oppressing or murdering the people of a small area, i could accept that. But the show is suggesting that this cult took of the United States except for a couple of pockets in like Chicago and, i think they said, Alaska. They must have taken control of the army.
Wasn’t there a civil war with the use of nuclear weapons on US soil? I thought that was the idea.
There is just a whole lot of world building that would be necessary for this world to exist for me and from what they have shown of the world before the event, there were less babies, protests about that, women lost their right to work, men took their money, their were protests, people shot in the streets, and they blew up the government and took over and yet the world before all this happened people were still doing normal things going out to dinner, writing books, working, going to the movies as if nothing was happening.
Yes, but I think that’s intentional. The show is largely from June’s perspective, and we get the distinct impression that she didn’t think that things could get truly bad until they did. In the meantime, Serena and Fred and their co-conspirators were obviously playing the long game, in that we do get a sense that the coup was years in the making, with the ground for it being prepared ideologically over time. Similarly, in 1930s Germany some people could see the writing on the wall, but most just went about their habitual lives, with the expectation that things will “blow over” and go back to normal precisely because “it couldn’t happen here” and “but we’re normal people”. Nor was necessarily a sense of what “it” would be. Ditto Russia of the 1910s. Yes, you could say later that something was fomenting and we all should have seen it coming, but the whole point of this show is in the analogy of the pot that gets too hot, but does so slowly, until the frog is boiled.
I guess my question would be what would the actual mechanisms be that would prevent things from getting from point A to point B as they are stated in the show. You seem to be saying that people just wouldn’t stand for it, or wouldn’t buy into it — I agree. But honestly, I think this would boil down to one single thing: who has the allegiance of the military.
But honestly, I think this would boil down to one single thing: who has the allegiance of the military.
Caesar. I hear it ends badly for the Senate.
Okay, I’m behind! I haven’t watched last week’s episode yet but I’m going to try to do so before the new one drops. Hopefully will have thoughts on both by Thursday!
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Okay, I’m behind! I haven’t watched last week’s episode yet but I’m going to try to do so before the new one drops. Hopefully will have thoughts on both by Thursday!
Yes, please what Jezebel so I have someone to rant about it with. Ugh, what an episode.
“Jezebels”
–Okay, this episode really disgusted me and for a variety of reasons. Quick flyby notes for now:
Disgust #1 (The Personal): I have that exact same music box and it legitimately freaked me out that Serena gave it to June.
Disgust #2 (The TV Critic/Mini-Culture Rant/With a Side of Book Purism): If ever there was a time to NOT have an episode focused on Nick and Nick’s own feelings, background, ect it was this one. Holy crow, who thought giving the “Jezebel” scene a Nick-centric flashback was a *good* idea? Cause lemme sit them down and tell them why that’s bad.
Jezebel’s is a really pivotal moment in the book because any reservations we had about the Commander being anything but a dutiful and pious person if incredibly flawed in his interpretation of sacred text is washed away as we really realize that he and the rest of the Commanders talk a good holy game but continue to live in and benefit from a world that they deemed unnatural, immoral, and ungodly.But now, because it’s to their benefit and there are no consequences, they get to live the debauched life that their religion once condemned. The idea that off the record whorehouses (cause that’s obviously what it is) are there for Commanders to freely indulge in with unwilling women (death or rape, you choose ladies. See, there’s totally choice in this world!) is horrifying. But that’s why this scene needs to be totally through June’s eyes. We need to be inside her head while the Commander finally rapes her without the guise of the Ceremony. All we get the next day is “you know I had no choice” while she’s more or less asking for Nick’s forgiveness and he’s shunning her, refusing to speak to her, as if she’s committed the crime? Nope nope nope. All the nope. That’s NOT how you present a series of scenes from one of the most feminist novels in the past half century. If the writers didn’t want this to be another June episode, then okay but at least give it to Moira! Heavens above, you can flesh out her story that she tells to June, give us more information on the colonies about why it’s truly a terrible place and how Moira made the decision she did!
I think I’m beginning to see why a full TV series of this book is a worrisome idea. TV likes to flit back and forth between characters. Everyone gets to play. But that’s a massive disservice to Atwood’s novel that is only–ONLY–ever through one character’s voice and eyes.
The Serena centric episode a few back was okay because it picked up certain threads from the novel and it fit with the examination of women, any women, in this world. I wasn’t thrilled with Luke’s episode but at least I got why the show was doing it, especially with it getting a S2. But this one made me side eye the show *hard*
Also, someone correct me if I’m wrong but I’m fairly certain June doesn’t sleep with the Commander at Jezebels in the novel! And it’s because she’s gained a bit of agency, of bit of herself back through her choices to start rebelling. This is why I was somewhat skeptical of them introducing elements of June’s rebellion so early on in the series. The revelation that Emily is part of an underground organization trying to topple Gilead comes much later in the book. June using her real name never even happens in the book and they had our June doing it in the first episode. The internal rebellion of June comes about very slowly in the novel; it’s given room to grow. The show sorta threw us in to that part of June’s life as Offred in the pilot which makes it hard to grow.
Disgust #3 (The Major Culture Critic): I need one heck of a shower after that Jezebel interlude and everything leading up to it, starting with the shaving of June’s legs. I want to scrub my body with a loofa. Uuuuuugh. June is already an object in this world but tonight she became the Commander’s doll; a little toy for him to dress up, play with, show off to the other boys in the treehouse, and then drag through the mud because why not: the doll belongs to him, right? If this episode succeeded in one thing it was that it made me really loathe the Commander even more. But here’s the thing. I know there’s been a lot of talk upthread about if this world is realistic or not and this is why I say, “yeah. It is.” This is a hyper realized version of it, but this objectification of women, the treating of them as objects of pleasure, and this male privilege are all part and parcel of rape culture. It’s what we talk about constantly other places in regards to OUAT.
I’m disgusted by this whole scene but not surprised! Sure, I’ve read the book but this is just real life locker room talk, right? Because if we were living in this sort of word right now, here’s how this would be played off: men talk like this and act like this all the time. It doesn’t make it assault or rape! This is the Commander moving on June “like a *****” but he’s in charge; he’s a celebrity/famous/government official. They can do whatever they want; like grabbing them wherever, whenever. The Commander even says some of them were working girls before the Gilead Revolution. So it must be totally fine. And besides, I’m sure God/the law is on their side. They’re the boss, they work hard, they need a way to blow off steam cause sex at home is boring, the wife is frigid, and we have to rebuild the population somehow. It’s all about the children, don’t forget. Gotta have those babies. It’s not a way to institutionalize and legalize rape and misogyny while hiding behind the Lord’s book. Nope, these men aren’t egotistical and privileged who have never been taught that they aren’t as special as they think. They didn’t become the very thing they fought against. The world needs children so let’s plow as many fields and spread that seed far and wide. And if we have to , we can just round up all the fertile women and impregnate them at once! Give it a clever name that sounds religious-y and the dumb wives will eat it up. What do they know; they’re just dumb women. More like animals anyway. As long as their wombs might give forth more babies then who cares what they think, feel, or say.
(I’m fine.)
I understand if people don’t think a lot of the political stuff is realistic or happened too fast or would be stopped long before it got this far; that’s fair and a lot of it comes down to how you read the current political landscape. But to look at the feelings, interactions, and mentality of men and women in this show and to not say that we’re living in a world where those feelings, iterations, and mentality are already present is beyond me.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Ok, some thoughts on Jezebel now that I’ve digested the episode.
I feel super mixed about this episode. There were some things I thought were really effective, but other choices really made me cringe and wonder why they went in that direction. I’m going to do a character break-down instead of themes just because that’s sort of how I viewed the episode.
If ever there was a time to NOT have an episode focused on Nick and Nick’s own feelings, background, ect it was this one. Holy crow, who thought giving the “Jezebel” scene a Nick-centric flashback was a *good* idea? Cause lemme sit them down and tell them why that’s bad.
This was my first reaction to them centering Nick’s backstory too. And on one level, yes, if ever there was a part of the story where I couldn’t give a flying rat’s butt about some secondary character’s manpain, this was it. But on the other hand, once my general distaste settled, I think this was potentially an interesting move, and effective depending on what message they wanted to convey — though it depends on how you read Nick. So here’s my impression of why Nick’s story was there. The usual trope/purpose of the backstory is a character’s genesis, a way to make them more sympathetic by showing the complexity of their life trajectory, and of the decisions they had to make to get to where they are now. It was therefore weird to me to see how they used Nick’s backstory — which makes his character much less sympathetic, not more. This is a kind of “recruitment into the Stazi” story that was an almost textbook illustration of Hannah Arendt’s point on the banality of evil. And in this, Nick is a microcosm of the entire world of Gilead (and of course, this is a commentary on our current world order too), a kind of story of rapid, unproblematic, and almost unthinking normalization of casual cruelty and the enshrinement of the social hierarchy that makes it possible. The actor that plays Nick plays him as a cypher. Even when we get a glint of internal conflict, it passes so quickly it could as well be a facial tick for all we know, and Nick takes one step forward into inhabiting his role of a member of the secret police. In fact, we get a sense that if Nick has an archetype, it’s that of the “collaborator,” his primary feature a kind of cunning cowardice coupled with an almost uncanny ability to survive and adapt. Nick, in other words, is exactly what you’d expect from a piddling snitch member the secret police in a despotic state. In other words, he is utterly unworthy of June’s affection, and therefore his turning on her at the end — indeed, as if it were she who was at fault — confirms this. I think what the show’s doing here is inverting a trope we might have fallen into, that the love interest might save the heroine not just through some sort of action/intervention into the plot, but by virtue of his own moral standing. So as much as we, as the audience, might be tempted to latch on to the Nick/June pairing, seeing Nick’s insider status as a potential boon for June, here we are quickly disabused on that notion. And precisely because this is all happening against the background of Jezebels, the point of which is to confirm that there is absolutely nothing “holy” or “saintly” about the sort of people who are the primary beneficiaries of this social system — that it’s all to the benefit of a self-indulgent and uniquely fragile and threatened masculinity — is what makes this pulling the romantic rug from under June’s feet effective, I think. Essentially, the show is telling us that yes, June is thoroughly alone in that this system doesn’t have an “outside” or “exemptions.” It’s also saying that so far, all the men we’ve seen here are complicit, in one way or another, and have no interest in going against the system, including Nick.
Commander — We already have a sense of that sort of underlying taste for cruelty that he develops as soon as there’s any power differential at play. This is also his mode of relating to Serena — as soon as she is in a hierarchically subordinate position, he essentially ignores or dismisses her. But I keep thinking, what’s the pay off for taking June to Jezebels? I’m assuming this is another power play — I am pretty sure he realizes that this is a horrific experience for June, so there’s something profoundly perverse in his insistence that she should be enjoying herself. I think this is what makes him especially loathsome, that he demands of her not just servitude, but gratefulness for her servitude. And that’s what makes me want to see June rebel all the more, but in this episode that rebellion was absent except for her sneaking out of the room to speak with Moira.
(I’m fine.)
Breathe, RG! 🙂 (and yeah, I know)
To me, what seemed so interesting about this part of the story is the internal fracturing of Gilead’s governing elite. Whereby you actually have ideological zealots on the one end, and these sorts of cynical debaucherers on the other, and from what we see in the end, the zealots are seemingly gaining the upper-hand. This spells trouble for the Commander, and in this the show’s very clever, because at this point the Commander is so utterly gross that you as the audience just might start rooting for the fanatics, because at least they mean it and it would be so very satisfying to see him brought to heel. But that’s a weird slippery slope to be on.
Also, someone correct me if I’m wrong but I’m fairly certain June doesn’t sleep with the Commander at Jezebels in the novel!
Just to correct myself here…
I went and dug up my copy of the book…Offred *does* sleep with the Commander at Jezebel’s but there is a difference to it, specifically that the Commander can tell Offred isn’t excited by the prospect of sleeping with him without Serena Joy and vocalizes his disappointment in her lack of enthusiasm. Offred them silently orders herself to fake it. (It’s chapter 39)
I guess it’s also important to note that the chapter ends with Serena taking Offred to sleep with Nick. Re-reading, Offred gives the account of sleeping with Nick twice one which is super romantic and one which is more awkward. Offred then acknowledges that neither version is totally true because all stories are a reconstruction colored by a lot of factors.
Some book spoilers ahead here! This again brings me back to the epilogue vs the TV show. I think we’re supposed to be viewing the TV show as present day unlike the epilogue which is a reconstructed story that has been put back together through the work of some Gilead historians who are presenting Offred’s story at a conference, some–what—200 years into the future? So The Handmaid’s Tale is literally a series of tapes found, pieced together in some orderly fashion and then transcribed in which Offred recounts her time with the Waterford’s but admits that her story is colored by the fact that she’s looking back. It’s also really incomplete, tangential, and lacking in details that usually make up a story.
I mean, for example, we keep referring to him as Waterford and to her as June but the novel never actually definitively says that’s who they are and in his presentation, the historian spends more time trying to figure out if the Commander is Fred Waterford or Fred Judd; with Offred’s identity it’s simply not possible to know who she is and the historians failed in puzzling her out. The historians are doing guess work based on their own research.
This is one of those things that makes Atwood’s novel so great because you get to the end and you realize that you’ve been reading a woman’s account but put together and puzzled out by a man in the far flung future after Gilead has long fallen who tells those who are listening not to judge Gilead society too harshly because all judgments are culturally based (and, yeah, as someone with degrees in history and religion, it’s basically what I have to tell myself when I’m working my way through ancient Greece or Judeo-Christian texts).
I guess what I’m getting at here is…where is the show going with June? The epilogue, for me, is one of the most unsettling aspects of the novel because Offred’s personal, internal, and emotional story seems so incomplete. There are no answers about what happens to her. Instead a professor explains how the tapes were found, how they were put together and transcribed by his team and then puzzles out who the Commander is. It’s like Offred, the person, once again because an object, and not the subject..
This spells trouble for the Commander, and in this the show’s very clever, because at this point the Commander is so utterly gross that you as the audience just might start rooting for the fanatics, because at least they mean it and it would be so very satisfying to see him brought to heel. But that’s a weird slippery slope to be on.
Yeah, who do you root for in this case? It’s like the novel/show says “better doesn’t always mean better for everyone. It’s always worse for some.” Getting rid of the Commander would save June his more ardent passions like taking her to Jezebels but at least she understands the Commander to some extent and can find moments of rebellion in Nick. Would getting rid of Waterford be better?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Once again I am behind. But I think I’ll be able to watch last week’s episode and this week’s season finale episode tomorrow! Then we should be able to discuss the season as a whole 🙂
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"1×9 “The Bridge”
That one was particularly hard to watch though I’m having trouble putting my finger on exactly why. Maybe it’s because all the allusions of care are dropping away and it’s now just a series of power plays where our heroine seems doomed to fail because of the world she lives in. We see this in both Putnam/Jeanine and Fred/Offred.
Obviously Commander Waterford is loathsome but there’s something particularly galling in him this episode as he lets Offred believe she’s gotten a slight upper hand in “manipulating” Fred into another round of Jezebels. It’s a lot like what @nevermore has been saying about Fred and him getting off on power plays and demanding that Offred be grateful for these little gifts he bestows on her. Not only does Fred reunite Offred with Moira but he lets Offred believe she’s “won” at this little game they are currently playing. We saw all this when it was still just Scrabble in his office. Back and forth, one letting the other win in order to establish dominance and servitude but always knowing that there were different levels to the game. Fred’s whole “I did something nice for you. ‘Thank you, Fred'” followed by the instant “thank yous” by Offred and Moira were stomach turning. Though, particular shout out to Elisabeth Moss once again for her work here. The way her voice instantly changed to sugary sweet, high pitched, perfectly “feminine” was good. I doubt any of us believed the Commander truly cared for Offred but surely any lingering doubts are totally done away with now. She’s property, she’s a thing. A toy, a doll, a womb, not even remotely a person. It suits Fred to let Offred think she’s winning at something but only because it makes him feel superior.
Then we come to Putnam and Jeanine where we see that at least two of the Commanders are in the same boat of not exactly abiding by those religious creeds they fought for before the war. The word psyhcoapth has been bandied about in this thread in regards to Waterford but I don’t think that’s quite right. Not in the medical sense of having an actual mental illness that could be tempered with medicine or round of therapy. What we’re looking at is heterosexual male privilege on proud display. It’s cultural based on psychologically based (though, I will agree that there’s a fine line since cultural learnings play a heavy role in the psychological makeup of a person). But these men, through the culture they lived in, taught them that they were special, important, and most importantly right–winning the war only served to bolster those assumptions. Before the war, they were the silent majority (a term also bandied about a lot in the past year and half in our very real world). They felt ostracized by everyone they saw as “other”–women, LGBT groups, the liberals, the religious left I suppose. Men like Waterford and Putnam believed their way was the best way, or more specifically the right way. Now that they’ve won and their assumptions and beliefs about themselves have been verified, then there is no doubt that their actions–whether they are antithetical to their religious beliefs or not–are simply right. It’s fine for Putnam to make demands on Jeanine for sexual favors that his wife wouldn’t do. Not just fine, but right. He owns her, does he not? If he uses sweet little lies about love and family, who cares? Just like it’s fine and right for Waterford to use June as he sees fit. Putnam doesn’t give a rats behind about Jeanine; she was just something to give him pleasure when he couldn’t get it elsewhere.
“Men don’t change” says Mrs Putnam and there are about 1000 takeaways from Atwood’s book but this has got to be one of them. If you’re looking for real world parallels between The Handmaid’s Tale and our world, this is it. This is the biggest one. This TV show/book might be a hyper reality of what happens when heterosexual male privilege is given free reign but for me the parallels between this world and political figures, businessmen (Trump and the CEO of Uber currently come to mine) are aplenty.
And yes, I will pause here because #notallmen to be sure. But I think that’s another takeaway from this TV show at least. Luke isn’t Waterford but he was still a beneficiary of heterosexual privilege even if he’s not an active participant in the toxicity. For example he didn’t have to give up his bank account or his job. There are some moments in the book (and maybe they’ve shown them in the TV show and I’ve forgotten about them?) where June flashes back to her life pre-Handmaid and Luke is telling her that he’ll take care of her, that it’s still there money even though it now all legally belongs to him. It’s not institutionalized rape but still has a certain misogynistic flavor to it. “Yes, what happened to you sucks, but we’ll be here to take care of you!” Men like Luke (or even Nick or the hundreds of nameless men we see wandering Gilead as soldiers, butchers, shop keepers) are still privileged. That’s why it was nice to see that the way Moira got the message to June was through a man who’s working to take down men like Waterford.
Misc notes
–Brava to the actress who plays Jeanine. The bridge scene was gripping.
–Aunt Lydia: much more sympathetic figure than I thought they’d do with her? She seems honestly concerned by Jeanine’s jump/downfall but this is the same woman who ordered Emily to be mutilated. Is it just because Jeanine did her duty and became a mother?
–In the book we don’t see Moira after the first Jezebel encounter but it seems like the show is going to give her her own storyline. Thoughts?
–How will Serena Joy react to learning that Fred has been seeing June on the side (that’s a gross way to put it, I know)
–Speaking of, Rita and Serena Joy’s late night encounter in the kitchen. Rita was a mother but became a Martha instead of a Handmaid. That’s puzzling. Is it because she’s older than Offred? She’s no longer deemed fertile perhaps. Also, the way Serena Joy turns on the religious babble when she hears Rita lost her son in the war made my stomach flip. Ugh to her.
–Hopefully back with notes on the season finale soon!
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"10.
I am still really having a motivation problem. I get the commander. I think the hyper version of male superiority and privilege is what they are going for with that character. There is nothing in the United States that could become exactly what he is, but it is a version of a thing that exists.
I get June and the other handmaids. They are all just trying to survive though how it came to this has yet to be explained.
I just don’t get Serena at all. Here she wrote books. She even wrote some of these laws. But now she can’t read or be involved and is upset about it, so why? Why is so so angry at June when this is a situation of her own creation? Did they grow up in this cult and if so then why is so so angry about this lifestyle? It doesn’t seem like they did grow up in the cult. They are playing at being zealots like someone else wrote to get power, to get a child, but what is the value in doing it this way. This bizarre ritualized way where the handmaid is like living in the house, like why do any of this? It didn’t seem like they joined the cult out of fear. They seemed to be early members and that is why the commander is a leader. There is just something there that feels inconsistent to me.
Nick is just ridiculous. I think the idea of someone who got caught up in it all as a collaborator makes sense. I just can’t quite tell if the show wants us to like him or not. Putting his hand on June’s stomach and being happy about it was just weird with the soft floaty music. I just don’t know what they are doing there because we know that June cannot trust him.
Why didn’t Moira take the notes to Canada if she was going to run? I guess she didn’t know what they were. I would much rather see more Moira and Emily and just much less Serena.
I think that it is a good point that we have the fake zealots like the Waterfords and then the true believers and we do see the conflict in that. I think that they just aren’t going to explain how a cult like this grew to this size in the United States and was able to take over. I am going to have to let that go even though it makes some of the characters motivations not work for me. I think that June and the handmaids struggle is the only compelling thing going on in this show and i do find that well done.
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