Spoilers The Handmaid's Tale (TV series)

[StarMan]

"You deserve to die alone".

Pretty gut wrenching start to the season. I suppose it was naive to think the handmaids would get to happily walk off into the sunset after their defiance. It's hard to watch without feeling trapped with Offred and co in this dystopian, misogynistic nightmare thanks in no small part to the heavy and highly atmospheric score.

 

[Skulkin' Vulcan]

I just finished the season. Holy crap, this is more depressing than The Man in the High Castle. Not sure I can hack another season of this, not unless an armed insurrection breaks out by episode 3 at the latest. It's very well made and all, but I do expect some entertainment value in my entertainment and this is too much like torture.

 

[theenglish]

I just finished the first two episodes of this season. I was not sure where the story was going to go as the novel ended with the first season, and in the novel the story is based on the secret writings of a handmaiden whose identity was unknown being studied by scholars in the future. I'm glad that Margaret Atwood chose to maintain a strong hand and control on the writing and plot developments because this felt like a logical sequel.

This is possibly the most disturbing series I have ever watched because, as someone pointed out above, everything that happens in this series is, or has, happened somewhere in the world. And it is a stern reminder from the flashback scenes, is all it takes is complacence from the majority of the population in a civil society, for it to happen anywhere.

 

[Timewalker]

For a government that is desperate for children, they certainly don't mind torturing and killing the very people who are supposed to conceive and birth those children.

I missed a few points: In the last episode of Season 1, Nick told June to trust the people in the black van. Of course that's how it played out in the 1990 movie and they were indeed part of Mayday and took Offred/Kate to safety. But in the series, Offred/June is taken to be mock-hanged...?

I can't believe Nick knew about that, so I'm a bit confused. I'm guessing Mayday intended to get her out of the house, but couldn't - so they tried again at the hospital.

It's also unclear how the Waterfords found out what was going on. Were they told that all the Handmaids in the district were being punished, and Mrs. Waterford told the Aunts that Offred was pregnant so she was excused from the rest of the torture? It would have been fun - if any of this series could ever be considered fun - to see the Waterfords' reactions to finding out June had escaped from the hospital.

I hope they're going to use an older actress to play Hannah this season. She should not still be a little girl. It's over 4 years (closer to 5) now since June and Hannah were taken, and Hannah needs to look noticeably older. Of course June's memories of her will show her as little.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I was worried June wouldn't get on the plane because of her strong motherly urge to save Hannah...and then it didn't even matter, because of course it didn't. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but the show really isn't give us much to hope for.

Well, except for another season.

I did love the little exchange between Moira and Erin:

"You go fuck yourself."
"Blessed be the Froot Loops."
"How long have you been holding onto that one?"
"Awhile."

So that's something at least.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Just watched episode 2. Very dark and disturbing, considering the current political climate in the United States...

What are people's thoughts on the Colonies? I know the book describes them as a place where the war is still raging, full of "toxic and radioactive waste" (though others are agricultural centers where the unwomen are used as slaves). I take it that the particular Colony to which Emily has been sent is in the mid-West, which must have been nuked by Gilead. The terrain they're cleaning up isn't too dissimilar to a likely ground zero of a nuclear weapon.

I hope we get to explore this aspect of the show a bit more this season.

 

[Timewalker]

I have to wonder... at the end, were the Eyes coming for June or for the driver? If it was for her, it's pretty damned irresponsible to fire shots into a confined space where a pregnant Handmaid is sitting.

Assuming kids are what they really want, and that they're not going to risk killing a pregnant woman just so Gilead doesn't lose any more face because she escaped (temporarily).

Nice touch, making the Econo-family secret Muslims.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Today's episode was probably the cruelest and most difficult episode to watch yet, and considering all of the previous episodes including last week's, that's really saying something.

There isn't much crueler than forcing a victim to beg to stay with her abusers and to force her to say she shouldn't have tried to escape. To lay blame at her feet that a family of three was torn apart because she was so "selfish" to want to escape her oppressors. To attack other women for the actions of the victim. Fucking horrible.

With those cruelties in mind, Aunt Lydia successfully pitted two identities against each other: June, the ungrateful whore, and Offred, the blameless handmaid. The scariest part of all is it seems like, for now, Offred is the presiding identity. "Nice weather we're having."

On a side note, with the appearance of Luke's ex-wife, Annie, in the flashbacks, I wonder if she'll appear in present day in some capacity for Gilead? She definitely strikes me as an Aunt...

 

[Shawnster]

That's one way to look at it.

I kept looking at it from a more practical viewpoint. Yes, it's June's fault, but that's because June was reckless and untrained in her running away. June did not follow instructions and placed others in jeopardy due to her being stupid and reckless during her escape.

The whole time she was in the old Boston Globe I kept telling her to keep away from the windows. She was running around a dark, abandoned building at night with a flashlight on and I the day didn't care who might look in. She argued with Nick about leaving at one point and then, later, argued with the bread man, Omar.

Omar was stupid for letting his emotions break and listening to June.

In such a situation it is imperative to follow instructions. This is the only way to keep an underground cell alive and without notice. Breaking instructions and protocol gets people killed.

June should have stayed in the scrap area after the safe house was blown. June should never have gone to Omar's Econo Apartment. June should never have taken it upon herself to disobey instructions.

 

[Timewalker]

That's one way to look at it.

I kept looking at it from a more practical viewpoint. Yes, it's June's fault, but that's because June was reckless and untrained in her running away.

How does one train to escape from a fascist, theocratic, totalitarian hellhole?

June did not follow instructions and placed others in jeopardy due to her being stupid and reckless during her escape.

The whole time she was in the old Boston Globe I kept telling her to keep away from the windows. She was running around a dark, abandoned building at night with a flashlight on and I the day didn't care who might look in. She argued with Nick about leaving at one point and then, later, argued with the bread man, Omar.

Omar was stupid for letting his emotions break and listening to June.

In such a situation it is imperative to follow instructions. This is the only way to keep an underground cell alive and without notice. Breaking instructions and protocol gets people killed.

June should have stayed in the scrap area after the safe house was blown. June should never have gone to Omar's Econo Apartment. June should never have taken it upon herself to disobey instructions.

One thing that struck me was how she just stood at the apartment window and looked out, not caring if anyone saw her. And wouldn't any of those guards have noticed somebody new in the neighborhood?

 

[Shawnster]

I have a question about the guards. Where are they all coming from? , Has the entire Gilead military been activated for home guard duty? Is nobody on the front lines? Are there enough guards to literally be in every populated location regardless of size? Or are they more concentrated in larger population areas?

Is Boston the capital of Gilead?

It appears this revolution took a few years of growth. Gender traitors were not immediately rounded up and punished. Slow incremental changes. The gay university prof took his pictures down last year (?) and went back in the closet for a while before finally getting lynched and that lynching wasn't officially state sanctioned. There was enough time for Emily's and family to attempt escape but they laws changed too quickly.

Emily wasn't immediately arrested. At what's point was she finally arrested and force into slavery?

Why wasn't Omar's wife spread a handmade? She was fertile. I assumed all fertile women had been rounded up by now.

 

[Timewalker]

They couldn't force all fertile women to be handmaids, since they would need future generations of workers such as guards, shop clerks, drivers/delivery people, Marthas, etc. According to the novel, Daughters (the daughters of the handmaids who are presumably fathered by the Commanders) are intended to become the next generation of Wives, but it doesn't say what the Sons are supposed to do... whether they all become Commanders, Eyes, or if they do other things.

What I've wondered ever since reading the novel back in the '80s is where the future Handmaids are supposed to come from. The novel states that the Daughters (ie. baby Angela when she grows up) and elite Eyes (or presumably future Commanders) are married in a group ceremony (like a dozen couples at a time), and if any of the Daughters are infertile, the couple will be assigned a Handmaid. But where are they going to get them?

 

[Leto_II]

I have a question about the guards. Where are they all coming from? , Has the entire Gilead military been activated for home guard duty? Is nobody on the front lines? Are there enough guards to literally be in every populated location regardless of size? Or are they more concentrated in larger population areas?

It's clear that the Gilead military is stretched fairly thin at the point when the series is set -- in season one, June mentions in her narration that the remnants of the U.S. military are still engaging with Gilead-forces across the country ("Now, the Guardians of the Faithful and American soldiers still fight with tanks in the remains of Chicago"), and that some regions of the country have yet to fully submit to their rule. However, given what was established about their war against the former U.S. government, I wouldn't think that they could pull too many front-line troops away to deal with internal strife without punching some big holes in their lines that the U.S. government troops could exploit.

Is Boston the capital of Gilead

Back in the first season, it's mentioned a few times that Washington, D.C. is apparently still the national capital (at one point, Commander Fred mentions that he has to "get back to D.C." for important governmental talks with foreign countries).

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Emily wasn't immediately arrested. At what's point was she finally arrested and force into slavery?

While stuff stayed relatively "normal" for a while after the immediate takeover of the government, with political freedoms, women's and LGBT rights only gradually being curtailed, things must have gotten so bad at one point that people started to flee in droves as we've witnessed in a recent episode. I suppose shit must have really hit the fan shortly thereafter. As it was depicted in flashbacks in the first or second episode of the first season, the new government must have decided to drop any pretense of still running a free country at a certain point, and security forces just opened fire on peaceful protesters in the streets. I suppose this was around the same time when the government decided to storm newspaper buildungs and have the people working there summarily executed. Since there wasn't a reason to hold back any longer, it's possible that they went "full Gilead" very soon after that. I think it's not unlikely to assume that we went from "Emily at the airport" to "Emily at the Rachel and Leah Center" within six months to a year tops. At least the airport flashback episode gave me a strong feeling this was set very shortly before things went completely bad, otherwise there wouldn't have been so many people trying to flee the country (some successfully, others not).

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Two observations after tonight's episode:

1. Love the irony of the unwomen being forced to sing "Morning Has Broken" as neo-Christian tune, even though it's basically identified as a Cat Stevens song (despite its Christian origins, which certainly no one remembers at this point). For those who don't get the irony, look up Cat Stevens.

2. If they go through the trouble of getting all these nubile teens to be wives for the drivers, why don't they just recruit them as Handmaids?

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

I for one am glad that June is still (again?) determined to escape. Seeing her as a compliant and obedient sex slave for the next three seasons would have made for a pretty boring show. If she manages to escape the Waterford household for a second time this season, I just hope that it will be for good. If she's captured again we'd start to run around in circles a bit.

As you may have noticed I was a bit flabbergasted and disappointed by the narrative "reboot" we saw in Episode 4. The plot needs to move forward not backward IMO. One season how Jane manages to escape, one season how she evades capture and eventually makes it to Canada, one season how she goes back into Gilead to find her daughter. Maybe then she could be briefly recaptured. That's how I would do it anyway.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, at the end of the previous episode, I was emotionally checked out and I wasn't sure how much more of the show I could take, but that final scene under the covers gave me the kind of tearful hope I needed to push forward. June is still very much alive.

Not surprised Gilead has added forced teen marriage to their very long list of crimes. The ceremony itself was gross enough but to see everyone so proud of themselves made it all the worse.

Janine continues to be wonderful: "Cows don't get married!"

 

[UssGlenn]

2. If they go through the trouble of getting all these nubile teens to be wives for the drivers, why don't they just recruit them as Handmaids?

Gilead would still prefer children be born to their parents. A fertile husband and wife is the ideal situation they are going for. At this point only women who have sinned are handmaids. If one of the driver wives screws up then she will be pressed into service as a handmaid.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Gilead would still prefer children be born to their parents. A fertile husband and wife is the ideal situation they are going for. At this point only women who have sinned are handmaids. If one of the driver wives screws up then she will be pressed into service as a handmaid.

Which is what happened to Erin, Omar's wife, as mentioned by Lydia in the previous episode.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

That last episode - aptly titled "First Blood" - raised a lot of interesting, moral questions.... in the past, the Waterfords were aggressively shouted down at college campuses and eventually someone tried to assassinate Serena Joy. At some later point the Waterfords helped overthrow the government, instituted a totalitarian dictatorship, and Fred Waterford personally executed the wife of his wife's would-be assassin in revenge. Some point further down the road, the enslaved and mutilated "handmaid" Ofglen suicide-bombs a gathering of high-ranking Gileadean government officials. So... is the message here that violence begets violence?

Maybe, but there's yet a deeper layer. The issues at hand is: Did the agressive response to the Waterford's initial teachings cause them to radicalize and support the founding of totalitarian regime? Would they have chosen an entirely different path, had they been treated with respect and tolerance and heard out by their opponents? Or wouldn't that have mattered at all, since the Waterfords were already so radical that they would have eventually supported a move to full totalitarianism in any case and treating them with respect and tolerance would have made reaching that goal even easier for them? If the former is the case, Serena Joy's would-be assassin bears some responsibility for the eventual rise of Gilead. If the latter is true, the only thing which is there to bemoan is the fact that the assassin failed to kill Sereny Joy when he had the chance.

The episode doesn't provide any definite answers to these questions... it does point out a severe hypocrisy on the part of the Waterfords though. In the past, Fred Waterford was outraged that his wife's freedom of speech was stifled despite the fact that he eventually created a regime that tortures, mutilates, and executes people for trying to exercise that same right. So, maybe the real question is: Would you have supported assassinating Adolf Hitler in 1921 even if you had no knowledge of future events and if you had supported it, would that have made you as bad as Hitler?