I've had a chance to catch up now, and have some further comments.
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?
It should be obvious by now that due to human nature, violence often does beget violence as the first victims take revenge, and the cycle goes on. That's why the Middle East hasn't been at peace in millennia.
The campus scenes remind me of a few years ago when there were protests over Ann Coulter speaking here in Canada. Minus the shooting (since that is not the normal Canadian way of protesting), that's the reaction she would have received from a lot of people.
She got really huffy when told that the speech she intended to give would be in violation of Canada's hate speech laws, so if she refused to change it, she'd best not give it in the first place. She started ranting about her "First Amendment rights"... as if she actually has those in a foreign country. We do have freedom of expression here, but there are limits when what we want to express publicly includes hate speech.
As for Ofglen, I guess she must have had a 180-degree turnabout after her tongue was removed. Before, she told June that her life was much better as a Handmaid, since she had shelter, regular decent food, had kicked her drug addiction, and her Commander and his wife were nice to her. That would probably have changed, so it's not surprising to me that she would have been willing to kill herself and take as many Commanders with her as possible.
Still on the subject of Ofglen... apparently the Wives are kept in the dark over other handmaids' punishments. Serena kept asking Ofglen questions, which was really cruel given that Ofglen could no longer speak. Serena kept yapping on, and I really hope it's because she didn't know, and not because it would have led up to "Why won't you answer me? Cat got your tongue?"
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?
The Waterfords are massive hypocrites, and Serena was oblivious that she herself would be expected to live by the rules she helped create. This was rubbed in her nose when Aunt Lydia started writing in a notebook, said that Aunts have a special dispensation that allows them to read and write, and further rubs it in by complaining that it was really such a nuisance.
At the very least the Waterfords wanted to influence the public into accepting this "domestic feminism" crap, whether or not they intended it to be implemented via a normal election in which their "party" would win or if they did it by violently overthrowing the legitimate government.
Anyone notice that really annoying verbal tic that Aunt Lydia has now? "Oh, ho, ho, ho..." as she proceeds to lecture the Commander on his marriage and household, lecture Serena about her smoking, and micromanage everything that Offred is expected to live by - including those disgusting green concoctions.
That consummation scene with Nick and his child bride... yikes. But some religious groups actually do have this as a custom (the hole in the sheet). They believe that sex is for procreation, not enjoyment, so it appears that Gilead has adopted that.
I couldn't help but notice just how
available some very sharp objects were. Serena's knitting needles, that oversized knife the Commander had in the kitchen...
I presume Nick wasn't in the building when the bomb was detonated, so it remains to be seen if he gets to actually leave the Waterfords (ie. if Commander Price dies, the transfer won't go through). I can see Nick observing Eden treating June like shit, telling her to stop doing that, and Eden wondering why the Waterfords' handmaid should matter to him.
