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Post by marion on Jun 11, 2019 10:06:28 GMT
Well got back! Never heard of her or the show, LOL.
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Post by goodhelenstar on Jun 24, 2019 8:13:20 GMT
According to the reviewers, Serena and Fred are separated. I imagine in Gilead they would simply say that she is visiting her mother for a while, having 'lost' her baby. And of course they don't have a house at the moment, unless the regime would simply acquire one somehow (no information on how the property market works in Gilead!). So it's not surprising that she is staying there – and what a house!
Clever scene with Fred rehearsing his speech, though the longer it went on the clearer it was that he wasn't talking to Serena. I do feel a bit sorry for Serena, notwithstanding her role in creating the regime in the first place. She has no one who cares about her – certainly not Fred, and her mother's 'pull yourself together' attitude came across as callous when what Serena really needed was a hug. Instead, she was forced to go to June as the only person who understands how she feels. Good for June that she now regards Serena as an ally and is actively talking about resistance.
Not clear what's going on with Joseph, who was so understanding and helpful and now comes across as cruel. He's clearly a pragmatist, but I previously had the impression that he was one of the academics who proposed Gilead on economic grounds and now was horrified at what he helped create – rather like Serena. However, his humiliation of June, and earlier of Sienna who was only clearing up a mess he had made, was horrible. Was he perhaps jealous of June's easy conversation with Fred? Is it a pretence, or is he actually a psychopath as June said at one point? It was interesting that he handed a pile of papers to June in full view of the Guardians, given that women are not allowed to read. When Fred gave June reading matter it was done in secret, and we saw what happened to Serena after she read aloud to a group of Commanders.
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Post by geometryman on Jun 24, 2019 23:41:02 GMT
Yup, there was at least one explicit reference, with Serena saying to her mother something like "You want me to go back to Fred".
I'm still not sure about him. When he was humiliating June, it seemed she'd been put in the impossible position of having to illegally read the book titles in order to retrieve the one he wanted. But he let her off the hook ("stack on the left, third book down, yellow lettering"). I thought the incident was an act he put on for the benefit of the other Commanders, though was he also testing June? At the end, when she announced she'd picked 5 new Marthas with a variety of skills valuable to a resistance cell, I did wonder if that was exactly what Joseph had wanted her to do.
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Post by marion on Jun 25, 2019 10:37:00 GMT
Yes I am in exactly the same position as you regarding June and Joseph, G Man.
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Post by goodhelenstar on Jul 8, 2019 18:28:44 GMT
This series continues to puzzle me. Serena had her finger chopped off for reading aloud in public, and yet now she's being shown the medical reports on 'her' baby daughter in a meeting of the governing body I can't see what the point was of her visit to Canada, and can't believe that Canada would possibly return Nichole/Holly, especially once DNA testing reveals that the baby isn't theirs in any sense at all. Do they really think showing June, her birth mother, in a subservient role will help, particularly the way she was glaring at the camera?
Going back a couple of episodes, I'm wondering what the purpose was of capturing a lot of women, only to send them to the Colonies. Wouldn't they harvest them as Handmaids? And where are the five that June nominated for recruitment as Marthas? Still to appear, I guess.
I'n also wondering what was in the jars in Loves and Fishes when June and Ofmatthew were talking!
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Post by marion on Jul 10, 2019 14:21:07 GMT
What I couldn't believe about that trip to Canada is that Serena didnt take up Mr Hawaii's second offer of relocation. I'd have bitten his hand off, especially once he had given me those new clothes and I could see my old self again.
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Post by goodhelenstar on Jul 11, 2019 7:42:05 GMT
Yes, treason and coconuts, wasn't it?!
Serena's motives are hard to fathom. Perhaps, having been one of the architects of Gilead who is now appalled at the life she is having to lead, she is desperate for love (a point made by June about herself at the beginning of the episode) and has bonded with baby Nichole, an innocent. So she's conflicted by her intellectual belief in the concept of Gilead and the sterility of her everyday life. She knows Nichole isn't hers but is clinging on to some semblance of motherhood. I can't see where this can lead. I gather another series has been commissioned so wherever it's going, it isn't going there very fast!
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Post by goodhelenstar on Jul 15, 2019 8:05:33 GMT
Another episode large on beautiful scenes and devoid of any sensible content. It still has the power to shock though – the awfulness of the Handmaid's stapled mouth made me gasp, then I wondered if they all have them beneath their masks or if it was a punishment for that particular Handmaid. How do they eat and drink?
Not sure what to make of Nick either – he was promoted from Fred's driver to Commander in this series, with no indication of how that came about. We know he was an Eye – not undercover as everyone knew he was, so what did he do to be fast-tracked? Then he was off to the fighting front, i.e. death, now he's swanning around Washington, but there is something in his past that means he can't be used as June's secret weapon to subvert the Waterfords' plan to return Nichole to Gilead. What's going on?
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Post by geometryman on Jul 15, 2019 13:28:10 GMT
I got the impression Nick wasn't just going to the front as a soldier, he was going as a military leader. Serena's reply, when June asked her what he did before becoming the Waterford's driver, was evasive but did suggest it - "He was a soldier in the crusade. We wouldn't be here without him." Also the brief scene immediately following that, of Nick joining his men, made him look like a crack commander being sent in with his storm troopers to recover a situation.
Did everyone see the whole thing? I have done now, but the episode started nearly 20 minutes late and my main recording cut off before the end (fortunately I had a back-up which didn't).
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Post by goodhelenstar on Jul 15, 2019 14:02:47 GMT
Yes, the ending would probably be very powerful to American viewers, with the desecrated Lincoln Memorial and Washington monument. With the Handmaids standing in rows and Fred and Serena surveying them, it had an air of a Hitler rally, no doubt intentional. Why the handmaids would be paraded before Fred is anyone's guess – he only just escaped being sent to the wall so I wouldn't have thought he carried particular sway with the powers that be in Washington. The whole thing was very odd.
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Post by marion on Jul 16, 2019 9:55:51 GMT
What I couldn't understand about Nick was that if he was this crusader as explained by Serena, how come he tried to help June escape in the earlier series?
Also, why on earth are Canada and Switzerland joined in these diplomatic talks about Nichole with Gilead, a state which enslaves women? I thought that was odd too. I mean if that was going on, surely there would be wide protests from Canadians and Swiss citizens! Those bureacrats didnt seem too bothered about women's rights to me... And two of them were women!!!
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Post by carrie on Jul 16, 2019 17:23:57 GMT
The Swiss did say that Gilead was militarily powerful, so I suppose Canada doesn't want a war, they might lose, over a baby.
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Post by linseed on Jul 16, 2019 18:38:14 GMT
I assumed the Swiss, being famously neutral, were there as peacekeepers
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2019 16:23:17 GMT
It may be a bit different from what is going on in the television series, but The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale will be out on 10 September. Despite the fact that it is not even out, it is already on the Booker Prize longlist. |
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Post by goodhelenstar on Jul 30, 2019 7:54:21 GMT
According to Waterstones:
'Undoubtedly the most highly-anticipated book of 2019, The Testaments is the landmark sequel to Margaret Atwood’s seminal masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale. Picking up fifteen years after its predecessor’s tantalisingly open-ended conclusion, The Testaments promises a new window into Atwood’s dystopian world, as seen through the eyes of three women of Gilead.'
It's a different story, unconnected with the TV show. I don't know if the three women are all Handmaids – could be a Handmaid, a Martha and a Wife perhaps? I don't think Offred/June is one of them.
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Anymore to come?
