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The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2

948 replies

CruCru · 08/04/2018 21:15

I’ve just heard that this will start in the US at the end of this month but Channel 4 haven’t said when they’ll start showing it yet.

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Chimichangaz · 30/05/2018 18:54

@Tulip7 if you go to Telly Addicts topic and scroll down it's titled Handmaids Tale but has SPOILERS in caps.

Good luck!

(Can't wait for ep 6 which is a corker judging by how many people have commented!)

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 30/05/2018 18:55

Here’s the spoiler thread.

Tulip7 · 30/05/2018 19:08

Thank you @Chimichangaz and @SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius and apologies if I've spoilt ep. 6 for you.

Chimichangaz · 30/05/2018 19:11

Not spoilt at all! Hope you enjoy your discussions Grin

madeyemoodysmum · 30/05/2018 21:27

I think the sex scene was very appropriate

When you are so angry and frustrated love is the opposite end of the spectrum and goes hand in hand with those emotions imo.

Ever had angry making up sex?
I think june was letting out her frustration with her situation in a purely animal way.

I didn't find it gratuitous. The only nudity was Nicks buttocks.

I found the other story line very chilling

I pray I will just die in a nuclear situation. What awful suffering

CurbsideProphet · 30/05/2018 22:19

I kept expecting Fred / Serena / Aunt Lydia to march in while June and Nick were having sex. I presume the sex was supposed to be a reaction to the fear and adrenaline / their emotions for each other / June taking back control / to contrast the sterile ceremonial rape of handmaids. I still think Nick might lead everyone to June, so hopefully may day will move her on soon.

chickydoo · 30/05/2018 22:32

Just watched episode 2
Don't get why after Emily had given the 'mistress' pills that would kill her.
In the morning the 'mistress' was tied to a stake/cross outside.
Seems weird.

BaconAndAvocado · 30/05/2018 22:34

Lowering the tone somewhat...........does anyone else think is Nick is rather gorgeous?

BaconAndAvocado · 30/05/2018 22:35

Too many "is's" !!! I was getting excited Grin

Xenia · 30/05/2018 22:38

Yes, the stake was a bit strange as she was not killed by guards for not working hard enough.

Clawdy · 30/05/2018 22:46

Was she crucified by the other prisoners because they saw her as the enemy, as Emily did?

Wanderwall · 30/05/2018 22:54

Yeah I thought the other prisoners did the stake thing?

Wanderwall · 30/05/2018 22:55

@BaconAndAvocado yes nick is hot!

ZibbidooZibbidooZibbidoo · 30/05/2018 23:05

Nick is lovely. Anyone know what else he has been in? I recognise him but can’t place him.

CruCru · 30/05/2018 23:18

Presumably the other women in the Colony found her corpse and decided to send the Aunts a message.

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CruCru · 30/05/2018 23:20

The guy who plays Nick is an English actor.

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noblegiraffe · 30/05/2018 23:38

There’s way more to it than that - otherwise why not leave gay men alone?

Because they’re going properly Old Testament. If you think that the falling birth rate is a punishment from God for deviating from his ways, then the way to please him would be to go old school. No tolerance of homosexuality, no masturbation etc.

Serena and the Commander were madly religious, quoting the Old Testament at each other while they had sex. It must have destroyed Serena not to have got pregnant while being so devout.

When they had that dinner in the first series where they brought out the children of Gilead - that was validation that they were doing the right thing - God is blessing them with children. I expect that was also validation for Aunt Lydia when finding out June was pregnant.

If you want to read the bit of the Bible about handmaids giving birth it starts here: www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+30&version=NIV

Main bit “When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die!”

2 Jacob became angry with her and said, “ Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children ?”

3 Then she said, “Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her.”

4 So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, 5 and she became pregnant and bore him a son. 6 Then Rachel said, “ God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son .” Because of this she named him Dan.[a]”

You’ll most likely be familiar with this particular bit of the Bible - Jacob has loads of kids with his wives and their handmaids, one of whom is Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

WitchSharkadder · 30/05/2018 23:47

I can’t believe I’ve only just made the connection to the Son’s of Jacob with that, Noble, I always knew the story of the sisters and the giving of the handmaid, Billah....

Joseph also became Jacob’s favourite child as he was the only one born naturally to Leah, his true love, iirc.

And yes, Max Minghella is bloody beautiful, Bacon. He was in The Social Network and that film with Daniel Radcliffe a few years back. Sorry, I can’t recall the name.

EvilTwins · 30/05/2018 23:56

I knew that bit from the OT - A Level English 😁

I’m guessing we’ll get more about the rise of Gilead as the series goes on.

MrStarkIDontFeelSoGood · 31/05/2018 00:25

In the novel when in training, I think the centres are actually called Rachel and Leah centres and that story is drummed into them

Blankscreen · 31/05/2018 00:36

I watxh the handmaid's tale but just always have this sense of unease whilst watching it. I know own that's the point but all I can think about is ISIS and the parallels to the programme.

It makes me feel very anxious.

POPholditdown · 31/05/2018 00:36

I agree that infertility doesn’t seem to be the be all and end all for Gilead and the ones who run it. I wonder if it could just be an excuse to take over the country and be the most powerful. Maybe it started off as a religious sect, but Fred has already committed so many sins that I don’t think he truly believes in what they’re peddling.

In the first season, when they were trying to secure a trade deal for Handmaid’s, I was thinking if fertile women are like gold dust why would they trade them? It seems to be more that they are leverage so that other countries don’t intervene, Gilead can make money and birthing children who will be brainwashed is a ‘bonus’ to keep Gilead from dying out.

Also, in a nation so ‘pure’ and living by the literal meaning of the Bible, why would they allow Jezebels to exist? Other than to attract business/build relationships with other powerful men through a secret, elite ‘gentlemen’s club’.

PollyCotton · 31/05/2018 01:06

Rachel was the one Jacob wanted to marry - he was talked into marrying her sister Leah because she was the eldest & therefore should be married off first. He then married Rachel who eventually went on to have Joseph & Benjamin. Joseph was therefore Jacob's eldest son from the relationship he chose & was treated as the special one, as per tradition with the "firstborn son". Jacob did have a pretty flexible history when it came to the rights of the firstborn, given that he'd tricked his dad/elder brother so he got the birthright, so it's not surprising that he'd conveniently forget all his older sons of all the other women when his favourite wife gave birth!

I'm struggling to get into this series. I think it's because it's going in a different direction to what I expected. I've not read the book so have no knowledge of the original plot but I was expecting to see her journey of having to have the baby while living with the knowledge that it would be taken away from her by these people who had no biological link to it & everyone would just pretend like it was theirs & then she'd be moved on to the next couple. As much as I want liberation for her & all the others, I was expecting that to come with the fall of Gilead due to the whole network of men & women working together, not just her being the special chosen one getting spirited away because she caught the eye of a man.

MrStarkIDontFeelSoGood · 31/05/2018 01:29

In answer to the question posed upthread about Jezebels...

All totalitarian states eventually become one rule for the masses another for the elites.

E.g. Animal Farm "some are more equal than others"

In pretty much all strict regimes and setups an underground emerges from Black Markets in WW2 to bootlegging in prohibition. People who want to find a way to subvert the law will manage it, especially something like Jezebels which only the men not the wives benefit from.

Prostitution isn't called the worlds oldest profession for nothing. I was watching the Alienist recently and featured were a number of young boy prostitutes. You think to yourself but WHY this is Victorian times everyone is morally upstanding and stuff. But the market existed.

It's something that Serena suspects but doesn't know and goes back to that Victorian and slightly Old Testament way of thinking.

"Woman heed thy husband" and so they have to carry on being the virtuous heart and hearth of the home and the men pat each other on the back about their "little wives" and "not for women's ears" etc whilst doing as they please because women are the lesser sex and need to learn their place or else before you know it they'll be reading again.

It's a tale as old as time.

Have any of you seen the old Seventies photos of women in trousers hanging out in a library in pre Taliban Afghanistan?

Any nation is only one civil war away from that.

Also I think I read somewhere that all stable countries need is 48 hours chaos to collapse.

LapsedHumanist · 31/05/2018 01:32

I thought the sex scene was there to demonstrate the new pressures and power dynamics inherent in emancipation from patriarchal structures, into a hostile landscape where she is still powerless and dependent.

There’s still pressure to perform a role that’s not really freely chosen, just the best option of a bad bunch. A role which is about meeting the expectations and desires of men on whom she is dependent. In this case that means being eagerly sexually available.

The part where Nick flips round round was to show he has control over her now rather than the Commander. In some limited ways she has leverage over him- she is carrying his child, his affection for her, she could expose his part in her escape (but only by being recaptured herself).

The part where he lets her have to keys so she can drive off, rescue her daughter and escape to Canada was to show the utter futility of her new “freedom” in respect to anything that is important to her. That dawns on June very quickly.

She is free from the forced ritual, the daily humiliations of the female hierarchy in the household.

But she is not free to do what she really wants to (yet). She is able to find solace in acts of compassion, find some reminders of the past but she isn’t able to find active agency in her own life.

She may want to have sex with Nick but only because other things that would be a much higher priority for her are impossible.

At this point, she’s as captive as the woman chained to the bed. Slightly longer leash that’s all.