The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 (UK Pace) - thread 2

[CruCru]

Hi all

Here is the next thread for those who are watching The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 on Channel 4. Please don't put any spoilers on this - the other thread (for those in other countries who are watching ahead of the UK) is www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/3239228-Handmaids-Tale-Season-2-SPOILERS-VIEWING-AHEAD-OF-UK-SREENING.

Fairfax that has always been my theory, the songs at the start and end of each episode are from Offred's tapes discussed at the end of the book.

I'm very attached to that theory so I'm glad you think so too. Now there's two of us it's definitely true

Under his eye!
As far as the sex between Serena and the commander, there was a flashback in Series 1 pre-Gillead where they were getting it on between appointments in the work day, and he was jokingly complaining he couldn't just be treated like a "boy toy and needed romancing" - I assumed she'd been on MN conception boards and had just got a smiley face on a stick or whatever so was trying to catch an egg. Can't see there's much of that happening anymore now

Swanny I remember that scene, and that episode did make them seem like a happier couple, more in love and happier as people even as they conspired to destroy the country.

Fred seemed to hold Serena in higher regard then, now it's as though the power and corruption of Gilead has gone to his head and any love or respect he has for her has mostly disappeared along with her status. He's enjoying his opportunity to do what he pleases unchallenged.

All or most of what they seemed to have in that episode seems to be gone now.

Fred & Serena did have sex once in season 1. It was episode 6 after the Mexico dinner was successful and they were all over-excited. Later, after SJ discovered he raped June outside of the ceremony, Fred said it was all SJ’s fault for bringing lust back into the house ‘on her back and on her knees’ he was referring to that night. Like she had ‘re-awoken’ something in him again after all that time of ‘virtuous-only-for-procreation-sex-with-the-handmaid.’

I think the reason husbands & wives don’t (and I’m only speculating) is because the wives have been ‘proven’ barren and therefore it’s pointless and the man shouldn’t be wasting his seed so to speak on a woman who can’t be fruitful.

I'm watching on catchup. My main gripe is it's so dark sometimes I can't see what's happening but when they brought the handmaids dress back and it was so vividly red - amazing shot.

I think I read somewhere we would hear more of Serena's story. I think June is hiding her time again...

I must be the only one who isn’t finding the scenes too dark or the dialogue incomprehensible

I’m not either, Whatin. Maybe we have superhuman sight/hearing

Maybe so witch 😎

I think people just need to fiddle with the settings on their tvs. I found it too dark to see things so I turned the brightness and gamma up and now its fine.

I don't have any issues either and I have shite hearing.

No issues here either thankfully!

I'm with colouringinagain re 'the look'.

On her return to the Waterfords, Fred talks about the insidious nature of the terrorists- I think June thought he was referring to Nick.

The relief at seeing him may have overwhelmed sense.

Just caught up with the fourth episode. Really powerful the way they interspersed June's guilt over her and lukes affair with her guilt re Omar. I think women seem to feel guilt far more than men seem to-about lots of aspects of life-it's such a powerful emotion and interesting to see it in destructive play here for such varying reasons.
I hope even just one tiny happy thing happens to her next episode though because it's quite hard viewing at the moment. Though I guess that's the point!

"The cow eyes at Nick wasn't a stupid oversight on the part of the directors, it was a clever dig at serena that she has something over her. "

If it came out, Serena would just deny anything. There's nothing in writing that she was the one who June to sleep with Nick. It will be Nick and June in trouble. Anyone who finds out is likely to collude with the story that Fred is the father though.

I wonder what would happen if Serena got pregnant too? Would she get to keep both babies? Would she want to? Would June get to stay as a kind of 'mother's help' to look after 2 babies?

I don't think Serena can get pregnant.

Are there some in Gilead who can get pregnant through? Why is it only the higher wives who have to use handmaidens can none of them get pregnant??

Long time lurker, marking my place.

I wondered that too wips. Surely not all the wives are infertile?

When June went for a check up in season 1 the doctor offered to get her pregnant and implied that he has done it before because the commanders are all infertile.

He did Curbside but how would he really know?

I can't imagine they would agree to be tested, and if they were all tested, how would they justify the Handmaid's?

They would know that any pregnancy was the result of sex elsewhere and they would all have to accept that. Otherwise they would have to explain the 100% failure rate to get handmaid's pregnant, and sooner or later the wives would want to stop the ritual if no babies were conceived.

Easier not to officially know one way or the other, so they can pretend they might be the father. Fred did ask "Is it mine?" which shows he might not know if he's fertile or not.

"It's easy to think that in Nazi Germany had you lived through it you would've been one of the good guys

Or that if you were in Gilead I think we'd all like to believe we'd respond like Emily or June or Moira but the Aunt Lydia's the Serena Joys they are your neighbours, your colleagues and maybe even you. No one knows until it's their life on the line, their DCs life, their DHs."

Oh, I'm pretty sure I would have been awful and just followed orders. I'm quite subservient to authority and don't like taking risks. No way would I have been in the resistance.

"Fred did ask "Is it mine?" which shows he might not know if he's fertile or not."

He's in denial. He might not know 100%, but we know it's very likely that Fred is infertile, although the official story in Gilead is that the wives are infertile.

As far as the Commanders/top men are concerned it's got to be the women that are infertile, otherwise how can they manipulate them, put them down, keep them inferior?

But I reckon it's really the men that are firing the blanks! now wouldn't that be funny!

It'll have to be something to do with Hannah that shakes her out of her lobotomy, or there will be an invasion? Some glimmer of hope that other countries might step in?

It was strange being back in the claustrophobic darkness of the house after the tense journey she's been on in the last few eps, it was almost comforting and I know how awful that sounds!

It's interesting seeing the interpretation of the gooey eyes she was giving nick, I thought t was just bad writing, just like her rustling the curtain in the last episode, I find myself shouting at the tv cos I know june is not that stupid!

I also kept expecting Nick to turn up dead, surely they must be investigating how she got so far to escaping and why nick kept disappearing for hours on end (to go see her at the Boston daily)?!

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