Handmaid's Tale. EPISODE 6 (season 3). Channel 4, 14/07/19. UK pace. NO SPOILERS!

[OriginofSpecies]

Thread for Episode 6 (season 3) of The Handmaid's Tale.

We are watching on Channel 4, UK pace and have only seen episodes 1 - 5 so far.

Please, NO SPOILERS.

I've just googled and "test tube babies" were here before the book was written, but not by much (about 5 or 6 years) so Atwood would have surely been aware of them by they weren't a well established thing, possibly?

I don't know, Tilda, that sounds expensive... Much cheaper to kidnap & rape women!

A bit of an off topic, hormone filled comment to make about this episode.
How lovely is the way adults interact with the children? The men of Gilead are misogynistic, megalomaniacs to be sure but their response to the little girl's request to a tea party touched my heart as there are plenty of parents that would say no especially when they are in the middle of a meeting. I do love how the children are cherished as they should be even without the nation having fertility problems.

Other countries may not know how many women and men are fertile. Gilead knows which women have had babies previously and presumes all of the commanders are fertile. I don't know hone that logic works!

The interaction with children seems creepy to me, as I can only imagine that the men are happily raping women to create the children

Someone upthread mentioned when Mexico visited Gilead. The woman June spoke to said they hadn't had a child born in her home city for something like 5 or 10 years.

I LIKE that little happens sometimes - surely that's how it would be? Ages and ages of nothing? She's very frustrated now, June. Desperate women do desperate things.

As for Nice Nick - I am waiting for the Big Twist. Bet he's the link to the resistance, and has agreed with Canada that June is not to know anything because she's in real danger, something that she has no idea about.

I no longer think Serena Joy will help, but, I have Aunt Lydia pegged as a surprise contender. She is fond of June, in a bonkers way, but, she would not want to see her with staples in her face.

I'd hopes for aunt Lydia too, but she is really fond of Janine and still beat her with a stick last week!
I think she'd turn for something that puts babies at risk possibly.

People keep referring to the lip things as staples but it wasn't my assumption that the rings were permanent. Lip piercing is a viable thing and not massively a problem (see image from a piercing site) so this effect could be achieved through 6 piercings and the rings designed to be removable even on a daily basis, or when ill, or needing to communicate, for eating and teeth cleaning etc. Not that I am minimising how awful it is to silence women like this but I wouldn't think Staples was an accurate description. Thinking about how women describe things like the hijab, I would expect a pious handmaiden to say (if she spoke) something like "of course I can take the rings off any time I like, and I do whenever I need to, but the rings are helpful to me, as they remind me how blessed it is to be silent"

I also saw them as rings not staples. I think they are removable but not easily, I imagine they would be taken out once a day for the handmaids to eat properly.

Serena called them rings.

I just watched episodes 4,5 and 6.

Things seem way more lenient in Gilead now. As mentioned up thread.

However in Washington they aren't. The mouth stapling is sooooo scary.

I thought June was heading that way when AL whipped out the new face cover.

I also worried that the brief hand touch between Nick and June would have been caught on camera.

I think it might have been Nick who planted the bombs which led to the takeover by Gilead. Just because Serena pointed out that none of it would have happened without him.

Those rings are horrific! Even the mouthcoverings were further evidence that women were just sperm receptacles, silent and raped.

I think Nick has made a deal with the Swiss - they can't simply come out and call a full stop to the negotiations, as that would risk Nick and totally 'out' him to Gilead as an Informer. I think they are 'continuing the negotiations' so as to keep their Man on the Inside. Hope so anyway. The shot of him in the troop carrier being saluted was proper chilling. Like we don't really know him.

But surely Fred and Serena would have known that an army of women, all with their mouths covered, was not going to endear them to the wider world? They can hardly claim that the women are happy like that.

And the answer to the question 'are they all yours' - 'who else's wouyld they be' neatly avoids that awkward ' No we stole them from other
sinners women'.

I think lots happened in this episode! Not much action, granted, but lots of thought-provoking stuff. I wish June had told Serena that she didn't/couldn't love Nicole if she wanted to bring her back to Gilead!

That commander with his arse in Fred's face! Surely, surely not! He would be testing Fred, surely - they hardly know each other and could not know how the other would react. It's a mortal sin to be gay! How could he be so blatant and hope to not be condemned? Even with several children to 'his' name - although who's to say he hasn't farmed off his Handmaid to a fertile man/driver much like Serena did with Nick? (And stapled her mouth shut to stop her saying/inferring anything?)

We know Nick. We know that he risked everything to have an affair with a handmaid. We know he couldn't bring himself to pretend to love his wife & that she died for having an affair. That didn't stop him carrying on with his affair. When their affair began June was just an ordinary handmaid... I can see them wanting to have someone spying on her now but not back then. I'm completely confident in Nick's support of the resistance. He plays the game as much as he has to to survive, maybe to bring down Gilead, but it's all just for show. In June he's found someone who actually cares for him, not someone who abuses him like his family or uses him like Gilead. I can't see him betraying her. #teamNick

I’m rewatching this and wondering where Commander George’s house is - I lived in DC for a while as a child but never saw anything so grand in the city centre (not even in Georgetown).

They must have diverted the trains (and demolished some massive buildings) to be able to see Washington Monument from the train.

ptumbi he offered Fred promotion and could possibly offer him the big promotion in return for sexual favours. If Fred turned his advances down or grasses him up then he could make a lot of trouble for him. Who are the establishment going to believe? The all powerful George or little old Fred? George will have him on the ropes.

How many more episodes?

I’ve also been thinking about the children. They have weird lives - apart from how they came into existence, this generation will be the one most studied and fretted over. Whenever a child wants something, the adults will always have to stop what they’re doing to pander to them. I wonder what happens when the children fall out with each other?

I wonder what happens when the children fall out with each other?

I expect the girls have to defer to the boys.

How many more episodes?

There are 13 in total in this series.

I recently watched the new series of Happy on Netflix and kept waiting this whole episode for Commander George to start talking to an imaginary unicorn.

I felt that the "are they all yours?" Question was more about if they belonged to their household than the parentage of them.

where are all the eyes?

In the first episode (and presume the book, too long ago since I read it) Eyes were everywhere, they could be anyone and they reported on everyone commanders included. It was an intrinsucal part of Gilead, no one could be trusted it was to keep all the populace of Gilead on their toes and in line. The threat of being exposed was always looming.

The eyes brought down commanders in the first series, which sobered Fred quickly.

now there is no mention of eyes, not one commander is careful of what they say to another.

That's what I thought Moobaa - the Eyes. The Washington commander would not shove his arse in Fred's face just in case Fred was an Eye. Or if he was an Eye and is testing Fred out for Gender Traitor. No one can trust anyone.

Nick is doing/has done what he needs to, to survive. I find it odd that the Swiss will not deal with him if he is a Gilead founder - surely that is the sort of HIgh-Ranking insider they'd need, to bring down Gilead? Or is he just a lowly, an Eye, a commander because he can't be anything else.

He always did have a lot of Power in the Waterford household tho. Fred did as he was told, by Nick.