HANDMAIDS TALE S6 - thread 2 - time various but sun ch4 - TV PACE NO SPOILERS

[Blondeshavemorefun]

New thread for the last two EVER episodes as either going to be a lot of replies as last 2hrs will be amazing and all loose ends tied up

Including seeing Hannah whether new head or not

Or

Be totally crap and wonder why we have just spent the last 10hrs of our lives watching s6

Sadly does seem like they have run out of ideas even tho based on a book. ?

below is thread 1

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5323712-handmaids-tale-s6-starts-sat-3rd-may-ch4-9pm-tv-pace-no-spoilers?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

@BonjourMinou that was the DC trip.

Jingsmah I think people are holding off reading it until the end of the series?
Don't worry about it, accidents happen and I'm really looking forward to being able to talk about the Testaments (though I guess that will need a new thread in case people don't want the Testaments spoiled!)

I have read the Testaments but haven’t seen the post that has now been deleted.

There is a chance that the series will deviate from the book quite a lot. In Trueblood, Lafayette was a fairly major character throughout. In the books he was a very minor character who got killed off early.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up @BonjourMinou.

BTW, if anyone is confused about geography, here's a map of Gilead: https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Geography_of_Gilead

The storylines in general are centered in Boston but Gilead itself is vast. That said, it feels like along with DC, Boston is a major epicenter of high command activity within the regime.

I was thinking about how New York is never mentioned at all and neither is Philadelphia. They may have focused their coup strikes on Boston as a way to take out Harvard elites and devastated New York as a way to strike down "Sodom". I think I'll dig deeper into the original Handmaid's Tale book because I don't remember what Margaret Atwood said about those cities.

In the first series, Emily says that they obliterated St Patrick’s so they must have taken over New York. It’s a funny one though, June talks about Gilead being a return to “traditional values” - I can’t see New York being all that attractive to the Gilead Commanders, there’s not that much traditional about living and working in a high rise. Washington DC would make more sense as it is a far more low rise city (I lived there on and off as a child).

I’ve never been to Boston.

I don't know why for some reason I thought the states didn't exist anymore under Gilead.

I'm annoyed that the Commander's won't know they lost! Quite an easy death for them really and they'll have no idea!

Poor Lawrence 💔

I was thinking about how New York is never mentioned at all and neither is Philadelphia

New York was mentioned briefly in series 1 when the bloke from the Mexican delegation told June her husband was still alive. He said Luke was born in Nayak formerly New York state.

@JingsMahBucket The book has been out for a while, but not everyone has read it!

Sorry can't say as I'll get a kicking from the spoiler police, but really worth listening to rather than reading (or do both).

Re geography of Gilead, in a recent episode I think Tuello was looking at a map of Gilead and it was the whole US except for Alaska and Hawaii.

All you had to say was that it was an ensemble cast. That would have answered my question. You could also just have left out the dig about the spoiler police

Yep. How does anyone, ever just drive into an airfield.
not to mention the fact that she was Gilead’s Most Wanted

Re geography it makes no sense that mayday and other characters seem to be driving between the border and Boston area all the time
I just googled and it’s a 9 hour drive

I've only read The Handmaid's Tale and not The Testaments.

From the point of view of tv viewers, I'd say that the tv series has diverged so much from the original book that it might well be the same - in terms of the amount of divergence, I mean, for The Testaments. Ergo, the character may or may not be in the original novel of The Testaments.

It's been many years since I read the Handmaid's Tale, but my recollection is that Gilead as depicted in the book was led by white supremacists. The commanders in the tv series are all white, I think, but they haven't carried out all the horrors described in the book.

There was a Black commander in one of the earlier series.

Thank you. I didn't remember that. There were certainly none in the book.

Book Spoiler in link below.

[ETA This explains what happened to black people in the book.]

https://academic.oup.com/ccc/article-abstract/11/1/206/4953985?login=false

That’s really interesting @WearyAuldWumman.

I must go and read the book again.

i found the African-American commander!
the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Commander_Horace

Can someone explain to me, as I must have missed it, how did Gilead come about? How did all the Comanders gain power and how did they overthrow the US government? Who fought for them?

I don't remember seeing it in the TV series.

From memory, there isn’t that much explanation - but I found this on THT fandom page:

In the series, Commander Waterford states in a flashback that there were three coordinated attacks against the US government when Gilead took over, sequentially: "Congress first, then the White House, then the [Supreme] Court". In the novel, there was one large attack against a joint session of both Houses of Congress being addressed by the President at the time

https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale_(TV_series)#Differences_from_the_Novel_&_Film

Thank you. So i didn't actually miss it.

Plus people who want to watch the testaments might not be expecting to read about it on them here

like on an EASTENDERS thread then people say abc dies /kill’s someone /gets married etc in corrie

you would be pissed off as had been avoiding the Corrie thread

this is the same

Blimey.

?

I was surprised to see so many new posts and most of them are discussions about spoilers 😂