It’s particularly appropriate because the happy ending was so important to Forster.

I think June went to apologize to Fred because she needs someone to winkle small mercies out of, and he took away Serena, so she’d better start scraping and kowtowing for his favor again.

The crack about knitting got under my skin a little. It’s fine in isolation, but I’m sick of women characters in patriarchal settings showing they have a brain by hating knitting or sewing (see Arya in the first episode of Game of Thrones). It starts to seem like the writers buy into the idea that everything “girly”…

I love durian and wish it were easier to get where I live. Black walnuts, which grow in my yard, are disgusting though. My taste in divisive foods is geographically inconvenient.

My guess is that he will keep using his feet but will not need to sit on the table to reach when his legs are longer, but he may find that something else works better for him.

If the restaurant is serving food in communal dishes, they should be cleaning them as needed, and hands are absolutely filthy anyway. I’m not too impressed with needlessly restricting disabled people’s access to only some of the food you serve.

This is how this kid eats. Either he can eat with his (just washed! probably cleaner than many hands! hands are super gross and not everyone washes them before eating) feet or he can never eat in restaurants ever in his life. The alternative to accommodating people with disabilities is banishing us to the margins of…

Right? It felt like they were setting up a huge status quo change for the next season and then they pulled the rug out and restarted the chase.

In the book we’re told that she’s been given to a Gilead-approved family. Perhaps the show is intentionally leaving things more ambiguous, but with the regime’s focus on making children I’d be surprised if they’re squandering seized children in boarding schools. With such a shortage of children, there must be some…

I like that we get both. Aunt Lydia is a true believer. Fred strikes me as not bright enough to notice he’s driven entirely by self-interest.

The hypocrisy is the point. A system like this doesn’t get cooked up entirely out of sincere belief in its supposed rules.

I think from Serena’s perspective, June should be grateful she hasn’t been executed. Here’s a woman whose many crimes could condemn her to death, but because she’s fertile she gets to live in a beautiful house and hang out with Serena Joy. June is gross and dangerous and immoral, and Serena Joy has to put up with her…

Why would Hannah become a handmaid? Being a handmaid is a punishment, and stolen children are a perk for Gilead’s most powerful. Hannah’s future is probably more like Eden’s.

Not to make you feel worse, but I recognized him last season in silhouette behind the curtain and screamed “Donnie Hendrix!” at my TV before he started talking. On second thought, not recognizing him is much more reasonable and less alarming.

Do they insinuate that? Women’s abdomens aren’t all about making babies. That the shooting caused the infertility didn’t occur to me when I watched the episode. I can see why people thought of it, since we’re primed to think about women’s fertility, but I’m not convinced it was intended.

My understanding (and this may have been made explicit in the book; I don’t remember) was that in Gilead infertility is always officially blamed on the woman. Sperm donors aren’t biblical enough and threaten the idea that powerful men are all-powerful.

Political marriages among the elite don’t tell us much about what most people were doing. Here’s some information about marriage in Western Europe that covers the periods in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern

I hate when adults are cast as teenagers in statutory rape storylines. It really undermines the story.

When I watched Big Little Lies, I kept noticing that I dress like the Shailene Woodley character, so I guess my aesthetic is “traumatic past.”

They took Janine’s eye at the red center, before she was pregnant, if that’s who you’re thinking of. I gathered from the scene where June gets soup while her fellow rebellious handmaids get burned that pregnancy greatly limits the physical damage they’re willing to do.