It wasn’t Dante’s grave, unless you’re calling it that because he dug it. I was wondering why he bothered killing infirmary patient Cheryl, but he needed an excuse to dig the hole exactly where it had to be to connect to the network of tunnels. (I remember thinking, why is he digging a grave there; it didn’t seem to…

Beta wasn’t just wearing his loved one’s face; he was wearing his “Have a nice day!” smiley-face tee-shirt — the same one in the photo. For seven years. (Okay, maybe his loved one had a dresser-full of them, but I don’t think Beta was inclined to pack; I think he took it off the body.) So he’s been holding onto…

I’ve enjoyed “Anne with an ‘E’” but I can’t say I’ve loved it. There are far too many false notes. I don’t mean the plot liberties only; I mean the plot liberties that make me think, “The characters as I know them would not be so bloody stupid.”

I’m late to the party and perhaps this was noticed. Everyone refers to Billy Russo as “Billy” or “Russo” but Frank calls him “Bill.”

“Billy” is a diminutive, a name that characterizes the subject as childlike and needy, someone to be protected. But Frank calls him “Bill,” the name for a man, an equal, someone to be…

I know I’m late to the party with this. What I found moving about this episode was Carol’s response to Lydia’s death wish. As Lydia explained to Carol, Lydia’s mother had called her weak, and she thought her mother was right.

How many times must Carol have heard similar condemnations from her (gone, but not mourned) hus…

“You hurt my son.”

I’m not defending Serena in any way but I could see her arguing that she did it to protect June. I seem to recall Serena telling June that she had only one year in which to get pregnant, after which she could be considered barren and sent to the Colonies — and, as Fred wasn’t likely to father a child, it was in June’s…

Background: The book that Joseph Lawrence is reading aloud is “Treasure Island.” He’s on Chapter 32 - depending on the edition, he’s more than 100 pages in already.

I’m thinking that all of the children were born prior to Gilead’s creation and therefore literally ‘taken,’ except for the one infant. Given also that its ‘parents’ were killed, that one might be problematic from a diplomatic standpoint.

Let’s assume that the plot precedes with no futher hitches. The handmaids and Marthas manage to wrangle all of the children (some of which, like Alma’s, are too young to remember any other home) successfully. The plane is loaded, with all expected passengers on board, takes off with no suspicions, and lands safely in…

I was strongly reminded of Jane’s death in BrBa. Walt didn’t intentionally cause it but he had the opportunity to stop it and chose not to. It was an ugly moment with long-lasting repercussions and death toll that revealed dark truths about Walt that echoed until the end of the series.
Jane was an addict, but young and…

Has June killed anyone before (apart from the particicutions)? She opened this episode by telling Mrs. Lawrence “You don’t want to be a murderer.”

I like the poetic justice of June taking down Cmdr Winslow with a pen as her weapon.

I’ll say one thing for Cmdr Lawrence ... when June asked him to wait and he said he would, I doubted that. When it appeared that she had sat alongside the body until the housekeeping staff showed up the next morning, I was sure he would be gone. But he had waited, apparently for hours. He kept his word.

It was also brave of Rita to risk being seen as questioning Serena’s judgment — and I think Serena understood and appreciated that bravery.

The phone did turn out to be the equivalent of Serena handing Fred a poisoned apple. I suppose that works better as an ‘Eve’ analogy than a ‘Snow White’ one. She wasn’t trying to get him to betray or leave Gilead (she took that upon herself). She just needed to lure Fred past the border. Silly Fred, patting himself on…

Serena finally set her own agenda. Good. I think she had accepted that Nichole would not be hers but both Serena and Fred were using Nichole’s return as a McGuffin to get what they wanted. Serena was better at that than Fred was. (And I suspect that Chekhov’s phone had been used, more than once.)

Morning-after pills are a form of birth control and would be the only medication that would help June immediately, given the circumstances. Joseph and June would know that. Can I say for sure that they were morning-after pills? No. But I think that both Joseph and June would know that one month of preventive birth…

Yes, but it wasn’t infected until Natalie pounded Janine’s eye socket with a can of food. It wasn’t healing well. My take was that Lydia used that as an excuse to do a small kindness for Janine -- and now, Winslow was calling Lydia out on it.

This was the first episode in some time that I thought worth a rewatch — and I realized that Gilead really is a dick-wagging contest. A commander who cannot (not just ‘will not’) perform the ceremony is no more than chum to his rivals (along with the rest of the household).
Fred: “There are mechanisms in place to…