Expanding on the Martha's world would be an interesting plot line for their second season. (Assuming they go through the entire book in this first season.)

This podcast I'm listening to right now is theorizing that all of those pictures are a code to the Wives that this doctor is fertile. It's an interesting possibility.

I love Fred Clark! It's always nice to hear of him in the wild.

That's right, I always forget that.

At least June mentally rallied. It's rough viewing already without our narrator losing her mind.

We see a couple during Janine's childbirth, but they're extras without lines.

I have to assume he died. Divorce is not allowed, and if he was purged they wouldn't leave his picture on the wall. They probably wouldn't even leave his wife untouched - she would be purged with him or remarried to someone else.

Take that aside, I think it would make it more current. TV evangelists were a huge cultural touch point in the 80s, but not so much today.

I really enjoyed that scene for the exact things you've outlined. And it reminds me of a bit of the books that we haven't seen yet - Serena Joy letting them watch television in the study as they wait for the Commander on Ceremony night. In the book it was used mostly for exposition and world building, but I think it…

I think describing the final scene as a power strut or triumphant is overstating it a bit. Offred looked a lot like I do on the first really nice day in spring, when it's finally not snowing, raining, or constantly dark. I have literally gazed around at the tree buds with a goofy smile as she did.

IVF was still pretty new when the book was written, which is probably the actual reason it's not an aspect of Gilead. But I think you can justify it within the universe - it wouldn't have allowed them to continue insisting that no men were infertile.

A couple of small bits I remember from the book - Offred comments on both the spiked juice at the birth, and the particicution, as needed relief valves for the Handmaids.

Maybe there's some random line in the bible about beating someone's feet if they run away? The Gildeans do so love to be poetic.

Which, of course, is comically missing the explicit point the Bible makes - Onan's sin is not impregnating his dead brother's wife. How or why he doesn't get her pregnant is irrelevant. Just like Sodom was destroyed for their violations of hospitality, not anything to do with buttsex.

Touche

Maybe the were surprised that she disclosed to Offred?

I didn't get the impression that they were surprised that she had a wife in the time before. She's being punished for being in a current illicit relationship with the Martha, not for having been married to a woman before Gilead.

All of the "gender traitor" parts of Ofglen's character are new to the show, in the book she is only in the resistance. Book!Ofglen commits suicide when she sees the Eyes van coming to get her, so she won't betray the resistance.

And, bonus pretzel, a convenient rhetorical way to tell Western women to shut up.

I thought at one point they said the Aunts were all named after household products, like toiletries and cleaners. I always assumed Lydia was named after Lydia Pinkham's, although that's a throwback even from the 80s.