I feel like I've heard a few people mention publicity stills of Samira Wiley that are clearly at Jezebel's.

She's our faithful AVClub reviewer, so yes, real name.

Solid point. I wasnt expecting so much intrigue so I suppose it passed right by me.

Ah, I had forgotten that part!

Concur

Odd.

I believe that quote was referring specifically to the question of having Gilead be all white, with (obviously) an all-white cast.

You might be thinking Brooklyn because they say Brookline, which sounds almost the same spoken out loud.

No, the main text of the book is contemporary to when it was written, with the flashbacks taking place in the then-present day of the mid-80s and the Handmaid portion being "20 minutes into the future" in the 90s. You might be thinking of the "Historical Notes" at the end. They are dated about 200 years in the future,…

Woah, I completely forgot the Aunts were allowed to read.

I think it's blindingly obvious that their system won't work. That isn't the same thing as it being obvious that they don't *care* if it works.

They do allow Jews to stay in the book if they convert. I believe there is either a TV news bit or a memory of Offred's of some converted Jews keeping all their Judaica under the floorboards or whatever, and getting found out.

Pinterest. No words required.

IMO you don't really need to worry about the book spoiling you because the show is tracking it so loosely that there's no way of knowing if the rest of the season will follow the plot to the end of the book.

I enjoyed Lost as long as I treated each season as a separate mini-series. The minute I tried to stitch them together I got cranky.

I don't think that kind of progression is uncommon, historically. The USSR is kind of the Ur Example, with early-era revolutionaries being purged as the government tightened its grip, but they're not alone.

Absolutely agreed. The "how does X work" stuff is just a fun way to while away time at a boring job. :)

Yeah, this kind of thing is why I wasn't super jazzed about a second season. I can just really see this going in a Lost direction where none of the internal logic is consistent from season to season, or even within seasons. That would be incredibly disappointing.

I was going to say Atwood probably simply wasn't aware of the demographics of the area, and then I saw she went to Harvard. So now I'm just perplexed.

Eh, I think that's enough inference to say I'm not confident the showrunners are thinking of it that way. And if they are, it is seriously subtle enough that I don't think the majority of viewers would pick up on it. (A substantial amount of the recaps, etc I come across accept the fertility issue wholeheartedly.)…