It could be rather interesting if he took the traditional women-on-the-homefront role - giving speeches, raising money, putting together care packages.

Absolutely. Which is fairly believable, I think.

Okay? I didn't say it was impossible that they are in an encampment situation, I just think it's equally possible they have been resettled if the only reason you think they haven't is the economic situation.

Given what we've seen of the world outside of Gilead, I think there's a 4th possibility - that they have been resettled, but the economy is so dire everywhere that Canada is experiencing shortages. It seems like whatever pollution crisis caused the birth rate to plummet possibly also caused agricultural problems…

I buy it. In an emergency situation when your adrenal system has short circuited all your higher brain functions, people can get very fixated on a particular course of action. If Luke's Flight/Fight/Freeze system was screaming at him to just go home, it would take a lot to override it.

Right, you can't really have it both ways as a show. If you're going to leave a lot of stuff undefined to let the viewer fill it in, you have to commit to it. Otherwise (and I feel terrible invoking this show again) you end up in a LOST area where the answers are disappointing, or promised and undelivered, or make no…

"This all reeks of YA fiction and my fears of making Offred into Katniss are slowly coming to life, I'm afraid"

Agreed on the escaped Handmaid - it's not that it's impossible for someone to have that level of traumatic reaction to the Red Center, but it's certainly unusual enough that a bit of an explanation would have been warranted.

Meanwhile, the show suggests that the Guardians went from town to town, rounding up all the fertile women, and it's like… why?

I think there was more than one person left on the banks, but I couldn't quite see who or how many.

Phew, other comments appeared so I'm not first.

There is an actress listed on their IMDb as an econowife. So maybe coming up?

As far as I recall from the book, they can't read or write at all - that's why Offred gets super excited about an embroidered pillow cushion she has with a word on it (Faith) and the writing in the closet. They aren't allowed to read the Bible, and at least once Offred says (in her internal narration) that she thinks…

Sure, I'm not saying they should include the white separatism. But there are other kinds of racial hierarchies. Consider the Caribbean or New Orleans during slavery, when people were slotted into multiple categories based on their percentage of whiteness (quadroon, octoroon) and the more white groups had more…

I agree that part makes far less sense.

The voiceover clearly says "priest, doctor, gay man".

Okay buddy.

oranges and rape

They might be conflating it with the Book Wall where Offred thinks about what J might stand for because she's pretty sure the symbol for Jewish is different. Or there's something buried later in the episode - I didn't rewatch the whole thing. Too nice out today.

And if they are sending a lot of people to the Colonies, they've got a shitton of free labor.