Unless they are high school or middle school girls …

Distinguished mudflap is the most-beautiful use of the English language I've heard all day.

I always assumed that the J stood for some kind of violation related to Jezebels, but that Offred couldn't have known it yet at the beginning of the book.

Ok phew! I was like, "how could I not have noticed that?!" But several people on here were insisting and I doubted my recollection.

Interesting. I missed that.

I could be misremembering or conflating two scenes, but I thought she said something to Luke about picking up Hannah and putting her to bed that night when he got home.

I took it as happening at the end of his first day post-takeover, the evening of the day when SJ had been hanging her blue dresses up in her wardrobe for the first time.

The Gilead handmaid's system's main purpose is very clearly oppression and control. That was the gest of my original comment on this page. My complaint is that I think the show cannot and should not expect us to infer the reasons why it is apparently still more successful than at least one other nation at impregnating…

My point is not that I assume Gilead's reproductive methods will be exported along with the sex slaves. My point is that it makes no sense for Gilead to have a much, much higher success rate than Mexico or anywhere else when they are using impregnation methods so backward that they almost seem designed to fail. The…

Eyeroll. Insulting me hardly seems warranted here …

Then why do you seem to be presenting your comments as if we are all overreacting and this Mexico deal makes good sense?

Red tags means handmaids. It refers to the cattle tags they have in their ears.

We don't know precisely how long it's been, but we have a pretty good estimate. Offred has been a handmaiden for three to six years. And it was probably, what, a couple of years at most between the initial government takeover and her attempt at fleeing the country, possibly less. So less than a decade, for sure.

It doesn't really matter if the other nations want handmaid policies like Gilead's or not. They would still be engaging in human trafficking. This is slavery! It doesn't matter if you're a "nice" master or a mean one, you still buy and sell human beings.

I think it is important, crucial even, to the story that the commanders of Gilead are not just monsters, but craven ones who betray with their every action that while they claim they did all this to save the population, even the tiniest bit of scrutiny reveals that they are, in fact, not very much bothered about the…

Awwwww thanks! I think some shows really attract that element and MM was definitely one, as was Breaking Bad. Or maybe the site's overall readership has shifted and I've not noticed. Interesting idea.

If the other countries are not opposed to fertility treatments, then why do they have no babies and Gilead a roomful of them? The show is accidentally validating Gilead's methodology by being in such a rush to expand its world.

It's a pretty quick read, fwiw.

That doesn't necessarily mean she is Jewish though. I've been to many bar and bat mitzvahs and I'm not.

I did attend a wedding once where it sounded like the couple was negotiating a thresome with Jesus, so I shouldn't be surprised. And yet I am.