Agreed — this one had me start to finish. I dug all three acts: the chase, the mystical Lebowskitten, and the forward momentum in the Emmit/Sy/Varga storyline.

Well, she did say she's been popping a lot of Xanax when we saw her at the cemetery…

Agreed. The fact that it ended in the EXACT same spot as the last episode was pretty frustrating. If they had condensed the Laura backstory enough to follow it up with some sort of plot advancement, maybe it wouldn't feel so much like filler. I did like chunks of the episode (Betty Gilpin = the best), but the lack of…

It seems like a power thing to me. Because she's resistant to the changes he's trying to implement, anything she does that doesn't line up with his set of priorities is taken as a challenge to his authority.

Every day (in the warm months), I pass a couple of guys selling fruit out of the back of their van in my neighborhood. EVERY TIME, the theme song I associate with them pops into my head: it's "Fruitvan," a variation of "Spoonman." ("Fruitvaaaaan, selling fruit out of your van. Taaastyyyyyy, pineapples and…

Get a grip on the concept of compassion. Actually a beneficial trait, evolutionarily speaking. Try it out, if you get a chance.

…or women living in the age of Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/201…

Exactly. The part of this episode that made me react emotionally the most (including the gut-punching van scene) was when they started firing on protesters, because that's a nightmare that is already happening (Venezuela, anyone?), and I can totally see the string of events that could lead to this in the US, and that…

The story's pretty intense, but Atwood's stated several times that every bit of religious and social oppression she depicted in the novel has happened in some form in real life, throughout history. So I wouldn't say it's an anti-religion hatefest so much as a "greatest hits from humanity's history of oppression."

agreed — there was a picture in the room in 1988 that led into the start of the 2010 scene, like we're walking through the lookingglass from one case of tragically mistaken identity to another…