Just finished the TV series and I have thoughts
I've never been on this subreddit before so I didn't know what flair to use and I don't know if this topic has been discussed because but I just wanted to say it and complain about the writing of the TV show.
I was so confused as to if I missed something with the imprinted chips with information in Daisy specifically as she was baby Nicole supposed to be transferred to the spy/Aunt Lydia in the TV show but it turns out that Mayday just sent a random teenager with no training into Gilead to "be a sponge" and report back information. A highly organised spy organisation would not do that as they already have loads of agents in Gilead to do that exact thing. And if they wanted someone to infiltrate as a Pearl Girl to gather information on elite schools that other Gilead-allocated categories of people cannot access, there is no way they would exploit a young girl to do that (which Gilead is already doing to a much great extent so why would they do the same thing at any extent?) - they could have trained a teenager who actually wanted to do it and not just send in a traumatised orphan. It doesn't make any sense because sending in someone they have no characeristic information on except that Gilead killed her parents and the country wants her back holds huge risks for her messing up their organisation. They had no personal checks on whether she could realistically do it, nothing. And she couldn't - she messed up and pretended that she was a victim of Dr Grove which was reckless as it could have exposed her cover if they found out she was lying. Spies that do impulsive stuff that are liabilities and I don't understand the logic the tv writers thinking that the people watching won't notice that this key plot point doesn't make any sense.
The fact that Daisy wasn't Nicole because she was the same age as Agnes also took away from the sister plot in the books.
And the conversation between Aunt Lydia and Vidala didn't make sense to me either. Her asking why she never liked her just felt like there was not enough build-up and that whole interaction just felt contrived to me. And Aunt Lydia saying, "One thing I can say about her is that she never gave up and neither will we" doesn't make sense either. Why would she want June's daughter to think well of her?
I was a bit disappointed with the lack of mentioning of Agnes' first adoptive mother because she had such a connection with her in the book. It was one of the few things about that novel that felt real to me (the Handmaid's Tale felt totally real but its sequel, not so much), like the prayers she taught her that Agnes was confused about. You could only see the resentment Agnes had for Paula in the TV show, not the love and grief she had for her first adoptive mother. It could have added a layer beneath the way Agnes interacts with the Gilead world as there is already something that has cracked the supposed normality that the its government is trying to reinforce. In the TV show, Agnes' curiousity about the outside world when she showed Daisy what she collected, could have also been deepened.
I don't understand why Agnes kissed Becka back. Also didn't make any sense because she was in love with Garth which we saw in throughout the series and the scene just before that when she said that it was so difficult for her to ask him to marry Becka so her friend wouldn't be a fallen woman. On top of that, Gilead's extremist Christian teachings would have hammered into Agnes that homosexuality is a sin so even though all of them had broken Gilead rules, it doesn't make sense for her to have no reaction to her friend trying to kiss her and even kissing her friend back when she supposedly doesn't have any feelings for her and has feelings for Garth? Maybe I'm just being dumb with this specific paragraph but I don't understand.
That conversation with Daisy and Agnes on the stairs about June didn't make much sense either. Why would you say that sort of thing in Gilead in such a public place on the staircases of the school where anyone could hear you? Other times in the show, the girl group went to the bathroom or places like that to discuss topics that they could get in trouble for.
Yeah, this stuff kind of ruined it for me...