u/Weekly_Sir5202

I'm only talking about the show.

The Angel's Flight escape plan began after Eleanor led June to the basement where Lawrence stored boxes of "Red Center dossiers". They contained identities and locations of Handmaid's children. There was another very important meeting in that basement.

Kid's futures are chosen for them. Who should do the choosing? Should it be the State? June was one of many folks who made the escape decision, from the bartender, maids, marthas (especially Beth and Sienna), and handmaids down to a specific individual who loved each kid.

What is Angel's Flight without the flight, hopeless and cancelled. The truck plan was doomed from the start. Lawrence knew it. One of my favorite THT scenes is in one of my favorite episodes, s3ep11 "Liars". June met in the basement with the rebel leader marthas. Even after June passed their pressure test, two of them tried to hide their disappointment that the boss gave the plane knowledge to June. One of the leaders of the rebellion made that decision for the kids.

I'm cynical about rebel leader June manipulating undercover asset Daisy, but she has a war to win. She doesn't think, for instance, about a few temporarily traumatized Angel's Flight kids and she shouldn't. Daisy has become unreliable and could be captured. Her knowledge is valuable to both sides. On the dock, June is testing the asset. Is the possible reward still worth the risk? June has a plan. Rita and others know about it. Should June pull Daisy and use her information to further the plan with another asset?

The dock meeting is like the basement meeting. In the basement, the resistance leader martha tested and helped June. On the dock, resistance leader June tested and helped Daisy. It was dangerous to keep the honey truck on the dock after it dropped the escapees. June kept the truck waiting because, from before the meeting, she was hoping to be able to send Daisy back in.

As far as June not learning about the effect of Gilead on individuals or not understanding the consequences of her decisions, she has faced the future of Hannah returning but not being her daughter. On the dock she says,

"I might never get my daughter Hannah back, but I will die fighting so that she can experience freedom as a woman, as a human being."

Even after learning that Daisy is close to Hannah, June is still going to pull her out, "I'm not gonna risk another one. I'm not gonna let you die." She doesn't reverse her decision until Daisy defies her and says, "Its my turn now. I might fail. I might even die. But its my choice."

"They don't know they need saving." Before the meeting, Daisy only wanted to save Becka and herself. After the meeting, she knows she needs to save all the girls.

Something about the dock scene bothered me until this rewatch. Right before June returns to the boat, she turns to Daisy and puts her hand to her open mouth in an exaggerated manner. I couldn't figure it out ... until thinking about the exchange above, I finally noticed that immediately afterward Daisy mirrors the the open mouth gesture. Is it symbolically a sharing of the burden?

I first thought that June took a pill and it foreshadowed her death. I believe it is burden sharing, but it could still foreshadow her death. Jesus and his disciples shared bread at the Last Supper. Is this a last meeting of June and Daisy?

Showrunner Bruce Miller said that a season of TT costs more than $123m. And it shows. The world is immersive. I earlier posted about powerful scenes because they make a show great. TT is built from great writing, directing/editing, sets, costumes and especially casting and acting.

We're way past the season finale and I'm just tryna have me some fun. Its a little bit out-there but this is my reaction to negative finger pointing at actors and accusations of YA.

I barely know YA from the Say Hey (Kid, that is.) I bring up baseball great Willie Mays because he got that nickname as a stand-out rookie. Outgoing and talkative, he met lots of new folks. Mays was smiling "say hey" to everyone because he wanted to connect but couldn't remember so many new names. This bright side was true but there was another side.

The opposite, dark side was also true. Jackie Robinson was the first, 4 years earlier, but there were less than 20 "integrated" players when 19 year old Mays left high school in a Southern segregated black world to sign with the New York Giants and soon enter the hostile white baseball world.

I haven't read the books, but some negativity may be because show-Daisy is the opposite of book-Daisy, one of many opposites. She's a know-it-all, outgoing teenager who lovingly banters with her parents and is an equal partner with her boyfriend. She flows through congested city life on a skateboard. She is the opposite of the girls in Gilead, especially Agnes.

Lucy Halliday is doing a great job conveying the opposites. We believe that she is successfully pretending to be Gilead pious while secretly thinking of God as She. In an oppressive world, the teenage know-it-all is always just beneath the surface. When it shows through, we feel just enough fear before the coverup.

Lucy has to do a lot of heavy lifting. There are new viewers, many of them young. They see through Daisy's eyes. She also stands in for rational society. Her shocked reaction to the sawed off hand is just as true as her general bewilderment over rituals like the one that has the girls crying over spilled tea.

As the season progresses, Lucy develops Daisy's awakening to mirror what Chance is doing, but at the same time it is the opposite. Lucy comes from the outside in, while Chance moves inside out. Lucy reveals/hides/confides as the characters begin to align in the Valentine's Day crack pipe scene. It has secrets, tragedy, comedy and bonding in a brief scene.

Most everyone agrees that the excellent and unexpected "swim up" scene is great work from Rowan Blanchard. We could rave for a while about Rowan, but Lucy is also excellent in that scene. We feel it as she goes through being dismissive about the theft, consoling about barrenness, amazed by the brother confidence, pleased with nickname status, reluctantly choosing to return the confidence by explaining sex, being a good straight-man to setup Rowan's comic magic and then being dumbfounded by Shu's opposite from expected reaction. Lucy-Rowan interactions are probably future gold.

The Becka-Garth engagement party is the next chance to see Shu and Daisy together. This is one of those times that the show tells us something interesting without saying it out loud. When approaching the girls, Daisy is eying Shu, concerned about her follow-up to "swim up." Shu maintains her confident manner and then turns her body directly to face Daisy when she shares the "mediocre flow" knowledge, as though with a fellow holder of secrets, like the one her sources have confirmed about "swim up."

Some obvious stuff leading to a question.

All the girls are religiously programed to be wives and materially baited with future benefits at the top of society. Even so, at some level, there is conflict caused by the dread of being forever tied to an older stranger.

They are awakening to the adult, pervasive, Gilead conflict of wanting to be free of its restaints while simultaneously wanting to cling to its core religious values.

All the girls carry the general religion/freedom conflict and the wifely precious-flower/prized-pig conflict. Becka's extra burden of her personal Agnes/marriage conflict makes her willingly become an outsider, a sarcastic teenager, "whatever ... its in God's hands now." She often floats just outside the ring of core girls. She doesn't care anymore. She is so careless that she gets drunk on the biggest stage.

The next conflict brings her down to earth hard. It begins with rage, shock and humiliation.

At school, the mourning after the accusation, within the space of a few minutes, Becka goes from near-violent rage against Daisy, to the shock of discovering her father's betrayal and then to sobbing humiliation in front of her friends in the prayer group, her only friends, the friends that she loves and that her father hurt.

Becka was not molested by her father, but if she had not felt the conflict of hating/loving the molester/father, would she have killed him? Would her mind have lost its balance and escaped into religious vengeance?

After being led by Agnes into a perilous marriage, locking the door and leaning against it with head slightly bowed, Garth is separated by that door from Becka.

Which one is more frightened of the other?

Some obvious stuff leading to a question.

All the girls are religiously programed to be wives and materially baited with future benefits at the top of society. Even so, at some level, there is conflict caused by the dread of being forever tied to an older stranger.

They are awakening to the adult, pervasive, Gilead conflict of wanting to be free of its restaints while simultaneously wanting to cling to its core religious values.

All the girls carry the general religion/freedom conflict and the wifely precious-flower/prized-pig conflict. Becka's extra burden of her personal Agnes/marriage conflict makes her willingly become an outsider, a sarcastic teenager, "whatever ... its in God's hands now." She often floats just outside the ring of core girls. She doesn't care anymore. She is so careless that she gets drunk on the biggest stage.

The next conflict brings her down to earth hard. It begins with rage, shock and humiliation.

At school, the mourning after the accusation, within the space of a few minutes, Becka goes from near-violent rage against Daisy, to the shock of discovering her father's betrayal and then to sobbing humiliation in front of her friends in the prayer group, her only friends, the friends that she loves and that her father hurt.

Becka was not molested by her father, but if she had not felt the conflict of hating/loving the molester/father, would she have killed him? Would her mind have lost its balance and escaped into religious vengeance?

After being led by Agnes into a perilous marriage, locking the door and leaning against it with head slightly bowed, Garth is separated by that door from Becka.

Which one is more frightened of the other?

There are so many powerful moments in this show. Lydia's enlightenment, Agnes's empowerment, the kiss and our last look at Rebecca are among many, but I can't go on forever so I'll talk about those.

About Rebecca, Lydia pleads for help "we can't let that happen" and Judd tells her "there is no we anymore." She is stunned. It is such a sharp change, lights blast the wall behind her and a closing door frames her, off-center, in a tight box.

Agnes begins to understand the weight and responsibility of leadership. "Listen, you have so much to look foward to right now. Think about your engagement. You're gonna live a great life, Hulda. I believe that."

The kiss is a bell ringing, a turning point, a leaving-the-fold act. They're in a private room but still, they know that they could be hung for it. The kiss is intellectually, emotionally and literally the intersection of the characters. They both understand that it's a fleeting moment like the one that they discussed when Agnes told Rebecca about being in love with Garth, "at least you feel this way once, right? No matter what, that's a blessing." That was Rebecca, already being there, understanding, already an outsider. Now Agnes is there with her.

The last Rebecca scene haunts me. She is delivered to the bed at her home, doped up. She rolls toward the door, and that face, you could read anything into that face, and you're trying to read it, but the darkness wipes across it. Ok, so I've watched it a couple times. Its impressive. As she rolls over, her right hand comes across her lower torso as if for protection but at the same time it appears to be reaching out. It is storytelling, cliffhanger magic.

I think this is a great show with excellent - everything: writing, directing, design and especially casting and acting. My favorite genres are scifi and detective with female actors so I'm in hog heaven here. The required darkness of THMT reduced the size of the audience. Hopefully this show will bring in new viewers. On with the theories:

June is lying, or rather, she is telling a story, Melanie's story, the Harry Potter story. After "you were theirs" and subtle right and left side glances, June's no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point demeanor is replaced with an expressive sales mode. Afterward, Daisy says, "just because you say it with conviction doesn't make it not bullshit." This bs detector impresses June and she can't hide a quick smile. If Daisy knew more US history she'd know, like us, that the toddler timeline doesn't work.

Traumatic memory loss does work. When Rita tells Daisy about the freight plane to Colombia, Daisy says, "they're the ones who should have to hide, loaded up like freight on a plane." That's a clue to her origin. June has been monitoring the Angel's Flight kids, especially girls. She has a Pearl Girl plan. Rita knows about it. Trauma has suppressed Daisy's early memories, but her memory of life with May Day agents is important to both sides. For Gilead, Daisy is a Night of Tears kid, but if her parents really are dead, a public return is less important than a private interrogation.

When Daisy is learning the Commanders faces, we learn that a Commander named Weston "has racked up a couple of restraining orders for domestic violence." Was the violence aimed at the same woman twice or two different women? I don't know which is worse, but it does get worse, as we briefly see Rita struggling to hide a dark, emotional reaction when she sees Weston's picture.

Maybe the actor playing Weston, Reed Diamond, channels his detective role on "Homicide: Life on the Street" to present a smiling mask. His reactions in the "I was one of the ones he hurt" scene are masterfully revealing. He started very concerned, but when Agnes moves to the chair close to him, he physically recoils, regains his composure, to be stunned with the news that his untouched virgin fiancee has been, as Paula put it when describing Rebecca, sullied. When that realization hits, he has not even the tiniest empathy for this "hurt" girl. He looks away, down at his crotch actually, and then gets away to the window. How will he get out of this - the wheels are spinning, he massages his ring finger and decides to silence the girl by helping her friend.

First though, he asked if her parents knew, because that would require extra maneuvering. Agnes's father could cause problems with the Council, and the mother, well this leads into an out-there theory.

At the suitor's visit, Paula is furious that Agnes mentions Weston's dead wife. That night she comes into the house late and tells Rosa that a brisk walk clears the head. Its strange that she is explaining her behavior to a Martha. Then she frightens Agnes by appearing from a shadow, to say that the wedding is still on - because Weston believes "it's no fun breaking in a horse that's already docile."

What? A Gilead Commander's wife comes home alone, late, in the dark, from a neighborhood walk, and knows what Weston is thinking.

The next day or so, after Agnes's confession/plea for help and its clear that Weston has pulled out, Paula has a manic episode. Its way too much, unless ... she's having an affair with him and was counting on Mother-in-Law status as an acceptable reason to see him.

Edit: I'm new and pulled the rookie mistake of allowing the site to give me a username. Oh well, at least I'm not alone and some names are worse than mine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddithelp/comments/150cpna/how_do_i_change_my_reddit_name/