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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]And why did nick request the reassignment? That confused me. [/quote]

I think he asked for reassignment because he realized that he was putting Offred and himself into more danger by being in the house with her. He knows he doesn't have a prospect of getting her out again, he has a wife who's already looking for reasons to question him, Rita has seen their intimacy and has mixed feelings about Offred (either personally or because of her handmaid status), Waterford won't tolerate anything that gives credibility to Serena's claim that Offred's baby isn't his, any one of these people who make a report about their relationship that would lead to questions about the paternity of Offred's baby, which surely would not end well for Offred if Waterford and Serena Joy were to abandon the fiction that this is his baby.

I also think Nick is more connected/valued than we realized. It was pretty clear earlier in this episode and in others that the Gilead leadership is less and less pleased with Waterford, and I think Nick is privy to this. His "there's stuff I haven't told you about him" might have been to signal that Waterford's even more of a liability than they realize and that if they protect Offred, Nick will give them what they need to justify getting rid of him. Yes, a driver/Eye falling for a handmaid is not what the Gilead leadership wants, but it's been made pretty clear before that sometimes people get "dispensations" beyond what their class permits when it's convenient for the leadership's agenda.[/quote]

I think all of this but really, Nick made a probably fatal mistake by asking this and I read it as a moment of weakness and recklessness brought on by the horror of the night with his child bride. If he gets away with it, it will be because of the episode ending (trying not to spoiler).

I think this was a really great episode. So much of the show is about the abuse and resilience of humanity and human dignity. Even though the "humanizing" back stories for the commander and serena didn't work for me, I appreciate all of the perspectives they're showing us. It was excruciating but so intense watching June straddle the line with Serena and the other handmaids, where Serena wants to enforce the false idea that the handmaids can be both enslaved and humanized, but June and the situation keep making clear that that's impossible. The inclusion of slaves in a household in that way is such a bizarre and fascinating thread of human history and I think in this episode the show really delivered something valuable to that conversation. There are parallels to American slavery and domestic slavery abroad of course, but the story of the brunch place and how they all went there just underscores that the real crux of this situation is that some people decided to dehumanize others and achieved enough power to enforce it. Even if you strip away race and class as factors, that's what it comes down to in the end.

Also, all of Mike Pence's speeches about "orientation to authority" would be cheered in Gilead.

I remember feeling grateful that there wasn't as much squirming torture watching in this episode, so of course they hit me with the Commander in June's bedroom scene. They both deserve all the acting awards for that scene and it was honestly worse than watching the hands on the stove. I don't know if they were trying to gear us up for the ending or what but it's crazy that a TV show can make it so clear that our precious norms are so fragile. Reading about that episode on paper I would have said that the point was to humanize Serena and the Commander by making us sympathize with them and denounce the attempted silencing and violence against them before the fall of America, but all I could think watching the Commander in June's bedroom was that if the guy in the woods had aimed a little higher, maybe June would have her child and not be a slave. Very disturbing. 
[/quote]

I don't think Nick requesting a transfer had anything to do with trying to get out of his marriage or his guilt about bride, because if he gets transferred, she will be transferred with him. This does nothing to get him away from her or his station, he'll just end up as a driver/Eye in another house, or maybe in a different job at a similar station. But he'll still be under their control, and he will still be saddled with his child bride and the attendant expectations.

I also don't think anything in this episode was meant to humanize the Commander, I think if anything this episode (and others) showed the extent to which the Commander held Serena Joy under his thumb even when she viewed herself as free. He agreed to let her speak publicly, he couldn't let her do it anymore, he decided whether they would stay or go, etc. He was just as bad before the fall of America as after, there was just a more appealing gloss on it then.

I'm not sure I'd describe the episode as an attempt to humanize Serena Joy either as much as illustrate how she built her own prison without realizing it. She became an unwitting tool of the Sons of Jacob, believing they supported and valued her when really they were using her to advance their own agendas. Serena Joy wanted a return to "traditional" values and family structures, but she didn't want a world where she would be banned from writing her second book (and where women would no longer be allowed to read her first one), where she would be barred from having a voice or a brain or even from holding a pencil. She expected that in the rise of Gilead, she would have a role of meaning and influence (even if she didn't have an official position of power), but instead she's a doll in a blue dress who has no value in this new society other than to give it the veneer of civility, because she can't even produce a baby. When she tries to discuss politics with her husband and give her thoughts, he now dismisses her. No one cares what she thinks anymore. And she's enraged by it.

I suppose in a sense this humanizes her, that she ended up being a victim of the Sons of Jacob as well, but I don't think it's meant to make us sympathize with her politics or denouce those who spoke out against her, I think it's meant more to make a point about how people sometimes work against their own interests either because they don't think through (or are in denial about) the implications of their advocacy, or because they think that somehow they'll be the exception, without fully getting that people who want to subjugate others don't make exceptions.[/quote]

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