Season 5: Ep 1 A+ Ep 2 A+ Ep 3 B Ep 4 A Ep 5 C-

This piece contains potential spoilers for Season 5 Episode 5, "Fairytale". A very disappointing episode, the twist with the Wheelers rescues it somewhat.

JUNE'S FUGUE

It had not been a therapy session, I swear. 'Therapy' is something way, way too close to what Moira says I need. It's why, in the main, Moira has been so disappointing. Maybe not Moira the person, but Moira the character in this Tale. She is now NOT the same person I knew in the before times - she was the one who'd disapproved of Luke. She was the one who in the Red Centre had told us to fight. She'd been the one to escape not only the Red Centre, but fucking Jezebels! She was my hero.

She did it on her own. What happened to THAT Moira.

No matter. In the darkness of my limited mind here, I'm trying to claim that I had not been in therapy, that I'd been stronger than that. So, in my non-therapy session, the doctor had told me about triggers. Ha! I could tell her about TRIGGERS! Me, I was the queen of triggers. Me, the hero of Angel's Flight, how do I explain to people that not only am I not tall, but I spend most of my time as a space-case.

Nick once told me he'd caught me in the Waterford kitchen, burning those postcards. Those cards from women trapped in Gilead, there I was at the sink burning them. Completely oblivious.

I had to take his word for it, because I never saw them again. Upon Nick's return from Canada - where he'd accompanied the Waterfords - he told me. When he told me that those postcards had made it to Canada, and had blown up Waterford's plans…. when he told me he'd met Luke in Toronto…. only then that's when that fugue had passed.

Ok, I'd been triggered. I was, as a result, going to be a good girl. For Aunt Lydia, who kept telling me that Offred, she was good. It was June Osborne she was bad. That's what the therapist had covered in that sole encounter I'd had with her.

But it was not therapy.

Okay. Where am I?

I'm serious, this must be what it is like to be in a fugue. Fuck, it's dark. My eyes don't work.

Not a 'dissociative-fugue', the woman had covered that. I have little memory loss, I do know who I am, I'm just not sure where I am. Or who I'm with.

I assume I'm with Luke, my husband. Things have been great between us lately. I genuinely feel that he 'gets' me. When he said that he would not promise that he wouldn't kill Serena Joy Waterford, I believed him - he was not toadying to either me or my obsessions. Yet, I cannot feel his warmth.

Luke had come with me. More properly, I had gone with him. There had been the call from Lily, down at the Mayday camp at the border. An isolated land-border between Quebec and Gilead (mainly no man's land). Not the water borders that Ontario has with the old US of A.

The fugue? Obviously because of being chased in the woods. Yup that'll do it. It messes with you. Okay, maybe not 'you', it messes with me. I'd lost Hannah like this. I killed Fred like this.

We'd been called to the border by Lily, because one of the runner-Guardians, he was this time not going to come as far north as the border - yet he said he had info on 'the Plums', meaning the girls at the Wives Academies in Gilead. 'Plums' because the girls wore purple, girls as young as 12. Girls Hannah's age.

God, I get wordy when I'm like this. I guess absent other stimulus, words are all I have. Indeed, it had once been my life. Me, I could spot a typo or a grammatical mistake from a mile away. Do you know how hard it is to bang out 2,000 words flawlessly? Try it sometime.

WHY THE FUGUE?

My last memory? Dashing to the border with Luke, trucks with their lights and men with guns chasing us. Our runner, Guardian Jaeden, had just triggered a landmine. Blown off his right foot. Alerted patrolling Guardians, the unfriendly kind. The ones we're constantly told are never this far north in the disputed zone.

You could see the border obelisks up ahead, the Guardian's truck's headlights illuminated them, a pair of them - if we could just make it another 100 yards, the pursuers would not dare chase us north and drag us back. Would they? Run, Luke, run, don't look back!

Me, I kept thinking of seven years ago, Hannah dragged from my arms by other Guardians. Me, shipped off to rape-school. To service Gilead. To service Fred fucking Waterford. To tear myself apart because of Hannah. The damage of all of that had not become apparent until I'd made it to Canada - without Hannah, I might add.

So it was, that one call from Lily down at the border, there I was like a fool risking everything by venturing south on a fool's errand. One which Luke was now infected.

WHY IT WAS STUPID

Why was it stupid, when I could have pursued other, more interesting narratives?

It was stupid because it had not served the plot, the plot written since I killed Fred Waterford - killed him in woods much like the ones I was, apparently, now in. Or was, I don't know.

What had Luke and I done in Gilead? With Guardian Jaeden? We'd gone bowling! No I am not making that up. Luke and Jaeden got all competitive, forgetting where we were, forgetting the warning which up until then Jaeden had been giving us. I mean, caution was the whole reason for us to spend extra time… in a bowling alley!

Did Guardian Jaeden just need the company?

Then Luke. I must have dreamed it, because I'm his wife, and I'd never before seen him at a keyboard, much less serenading me. In a bowling alley. In Gilead. Okay, okay, its disputed area, but still.

I'd not known that fugue-states could be so cheesy.

SERENA JOY

Hey, don't ask me how I know the next stuff. Me, I'm the one in the fugue state.

Mark Tuello had asked, in our hearing, "who is Ezra Shaw?" Apparently Luke had met the guy, at the now closed Gilead Information Centre. Luke had said that Ezra Shaw had been Serena's 'Canadian body-man', although he was a Guardian from Gilead.

Me, I'm now unsure whose side Ezra Shaw had been on. By that, I don't mean that Shaw was on the side of sweetness and light. He was so, so Gilead. When my gunfire - ha, 'gunfire' in Canada which had gone uninvestigated! - when it had scared Serena from the Information Centre, it had been Ezra Shaw who had spirited her away.

Wouldn't it be rich to imagine something. That's for below. Don't read it if you hate spoilers.

Okay, I'm now up to 1,249 words and have to focus. It's not just Serena Joy, it's Joseph and High Commander Putnam. It is flashbacks about the 1st Offred, about Serena and Mrs. Putnam discussing if they were going to go for the Handmaid Program. They'd been shopping for grown, captured children. Jesus, those flashbacks seemed so random.

Canada has Gilead sympathizers. They're drawn from the ranks of the Truck Convoy folks, those anti-immigration, anti-refuge people who had once shut down Ottawa, on the street right outside Canada's Parliament, right outside the Prime Minister's Office. Those racist 'nationalists' we Americans had always been told were only a problem for elections in the United States.

Nope. They're alive and well in Canada. (I was about to say, 'here in Canada', but I am still unclear which side of those border obelisks I am.)

Okay, on to what is rich about Serena Joy.

She's trapped by the Wheelers, a couple who own an estate near Toronto, who I don't know why I'm even aware of them. Ezra Shaw, he had something to do with trapping Serena Joy there. Luke said he was a real piece of work. The quiet type, silent but deadly.

Serena had been released by Gilead to open an Information Centre in Toronto, as part of a charm offensive. Why they didn't just induce birth for her, right there in Gilead, I'll never know. Take the baby like they did mine, then force her into rape-training with Aunt Lydia. Easy peasy.

Yet Gilead, not otherwise known for international intrigue, releases her to Canada, into Ryan Wheeler's care - as well as his loopy, womb-starved wifey. Oooops, Wifey. Can't forget the capital 'W', me, I'm the proofreader.

WHO WE'VE NOT HEARD FROM

Okay, time for me to move on, save a bit for the next chapter - if there is one. I'm still quite unconscious.

No one speaks of Emily any more. Did she just fall off the face of the earth? We've not even heard of any unaccounted-for explosions deep in Gilead's heart.

Given that I know stuff about Serena Joy, and the Wheeler's, about Joseph Lawrence and High Commander Putnam, why do I know nothing further about Nick and his Wife, Rose?

Why do I know nothing about Mrs. Keyes? Is she even alive? I know a bit about Janine, about how she's finally, yes crazy Janine - she's finally getting into Aunt Lydia's head. Is that it? At least I know that Janine is still with us, not as crazy as before - but people grow.

Esther Keyes? Are people suddenly ignoring her because she had the temerity to poison a lead character? You know what? Esther had been right! Janine had been wrong! Consider this, which of them had been more like me? That would be Esther. She's even shorter than me. I still don't even know if she's alive.

What's with Commander Lawrence's New Bethlehem? To me it sounds like something he would do. Joseph is actually one of the few Commanders who seems to want to make Gilead work. Be sustainable - by keeping the borders open to trade, and providing a vehicle where foreign workers can contribute.

How did High Commander Putnam react to that? With a stunning reversal of Commander Mackenzie's proclamation - one that had sent Serena Joy to Canada to aid in a new Glasnost and Perestroika, Gilead-style.

A major plot point introduced in one, is withdrawn in another. At least Serena Joy is now confined to her upstairs bedroom like I'd been, being medicated by none other than Ryan Wheeler himself. You know what, Serena Joy would have made one hell of a Handmaid - she knows how to kowtow. I mean, she should - she lorded it over me enough.

What else? Two hundred and fifty words to go. Can't leave the fugue just yet.

Serena tried all the dodges. Asked - quite politely, I might add - to be included in restructuring the Information Centres, into Fertility Centres. Denied. Asked for a cellphone. Denied.

Ok, just before I get to my big reveal - pure speculation on my part - please do not read if you do not want to know. I mean it, don't read ahead.

Before I get to that, lest your eye wanders - I know what the phone was for, what Serena had wanted to do with it. She was going to place a 911 call to Mark Tuello, all of a sudden she was going to be an American. "Mark, come get me, these people are nuts!"

Okay, the reveal. I could be wrong. I hope I am not.

The one thing which would rescue the content of my fugue - my disassociative darkness? The one thing?

It would certainly answer who Ezra Shaw is. Who he's working for? Final warning, do not, repeat, do not read more! It would answer what Commanders Mackenzie and Putnam had been up to.

Is Serena Joy the Wheeler's handmaid, and she just doesn't know it? God that would be rich. Geez, I may even then be on her side, for once!

Please don't yell at me for blabbing, I'm actually not. I have no special knowledge. Hell, I don't even know if I'm, right now, a captive or have been rescued. They don't tell me, especially when I'm like this.

2,000 words. My musings about Guardian Jaeden will have to wait.