While waiting for Season 5, Episode 8 to mysteriously tickle my screen.

The following is in answer to that perennial question - the great divide between Handmaids Tale aficionados… why 'Nick'? Who the hell is he? Eye? Eye-candy? Mayday? Warmongering Commander? Cold-blooded assassin? Nuanced fascist actor in Gilead's power structure? Hero of Chicago? Waffler between Gilead and Mark Tuello? Is he really planning to get Hannah out as his final act within Gilead? Why has Bruce Miller/Elisabeth Moss taken the 'Nick' character in the direction they have?

Look at how Miller/Moss have teased us. The Swiss - they try to warn June away from him. Even Serena Joy, she tries to warn June away from him. "You don't know who he is," was the warning - which is unimpeachably true. Both accuse June of not knowing what she's dealing with - but for so long for June, Nick was the only chance in town. The only bridge across a giant chasm, so there was no other choice for June, not really. (See June's tape to Luke, explaining Nick to her husband.)

In the Miller/Moss version, Nick would occasionally deliver, obviously being part of June's first grand escape, holed up in the old Boston Globe facility. Nick had had something to do, with Rita, with Nichole's escape from Gilead - which June spurned.

Arguably, Nick kept June alive - just barely - when Lieutenant Stans had got his slimy mitts on her. What viewers/critics complain about is June's plot armour, but that's probably more Nick's limited abilities (within 'the system') to keep Gilead from taking the final step of terminating her.

Should June have listened to the Swiss? Should she have listened to Serena? She'd not had a lot of choices, had she.

But the Miller/Moss version had Nick showing up at the oddest times, usually for a random snog, and then June had to subsequently dodge aerial bombardments in Chicago, ordered by (ironical?) Commander Nick Blaine. Freud would have had a field day with those two things set side by side.

Did Nick offer up Fred to June as a love offering? That would just be weird. The one unabashed thing Nick did for June (as well as Luke) was Hannah's dossier he handed to June- in exchange for a hug with Nichole.

So, while waiting for Episode 8…. what the hell is with Nick?

IMAGINARY ALTERNATE TIMELINE

"I'm telling you, Moira, he was cute. That. Is. All." June blushed a bit when she told Moira that, as she was settling Hannah. Hannah, being 10, was becoming herself a little woman, and was now fussing most mornings - how she 'looked' was suddenly a 'thing' for the girl, and she was only in Grade 4!

"Damn, girl," Moira said, "you have a wandering eye. I'd watch that if I were you."

June said, "look, pour me a margarita. I need one."

Moira brought the big glass, then inquired, "Okay, tell be about him. But let's keep in mind, my lady, that you are married. With an energetic daughter!"

"That's what you call it! 'Energetic'." June smiled and answered, "you wouldn't think we're in the middle of a fertility crisis. There he was, waiting outside of school to pick up his kid. He's from Detroit, he's married. I can look can't I?"

Moira did not change the subject due to any dis-ease with June's honesty. It's just that events in the United States in those days were, as she said, 'dangerous'. She'd said to June, 'how many Stonewalls will we need before we have to stop looking behind us?'

Moira said, "You missed the Jan 6th hearings today." Moira had been glued to the TV for the whole afternoon, before getting dinner ready. Moira had called the hearings important to her own survival. So was dinner! Luke usually did dinner, but he was out of town - and June had to juggle her own work with Hannah, taking the girl to and fro. Although today, June seemed not to be complaining about it.

"They had that couple, those Sons of Jacob jerks. That ad-man and his bitch wife, that author." Moira gave a mock shiver of disgust, "God, she'd tied her hair back so tight I thought her face was going to pop like a pimple."

"Fred and Serena Joy Waterford?" June guessed as she sipped her drink. "They came up at work."

"I was thinking all the way through their grilling, 'Jesus, what if those two had taken over? What if the vice-president had caved in and stopped the count?'"

Moira then surveyed June, whose mind was obviously elsewhere. Moira repeated sarcastically, "are you sure there's a fertility crisis?"

The news that had shaken Luke before he'd left on his trip?

His first wife, Annie, she was now pregnant. Luke had confessed to Moira, but not to June, that that news had hit him weirdly.

"What would make you say that?" June asked?

"Never mind," Moira deflected.

"Nick."

Moira asked, "what?"

June repeated, "his name is Nick. He has a daughter at the school. He's married. To a much younger lady named Rose."

"Wait a minute! How do you know all of that?"

June blushed, "well the two kids went off to the playground. Nick's wife, she's much younger. So was his daughter, it was good seeing Hannah like that playing with a younger kid. I'd always wondered if she'd make a good 'big sister'."

"Cool your jets, girl, cool your jets," Moira said. How much of this was the margarita talking?

"He'd been married before," June continued. "He said he'd lost her in a pool accident. When I asked him about it, and added that he seemed rather calm about it, you know what he said?" June didn't wait for Moira to speak, June just said, "his first wife, she'd been having an affair, she was 18, and was cheating on Nick - on the side - with a guy named Isaac."

Moira looked surprised, "you got all that while the kids were playing?"

June said, "I just thought he needed a hug."

Moira, "well, just keep it to hugs, June."

June said, "Moira, calm down. I'm in love with Luke. We're raising Hannah. And we have you, our mortgage-helper. And my conscience."

June added, "given what's going on these days, we're lucky to have Hannah. Me, I'm not going to endanger that. Besides, I've just now got Luke nicely broken in."

A WOMEN'S PLACE

"You know her book?" June said, in rather random fashion.

"Whose book?"

"That chick, the lady on TV, at the January 6th hearing."

Moira said, "I know of it. But the Sons of Jacob aren't exactly wild about dykes, you know. So why would I read it?"

"My boss, she wanted me to proofread it. Maybe even do a soft-ghostwrite," June said.

"They're giving those loonies the time of day!?" Moira exclaimed rather irately.

"My boss said it probably won't happen, us taking them on. She seems to think the Waterfords are going to jail, the both of them."

Moira smiled, "equality among the sexes, that's what I like."

June reached into her rucksack, and pulled out a copy of 'A Woman's Place.' "It's all in here."

"Get that filth out of here," she yelled, June pulled away when Moira tried to reach for the book.

"Hey," June said, "you don't want to know what she says?"

"I already know what she says. She's probably wanting to cut clits from lesbians. Just to teach us a lesson."

June grabbed a bookmark, opened the book at the page. "Right here, she's making the case for women 'to retreat from the world of letters, to focus on their God-given, biological destiny'."

Moira guffawed. "Okay, let me see if I have this right. She wrote that. In her 'book'. In a book filled with letters. In a book where if the loonies ever did take over, they wouldn't be able to read."

IMAGINARY ALTERNATE COFFEE DATE

The next day, Moira looked up from the pot she was stirring in the kitchen. "Hey, is that you?"

"Yup, it's me. I'm picking up Hannah in 90 minutes. She stayed after school for her choir."

Moira grinned, "between you and me, girl, the two of us we're regular Suzie-homemakers."

June came in to the kitchen, and stood staring at Moira.

Moira asked, "what?"

June said, "we had coffee."

Moira said, "honey, we talked about this. Just hold on, hold on - 'cuz Luke is home tomorrow. Have a cold shower or something."

June sat at the kitchen table, "it was just coffee."

Moira laughed, "it's never just coffee, girl."

June said, "Okay, but I have not felt like that since the first time Luke and I had gone for coffee."

Moira said, "you mean the one where you ended up in that hotel room for a little 'afternoon delight'?"

"Well, Nick and I, we just talked. We didn't go anywhere." June eyed Moira to weigh the next thing she was planning to brooch.

June then said, "he came to Boston with his wife and kid, because of the Sons of Jacob."

Moira quickly turned off the burner to the stove-top, pulled the pot aside, and shot out, "look, June, we need to talk."

"I knew you'd freak out," June said. "You don't have to worry, Nick himself is not Sons of Jacob. His wife, Rose, her family is big in the Washington D.C. chapter. The guy who brought him here - from Michigan - he's Massachusetts civil-service, an employment advisor. Big Sons of Jacob guy."

Moira just stood there at the stove, hands akimbo. "You mean 'Sins' of Jacob!"

"Nick knows the Waterfords. He hates them."

Moira said, "who cares who he hates? Nick is Sons of Jacob! What next? Oath Keepers? Proud Boys? Does he march with Tiki-torches?"

"Noooooooo!" June exclaimed. "He said that they take too much, too far. He told me about his dad back in Detroit, whose pension got destroyed - the Sons of Jacob out there were the only ones for the common guy."

"No, June. No." Moira added that June knew absolutely nothing about this guy. It would be different if her life depended on him, but this was Boston. In Massachusetts. In the United States, where most freedoms were still intact. Moira added, "what do you really know about him?"

"Well, I'm going to give him a listen. Don't worry, Moira, I'm not interested in Sons of Jacob. Truly, he's not either. It's just how he puts food on the table."

"Jeez, girl. Wake up. You're still sleeping." Moira just huffed.

"What?" June said.

"You know who you are, June?"

"Who am I, Moira, O ye of the psychiatrist's couch!?"

"You're the type who cannot see what's going on, not until you're hip deep in it. Not until you're forced into survival mode."

The two of them sat silently.

Moira then said more softly, "All I'm saying is watch yourself. Don't throw this all away. Don't wait for the last minute. That's when you get bit in the ass."