The fictional conversation below between Rita Blue and Moira Strand is a riff off of a comment I heard from THT Show-Runner, Bruce Miller who recently did 'The Red Resistance Podcast'.

When asked why both Rita and Moira had so little and mostly insignificant screen-time in Season 5, he said:

".… we always have a lot which is lost, not put into a script. There's a lot which is lost which had 'made it onto the board'. There's always fantastic storytelling that we cannot get to. This season there was a unique situation because we lost Alexis Bledel. Because she unexpectedly left, Moira and Rita's story suffered a huge amount. Because so much of their story was built around (Emily) , and I don't want to go into details, I had to scramble a bit to make them part of the story because the part where they were central vanished unexpectedly close to when we were starting."

When told in the podcast that Moira and Rita's absence was the biggest criticism of Season 5 that one could offer, Miller agreed. "It's my criticism, too."

"When you lose a card, everything should fall down and it does."

A PIECE MISSING

Moira came down from settling Nichole upstairs. Nichole seemed to be Moira's lot these days. Luke, he was over at the hospital where June was in critical condition - being run over by a truck will do that.

Luke was either at the hospital, or down at the TPS police station for interviews which were actually a lot longer than one might expect. After all it had been Luke who had saved his wife out in the street. The driver's eventual death should have been, so Moira thought, explained as self-defence. The man had run over June and he had exited the truck with a rifle. 'What did the cops want?' Moira had thought.

Downstairs, she had not heard anyone come in, but sitting there in the living room was Rita. Rita had already made coffee, the kind that Moira liked. Typical Rita.

Rather than a usual greeting, Moira said, "God bless you," She picked up her favourite mug which Rita had set out, warm with the blessed liquid. Moira had long since stopped complimenting Rita for her obvious culinary, brewing and serving skills - being that those talents had been part of a survival skill-set forced on her in Gilead. No one wanted to have Rita thinking that they expected that from her.

As Rita had said, 'when I'm able to take a compliment without preparing to be being hit by Mrs. Waterford, I'll know I'm on the mend. But that's not yet.'

Instead of idle chat, the two of them sat in silence drinking their coffee - there had been no noise from upstairs and there was nothing but the sound of regular night traffic outside. There had been no calls from the hospital, from Luke, not even from the Consulate. A slow night considering military disasters and shootings at memorials.

Then Rita broke the silence. "I miss Emily," she said. With those three words, the two women had yet to made eye-contact, or even pass a pleasantry. Or even a worry as to how the past week had been so hard and violent to the house.

Moira said, "June bought a Kevlar jacket, a bullet-proof vest. I thought Luke, he was going to freak. But Luke, he showed up with a handgun. I didn't think you were allowed to do that in Canada."

What was transpiring between the two women, it was not a conversation. Not so far.

She didn't do it to appease Rita, but Moira returned to the subject of Emily. She asked, "what do you think she's doing, I mean right now? What would someone underground in Gilead do on a night off?"

Rita chuckled, then said, "I thought Sylvia would be curious about things like that, but Sylvia never says, not even rhetorically. Doesn't even speculate. I guess 'love' builds a wall, protecting her from that."

"I hope to never find out," Moira offered. "Closest I ever got to that shit, was Oona."

Then Rita said, "I'm not saying that I'm ignored - I hate being in the spotlight, you know that. A holiday for me these days is a week in my apartment with enough food and a stack of books I was once not allowed to read. I don't need to be a main actor in someone else's drama…"

Moira cut in, "….. ain't that the truth." Moira refilled her mug with caffeine, then said, "there's me, then there's you. Opposites." Then Moira chuckled, "June once told me that at the Waterford's, if she had a pang of conscience, it was my voice in her head!"

Moira knew what Rita was talking about.

Rita asked, "what do you think would be the grand narrative for our time in Canada if Emily were here? A grand one with the three of us - you, me and Emily? Do you think Emily leaving has pushed us, you and me, to the back? Without Emily, things gravitate to June. You get stuck with Nichole….."

".…. who I love as if she was my own," Moira added.

"That's not a bad thing," Rita continued. "June is, afterall, June. She's the actor, we clean up her messes. She's the hero of Angel's Flight. Still dangerous enough to have Gilead take pot-shots at her and run her down with trucks. My guess is that that is a narrative she could live without."

Rita waited for her thoughts to settle before risking, "Emily, she was an introvert, big time. With trauma, even bigger. Worse than me. She would get her eyes checked, but not her soul or inner demons." Rita wondered what the three of them would be talking about right now, if Emily had been there to defend herself.

"My stuff with CERA, with Oona, it really came alive with Emily around. It's hard to pinpoint why." Moira thought a bit more about it, and said, "With her gone, with all that's going on with June and Luke, even I have no urge to push myself into view. Nichole is good enough."

Rita said, "I never did have urges like that. If I could fade into the wallpaper, I would. It's strange. No Emily, even when she'd come visit - with her, I felt I was contributing to something interesting. Her darkness? It was a story worth telling."

Moira said, "I guess that's why we don't see Sylvia any more. She wants nothing to do with the dangerous drama that June and Luke are stuck in. I just hope that June can make a recovery. Her arm got fucked up."

"You know," said Rita, "when June and I were out on those front steps, talking about her sneaking into Gilead to go get Hannah? She was asking my advice, although she wasn't - if you know what I mean."

"I do," said Moira, "I've known June for a long time. I was there when Luke and her met."

"Even out on that front porch, I got the feeling that it should have been Emily talking to June, not me." Rita put down her mug and asked, "that's not weird, is it?"

"No, it is not. Maybe it's only you and me, but I get the feeling that with Emily gone, that our little triad - you, me, and her - it was busted up." Moira continued, "There's now no story to tell. One card falls, and it's harder to hold the others up. She's a missing piece for all of us outliers in Toronto, but she's a missing piece especially for you and me. Me, I've got that little monster upstairs as part of my narrative - you have your church. Who's going to want to write about just the two of us, with Emily gone?"

Rita repeated, "I miss Emily." Rita thought that her life was now just idling along.

Moira asked, "do you think she's safe?"

"No," Rita said, "that's not why she left her son and wife. Her safety was not what she was interested in. She wanted to end Gilead."

"Maybe that's why we, you and me, feel incomplete without her, I don't know," said Moira.

Rita said, "I may call Sylvia." The two of them then sat again in silence with their coffee, nothing particularly interesting to write home about.

A HANDMAID IN FLIGHT

"Look, I need some money," Serena said with a controlled desperation to the blue-haired driver, the one who'd picked her up off the street, but now they were stopped at the side of the road.

"I just need you to tell me that that's your baby," the girl said.

"He's Noah." Not knowing what else to say, she said, "The people in the Gilead Information Centre, they were getting very weird. I had to get out of there."

"Are you one of those Handmaids?" the girl asked. "We don't have handmaids in Canada. I'm quite sure that that is illegal."

"Let's just say," Serena said, being careful with her words, "that if you can help me, I won't be a handmaid." After a brief silence in the car, Serena asked again, "Can you help me, I need some money."

"Well, this car isn't even paid for, which means - no, I have no money. My aunt, she's a feminist, hates Gilead. She's a counselor at a refugee centre, she could probably help you. I could take you."

Serena tried to keep her voice from sounding panicked. "I'm not exactly a refugee, so she probably couldn't help."

The girl turned full around in the front seat to face Serena and the baby, "but she would at least know what to do. Should I call the police?"

"No!" Serena said so suddenly she hoped that the girl had not been spooked. Noah, he was miraculously sleeping through all of this. So much for 'the little monster' that Alanis had called him.

"Can you look up an address on your phone?" Serena asked.

"Yup, I have mobile data. Do you have a phone number to search on?"

Serena knew nothing about SmartPhones, but said anyway, "all I have is a name. Her name is 'Blue', like the colour. Rita Blue."

The girl massaged her SmartPhone screen expertly with her thumbs, then said, "nothing comes up. Are you sure you don't have a phone number?"

Serena gave the girl the only Toronto phone number she knew. After a minute, the girl said, "Lucas Bankole. Do you want me to take you there? It's not that far."

"No!" Serena said, reprising her fear that she was spooking the girl.

"Look, lady, I'd like to help, but I really have to be on my way, I'm late as it is," she said turning back to the front and looking at Serena through the rear-view mirror.

"I really need your help," Serena pleaded. "Could you at least look up the info for the American Consulate?"

The girl looked confused, and asked, "what's a Consulate?"

"Take me there," Serena said. "But drop me a block before or after. And could I have at least a little bit of money?"

RIGHTEOUS PANIC

Aunt Elizabeth would not have believed it unless she had seen it.

Lydia, manhandled by an Eye. Lydia had built her reputation in the past, with her ability (guts?) to wade into a legion of rifle-toting Guardians, herself only armed with her righteous indignation and a passion for her girls. She knew how to get a crowd of men with guns to back off. By herself.

Yet tonight, it was different. Lydia had not tried to intercede out of a sense of mission. Lydia had been almost hysterical when the Eyes had spirited Janine away.

Elizabeth followed, instinctively knowing to keep her distance. Elizabeth did not have Lydia's talent, but tonight not even Lydia had had it.

Elizabeth had once warned Lydia, "people have been slow to notice your charity towards Janine, but they are noticing. She needs to find a posting or they will find another use for her."

Lydia's response of 'Mmm-hmm' back then, was a weak admission that Elizabeth was right, but that her feelings towards Janine's welfare were complicated, and that Lydia was becoming compromised. Even Elizabeth saw it.

It had ended with Lydia's righteous panic, which was the first 'panic' of any kind that Elizabeth had ever seen in her. After the prison truck drove away, after Elizabeth had helped Lydia from the pavement, she noted that underneath Lydia's uneven breathing was a look Elizabeth had never seen in her colleague before. It was something she wouldn't have believed unless she'd seen it for herself.

Lydia's righteous panic had been replaced by fierce determination. It was the damnedest thing Elizabeth had ever seen…..

…... in a woman in Gilead.