It’s really weirdly awesome that Saki and Maria would engage in goodbye sex in the cold, I guess in the future there’s always a reason for sex.
Saki follows Satoru back to town only to be interrogated by the Board of Education and she spills out everything she has learned for Tomoko which pisses off the Board and if not for the timely intervention of Tomoko-sama, Saki would have been cat food.
The meat of the episode here is the Tomoko exposition: Group 1’s minds were not tampered from the beginning unlike other kids and the secret behind Tomoko’s power over the Board of Education.
Group 1’s (Saki’s group) free will were not tampered with, this means that their free thinking remained intact, while most of the other kids were conditioned multiple times into docile lambs. This is for having future leaders who can think for themselves and do what must be done for the good of the community. This puts Shun’s death in a unique light because he was heavily expected to be a future leader.
The second is that Tomoko Asahina is actually 267 years old, and her secret to looking young is the skill of being able to fix her telomeres, enabling her to live a very very long life and in living very long, she gains wisdom and knowledge of the old, something her younger counterparts lack. Also, Tomoko views the two kids who stayed behind as potential fiends and we’ve been shown how deadly fiends can be; she gives Saki with Satoru in tow 3 days to bring back Mamoru and Maria back to town only to find out that the pair already made the run for it.
I really loved this episode. I never expected to hear telomeres in my anime outside of biology class. I really like how the exposition is handled in this episode, it was done in such a way that it can be easily taken in by the audience. Also looks like if you can fix your telomeres your ability to reproduce remains intact, as evident by Tomoko who was able to have grandchildren at the age of 267. Finally, notice that the board heads are female. Board of Education head is a female, Tomoko-sama is a female and Saki who was Tomoko’s chosen is a female. I’m beginning to think that it is the females who run the community in this anime.
Well, the next episode preview seems interesting, Squealer is back and it felt like his voice became somewhat more menacing, also that line about queerats trying to take over humanity really got my attention. Can’t wait for the next episode!
Kuro's anime ramble blog 
A matriarchal community… that’s actually really something! It hadn’t occurred to me until you pointed it. I think it has a lot to do with men having more violent tendencies (in this series, the greater percentage of Fiends are males) so if trying to keep the peace strictly is the ultimate aim, a group of female leaders would be most likely to achieve this.
Yes that would make sense although the anime has pointed out that the first fiend was a girl also. I’m guessing the part about women ruling in the anime is a subtle social commentary about the current gender roles in Japan.