Season 4 is here! My intention is to write an “Insta-Reaction” post for each episode soon after viewing, to share some initial thoughts, questions, reactions — you name it.

Warning:

I may be talking about events from this episode, other episodes, and/or the book series… so if you’d rather not know, now’s your chance to walk away!

Outlander, episode 413: “Man of Worth”

The official synopsis (via Starz):

Jamie, Claire and Young Ian’s attempt to rescue Roger from his Mohawk captors goes awry when a ghost from Claire’s past lays waste to their plan. Meanwhile, Brianna worries Claire, Jamie and Roger might not return.

My take:

Major plot points:

• Jamie, Claire, and Ian find the Mohawk camp where Roger is being held. Negotiations for his release don’t go well.
• Claire’s opal upsets the Mohawk. A woman from the tribe shares the story of Otter Tooth.
• Rescue plans are foiled. Eventually, Ian agrees to stay with the tribe in exchange for Roger’s freedom.
• Brianna gives birth to a son.
• Murtagh and Jocasta get busy. Oh my.
• Everyone gets reunited in the end.

Insta-reaction:

I don’t know exactly why, but I was left feeling a little let down by the season finale. Maybe it’s just knowing that it’s the end of the season, and I’m already going into Droughlander shock. In any case, here’s what happened this episode.

Claire, Jamie, and Ian find the Mohawk village and ask to trade (pots, pans, and whiskey) for Roger. They seem to be making progress until someone spots the opal around Claire’s neck, which freaks everyone out. The trio is ordered to leave. Later, a woman from the tribe tells them the story of Otter Tooth, the man whose skull Claire found earlier this season. He showed up a few decades earlier and tried to convince the tribe to go to war against the white people and kill them all, in order to prevent their tribes from being wiped out in the future. No one believed him, and eventually his ravings were too upsetting, so he was killed. The woman offers to help them rescue Roger in exchange for the stone.

The rescue does not go as planned, and they’re caught. The woman ends up being banished by the tribe, and Jamie, Claire, and Ian are ordered to leave. The Mohawk will not release Roger, as no trade was completed. Jamie offers himself in exchange for Roger — but then Ian jumps in and makes his own bargain. Ian (and Rollo!) will stay and become part of the tribe, and Jamie and Claire are free to leave with Roger. Lots of tears at the good-bye!

Roger is naturally extremely pissed at Jamie, when all is said and done, and once they’re away from the village, he gives Jamie a very one-sided beat-down, since Jamie decides to take it as his punishment for beating up Roger and selling him in the first place. Once all the beating stops, Claire tells Roger what’s happened with Brianna — that’s she safe, but that she was raped after he left her, and that she’s about to have a baby, which may or may not be his. It’s a lot to take in, and Roger wants time to think. Jamie starts to get angry with Roger over his need to take a minute, but Claire basically snaps at Jamie to back the hell off. I mean, poor Roger has been to hell and back. Give him a second to breathe. Even though he really shouldn’t be hesitating for a second, but okay, let’s give Roger this moment to clear his tortured brain.

Back at River Run, Brianna is sad a lot. Then she has a baby. Then all of a sudden, the baby is two months old and Claire and Jamie arrive, but Brianna is heartbroken to realize that Roger isn’t with them. They prepare to return to Fraser’s Ridge. At the last moment, Bree sees a rider approaching and realizes it’s Roger! She runs across the lawn to him and they have a big, dramatic embrace. Roger asks her to take him to see his son. Awwwww.

Meanwhile, earlier in the episode, Murtagh and Jocasta argued and argued, she threw her drink at him… and they ended up in bed. Murtagh is quite the silver fox, amiright? Yowza. Let’s see if these two crazy lovebirds can make it work.

Maybe not, because the episode ends with redcoats arriving with an order for Jamie from the Governor: Form a militia to put down the Regulators, and find and kill their leader, Murtagh Fitzgibbons.

AND… fade to black! Bye-bye, season 4 of Outlander!

Insta-reaction wrap-up:

Jamie and Claire have been absent or underused during the last set of episodes this season, and while they do play a role in this final episode, it’s not much, and definitely not enough. Their screen time seems to be shortened lately to make room for Roger and Brianna, and I get that there needs to be a balance, but I think it’s tipped too far over to the non-Jamie and Claire side. Their moments this episode were powerful, but just too short. Jamie in particular only really had one truly strong emotional beat, in his good-bye to Ian (sob), but I didn’t care for his scene with Roger.

The Roger punching Jamie in the face bit wasn’t fun to watch, and didn’t feel true to the character. I get that Roger has a lot of rage and frustration to deal with, but by this point he’s heard the story of why Jamie did what he did. On top of that, Roger isn’t a fighter — he’s a history professor, for heaven’s sake, and isn’t someone who ever has had to use his fists to express his feelings. Roger is much more a man of peace and reason, so I just didn’t dig this scene at all.

Young Ian seems happy where he is, and seems to be excited about the new adventure ahead of him. In the book, one of the attractions for him was that he’d already fallen for a girl from the tribe and wanted a life with her. I wonder if we’ll see him at all in season 5? As far as I recall, Young Ian isn’t in book #5, but I suppose they could easily find a reason to have him show up for a visit if they wanted to.

I was really frustrated by the end of the episode. Why end with the Regulators business, the absolutely least interesting aspect of season 4? I get that they’re trying to set up the central conflict for the next season, but it just was not satisfying.

My preferred ending would have been Roger and Brianna holding the baby, with Roger naming the boy and claiming him as his own. It’s not enough that we see him telling Bree to take him to his son — after all the turbulence in their relationship and all the pain and suffering, we needed the pay-off of seeing the family together, with Brianna and Roger united and ready to start a new chapter. Wouldn’t that have been lovely?

And furthermore…

Overall, it’s been a good, strong season, despite the show moving the central storyline away from solely focusing on Jamie and Claire. There were some lovely moments along the way for the two of them, and it was nice to be able to spend time with Lord John and Murtagh again, as well as introducing teen Willie and Aunt Jocasta.

Now we start the waiting game again! Here’s hoping that season five comes along before the end of 2019!

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Season 4 is here! My intention is to write an “Insta-Reaction” post for each episode soon after viewing, to share some initial thoughts, questions, reactions — you name it.

Warning:

I may be talking about events from this episode, other episodes, and/or the book series… so if you’d rather not know, now’s your chance to walk away!

Outlander, episode 412: “Providence”

The official synopsis (via Starz):

Brianna confronts a violent figure from her past in an attempt to cope with her trauma. Roger befriends a fellow captive and endeavors to escape the Mohawk Village, while Fergus and Marsali plan a dangerous mission.

My take:

Major plot points:

• Roger suffers. Poor Roger!
• Seriously, this episode is about 90% Roger, and I’m not complaining.
• Roger deals with life as a Mohawk prisoner, and tortures himself over all the idiotic ways he acted in pursuit of Brianna.
• Brianna goes to see Stephen Bonnet in prison where he awaits execution.
• The Regulators break Murtagh out of jail.

Insta-reaction:

Roger — actor Richard Rankin — owns this episode, and kills it. Yes, other stuff happens too, but at its heart, this episode is the Roger show. Breaking it all down:

Roger has arrived at the Mohawk village in New York (and wow, that’s a long way to walk from North Carolina!) Because he fails to make it all the way through the gauntlet before collapsing, he’s informed that he remains their captive. Would he have been freed otherwise? Unclear. In any case, Roger is wounded, with his arm in a sling and all sorts of cuts and bruises on his face, and is basically put to work as a servant in the camp.

A nice Mohawk woman offers him some herbs to ease his pain, but no one else seems to want to interact with him except to yell or push him around. Eventually, he does something to piss people off (pointing and interrupting, apparently), and gets put in a leafy shack that seems to be the Mohawk equivalent of a jail cell. There, he meets Father Ferigault, a Catholic priest who the Mohawk welcomed — but he fell in love with a woman from the tribe and had a baby with her, and now he refuses to baptize the baby as the tribe wishes. He won’t baptize the baby because he considers himself a sinner, but the Mohawk see this as an insult to the tribe and have threatened to kill him unless he performs the sacrament. Roger tries to convince him to give them what they want in order to save his own life, but he refuses.

Roger finds a way to escape and starts running off through the wood, but his damned sense of honor won’t let him run when he can hear the screams of the priest, who’s being held over a fire, where he’ll slowly burn to death. He runs back to the village and hurls a cask of alcohol on the pyre, setting the priest fully on fire so he can die more quickly. The priest’s lover kisses her baby good-bye and then walks into the fire to die with him.

That’s the bulk of the episode, but additionally, we spend some time with Brianna, Lord John, Fergus and Marsali.

Fergus and the Regulators have decided to bust Murtagh out. Not really worth going into the details. Suffice to say, the jail break works, and Marsali drives the getaway horse and cart, with Murtagh hidden in the back, headed for Fraser’s Ridge.

Brianna asks Lord John to take her to WIlmington to see Stephen Bonnet. She reads Jamie’s letter to her, encouraging her to seek forgiveness rather than vengeance, for her own well-being. For Brianna, this means going to see Bonnet in prison, chained up, on the eve of his execution. She tells him about the baby, saying that her way of forgiving him is to give him the peace of knowing that some part of him will live on after his death — although she also stresses that this is HER baby, and he’ll never know a thing about Bonnet. Okay, Bree, so your point is??? I’m not a big fan of this scene, either in the book or the show. Surely there are better ways for Brianna to heal than to go and talk with her rapist, who is not the least bit repentant. And why give this man a piece of information that may come back to haunt her? Brianna believes it’s safe to tell Bonnet about the baby because he’s about to die, but this is a man who’s escaped death sentences before — and as we see at the end of the jail break, it would appear that he got away yet again.

No Jamie and Claire this episode! We get just the briefest bit of Jamie as Brianna reads his letter to her, but that’s it.

Insta-reaction wrap-up:

Any episode without Jamie and Claire feels incomplete to me. Let’s face it — they’re the true reasons we watch this show, and their story is always the most compelling. As in the books, as the story progresses, Roger and Brianna become much more prominent, but particularly on TV, losing Jamie and Claire screen time does not feel like a satisfying trade-off.

Lord John is always a delight. He’s such an upright, honest, and devoted man. I love how his feelings for Jamie and Claire have translated so easily into caring for and protecting Brianna. He’s the perfect gentleman, truly. And I suppose it’s a plus that his status as a Lord helps open doors for Brianna that might have otherwise been closed. Still, it feels like a needless move on Brianna’s part to travel (pregnant!) to Wilmington to confront Bonnet. Why not just practice forgiveness from a distance?

The Regulators storyline continues to be my least favorite part of the season. Just not engaging at all — give me the human drama any day. That said, here’s hoping that the jailbreak will result in Marsali, Fergus, and Murtagh settling at Fraser’s Ridge. It would be nice to see the whole family together again… but first (next week), Jamie and Claire need to find Roger!

And furthermore…

It was good to get more of a view into the Mohawk village’s life, beyond Roger getting beaten up all the time. I liked the little glimpses of children playing and families gathering. If the show is trying to break away from the stereotypes of fierce Native warriors acting inscrutably, they need to give us more of this — opportunities to understand their customs, their values, and their way of life, and not just viewing them as the mean people doing bad things to Roger.

Next week is the season finale! It’s all gone by so quickly. I know what’s coming (according to the book), but can’t wait to see the drama and excitement on the screen.

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