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 411: “If Not For Hope”

The official synopsis (via Starz):

Jamie, Claire and Young Ian embark on a long uncertain journey to rescue Roger, while Brianna forges a friendship with one of Jamie’s old friends as she fends off Aunt Jocasta’s attempts to secure a husband.

My take:

Major plot points:

• Brianna is staying at River Run with Aunt Jocasta while Claire and Jamie search for Roger.
• Jocasta is trying to find a suitable husband for Brianna.
• Lord John visits River Run and begins a friendship with Brianna.
• Claire, Jamie, and Young Ian continue to follow Roger’s trail.
• Claire and Jamie soothe their hurt feelings and end the distance between them.
• Roger is still captive, and finally arrives at the Mohawk village.

Insta-reaction:

Gotta admit it — I didn’t love this episode. I didn’t hate it either. I guess this is more of a move-the-story-along episode, where events proceed but there’s not a huge impact.

Okay, so what happened?

The bulk of the episode is spent on Brianna. She’s settled in at River Run, drawing portraits and worrying about poor Roger. Aunt Jocasta is not one to just let things be. She’s aware that Brianna is pregnant, and having an illegitimate child is not something she wants for her niece. So, she takes it upon herself to round up a bunch of eligible bachelors and invite them to a dinner party, hoping one of the gentlemen will be a suitable match for Brianna. Brianna, obviously, wants nothing to do with her scheming aunt’s matchmaking.

Lord John is one of the guests, and is most chivalrous toward Brianna. Later that night, she stumbles upon John in an intimate encounter with another of the male guests. (Dude, why are you doing it in the pantry? Couldn’t you at least have found a hidden place outside the house or something?) The next morning, Phaedre informs Brianna that her aunt wants her downstairs because Mr. Forbes, yet another of the party guests, is going to ask her to marry him. Brianna slips outside, asks John to join her, and basically tries to blackmail him into marrying her.

Although John’s not willing to marry her, his heart melts a bit when Brianna tells him about Stephen Bonnet, the rape, and that she doesn’t know who the baby’s father is. She wants to wait for Roger to return, but she can’t be sure he’ll still want her when he learns that she may be carrying another man’s baby. (Clearly, Brianna doesn’t know Roger as well as she should!) Lord John talks to Brianna about his feelings for Jamie, and also about his admiration for Claire. Ultimately, he saves her from Jocasta and Forbes’s plans by announcing that he and Brianna are engaged.

Let’s see, what else? There are some random scenes of Marsali, Fergus, and Murtagh, and I’m sorry, but the Regulator business is too boring for words. Murtagh and Fergus do manage to track down Stephen Bonnet, but Murtagh himself is arrested before they can get away with Bonnet.

Maybe this was only a “meh” episode for me because of the limited Claire and Jamie time. Yes, Brianna’s story is the most dramatic at the moment, but there’s only so much time I want to spend with her at the expense of our true power couple. Claire and Jamie are at odds, each carrying around a ton of hurt and guilt. Ian tries to get them to patch things up, and eventually, they do. Claire reassures Jamie that he is a good father, that he is a good man, and that she loves him. They both are blaming themselves for the mistakes they’ve made that led to this point, but at least they’ve reestablished their bond and will continue on their hunt for Roger together.

Roger only gets a couple of scenes at the beginning and end of the episode. He ends up at the Mohawk’s village after weeks (months?) of travel, and is immediately put through some sort of gauntlet where everyone gets to take a swing at him. Welcome to your new home, Roger!

Insta-reaction wrap-up:

Like I said, I was fairly underwhelmed. I didn’t appreciate the attempted fake-out at the beginning, as the episode opens with Roger in a hot shower. Aha, he went back to the 20th century after all! Like anyone would really think that — not at all convincing. Of course, the shower is just a fantasy, and he didn’t go anywhere. I’m a little annoyed that the show didn’t let us know whether he walked away from the stones himself or was captured before he could attempt to time-travel. I hope they make this clear later on — it’s an important distinction that shows Roger’s frame of mind, and I believe it should not have been left so ambiguous.

I’m not clear on why Jocasta felt such a need to marry Brianna off. If they need a suitable cover story for the sake of her social position (and that of the baby), why not just say she’s a widow? Or that her husband was lost on a perilous voyage, so if he shows up later, it’s all good. Bree doesn’t need a husband to care for her — she has her parents, and for that matter, she could have a home at River Run for as long as needed. Why the rush, Auntie?

And ugh, that dinner party “game” Brianna invents, invoking psychology and the interpretation of dreams. I mean, what the hell was that? I was afraid for a moment that they would actually go around the table and make us listen to each individual person’s response to Bree’s question, which could have taken up the rest of the episode and then some. So weird. So unnecessary.

Ah, Lord John. Always a lovely man. It’s fun to see him with Brianna. As I mentioned before, he was being AWFULLY indiscreet, which is tremendously out of character for him. BUT, at least this is an improvement over the presentation in the book, where Brianna catches him sneaking back to the house from the plantation slave quarters where, it is implied, he had a tryst with one of Jocasta’s slaves. Thank goodness the show didn’t go down that problematic path.

It’s nice to see Fergus and Marsali, but I wish they had something to actually do.

The Jamie/Claire reconciliation was sweet and emotional (oh, the tears in Jamie’s eyes!), but there just wasn’t enough of them to satisfy me. They’re still the main characters of this show, and episodes that are light on Jamie and Claire feel like a cheat.

And furthermore…

I do like how Young Ian’s attire keeps getting little bits of ornamentation that show how much he’s been interacting with the Cherokee and becoming comfortable with them. Between the armband, the fringed boots, and the hanging knife sheath around his neck, he’s really picking up bits and pieces, which I think show that he’s developed a friendship with the Cherokee near Fraser’s Ridge. And now we learn that he speaks some Mohawk too. That’s not going to be important down the road, is it?

Only two episodes left! Here’s hoping the remaining too have a little more oomph that this one.

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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 410: “The Deep Heart’s Core”

The official synopsis (via Starz):

Jamie and Claire keep secrets from one another as they try to help Brianna process her recent trauma. But the secrets they keep cause a bigger familial rift once they are revealed.

My take:

Major plot points:

• Brianna and Jamie develop a deeper understanding of one another.
• Claire offers Brianna a choice about whether to keep or end the pregnancy.
• POOR ROGER is dragged around for the entire episode by a group of Mohawk.
• The truth comes out — Brianna finds out what Jamie did to Roger, and is PISSED.
• Jamie, Claire, and Ian set out to find Roger.
• Brianna tells Claire that she’s keeping the baby and staying in the 18th century.
• Murtagh takes Brianna to River Run to stay with Aunt Jocasta while the rest of the family searches for Roger.

Insta-reaction:

Kudos to Sophie Skelton, who gives a powerful performance as Brianna, really selling Bree’s emotional reactions as they run the gamut from despair to the first hint of healing, then rage and a step into the unknown.

First off, the early scene between Jamie and Bree is lovely. Jamie lets Bree know that he knows about the rape. She blames herself for not fighting harder, and despite Jamie stating over and over that it’s not her fault, she really can’t let go of her guilt — until Jamie physically restrains her to show her that she could not have prevented what happened, no matter how hard she struggled, and that she likely could have ended up dead if she’d tried to fight. Bree then surprises Jamie by asking him about the aftermath of his rape. Claire had told Brianna about all that happened at Wentworth. Bree wants to know if killing his rapist helped Jamie heal. He assures her that time, not revenge, is the key.

Life seems to be settling down to normal at the Ridge, with the family spending time together and enjoying the beauty of living there. Claire offers Brianna a choice — she can terminate the pregnancy by surgical abortion if that’s Bree’s wish. She doesn’t want Brianna to be forced into anything, but lets her know that if she wants to end the pregnancy, they need to do it soon. On the other hand, if Bree wants to go back to her own time, she can do that as well — but again, would have to leave now. Claire knows that it’s possible to travel through time while pregnant, but they don’t know if it’s possible to go with a baby. What if Brianna tried to travel but the baby got left behind, or even worse, got lost somewhere in time? If Brianna hopes to go back, it’s got to be now.

The truth about Roger finally comes out, when Lizzie tells Brianna that she knows what happened, and Brianna, horrified, realizes that Lizzie believes Roger is the man who raped her. When she learns that Jamie beat the man he believed to be her rapist, all hell breaks loose. Brianna is righteously furious. Jamie is upset by his anxious, but upset as well that Claire knew that Bonnet was the rapist and didn’t tell him. After Jamie beat Roger, Ian sold him to the Mohawk. They were just traveling through, probably headed back to their lands in upstate New York. Who knows where Roger could be by then, after a week has already gone by?

POOR ROGER. He spends most of this episode being dragged behind a horse, walking all day, every day, at first alongside another prisoner who eventually dies on the road. Roger’s face looks awful. Oh, Jamie, you are a scary man when you’re angry. Roger eventually gets a chance to escape his captors, and runs right into a buzzing circle of stones. At the episode’s end, we see him holding the gems he got from Stephen Bonnet, debating whether to go through the stones, or stay and try to find his way back to Brianna.

Meanwhile, back on the Ridge, Jamie and Ian vow to find Roger for Brianna. Brianna insists that Claire go with them, which makes sense. If he saw Jamie and Ian coming, he’d probably run and never look back! Claire is a familiar face, and what’s more, there’s a good chance he’ll need a doctor. Claire doesn’t want to leave Bree. It may be months before they return. She may not be back in time to deliver the baby. Bree is determined, so they come up with a different plan: Murtagh will take Brianna to River Run, to stay with Aunt Jocasta, who’ll care for her and keep her safe.

Jamie vows to Brianna that he won’t return without Roger. Yikes. That’s a big promise to make.

Insta-reaction wrap-up:

A really powerful episode. The father-daughter scene between Jamie and Claire, in which they discuss her rape and Jamie helps her in a very Jamie way, is just full of beauty and emotion. You really feel that these two have a connection, that there’s a growing trust and love between them… which makes it all the harder later on when Bree, in her fury over Roger’s treatment, basically tells Jamie that her REAL father (Frank) was a good man, and Jamie is just a brute. Ouch.

I mean, yes, he did do something terrible to the man she loves, but in Jamie’s defense, he really had no idea. A sucky situation all around, fed by terrible communication (which is a recurring theme in this particular book in the Outlander series.)

Every one was just so good in this episode. Claire didn’t have as many flashy moments, but I did love how we got to see Claire’s determination to give Brianna a choice, and how she presented her with the option to go back to her own time, even though it would break Claire’s heart.

And furthermore…

The scene between Aunt Jocasta and Murtagh made me wonder if all the fan speculation about the two of them ending up together might really be correct! Either that, or the show is just playing with us all.

And how adorable was Ian getting down on one knee to offer to marry Brianna? Gotta love Young Ian.

Claire and Brianna reciting a list of 20th century foods and conveniences they miss was pretty great too. Peanut butter and jelly! And of course, aspirin per the doctor’s orders.

ARGH. Only three episodes left this season! Where did the time go?

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