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Kilt Drops: 1
Previously on Outlander: The Frasers and their entourage had thrilling adventures on the high seas. Jamie and Claire rescued the kidnapped Ian from that crazypants witch, Geillis Duncan. And the Artemis shipwrecked in America.
We have updated the FYA Outlander drinking game!
The Official FYA Outlander Season 4 Drinking Game
Take a sip when:
- Claire espouses progressive viewpoints at odds with her time period
- Someone on the show drinks
- Jamie takes his shirt off (bless him)
- North Carolina looks suspiciously like Scotland
Take a shot when:
- Everything is the worst (war, prison, slavery – dealer’s choice)
- Claire disregards common sense and disaster follows (again)
- You just can’t with Brianna
Chug your entire drink when:
- It gets rapey.
Welcome back, my kilt loving friends! This season, I’ll be joined by Rosemary, as we follow the Frasers’ adventures in the New World. I hope you brought your flasks and a healthy interest in colonial homesteading. Sláinte!
Just in case you’ve been seriously missing their batshit shenanigans, the show goes 2000 years B.C. to show us that early North Americans loved them a standing stones circle ritual as much as any twentieth-century housewife in Scotland. Claire voices over about the importance of circles, even those as simple as a wedding band.
We rejoin the Frasers in 1767 North Carolina, four months after the shipwreck. Jamie bribes a guard to let him in to talk to one of his Scottish prisoners turned sailor who’s about to be hanged for accidentally killing an angry, cuckolded husband in self-defense. Hayes doesn’t want the distraction Jamie has planned to free him on the way to the gallows. He’s content to pay for his sins, as long as he can go out with some booze in his belly and his friend, Mac Dubh, smiling at him. After Hayes is hanged, Jamie’s other man, Lesley, causes such a scene that some of the other prisoners manage to escape the Redcoats before it’s their turn to swing.
The Frasers (including Fergus and Marsali, Young Ian, and fellow Ardsmuir alum, Lesley) are planning a visit to Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta’s estate, River Run, before they all hop a ship back to Scotland. But first, they have to bury Hayes in the cemetery under cover of darkness, because the minister wouldn’t allow a criminal to be buried in consecrated ground without a hefty bribe. While doing so, they find that one of the escaped convicts stowed away in the wagon with Hayes’ body, and the charming Stephen Bonnet convinces them to let him remain hidden there until they’re safely out of town, and he promises to be on his way. At a checkpoint on the road, Bonnet gets stabbed in the leg by a soldier, checking to make sure it really is a dead body in the back. After they get through, Claire patches him up, and he shows an undue amount of interest in her rings. As he parts ways with them, he warns them to be wary of roving bands of thieves and outlaws who target travelers.
Jamie and Claire decide to make camp in the woods for the night, surely just another excuse for these randy teenagers to go at it. In the morning, they look out over the stunning mountain view, and Claire tells him about the American Dream, and what that means for North Carolina, and the rest of the country. Jamie rightly notices there isn’t much room in that dream for the natives who already live here. That night, they attend a dinner at the Lillingtons’ house in order to find a buyer for one of their precious gemstones, to pay for their passage back to Scotland. There, the governor of the colony makes Jamie an offer of a parcel of land, if he were to bring and sponsor new immigrants to help settle the colony. Claire warns Jamie that the governor’s offer comes with the expectation that should war come (which Claire knows it will) Jamie will fight on the side of the crown, which would put them on the losing side yet again.
At breakfast, Jamie and Claire announce that they’ve decided to stay in America. An excited Ian is bummed to learn he’s still expected to board the ship back to Scotland. Lesley declines his share of the gemstone funds in favor of staying by Mac Dubh’s side. Fergus and Marsali say they plan to stay as well, especially since Marsali is expecting a baby, a fact they all rejoice over.
While Fergus and Marsali stay in Wilmington, Jamie, Claire, Young Ian, and Lesley take a boat down the river to visit Aunt Jocasta. While onboard, Jamie surprises Claire with a fancy case full of the most modern medical implements 1767 has to offer. While sleeping aboard the riverboat that night, they’re set upon by a group of thieves and outlaws, led by none other than Stephen Bonnet. There’s a violent fight, in which Lesley is killed while trying to save Claire, and Bonnet tries to force Claire to give up her beloved wedding rings. She manages to swallow one, but he gets away with the other ring, and the Frasers’ remaining gemstones, leaving devastation in his wake.
Kilt Drops: 1
I don’t care how hot the man is, camping is the worst.
Wit and Wordplay
Jamie: “Ye ken I would like nothing more than to have ye with me. But in God’s name, what would your mother say?”
Young Ian: “I dinna ken. But she’ll be saying it in Scotland, won’t she?”
Sasse-WHAT?
- What do you think of the new credit sequence and that bluegrass influence on the theme song? It may be my favorite version yet.
- Poor Young Ian is having scary flashbacks of his time with mad witch, Geillis. But why do we have to see them too? I could live the whole rest of my life without seeing another bathing pool full of blood.
- Let’s get real, has Jamie Fraser ever met a war he didn’t want a piece of?
- Do we think this is the most unexpected and disturbing use of Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful” ever?
- Welcome, Rollo! A+ casting of everyone’s favorite character in the series.
Was that premiere everything you hoped it would be? Are we missing a rule for the drinking game? Join us in the comments!
Next week: Season four is full of lots more excitement, Aunt Jocasta, house-building, indigenous neighbors, that rat bastard Stephen Bonnet, and Roger and Brianna!
