Previously on Outlander: Claire manages to get herself kidnapped while trying to get to Craig Na Dun.
Welcome back! It’s been a long time since we left Jamie hanging on that ledge, but Kandis and I are excited to be recapping once more.
In the interim, we actually met in person!
Need a drinking game refresher? Hope you have a lot of whiskey on hand.
Yikes. I figured they would include That Scene, but had somehow hoped there would be some magical thing the writers could do to make it not so gross and horrifying. Alas…
We start off with what essentially is the best the writers can do with the source material: Jamie contemplating how each choice he makes, leading to another choice, defines whether he is good or bad, right or wrong, man or boy. (Pro tip: don’t beat your wife, Jamie. Always a good choice.)
Backing up a bit! Jamie learns that Claire has been kidnapped by Randall, and convinces everyone to help him save her. The other men oblige, and easily sneak into the fort with a few threats about family jewels.
When he rappels down the side of the fort to hang out in the window, we’re back where the show left us in September. “I’ll thank you to take your hands off my wife,” he says, pointing his gun at Randall.
Randall, of course, is delighted to have another party to his attempted rape, and licentiously asks how his handiwork (Jamie’s scars) is, and whether he can see it. Claire yells at Jamie to just shoot him, but Randall puts a knife to her throat and Jamie drops the gun. Randall takes the opportunity to pick up the gun and shoot Jamie, but the gun’s not loaded. JAMIE, WTF. You are so pretty but are not acting so bright today.
Of course, once he knocks Randall out and saves his traumatized bride, he declines to kill Randall then, too. His voiceover notes that it never occurred to him to kill a helpless man. Pretty sure that if there is a supreme benevolent being, Jamie, killing Randall wouldn’t count. Make like Nike and Just Do It.
Once Claire is safely back at camp, she discovers no one will talk to her, and Jamie is furious. Shouldn’t have stepped out of line, little missy! Of course, he stupidly expresses his guilt and fear for her by telling her that she belongs to him, that she should apologize for nearly getting raped, and that she’s a foul-mouthed bitch. Claire, of course, calls him out on this jaw-dropping idiocy in a very intense, close-talking fight that should have set everyone’s panties aflame.
Jamie finally uses his grown-up words and expresses how afraid he was for her, and they both make up.
Winning everyone else over, of course, is not going to be so easy, and the price of their forgiveness is getting whipped by one’s husband. WHAT. Claire, to the last second, puts up a fight and wonders whether Jamie – who couldn’t kill his wife’s attempted rapist because he was unarmed – would really beat his wife. Answer: yes, he would and does, in a profoundly disturbing scene. I understand the call for it – the 18th century is not all wine, sexy bekilted men, and romance – but whether he’s a product of his environment doesn’t matter. He knew better and he chose to beat her anyway.
Claire, as you might imagine, does not take this the way her husband wishes she would. He’s rather chagrined that she’s withholding sex and not speaking to him. But this leaves the door wide open for Laoghaire, who takes the opportunity to show up in a widely-laced corset with nothing underneath, and tries to get Jamie to break his vows. But now that Jamie’s had someone with a personality, he’s not going back to a mewling kitten, and hell hath no fury like a mewling kitten scorned.
Meanwhile, Colum and Dougal are fighting: Dougal has been secretly rallying against the British and wants payment for it, even though it jeopardizes Clan MacKenzie. In their argument, Dougal even alludes to the fact that he fathered Colum’s son, Hamish. (OUCH.) Eventually, they forgive each other, and Jamie is left to patch things up with his wife.
Here’s how to get your wife to forgive you when you’ve just beat and humiliated her (and you’re a six-foot something redheaded sex god): you kneel in front of her with a dagger and swear an oath that you will never raise a hand to her again. And here’s how you make sure of that when you’re the feisty wife from the 1940s: you grab that dagger (and your husband’s face) during woman-on-top sex, and swear right back to him, while gyrating away, that if he ever hurts you again, you will cut his heart out and eat it for breakfast. (And then you find a Scottish voodoo doll under the bed, courtesy of your husband’s biggest swimfan.)
Is it hot in here, or is it just my intensely mixed feelings?
Kilt Drops: 1
- The consensual sex in this episode was hotter than anything this show has given us yet, and that’s really saying something. Too bad the beating and YET ANOTHER ATTEMPTED RAPE dampened those embers.
Sasse-WHAT?
- Jamie, take your hand off Laoghaire’s boob before you start talking about not breaking vows.
- Laoghaire, your damaged goods speech made me want to do you real violence.
And that’s it for this week! What did you think? Are you conflicted? Team Frank or Team Jamie? Team Neither? And why was there only one promo photo from this episode?
Next episode: Jamie makes a new Duke friend, whom he hopes will help lift the price from his head.
