It’s fitting that in an episode about the search for Jamie, we don’t see him either… but that sure made it hard to get through this one, as much as I liked it! Written by hardcore fan Matt Roberts, this episode was very faithful to the original material, much more than they have been this half of the season. But while it had its strengths, there were definite areas where the depth of feelings was more like the kiddie pool than the deep end.
The search party starts off at Lallybroch, where Ian, still shaken by what happened with the Watch, is ready to saddle up and head out himself. “We have to do something! Our Laird is in the clutches of the English!” I was bothered by this choice of words, though – Jamie is more to Ian than his Laird, and while this may be a picky criticism, by calling him “the Laird” instead of using his name or other more familiar and intimate term, the personal loss is diminished. We don’t see how devastating this is to him – we know it is, but it could have had more impact. And that, too, continues throughout the episode – between music and language, the immediacy and desperation that this episode could have had is diminished. There seems to be a separation between the extreme seriousness of the situation and nearly all of the reactions to it – Jenny is the only one that responded with the haste required.
The hashtag for this week – if you are a Twitterer – is #BadLasses, and boy, are they. Especially Jenny. “Love forces a person to choose,” she tells Claire as she burns a Redcoat courier’s foot to get him to talk. “You do things you’d never imagine you could do before.” And that’s what we see throughout the entire episode – Claire, Jenny and Murtagh forcibly pulled out of their comfort zones to do what is necessary to find and free Jamie, whom they all love. Is the love of a brother or a foster son as deep as the love of a wife for her husband? Jamie is fortunate to have so many people with such deep feelings for him.
But Jenny has just given birth within the last couple of days. And she knows that she can’t leave her newborn baby for very long. I have to admit that on my first watch of this episode, I was slightly uncomfortable with the breast pumping scene (and I nursed both of my children) – but I quickly realized that this scene was important to remind us of the immediacy of the situation – the threat had to be severe to make a new mother leave her child. Jenny really did need to get back to baby, but her love for her brother was so deep that she had no hesitation to go, at least for a while. Once Murtagh showed up, though, she knew that Claire and the search were in the best possible hands – she’s known Murtagh all her life, and understands his devotion to Jamie.
Can you imagine dour, tight-lipped Murtagh getting up on stage for anything less than Jamie’s life? Of course not. But yet here he is, attempting to do the sword dance, to attract attention to himself and Claire, so that Jamie will hear and come to them. Claire, using her limited knowledge of palmistry – from the palm reading Mrs. Graham did on her in the first episode – tries to find out if anyone has seen a “strapping, red haired” man. “If I had seen him,” one obviously unhappy customer tells her, “I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you!” When Claire urges Murtagh to sing to “jazz up” his lackluster performance, he decides that she needs to be the group’s singer. While Caitriona has a lovely voice – just right for her task, unpolished but pleasant – the use of a contemporary tune was jarring. It brought the viewer out of the search, and made the scene lighthearted – where it definitely should not have been.
At this point, Jamie has been missing for quite a while – we never get a good grip on how long the search has gone on, but Claire and Murtagh know that every day increases the risk that he’ll be caught or killed. And they must be feeling more desperate with every day that passes! So do we really need catchy light music? Jamie isn’t more likely to recognize the tune as specifically attached to Claire – he can’t distinguish tunes following the blow to the head that he told Claire about earlier. But the words Murtagh puts to the tune are ones Jamie will know, he says (as Dougal used to sing it when he was drinking). The scenes of their village tour have more the feeling of a rock band bus tour than a fruitless and frantic search.
The light mood is thankfully interrupted when they discover that a band of gypsies has seen how successful they are with their unusual song and poorly done sword dance, and decide to duplicate their act, but do it all better. Claire and Murtagh are furious at this – after all, if Jamie hears of the “Sassenach” performer but it’s the wrong one, he will miss the people looking for him, and may put himself further in danger.
Ward, the gypsy leader, realizes that Claire and Murtagh aren’t what they seem to be. “You have a servant. Clearly you’re in no need of funds. A respectable English lady travelling through the Scottish countryside posing as an itinerant performer – no. You do this for either politics… or love.” Claire decides to trust him, and confesses their motives, then pays him off to stop using their song. And Murtagh, much less trusting of the world, is furious with her. He is already unhappy with her attitude and outspokenness, and this is the final straw for him.
They have it out during an overnight stop. Murtagh tells her, “I’m a fool for trailin’ after ye. At least I ken that much. But you – you’re stubborn and willna listen to anybody but yourself. Ye insisted ye’d carry on singing that song. We’ve still no sign of the lad.” “Are you blaming me for our situation?” Claire replies indignantly. “This whole farce was your idea.” “And it was fine. Until your dealings with the gypsies.” Claire tells him that he can’t understand how she feels because he’s never lost someone. And how does she know? As it turns out, Murtagh had been in love with Ellen Mackenzie, Jamie’s mother, and the beautiful bracelets Jenny gave Claire previously, saying they were from “an admirer, and Mother would never tell us who” were from Murtagh, after he killed a boar by himself with a dagger, trying to prove himself as a man she would want. So his love for Jamie, who he says is “a son” to him, stems from his love of Jamie’s mother. This is a very touching moment, beautifully filmed – you knew there had to be a story behind Murtagh’s devotion to Jamie, and his quiet nature hides a deep fatherly feeling. Trust restored, bond deepened, they set out again.
The Claire and Murtagh show – the gypsy version – has attracted attention after all, and they get word that they should hurry to Glen Rowan Cross, a place Murtagh says that Jamie would know. It’s not Jamie, though – Dougal is waiting to tell her that their worst fears have come true, that Jamie has been taken prisoner and is in Wentworth Prison, sentenced to death. Dougal tells Claire to let Jamie go, that there’s no way they can save him, even if he is still alive, and that he, Dougal, is Claire’s only chance at protection. He has always had a thing for Claire – you know that if his wife had died before he forced Claire and Jamie to marry, that he would have married her himself – willing or not. And Claire knows why – should Jamie die without a child, Lallybroch goes to his widow – and Dougal will gain this valuable piece of land for the Mackenzies. But Claire convinces him that she’ll marry him should a rescue attempt prove unsuccessful (sure she will! She’ll be making off for the stones at the first chance, you know it!). And Dougal agrees that she may ask the men with him for help – he won’t order them to their death, he says, but he won’t prevent them from deciding on their own to go with her.
Willie is the first to step up. He’s seen how honorable Jamie is, and I think he wants to emulate him, rather than the out-for-themselves rest of the group. But were you relieved to see that Rupert wasn’t threatening Claire? You knew he’d never do that. And did you have any doubt that in the end, Angus and Rupert would agree to go on what has to look like a suicide mission into Wentworth? I didn’t. They may not be the smartest pair, but they aren’t cowards, and are always up for the adventure, just what Claire and Murtagh need.
My biggest problem with the last few episodes is that we haven’t seen enough of the building relationship between Jamie and Claire to understand how deep their love is. And this episode seems to distance itself from most of the relationships as well, starting with Ian in the first few minutes. That all leaves me with a vague feeling of disconnect – how honest are the emotions that are leading them into next final two episodes? The basis of Outlander is the soul-mate love between Jamie and Claire, and the bone-deep respect and admiration that everyone else has for them. To this point, we have seen very little of the first, and not enough building of the second to have a strong connection to the characters – if they don’t have that connection for each other, how can the viewer have it for them? Much of the depth of the relationships has been sacrificed for the changes that have been made. Outlander could have been so much better had Ron Moore believed in the need to tell the primary story, rather than “action it up.”
HOWEVER, boys and girls, we’re heading into serious territory. It’s been more than hinted at – if Jamie falls into Randall’s hands again, what chance does he have? If you’re nervous about next week’s episode, and I don’t blame you at all if you are, check out the preview I’ll post Wednesday evening. This is my special “early warning system,” your “Worry warning,” and I’ll give you a spoiler-free idea of what to expect.
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