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Outlander: Ep. 13, The Watch Review

Today we play angel and devil. This episode, more than any other, has come more out of the minds of the screenwriter than the mind of the creator.and that’s giving me a little bit of a dilemma. Do I review it as it stands, on its own merits, or do I compare it to what was changed? I think I have to do both. I’m really interested to hear what you have to say about this episode, so PLEASE leave comments!

ANGEL says:

Very interesting! The Watch was a damned if you do, burnt out if you don’t fact of life in Scotland. Ian and Jenny have made a practical choice to become friendly with McQuarry, the head of the local Watch, for a number of reasons. The introduction of the Watch, and the Fraser/Murray reactions to it, lets us explore a bit of how they’ve coped in the years Jamie was gone. I loved the discussions between Jamie and Ian – learning more about their relationship, including the time they were mercenary soldiers in Spain, was terrific. (A lot of this story was told in Diana’s novella Virgins, included in the story compilation Dangerous Women, available in hardcover or Kindle – click on the link to purchase). If you haven’t read it, it’s well worth finding!) The two men, as close as brothers, have fought together, been punished together, and are part of each other.

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Jenny tells Claire about Jamie and Ian – that Ian’s father, Old John, told Ian that his job is to “guard his chief’s weak side, When they stood side to side, there was none who could take the pair of them down.” And Jamie, trying to calm Ian down after he’s killed Horrocks, asks him, “Remember, we used to argue which was the bigger sin – fornication or killing? And worry whether we’d go to hell?” And Ian replied, “Well, you’re going to hell, and I might as well go too. God knows you’ll never manage alone.” The closeness of these two men has always been one of my favorite relationships throughout the books, and I’m so glad that Ron et. al. have made time to include and develop it. Jamie is a better man for having calm, steady Ian in his life – a touchstone and a Jiminy Cricket. While Ian has always recognized that Jamie was the one destined for leadership, Ian feels no shadow of jealousy.

McQuarry’s toast at the Murray’s dinner table was prophetic in many ways:

Here’s to a long life, and a merry one;
A quick death, and a good one;
A pretty girl, and an honest one;
A stiff whisky, and another one!

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And I did like Ian’s explanation to Jamie of why he actually liked McQuarry, the Watch leader – “I look forward to his visits,” Ian says. “I can drink whisky with a man who doesn’t look on me with pity, like I’m some kind of lame cur. Maybe I favor him because he’s a soldier, or because he reminds me of you. And because he protects from the Redcoats.” And Ian understands better than Jamie does at this point that there’s strength in numbers. “No man can stand up to that monster Randall alone – not you, not me. It takes an army. And the Watch is our army.”  Ian’s telling Jamie that he’s missed his friendship, and his presence in his daily life – Jamie doesn’t see Ian as a cripple or as “less than,” and it’s a strength of Jamie’s character that he sees Ian, and others, for who they really are.

Last week’s episode gave me some trouble because there was no sign of any kind of developing relationship between Jenny and Claire. This is another important friendship, and I was very glad to see it this week. One of my complaints last week was the time compression that the series has been under, and I think you can see some period of time – maybe a month or two – between the previous episode and this one, if only in the size of Jenny’s pregnant belly. But they’re coming to an understanding – they both love Jamie, and that’s their starting point. I thought the birth scenes were handled very well – as anyone who has gone through it themselves can tell you, there are moments when you can think rationally, have a clear discussion, and moments when you think you’re going to die. And they’re not that far apart.

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The small carved snake, made by their brother Willie, who died young, is a constant throughout the books, carried by Jamie all his life. I loved seeing it show up at this point in the story, when Jenny is faced with the very real possibility of her own death. “Willie’s buried out there next to our mother,” she confides in Claire. “She died two years after he did – in childbirth.” (One of our TiBS staff writers, Des Andrews, is a midwife – I’ll defer to her opinion of the “correctness” of the birthing scene, and ask her to comment at some point later.)

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McQuarry is an interesting character, completely made up and not part of the original Outlander book. Generally fair-minded, he has no illusion about the men who travel with him. He knows they’re uneducated, uncouth, disrespectful, and only in it for themselves; but they’ll fight, and follow him, as long as they get their share of the bounty. Horrocks, the Redcoat deserter that Jamie met with several episodes ago, makes an unwelcome return into Jamie’s life, associated with the Watch. We’re not meant to like him – and we don’t – and neither does McQuarry. The confrontation between Jamie and McQuarry after Ian has killed the deserter caused Jamie to make a decision – do I trust him with my secret? Based on Ian’s knowledge of the man, he decides that, yes, he’s better off coming clean. “I’ve a fair knowledge of mathematics,” McQuarry tells Ian and Jamie. “Three men go out, two men come in. Add to that, you two know each other and hid it from me. That doesna add up. Why’d ye kill him?”

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Jamie claims the kill as his own – he was the man on the line, not Ian, and he needs McQuarry to see him as a dangerous man on his own, not needing someone to do his fighting for him. Jamie confides in McQuarry, and is surprised by his reaction. “Good. I never liked the Irish bastard. If ever a man needed killing, it was him.” So now Jamie’s life and freedom are in McQuarry’s hands, and McQuarry takes advantage of this knowledge, pressing Jamie to come with them on their raid on the Chisholm rent party, with disastrous consequences.

The raiding party itself, riding through the beautiful, wild Scottish countryside, revealed that Jamie’s trust in McQuarry wasn’t misplaced. McQuarry, too, realizes that Jamie is different from the men that normally ride with him. His leadership and abilities are obvious, and superior, to most men. A bond of sorts is created – and results in Jamie’s capture by the Redcoat ambush, set up by Horrocks – Jamie is taken when he refuses to leave a wounded McQuarry, Ian tells Claire and Jenny when he returns.

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I loved the small bits of Jamie and Claire time we saw – Claire’s tearful confession to Jamie that she might never give him children – “It’s me who let you down,” she says. “The truth is, I may never give you a son as beautiful as little Jamie. I tried before I met you. I should have told you before we were married. The truth is, I never counted on loving you.”  When Jamie is leaving with the Watch, Claire tells him to hurry back, “or else. Or else I’ll follow. I’ll drag you back by your thick red curls. And you won’t like it one bit.”

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And the DEVIL says:

The family and relationship scenes in this week’s episode were my favorite part of the night. The invention of the Watch, and the complete change in the circumstances of Jamie’s capture, may have made for a better TV script, but the set up from last week – Jamie beating Ronald McNab for his treatment of his young son – now seem unnecessary. Sure, Rabbie shows up as a cute little groom at the stables this week, but we’ve lost the storyline that showed the tenants’ solidarity for their Laird (in the book, it’s Ronald McNab who betrays Jamie to the English, following that beating, and the tenants kill him and burn down his cottage in retaliation).

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For the most part, the changes that have been made to the story up to this point have been sidelines – maybe they could have happened, because with a story that’s told almost completely from Claire’s point of view, you don’t see a lot of what goes on outside of her presence. We’ve appreciated Ron Moore’s faithfulness to the original source material, even if lines we want to hear aren’t in the same places, or characters have been changed slightly. But this episode takes a hard left turn, bringing in a completely new story line, and a major departure. I really want to hear Ron explain this in his podcast – I hope he does.

So what do you think? Did the Watch storyline make sense? For book fans, do you have trouble with the complete change in the circumstances of Jamie’s capture? Looking forward, the lack of the McNab storyline doesn’t really affect anything coming up – Ron Moore has acknowledged the requirement of continuing throughout the seasons any storyline he creates (as an extreme example, if he removed Geillis’ pregnancy, he would have to change major plot lines in coming seasons) – there are some things that are important, permanent parts of the story, and some that can be changed without consequence, but should they be changed?

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And does a large new storyline like this take away from some of the character development points that might flesh out other plot lines? Would the viewer have gained more by keeping to the Ronald McNab storyline, even if it would have taken less time to develop, and using that time to have more Jenny/Claire or Jamie/Claire? To give a little more time to Jamie and Claire settling in to Lallybroch, which would have made future events more heartbreaking in that we would have understood more what they could potentially lose during the events of coming weeks? As I said last week, the requirements of a good hour of television are very different from the requirements of a good book – the structure of each are very different, and books have more leisure to develop characters, relationships and plot lines than TV shows do – but how much of that development can be sacrificed in the pursuit of gaining viewers who have not read the books? I don’t have answers to this, only things to think about. Tell me what you thought of this episode and the changes that were made!

Be sure to check out the transcriptions of this week’s Twitter Q&As with Twitter chat with Diana and Twitter Q&A with Laura Donnelly

Follow me on Twitter: @OutlanderTiBS

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