Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 4, Eps 1 – 3

Part 15: The Unicorn Meets the Eagle (or ‘America… f*** yeah!’)

Wherein Claire and Jamie are slaves to fortune, and others are just slaves

The shape and boundaries of Outlander’s story changed in steady increments throughout its third season, building to a wave (a literal one) that swept the show off its axis and into the raw, thumping heart of America’s pioneering past.

Drawing purely on internet chatter from the many Outlander fan groups I follow, season four’s new direction seems to be the site of the greatest schism yet between fans. Some consider the season to be an evolution, others a metamorphosis (from a butterfly back into a caterpillar). Some see it as a revelation, others an abomination. The fans have split into factions as surely as the two warring sides at Prestonpans or Culloden, a fierce, head-on battle for Outlander’s heart and soul. The question keeps coming up: is season four a blossoming, or a blooming disgrace?

So far, I can’t see what all the fussing and fighting is about. Sure, the show looks and feels very different in many ways, but it’s still solidly and undeniably Outlander. As a litmus test I spent the duration of ‘America the Beautiful’ playing a game of Outlander bingo: pointless Claire monologue? CHECK! Soft-core pornography? CHECK! Occasional bouts of yukky, stilted, over-literary dialogue? CHECK! An irredeemably psychopathic bad guy? CHECK! Hanging; misery; betrayal; death; wonky accents… BINGO!

Characters may live, characters may die; characters may come, characters may go; here, there, back, forth, but there’s one absolute constant in the world of Outlander.

Rape.

We’ve already established that the old world was a minefield of sexual assault (plus ça change) with defilements and debasements round every corner, so kudos to Diana Gabaldon and the writing team for always finding new and inventive ways of putting a fresh spin on the horror. I swear that Diana’s rolodex must be a veritable encyclopedia of assault-based flights of fancy. I wonder what ideas lurk in there yet to be employed? Hot-air balloon rape? Man serially abused by evil trees? Elks held in sexual captivity?”

This time around the horror belongs to young Ian, who admits to Jamie he’s still traumatised by the Bakra’s blood-soaked predations. The knife to his neck was but the final straw in a campaign of bodily terror that saw his spirit broken, his pride punctured and his memories hijacked, all of it garnished with a liberal sprinkling of shame.

Is it really any wonder that the Outlander fandom idolises Jamie? He’s a thoroughly good egg, isn’t he? Jamie is more progressive, patient and understanding than many social-justice-seeking millenials I’ve met. “Some ghosts can only be banished by naming them and their misdeeds aloud,” he tells Ian, shooting for spiritual guidance and in the process stumbling across modern psychology and the healing science of talk therapy. Jamie’s own experience with sexual violence has given him greater empathy for people in general, and victims of sexual assault in particular, but more than that: he’s a man who’s always been several hundred years ahead of his time (give or take a few ill-judged slaps).

Black Jack Randall may be dead, but his spiritual successor is alive and well in pre-revolutionary North Carolina. Step forward Stephen Bonnet, Outlander’s latest dastardly villain. Bonnet’s a mad, bad Irishman with the nervous, twitchy energy of a thousand Rik Mayalls, but none of his zany, humanising humour. There’s something more shark than man about this greedy, thankless scoundrel, who repays vulnerability with attack, and kindness with death.

After Hayes hangs for a crime of passion, Bonnet – next in line to swing – takes advantage of a diversion caused by Hayes’ angry, grief-stricken pal to flee his own pendulum-based destiny. Claire and Jamie later discover that Bonnet has hitched a ride in the back of their wagon, and against their better judgement agree to hide and harbour him, smuggling him past squads of redcoats.

When they next encounter Bonnett, he’s a robber, rascal and all-round rotter. He boards Jamie and Claire’s riverboat with his crew of criminals and proceeds to beat, terrify and humiliate his saviours, taking Jamie’s gems and Claire’s wedding rings, and even slitting the throat of the aforementioned grief-stricken pal to whom Bonnett indirectly owes his life. He’s… well. How shall we put this?

He’s a bit of a c***, isn’t he?

I wasn’t entirely sold on the use of Ray Charles’ ‘America the Beautiful’ over the scene of the boat rampage. While I understand that the juxtaposition of the song’s cheery melody with the visceral horror unfolding to its accompaniment serves to amplify the senseless horror of the attack, I really needed and wanted to hear the angst, the screams, the threats, the slits, thuds and cracks. Not because I’m an irredeemable sicko, you understand (although in many ways I am). I just felt that the music both dulled the magnitude of Bonnet’s betrayal and softened the impact of the violence. I wanted to see, hear and feel it the way Jamie and Claire did, no holds barred. I wanted to share the totality of their pain, anger and thirst for retribution.

[Granted, though, there was something irresistible in hearing a song about America, performed by a black man in segregation-era America, playing over a scene that typifies the violence upon which modern American was built.]

It’s clear that Bonnet has much in common with the fabled scorpion who hitches a ride on the back of a too-trusting frog, but team Fraser’s not exactly lacking for stings. I’m sure there’ll be a reckoning, and soon. But I fear that before that day comes, Bonnett will do much worse to the Frasers and those close to them. Much, much worse.

So far, barring the obvious robbery-homicide, the very worst thing that Stephen Bonnet has done is… speak. What is it with this show and accents? If they aren’t always going to hire Scottish or Irish actors to play Scottish or Irish parts, they should at least seek to hire actors who can turn their tongues to multiple dialects with ease. Ed Speleers is a good actor, but his Irish accent is a little… off. It isn’t in the same league of aural atrocities as Geillis Duncan’s ear-murdering lilts, but it’s just out of alignment enough to hamper the suspension of my disbelief. I’m sure the people of Minnesota, Rhode Island, Durban and Tokyo aren’t all that bothered about a few stray Oirish (sic) intonations, but I know one picky, prickly Celt that sure as shit is.

Ditto Aunt Jocasta. Now, Maria Doyle Kennedy is a talented actress, still in the midst of a long, varied and successful career – and I adored her in Orphan Black as the world-weary, murky, but deeply maternalistic Mrs S – but her Scottish accent is too clipped and staccato to scan as wholly authentic. Again, it’s just… just… a little off. Ever so slightly. But enough for each syllable to boom in my ears like a bomb.

Anyway, enough nit-picking. It’s time to… well, whatever the opposite of nit-picking is. Putting nits back? Making nits great again? Establishing a comprehensive nit-breeding program? WELL, RELEASE THE NITS, because I think that the fourth season’s second episode ‘Do No Harm’ is among the best the show has ever done.

It’s exquisite: a harrowing tale of conflict, prejudice, hatred, hope, despair, tragedy, ignorance and helplessness, for which there are no easy answers and from which there is no method of escape for Jamie or Claire that won’t leave them drenched in the blood of innocents.

Jamie’s experiences suffering under the jackboots of the English forces in Scotland has given him an affinity with subjugated and dispossessed peoples the world over, which predisposes him to stand up for the slaves’ humanity and freedom. Claire cannot abide injustice, and seeks to overthrow it wherever she encounters it, by any means necessary, and no matter the cost or the futility of the act. But here their noble impulses are prostrate in the face of a system that won’t budge, no matter how firmly they press their pasty-white shoulders against it. Jamie knows that even if he could rally the slaves to overthrow their masters, he’d most likely get them all killed in the process – maybe even his beloved aunty, too. Claire, from her vantage point in the future, knows in which direction this particular path of history is winding, and if Culloden couldn’t be stopped… then neither can this.

With each fresh attempt to do the right thing, Claire and Jamie only succeed in making themselves more complicit in the unfolding horror. Their impotence in the face of systemic racism and cruelty is grueling and horrible, though as a narrative choice it’s delicious: a rich seam of conflict and tension.

What does justice mean, who does it really serve, if its points are calibrated so crookedly? When blind white hatred outweighs black lives and freedom? Slavery is a system and a way of thinking that’s a danger and a detriment to the bodies and souls of all men, women and children, irrespective of colour; although the heavier burden rests, of course, upon the shoulders of those with darker skin tones. Sometimes that burden rests upon them literally, forcing them to exist as human cart-horses.

Jamie can’t abide the sight of Rufus hanging from a hook, awaiting excruciating torture and death at the hands of his hate-filled ‘masters’. It sickens and angers him. Hayes being hanged was one thing, this is quite another. He saves him… or so he hopes.

Claire takes an equally bold stance – placing the Hippocratic oath before the hypocritical oath of hatred – by using her surgical skills to heal the wounded man. I thought Ulysses – Aunt Jocasta’s slave of slaves – was going to thank Claire for her efforts, but he instead rebukes her for having intervened. He tells her with some anguish that when the angry crowd gets its hands on Rufus now, which it will, the boy’s fate will be much worse… that they’ll make an example of him to put all of the slaves in their place

It reminded me of the time I stood up for a homeless person who was being verbally abused and threatened on a cold, Aberdeen street. ‘Thanks,’ the homeless man said to me, once I’d warned his would-be attackers off, ‘They’ll probably come back later and kick the living shit out of me now.’

The only choice open to Claire if she wants to safeguard the rest of the slaves, preserve the time-line and ensure a less harrowing death for Rufus is to kill her himself. Jesus, that’s dark, Outlander. Commendably dark. A different show might have seen Claire and Jamie fake Rufus’ death and smuggle him out of town to safety, but this show likes to revel in its impossible choices.

On that note: Claire’s turning into quite the little serial killer, isn’t she? A real Harriet Shipman. They’ll soon have to rename the show ‘Take Me Out-lander’. Who’s she going to poison next?

‘Claire, young Ian’s got a bit of a sore leg. I think he’s grazed it.’

[Claire nods] ‘You get the kettle on, Jamie, I’ll go fetch the [wink, wink] special ingredient.’

‘NO, CLAIRE!!! JESUS CHRIST!’

Claire’s send-off for Rufus was agonising but tender. In death, she handed him freedom, and returned him to his family – even if it was only in his mind’s eye in the brief moments before it winked shut forever.

Then the lynch mob are handed Rufus’s body. Nothing sums up the insanity of racism more than a bunch of angry, mad bastards hanging a corpse. What awful, terrible bastards we’re capable of becoming given the right (or wrong) circumstances. It’s no great surprise that Jamie and Claire decline Aunt Jocasta’s offer to join them on her estate.

I always start these diaries worrying that I won’t be able to write enough and then, once I hit my stride, I always worry that I’ve written too much. Outlander lends itself well to analysis, and because of my closeness to the country that started it all, and my love of TV and pop culture, there are always multiple routes to journey down off the main avenues laid down by the episodes. And, as you’re by now well aware, I do so love a good segue.

However, whenever Roger and Brianna dominate an episode my anxiety about writing too much vanishes. I’ve never found their arc especially compelling, a lack of enthusiasm that’s only been compounded by my indifference to Brianna – both the character and the actress who portrays her. I feel like I could get away with writing, ‘Roger and Brianna did stuff, and then they did some more stuff, and then all the stuff was done, the end.’

Well, blow me down. What a difference a year makes. Brianna and Roger seem really good together here. And I like Brianna now, both the character and the actress. Sophie Alexandra Skelton has really settled into the role, and the character seems at once more relaxed, and significantly wilder. Brianna definitely has Claire’s tunnel-visioned, devil-may-care-ness, but it’s untempered by the anguish of wars and death. I’m sure her impulsivity will spell trouble for Roger in the long-run.

He’s a real love-sick little puppy, isn’t he? That’s when he isn’t being all whiny, passive-aggressive and entitled. I thought their burgeoning romance, with all its confusion, angst and heartache, was handled very well. And Brianna’s blouse landing on the deer’s antlers like some sexy parachute made ma laugh. Still, say what you like about Roger, there aren’t many men who would travel all the way to North Carolina to attend what appears to be a Scottish-themed church bazaar.

The song that Roger sang on stage for Brianna made me cringe. The lyrics were horrible, the tune was crud, an assessment obviously not shared by Roger’s audience, who sat enraptured; smiling, nodding, and staring ahead with unblinking zeal. I’ve been at concerts, recitals and karaoke nights. At least fifty per cent of the people in any given audience are chatting among themselves; twenty per cent or more are off at the bar; fifteen per cent are asleep; and the other fifteen per cent are staring down at their shoes like they’re trying to figure out how to use them to kill themselves.

Anyway, Roger and Brianna did stuff, and then they did some more stuff, and then all the stuff was done. The end.

A few final, disjointed thoughts

As Claire and Jamie’s first big bonk of the season got underway, my partner shook her head and said, ‘Why is Claire always just wet? No preamble, no foreplay: plop – in he goes.’ ‘Maybe because they’re constantly surrounded by the aphrodisiac of death and danger, and he’s got big muscles?’ She was still incredulous. ‘That’s not how vaginas work.’ It was my turn to shake my head. ‘Maybe this says more about me, than it does about Claire and Jamie.’
When the Scots were all gathered together drinking booze and singing Gaelic songs in a phlegmy warble, it reminded me again of how many similarities there are between Scots and that other long-haired, often-indecipherable warrior race, the Klingons.
So, the historical genesis of the drum-roll is as an accompaniment to hangings, is it? Thank you in advance, Outlander, for helping me to win a pub-quiz at some point in the future. What a wonderful, though slightly disconcerting, sprinkling of detail. I’m more used to hearing drum-rolls during a magician’s act. It’s a bit jarring to hear it accompanying a horrid, neck-snapping death, although what is hanging if not a magic trick without the ‘ta-da’ bit?
I hope we see more of John Quincy Myers – Hagrid’s little brother meets the bearded music teacher from the Walking Dead.
Ditto Phaedre. Good actress, good character. Wise and spirited beyond her years. I hope we see a lot more of her.
I wish Lt Wolff had been this season’s baddy. You can just tell he’s going to be a complete, unbridled arsehole.
What a big man-child I am. I found myself snickering away at the subtitles when they were describing animal noises. My partner shook her head in despair. Come on, though, ‘horse nickers’? A horse wearing a big pair of ladies pants? Who can blame a man for chuckling like a child? And the less said about the ‘gobbling softly’ the better.
Claire see the ghost of an Indian, and it leads her to Jamie. I’m sure that presages the appearance of some real-life native Americans in the show.
Frasers’ Ridge! Now I understand why that Facebook fan group calls itself that!