‘Rent’, Episode Five, Outlander Watch Along

Outlander Watch Along. Discuss the episodes. Win prizes.

Astrid’s Blog

Bridget’s blog

The rules:

• Be nice! This is meant to be fun. Rude or mean comments will not get approved so do not waste your time.
• No spoilers beyond the episode currently being discussed. If we are watching episode four but you are commenting on episode one, please do not spoil for anyone trying to catch up.

The Prizes:

• Third Prize – Book Lover’s Soy Wax Tarts in Sassenach by Frostbeard Studio
• Second Prize – Sassenach t-shirt in your choice of Unisex (black, grey, maroon, green, or blue) or Women’s fit (blue, green, grey, pink, or pistachio) by Socialpop Tees
• First Prize – Hand Stamped “Sassenach” Stainless Steel Dragonfly Necklace with Amber Bead by TaggYourIt

The Virgin View by Bridget Blackwood

How do I feel about this week’s episode? Angry. I was mad at everyone. Mad at the men for their treatment of Claire. They purposefully keep her out of their circle and act like she is scum. Yeah, it was nice to see them rise up to protect her honor but for me it was too little too late. Dougal was a royal ass using Jamie to garner support. We know from earlier episodes that Jamie is sensitive about it. So what does Dougal do? Show it off like a trained monkey in a three ring circus far and wide!! If I had the power to reach through and slap him I would have. The red coat showing up at the end to ask is Claire was being held against her will makes me nervous. I don’t want her to leave Jamie. If things played out how I wanted them to she would have told him “No I am fine but since you are here could you stab this sour ass scot behind me?” *le sigh* It’d cause too many problems but would be worth the satisfaction.

The hot piss for the dye the women were doing made me glad I live in the now and not the then.

I like Claire, but am I the only one that thinks she comes across as holier than thou too often? I don’t know if I would like her much in real life.

I wish I had more to say this time. I’m freaking irritated at the episode and after reading Astrid’s post I just want to curl up with the book. I need more Jamie screen time and less history channel.

The Professional Fangirl by Astrid V. Tallaksen

Wow! I missed the last 2 weeks of the watch along and so much has happened! I felt a little intimidated getting back into the swing, so I’m just going to kind of ignore the two episodes I didn’t talk about for the most part because while this episode doesn’t stand alone necessarily, it doesn’t really need exposition for it to be understood as long as you’ve been watching along already. Claire is setting out with Dougal and his men to collect rents for the Mackenzie clan. In the show Dougal tells her he’s bringing her along because it will be good to have a healer. Of course, we’re all wondering what he really plans for her. In the book he tells her straight out that Colum wants him to take her along to Fort William for the commander of that garrison to figure out what to do with her. He’s also taking Jamie along, supposedly because he’s good with horses, but Claire wonders about this later because she thinks most of the men would know enough about horses to figure out which ones are good enough to take, and there wouldn’t be many horses offered as rent anyway. Not sure why they are so cryptic about everything in the show when the spell it out in the book pretty clearly. That seems to be becoming a pattern though. Who knows?

It kind of bothered me that they keep having the men being rude to Claire, excluding her from conversation by using Gaelic and obviously picking on her while keeping her from actually knowing what they were saying. Honestly, in the book we really don’t see much of the camping at all thus far. It makes for some interesting interactions with Jamie though, and I really like these even though they aren’t in the book. He tells her at one point to remember where she is, and that she isn’t in England anymore and should be careful to act like it. Ned Gowan! I was excited for the awesome elderly lawyer to show up. I just really like the guy – he’s got the soul of a romantic, an adventurer, and other than Jamie he’s really the first person to treat Claire without much suspicion or as anything less than an equal. He talks to her some about where he’s from and how he came to be working for the Mackenzies. He kind of glosses over some of his history with the clan though. On the show he’s fairly vague, just saying he started out working for Jacob (Colum and Dougal’s father) after looking for a Highland laird who’d take him on. The story is far more interesting than that though! He calls Jacob a “wicked, red auld rascal” (apparently Jamie takes after his great uncle in the appearance department), and it turns out that he met Jacob for the first time at the end of his gun as Jacob robbed him. When Jacob took off with everything, Ned followed him until he decided to make him the clan’s personal lawyer. Ned also gives some history of how Colum’s disability sort of started – with a couple of accidents and broken legs – and how he came to be laird in spite of his deformity and difficulty moving around.

I loved the ladies in the village who sang their songs while walking wool (eeww hot piss on your hands, no thank you!). While they aren’t in the book at this point (Claire does do wool walking later on), it gives a basis for Claire to have the curiosity about the standing stones without the internal monologue that’s in the book. Craigh Na Dun is a fairy hill, and in the book Claire wonders if standing stones all over are warning markers for strange occurances like disappearances and appearances much like hers. There’s no argument over the goat that’s needed for milk for a hungry baby, and therefore no British officer questioning if Claire’s alright and then rushing off to tattle tale on the Scotsmen keeping her with them. Not sure why there’s the major change here, because it IS pretty major as I’ll discuss later on. Neither is there the later generosity from Dougal for the father and son who were affected by the English Dragoons who came through and left them without food. Ned called Jacob a wicked auld rascal, but Dougal is certainly even worse. Using his nephew to stir sentiments and raise money is just horrible. It’s plain how much it hurts Jamie, and I just really hate Dougal for it, both in the show and the book. Claire thinks at first that Dougal is just stealing, although in the books she recognizes immediately that he’s raising money for the Jacobite rebellion. She only watches the one time, and I wish we’d have only seen it the one time, because I’m actually getting pretty tired of the constant long dialogue in Gaelic. It’s an interesting language, and I understand that the whole point is that Claire is cut off from understanding the world around her, BUT it’s getting old, and I worry that it’s going to lose viewership from those who aren’t dedicated to the show.

Anyway, they move on and run into the Watch burning a house because supposedly the people there were informing to the British. This isn’t in the book, nor are the traitors crucified by the British. I’m sure this is supposed to illustrate some sort of roughness and danger to being a Scot at the time, especially when it comes to how one deals with the rebellion. After another night of Dougal using Jamie’s back as a motivation to get money for his cause, there’s a heated discussion between the two, and Claire listens in. In the book we have an interesting interaction after Dougal leaves where Jamie tells Claire she can come out (how cute, he knows she’s there!). The show just has her watch him punch the tree and then joke about him not hitting anymore trees (The whole “don’t do anymore xyz” joke is getting old, how many times can you re-use this dialogue pattern? It’s not even in the book!). I prefer the way it was handled on the page – Claire advises Jamie that he needs to hit something, which he does. There’s a cute little description of him hitting a cherry tree and the petals falling all over him. Too bad we don’t get to see Jamie showered in flower petals.

We also missed out on a little discussion about Jamie being left-handed and a demonstration about how he sword fights. I need more Jamie time! **pout** Jamie doesn’t say anything about “he’s my uncle” or “what’s worth fighting for”, but whatever. They’ve been adding and rearranging dialogue all over the place and I don’t suppose this particular bit matters too much. We move on to yet another village and another taproom. Claire tries to warn Ned (and later Dougal) that they will not possibly win this rebellion and many lives will be lost. Yeah, because men EVER listen when you try to steer them away from danger, especially when it comes to something they’re passionate about. She doesn’t even think about warning them in the book. In this same tavern we have a huge fight between Dougal’s men and the village men over something said about Claire, that results in a list of injuries. In the book this plays out far differently. In this case the fight only involved Jamie and three of the villagers, and it’s over something personal they said about him. The laundry list of injuries were all Jamie’s. As Claire’s fixing Jamie up, binding his possibly broken ribs, he tells her he learned to fight from his father, and that his father is dead. Poor Jamie. I absolutely loved the interaction that night when Claire finds Jamie outside of her door by tripping over him. I wish they’d have let this interaction play out like it did in the book because it’s adorable and witty and I love how it establishes an even stronger rapport (and fun flirting) between the two. When she trips over him in the book she falls and hits her head. As it turns out, she bumped HER head on Jamie’s head. He says “How much do ye weigh Sassenach? Ye nearly crushed my liver.” His shock about sleeping in the same room with her is sweet, although how it plays out in the show vs. the book is a bit different. His reason for being upstairs turns out to be twofold, although this isn’t said in the show. The people downstairs that he’s worried about coming upstairs to rape her are actually English Dragoons, who he obviously would want to avoid as well. Of course that would be easier done in a stable than outside her door, so she’s still definitely the priority (awwww young love <3). In the book she asks him what would happen if they came upstairs and found him. He says they wouldn’t see his face in the dark and would just think he was waiting his turn (he says this with a smirk and wink – I love cheeky Jamie so much!!!! And how cute is it that he’ll blush one moment about sleeping in the same room as her, and then turn around and make a dirty joke?). Why would you take away all this awesome interaction between these two?!?! Urgh!

So we come to the end of the episode with the same Brit as before showing up again with backup to ask Claire if she’s ok. What will she say? I don’t know to be honest. In the book this doesn’t happen at all.Instead Dougal tells her he’s taking her to Brockton, just the two of them, to meet the commander of the garrison from Fort William. I’m sure you can guess how that’s going to turn out. What did I think of the episode overall? It was slow moving, mostly because of so much Gaelic, the majority of which was Dougal riling up the Scots. They left out a lot of awesome interaction between Claire and Jamie, and I feel that’s such an important part of the story, if not THE most important part. Definitely NOT my favorite episode. Let’s hope this picks up a bit next episode.

What did you think? Don’t forget to comment for a chance to win one of the awesome prizes!