Outlander Season 4, Episode 3

Guys, I have exciting news!  My Outlander readership has increased by 5 times!  That means there are now 10 of you out there!  Woot woot.  Raise the 18th century roof.

The other exciting news is that things started to pick up on the show this week.  This was a welcome change from the book, where Claire and Jaime spend way too much time in with Auntie Jo in River Run.  The relationship between Claire and Jocasta seemed a little more pointed in the show.  Actually, Claire in general seems a little more pointed in the show.  She’s not quite a Tony Soprano or Don Draper in terms of unlikable protagonists, but she tries her best.  I suppose we should cut her some slack, being that she’s living 200 years in the past.

Speaking of that, this episode reminds us of the danger that Claire is in as a time-traveler.  We’ve all had those daydreams about being able to go back in time and choose winning lotto numbers but Claire is living an extreme version of that.  She has the acumen and medical training of a 20^th century surgeon but she needs to pretend to be an uneducated country bumpkin “healer.”  Why?  Because there is always the threat of violence as a way to keep women like Claire in line.  It lurks around every corner and we get the uneasy feeling that if Claire and Jaime stay much longer in River Run, they will meet a violent end.

So when Jaime and Claire decide to chart their own course by settling Fraser’s Ridge, it isn’t just a way for them to build something of their own, or recreate the laird dynamic of Lallybroch that Jaime was forced to leave behind; it’s a way for Claire to stay out of harm’s way and not attract so much darn attention.

The ending scene of Claire and Jaime looking out over the ridge made me so excited for what’s to come.  I love this part of the story, when Claire and Jaime really build a life together and their family takes shape.  I read the first books very quickly but I slowed down a bit once they get to America because I loved thinking about what it was like back then and how we would have lived.  Sure, we would have all smelled horrible and probably been dead by 45 but can you imagine how beautiful the night sky looked and how pure the air smelled?  How quiet it must have been without the noise of cars, air conditioning, TV, etc.?!

The other great nugget of this episode is the introduction of the ghost Native American skull that Claire finds.  To be honest, the sci-fi time-travel aspect of Outlander has felt tertiary at many points.  Sure, she’s gone back and forth a couple of times but once she’s in the past or future, it’s life as usual.  But now that the story is getting deeper, we’re going to learn that Claire and Gaellis are not the only people who have discovered how to time-travel.  There are others and Claire (and we) will want to know what binds them together and sets them apart from normal folk.

The presence of the ghost is also the second hint at Claire having superpowers of sort (the first was when she could feel that the skeleton (which turned out to be Gaellis who Claire herself MURDERS in Season 3) Joe Abernathy asked her to look at had been murdered just by touching it).  This makes sense because as with the books, it’s something that develops very slowly as Claire ages.  When I think about where Outlander will end up when Diana Gabaldon has finished the books and Ronald D. Moore has finished the show, I imagine Claire with X-Men level healing powers.  The big question is, to what end?  There are so many different layers to the Outlander story and I honestly can’t figure out where Gabaldon is going with this one… which is why she’s writing these books and not me!