Outlander Season 4, Episode 4

Oh snap, shit’s gettin’ real on Outlander!  Things really started cooking this week and there were some truly interesting deviations from the book.

For the most part I like the deviations but the change from real bear (book) to former Cherokee posing as a bear (TV show) was a little strange.  Lindsay and I speculate that this being Starz, they may not have had the budget for a CGI bear.

Strange bear-man aside, this episode was all about Jaime and Claire as they start their homestead.  For book geeks like myself it’s so exciting to watch Fraser’s Ridge take shape.  I’ve imagined their plot with the cabin and Claire’s medical shed so many times!  I pictured the area as less wooded but maybe they just haven’t deforested the area yet?

As with the book, the Frasers encounter some tense times with the Native Americans but come to a tacit peace.    Something tells me it’s temporary and wee Ian is going to be joining them soon!

For now, everyone is happy and we witness a key moment in Claire’s arc – when the Native American wise woman reveals that she has dreamt of Claire and knows that she will “fly” and reach her full powers when her hair is silver.  I love this nugget because it tells us that Diana Gabaldon intends to see this story through to Claire’s old age!  With so many new characters introduced throughout the later books, I had wondered if the focus was shifting but I think this makes it clear that Outlander will always be about Claire at its core.

The episode ends with the revelation that Brianna (now that she knows Claire made it through the stones and back to Jaime) has gone to Scotland to make her own journey through time and space to be with her parents.  I am not sure how I’m going to wait until next week to see how they handle this plot development!

In the meantime, since I didn’t address it last week, let me say that Roger has been a real tool.  I end up lurvin’ him in the books but it took a while after his misstep “proposal” to Brianna.  He backs her into a corner with a crazy proposal after they’ve barely dated and then takes grave offense that she, as a 19-year-old, isn’t quite ready to get hitched yet.  His whole “marry me or never see me again” approach to romance did not go over well.  In this episode he had the perfect chance to say “That was really unfair of me and I’m sorry” but didn’t.  The look on his face at the closing scene tells us he wishes he had, and he knows that he drove her to the past by denying her the present.