Episode 15 Wentworth

I’m just going to put that there so we can be thinking happy thoughts during this whole episode recap shall we? Holy shit, this was heavy. From the intro through to the end it was all bad. Which is why we love the books and the show, because nothing is sugar coated here. Nothing is glossed over and sanitized for your protection. One of the testaments of Diana Gabaldon’s writing is her merciless adherence to the reality of life. The honesty of history, and the brutality that people do to each other for their own selfish gains. When I was approached to read this series by my sister, one of my objections was that it was a “Romance” novel.

Romance novels have a certain sanitary quality to them that let the reader off the hook as far as the dramatic chain of events are concerned. The hero and heroine are going to get together, nothing horrible is going to happen to either one. Yes, they may have been wounded in a battle with the bad guy, or the heroine may have been kidnapped or some other bad thing happen to them. However, for the most part, nothing of any egregious harm is going to be done to them and the reader will have a happy ending to move on to the next sanitized for their protection romance.

Not so with Outlander. When I finally read the first novel, I was spellbound by the events that take place in the last few chapters, because it was like nothing I had ever read. Here was an author who said, “I’m going to punish the shit out of my protagonist. I’m going to take the hero to a point where I essentially unmake him and destroy everything about his essential character so the heroine can remake him in her image. I am going to let the bad guy win, just for a little bit. I’m going to let Randall have his way, in every way he has ever wanted Jamie Fraser. Because, my heroine HAS to save his life.”

And she does this brilliantly, which is why she is by far my favorite author of all time. She is not afraid to go to places other authors shy away from out of fear that they will upset the social order and lose readers. Herself just writes the story the characters tell her to. That shows courage, which is one of the most essential character trait’s a writer needs in order to put pen to paper in the first place.

So, in this episode and the one that follows, bad things are going to happen to Moony Eye. And just to let you all know, there will be profanity in this post, so if that bothers you, then go the other way. Just as DG doesn’t shy away from graphic language, I don’t either. If you are a reader and a viewer of the show, you’ve heard the words before. The time for you to be offended has come and gone. Now, on with the recap, shall we?

(oh, and by the way, there may be times where I put something in that makes you chuckle. It’s tough for me not to do this, but laughter is cathartic. I will stay serious during the more graphic scenes, but there will be moments where I let my hair down because sometimes laughter is the best medicine for when shit gets hairy. Case in point, you know who the funniest people on the planet are? Funeral directors. Yeah, whodathunkit?)

1. Right from the opening image we know this can’t be good. Dangling torture implements do not a good feeling make. Knives and masks and rusty sharp spiky things, oh my!

2. We are introduced to Wentworth Prison, a huge imposing castle with high walls and impregnable towers. In the courtyard, Jamie and Taran MacQuarrie are waiting for their turn at the noose. Jamie is still figuring out how to escape, and MacMumblesalot (who I can actually understand this episode) tells him to basically give it up. They are at the end of their ropes here, literally and figuratively. During one hanging, my sister (whom I watch with, you know the one who got me started on this crazy outlander journey to begin with) says, “We could do without the sound effects” because every time they drop some one off the gallows we hear a bone snapping CRACK! And it sends shivers up my spine.

So Taran MacQuarrie goes up to the gallows and starts on about how he should have been doing his patriotic duty to his homeland and how he should have killed more British pasty faced soldiers and god save the —– SNAP! Gurgle, shake, and he dies a long and slow agonized death. Which does not bode well with our Hero. But when they come for Jamie, he decides to fight like a lion and die like a man, which is what he wanted to do while Taran was alive. Unfortunately, the guys with the guns make short work of his struggles and he is hoisted to the gallows with a noose around his neck.

Just then, DAH DUN DUN! Who happens to arrive to save the day but our friendly neighborhood captain of Dragoons, Jonathon Woolverton Randal Esquire, just in the nick of time. And at his point, I’d take the noose. Because landing in that man’s clutches is like being invited to dinner by Hannibal Lecter.

2. Jamie is in a dungeon cell trying to get free of the chains. (I’m going to have a gamer moment here) this scene reminds me of Fable when the hero is locked in chains and is being mocked at the bars by a prison guard. The two sound the same, I wonder if it’s the same voice actor. “Don’t try to get out of that mate, it’s solid stone. You’d need twenty years and a rock hammer and a picture of Rita Hayworth to get out of this prison mate. Oh, and here’s some bread, compliments of Mr. Randall. And I don’t mean Tony, I mean, Jack, your buddy ol’ pal. You know, the one who wants to do bad things to you. Yeah, that guy.”

3. Meanwhile, in the Warden’s office, the original Fraser is sitting with Claire and talking about Jamie. Claire’s all, “Please let me see him, I’m an English gentlewoman of noble birth and I know the family.” and the former Dr. Who companion is all, “Well, I’m sure I can’t do that, but I can give you his personal effects.” which he does, out of a sense of nobility, and then Claire leaves, walks outside, shaking and vomiting and ending up in the arms of the warm cuddly bear Murtagh and his miracle eyebrows.

SIDE NOTE: I’m going to ask this, and I want you to be as nice as possible, because maybe I don’t see it. Why does Claire love Jamie? What’s with all the emotion here? I don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong, maybe I haven’t seen what others see, but one of the things from the novel that I saw was a deep and abiding love for each other. But this doesn’t necessarily play out in the show. Yes, she cares about him, and wants to rescue him, but beyond that, I don’t see the dynamic. (now, having said that, I haven’t been able to watch a marathon of these shows, and watch from week to week, and my life has been really busy for the last month, so maybe upon a whole series viewing after episode 16 I will see what everyone else is seeing and go back on this. What I’m saying is don’t pillory me yet, its just an observation.)

3. So we’re in the tavern, and Murtagh, Claire, and Willie are sitting around discussing what to do, while the brains of the operation (Angus and Rupert) go about losing all the hard earned money they could to a couple of guards from Wentworth. Claire and Murtagh argue with each other about what to do, and have no answer. Willie’s all, “we could break in just like Fort William, because, you know, explosives” and Murtagh is all, “Shut the fuck up Willie, you have no frame of reference! This is a prison, not a fort.”

Rupert and Angus finally lose all their money and come back to the table to gloat that they have found out important information from the jailers. The warden takes a trip with a certain Doctor who lives in a police call box and goes adventuring an hour a day, so his office is empty. So you can go ahead and break in there, find the keys, maps, other loot, and then find Jamie and there you go, bob’s your uncle. Wham bam, in, out and we go about our merry way. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

4. So we go back to the action in the prison cell. Jack comes in with lackey in tow, a mute half wit that is only there to punch Jamie a lot and choke him to half to death. After a quick Arthur King of the Britons reference, he talks directly to Jamie. “So, we meet again, Mr. Fraser” says Randall. “By the way, that petition of complaint? This one I’m holding in my hands? And am about to put in the fire? Yeah, should have made copies of that, shouldn’t you.” So with one last look at the letter, Jamie’s all, “Don’t do it, please, you had better not, oh you’re going to aww….. Damn. Yeah, should have gone to Kinkos.”

5. Claire and Murtagh are back at the prison and are introduced to the Warden’s office. There, they have a chat with his second in command, who tells them the warden is off with some guy in a police call box and won’t be back, but she’s free to wait.

Yeah, he checked out her bum roll…. When he leaves, Murtagh and the fair damsel ransack the office wasting valuable Jamie saving time by searching for a map. But it’s okay, Randall is keeping the ginger moony eyed hunk company, in more ways than one.

6. And Mr. Randall is going full creep balls on Jamie, and has a great monologue. Basically, asking if Randall haunts Jamie’s dreams. He’s a sick twisted perverted sadist, and at this point I don’t think I can hate this guy any more than I already do. And then he does this

Which leaves me feeling, “Eww.” Like some Bela Lugosi Vampire or something. Then he offers Jamie a choice. Surrender to me, and I will let you choose your own death. And he then goes on to rattle off some if Jamie doesn’t have enough imagination to invent his own. It’s a litany of painful and cruel tortures he lists off in a matter off act way like a wife telling her husband what to get at the grocery store. (and he’ll forget the butter. He always forgets the butter, doesn’t he ladies?)

To which Jamie is all, “Hell to the fuck no on that, and no mistake. You’re going to have to fight tooth and nail to get anything from all this.”

To which Randall is pretty much wishing would happen anyway.

7. In the office, the Dynamic Duo of Claire and Murtagh have found keys to everything in the prison, but no map. Our super sleuths get caught by the warden’s mate, and it is left up to Murt and his mitts to get rid of the guard. They split up, but not before Murt’s eyebrows tell her to get to the woods after dark when she rescues the Kid.
“Oh,” says Claire, “The ones with wolves and tigers and bears, oh my?”
“Yeah,” Murtagh answers. “Those woods. Be careful. And if you see a police call box anywhere in the halls, run the other way, because that shit is hella creepy. It’s always followed around by a bunch of giant salt shakers yelling EXTERMINATE!!!”

8. So Claire skulks around the castle and evades the British troops long enough to yell out Jamie’s name for a few minutes, while other convicts give her a run down on where the Kid might be. So she heads down into the bowels of the prison where one old guy convict tells her where they may have taken him.

9. Jamie, always a fighter, this kid. So Randall is waiting for his answer, and says, “I must break you,” like some caricature out of a mid 80’s Rocky sequel, and finally Jamie is all, “Ok, sure, come and get me, bra!” When Randall gets up close, Jamie decides, “To hell with it, I’m taking you out.” and pounces, cat like, on Randall. There is a melee, and Jamie smashes a stool on the wall, hits Marley (The Goon) and finally Marley gets Jamie on the floor, choking him.

Well, Randall doesn’t like this one little bit. No one can hurt his plaything but him. So he kicks Marley off of Jamie, and orders the big lug to get him up. This is one time I had to avert my eyes, because Randall picks up a hammer and smashes Jamie’s hand to bits. I mean, he goes to fucking town on it, and the resultant cracks, and Jamie’s screams make the tender in my loins hurt. This is when I knew, “Ok, this shit is getting real. Fun time is over, this is where the shit starts.” Jamie is no longer in control. At. All.

And then Randall does something that I can’t even write. So we’ll leave it at that. Simply put, it’s kinda fucked up, and that’s all I have to say about that.

10. Claire hears his cries and runs to see what is happening, but hides as Randall comes out along with the Marley character. Then she finds a door, opens it with the handy keys, and makes sure no one can lock it after her. Then she watches Randall go out of sight, and runs into the cell to find a crippled beaten Jamie on the ground. He looks up at her with surprise. And she’s all, “Dude, you didn’t think I’d go back to the stones once I found out you were going to die did you? I had to see if I could save you.”
“You have to leave, just go!” he implores her, but she won’t listen because, you know, love. So just as she is in the middle of trying to get the chain off his foot, she hears Randall behind her.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” he says, “Claire Beauchamp Randall, Fraser as I live and breathe.”

“Shit.” is her only possible reply…

11. So here’s our Claire, caught once again in the clutches of Mr. Randall the Sadist. Jamie can’t do anything to help her, and Marley is frisking her for weapons. Which he finds, but at the risk of a few delicate immodesties. Then Randall bandies about the C word (which a lot of women don’t like, so I won’t use it here) and she calls him a fucking sadistic prick. And Randall’s all, “nail on the head, kitten.”

So another fight ensues, and Jamie looks like he’s getting the upper hand (I know, I didn’t intend that at all) on Marley while Randall is trying for the patented “Choke a Bitch” routine on our lovely lass. Jamie stabs Marley in the throat, killing him nearly instantly. And I kind of had an “Aww” moment for the big lug, because he really didn’t mean any harm, he’s the minion with a soft spot. And he was only ordered to do things to the kid and his wife by Randall the Jackal with a heart of stone.

Finally, the fight is over, and Randall threatens to kill Claire. He’s got them both where he wants them. In his power and control. And Jamie finally relents. Let the girl go, he says, and you can have me. You win. He surrenders. And in an act of faith, Randall orders him to put his injured hand on the table and then goes about just calmly nailing it there.

And then, he forces Jamie to kiss him. And that’s all I have to say about that. And another element in the unmaking process. Randall thrives on degradation of the spirit. And in this case, he is almost there, even when he says, “I’ve only just begun…” you know there is a lot more in store. He plans on killing Jamie, obviously, but he’s going to destroy him first, defeat him in mind, body and soul before he eventually destroys him physically in order to move on to his next victim.
SIDE NOTE: A lot of folks in recent weeks have taken to the internet to profess the fact that Randall is gay. No, he’s equal opportunity sadist, he just prefers to destroy males. Yes there is evidence that he is a homosexual, but even Diana Gabaldon herself has said that he is a sadist. This scene, and the ones that follow, prove this. I can understand where the “Randal is gay” statements come from, however. In an era where most men had to keep their proclivities in the bedroom a secret, perhaps there was something to the early life of BJR that he had to repress. I have known gay men who in their early life had to keep it secret because their parents wouldn’t accept that lifestyle due to religious or societal concerns. One boy I knew would routinely get verbally and physically assaulted by a mother who wanted to punish the gay out of him. So he had an equal view of the world and was a bully to others in order to “prove his manhood” as it were. We don’t know the back story of Jonathan Randall, but it would be interesting to see if DG would do a book or a short novella on his early life.
This is one of the reasons I like this bad guy so much, he has a story, and a reason to do what he does, other than “it’s the bad guy, it’s what he does.” something had to have happened to give him a blackness of heart, and it speaks to the quality of writing that people want to find out what that was.

12. So the nail goes in, and Jamie urges Claire to leave with Randall because that’s pretty much it for him. He knows he is a dead man, and broken. He doesn’t want her to see him in any more pain. So Randall takes her out of the cell, but not before a touching scene with the two in each other’s arms for what seems like the last time perhaps. (Mama Claire ain’t done yet, oh no she isn’t.)

Randall takes her down the hallway, to a small trap door, and remarks that she was recently in a witch trial. “Oh yeah, I’m a witch.” she says calmly, “And I curse you, Jack Randall. I curse you with the knowledge of your death.” and she tells him when he is going to die. Pretty soon, I hope, thinks every audience member. So he drops her out of the castle, right into the loving arms of Taran MacQuarrie. “Hey MacMumblesalot, fancy meeting you here,” she says, as she climbs out of the ditch. Then she runs across the field and into the woods where we hear howling wolves.

SIDE NOTE: Okay, I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the Wolf Scene, hell even my sister had something to say about that. Apparently it was a big deal in the books that showed Claire would do anything, fight anything, in order to bring her love back. I get it. I really do. And I also was expecting the wolf scene and was mildly disappointed that it wasn’t there. But you can’t have everything and due to the vagaries of technology, filming schedules, animal wrangling, etc, it just wouldn’t have fit. Take into consideration also that this is supposed to be historically accurate, and the presence of wolves wouldn’t really make sense in a historical context, then there is little wonder why this scene was taken out. However, having said that, we are talking about a time traveling nurse, so why couldn’t we have suspended believe enough for Claire to go toe to toe UFC cage fight with a wolf, killing it like a boss. Oh well, another Ron Moore decision, we’ll have to hear about on the pod cast.

13. Back in the cell, there are about to be things done to Jamie that I can’t talk about, because it’s just too horrible to mention, and if you watch the show, you saw the same horror show I did. But I am left with one lasting image that makes it apparent Sam Heughan is going to be Oscar Caliber if he gets the right material.
One.
Single.
Tear.

That makes it readily apparent that he is done. Jamie Fraser is gone. As far as he is concerned, he is dead. And it breaks my heart to see, because up til that point the was a fighter, a warrior, and now he has met his match, a man who is more powerful than he is, who cannot seem to be defeated by any means short of violence.

14. So Claire is in the woods, yelling for Murtagh MacEyebrows and along comes Angus, dragging her to a secluded manor house where she goes in and says, “Give me a bottle, I don’t care what’s in it, just gimme!” They are in the home of MacRannoch. An old friend of the Frasers. Claire asks for help to get Jamie out of jail, to which the man flatly refuses because he has a home to protect. Then, she pulls out the pearls that Jamie gave her, and he says, “Where did you get these?”
“The Kid who is in prison right now, he’s my husband. He gave these to me on my wedding night.” and the guy’s all, “Dude, I gave these to Ellen Mackenzie, on her wedding night, hoping to score one time with her.”
“Jesus H Roosevelt Christ,” Claire says, “What, was this girl the Marilyn Monroe of her time or what? You, Murtagh, Brian, and who else? But seriously, you love the mother, her kid’s in danger. You have to help us out, yo.”
At which point he is considering when the drover he hired to find a bunch of cows comes in, besotted and feeling like a failure. The guy was supposed to find 41 cows, but only came back with half that. This is when Murtagh has a Brilliant Plan to rescue the kid. And it involves Aged Highland Warrior Bovines, because apparently the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were booked solid.

And we end on a cliffhanger, again, and have to wait two weeks.

I’m not apologizing for the lateness of this recap, because of a couple of things. This was a hard one for me to watch because of reasons I’m not going to go into here. I’ve also been having a lot of other work on a few creative endeavors take up more time. I wanted to put this out when episode 16 came out, so everyone would have a little refresher on what happened last episode, in case you haven’t watched it recently. Having had to watch it scene by scene was tough, during the end, because I hate to see this level of violence, and I have to hand it to the production team to go so deep into the realism of it all. That was in stark contrast to other shows that just skim the surface and not delve too deeply, or use it for shock value with no reverence for the source material. Good job all around to the production team, actors, directors, and writing staff. I hope somebody notices you all during Emmy season.

Now here it is, your Jamie Moony eye pic of the week.