Episode 16 To Ransom a Man’s Soul

Episode 16 To Ransom a Man’s Soul.

Well, we have reached the end of the season, and as season finales go, this was the best ever. All other TV shows have this one to emulate in sheer emotional power. Everything built up to this point, and it delivered with a one two punch to the gut, and a Chuck Norris Roundhouse kick to the heart. We have followed Claire Randall from bandaging up soldiers on the front lines of world war two, through the stones as Claire Fraser, bandaging another wounded soldier who happens to be her husband. This time, it’s going to be a lot tougher to do than pinching off an artery to save a life. She has to delve into the depths of a man’s bottomless pit of depression, after the unrelenting and brutal torture at the hands of her former husband’s so many times great grandfather Jonathan Randall. This is great fiction!

First off, let me thank Diana Gabaldon for all of the hard work in actually creating this series we all love. Without her words, none of this would ever have happened. She has changed the face of the writing world forever, and has cemented herself in the canon of great American literature for centuries to come.

Next, Ron. D. Moore, the talent behind bringing this story to life on screen, the actors, Sam, Caitriona, Tobias, and all the rest have brought all of these people who lived only in our imagination to startling and marvelous life. It is their talent and unflinching work ethic that has catapulted this series into the national conversation of what great television can be. Terry Dresbach has created a stellar wardrobe which ranks up there with some of the greats from film and screen. If all of these people are not nominated at least for Emmy awards, I will be highly surprised and disappointed. You all have done an amazing job, from start to finish, in bringing this captivating story to life. Marvelous job, all of you!

Wow, is all I can say. Just absolutely stunned. Broken, demoralized, gut punched, anxious, heartbroken, sad, and happy all at the same time. This was one of those episodes of television that is going to be difficult for any other show to beat. Just an hour of an in your face brutal rollercoaster of emotions. This one ran the gamut, and had me in tears at one point. Simply because there is only so much that a person can take before the combined visuals makes your emotions absolutely wrecked and you have no choice but to lie in a fetal position and sob uncontrollably. This is what makes excellent fiction, and this cast and crew pulls it off spectacularly in this episode.

So, lets get on with things, shall we?

1. The intro was simple, but each symbol will play its part in the rest of the narrative. A brand, a rosary and bible, and lavender oil. All three of these objects will important to the themes of pain and redemption and cleansing of a man’s soul throughout.

2. We open with pomp and circumstance of the English soldiers playing the fife and drums while raising a flag of the British empire. Such a simple ceremony outside, while a painful and brutal ceremony is being played out in the dungeons below. This is intercut with scenes of a broken Jamie Fraser lying haunted by the torture he has had to endure at the hands of a black hearted madman. The first we see Jamie is the look of a haunted soul. He has been broken. Like I was saying in my last blog, he has been destroyed. Everything that made Jamie Fraser up to this point has been swept away. His innocence, his youth and joy of spirit has been stripped to nothing. He is, by all intents, dead to the world. No longer is he Jamie Fraser, happy young husband, but James Fraser, tortured, and begging for death to end the nightmare in his mind. He has the thousand yard stare of a soldier who has seen and been through too much on the battlefield.

Jack Randall has won. He has totally unmade this young man, and he is joyous in victory. As he gets up the viewer is given a brief look at his body in full frontal, something TV hasn’t shown us in my history of watching. Correct me if I’m wrong please. As he is getting dressed, he hears a ruckus outside and goes to investigate. Jamie begs for death then, which Randall promised, but the cruel man decides to make it wait and goes off to see what the noise is.

3. He looks out a door window and sees the coos,

And gets trampled by the combined weight of a bunch of highland cows rampaging through the prison. The last we see this season of Jonathan Woolverton Randall is him under a door, unconscious with a pool of blood streaming from his head.

Rupert, Angus, and Murtagh come in, find Jamie and take him out into a wagon and hightail it out of dodge. The look of anger on Rupert’s face, and the pain Murtagh shows at seeing his godson so injured mirrors that of what many viewers are feeling in this moment. The rescue is intercut with scenes of the soldiers in the prison trying to catch the cows while the fearless band of rescuers fly the wagon to safety, all the while Bear Mcreary’s quick tempo tune is playing out over the action.

SIDE NOTE: Let me say that Bear McCreary is now on of my favorites in the pantheon of wonderful musicians that have created soundtracks for TV and film. John Williams, Danny Elfman, and now Bear, have all done brilliant things with music that bring movies like Star Wars, Nightmare before Christmas, and Walking Dead to life. Geniuses, all of them.

3. Claire is standing in the road, waiting for the men, pacing, wondering if they got to him in time. Her outfit here is beautiful in its simplicity, she is the army nurse once again, waiting to do triage on a wounded soldier. You can see real anxiety here, not just for the fact that she has a job to do, and a big one at that, but also for the man she has chosen to love, no matter what. She is absolutely beautiful inside and out, and I’ve said this the entire running of the show because the nuance of her acting throughout. The look of relief on her face when the wagon comes over the hill is what we are all feeling at the moment.

In the wagon she tries to tend to Jamie but he tries to strangle her, envisioning her as BJR. This is the first point where the Oil of Lavender is mentioned, as it has been used on Jamie, and they think someone tried to heal him. Would they were right, but in this case it has a more sinister usage which we will see later.

4. So it’s a head long race to the abbey, where they meet Father Anslem, and the rest of the monks. They drag Jamie into a room and start trying to get him taken care of, but he’s being a pain in the arse, won’t eat, raving, you know, typical “I gotta be the guy” behavior that a lot of Alpha Males tend to exhibit. Claire needs to get that hand patched up, and the other monk, which I will call Baldpate from now on, says, he can be healed physically, but his soul is broken and there’s no way we can mend that. Claire finally asks, “What did Randall do to you?” and Jamie goes into the first of three haunted memories. And it’s at this point

5.

 

A lot of horrible stuff happens to Jamie. This is the scene where the nail is taken out and Randall shows the first of his Cruel/Kind treatment. The following is kind of my reaction throughout this whole scene.

From the kissing to the other things I can’t really mention or want to discuss. Just put it into the “Bad Things Happen to Good People” category and we’ll leave it at that. And if I were Jamie at this moment, I would just go ahead and choke Randall like a rag doll. But there’s still fight left in the kid, because he eventually spits in Randall’s face. And then, well, its just BAD all around. Fucking cringe worthy actually.

6. So then we go to the bone setting scene, with Claire telling Jamie “Dude, we gotta get this done here, or you’re going to be crippled the rest of your life” to which Jamie responds with “listen, I’ve endured the torments of hell, I dinna want to live much anymore, actually.” and downs most of the laudanum they were going to give him.

Then we get into the bone setting and the hand fixing montage, and this also makes me cringe because it is so lifelike and I know it’s all prosthetics and special effects but damn, its realistic looking. And the contraption they put him in is right out of Torturer’s Weekly magazine. At the end of it, Claire walks out and finally gives over to her grief and looses some bile all over the floor. This is twice in two episodes she has thrown up and I’m starting to see a pattern here. Is it grief and emotions or something else?

7. Later that night, or the next morning, Claire is in a small prayer room of the chapel. Father Anselm comes in and sits down, says he didn’t want to disturb her. And then she comes to him and starts telling him her confession. Basically gives him a run down of the entire book so he doesn’t have to read up to this point. “Bless me father, for I am a time traveler, and no I didn’t come here in a Delorean, just a set of stones. Because apparently that works as a time travel device for certain people. And then I did all this other cool stuff like meet an absolute hunk of a guy who was oddly enough a virgin on our wedding day, for whatever reason even though he could have had crazy hot monkey sex with any woman he wanted just by snapping his finger. I mean, yes, really he’s that much of a chick magnet. It took me maybe one eye smolder in episode three to completely bake my ovaries. And then we had our wedding and I was all like, OMG this guy makes my heart smile and then, holy shit, we just had amazing sex for like four episodes and need I remind you of episode ten where he was being called Downtown Jamie for a week?”
“What was that time travel bit? You lost me“, the father says. And Claire answers, “Oh yeah, that. Well there’s a set of standing stones in Craig na Dun that I came through from 1945 so there’s that, yeah? But jamie Fraser is like, God bless the heavens sexy. Oh and one time he totes gave me a spanking but I was pissed but not really. Because I got to hold a knife to his throat while we were doing the nasty on the floor in front of a fireplace, which was hot in more ways than one. It was porn basically, yeah. Oh and there was this bitch who wanted him and I totally slapped the nonsense out of her because she was being a slutty tart to him and then can you believe that little bitch had me tried for witchcraft? So yeah, had some crazy adventures because all I wanted to do was get away from my book loving historian husband for a minute and smell some flowers.”
“Wait, you’re married already?” the father asks unbelieving. “Oh, yeah, Frank but I’m so like, Whatevs, over him, and into the Ginger Scot laying in the other room, who is totally like the cherry on top of my cupcake, and which I should totally get back to so what do you think, huh?”
“Extraordinary,” says Anselm. “You’re absolved with god now, so have faith all will be made well.” then he goes out of the room like, “Oh god, help me but that woman is out of her ever loving mind.”

8. She goes back to check on Jamie who is refusing food from Baldpate, and Claire finds out he is running a fever. She’s trying to be nice, but Jamie is being his stubborn self, and frankly everyone is getting a little tired of it. Even the three stooges, Angus, Rupert, and Willie. Murtagh is looking out into the distance while Willie is telling a joke about his uncle who lost an arm in an accident and fretted about it until he didn’t eat. “So what happened to him?” asks Rupert, and I don’t think Willie understands a punch line, because he says, “Oh, just starved himself to death,” to which they all groan with laughter, (Not) and Angus clouts him across the face. “I didna mean to compare the two you know, my uncle and Jamie,” but the damage is already too late. The cows are out of the barn kiddo, don’t go into stand up any time soon.

SIDE NOTE: I love Willie, really he reminds me of the daft younger brother. He tries to do the right thing, and he means well, I’m sure, but he always ends up saying or doing the wrong thing. Oh, and he totally has the hots for Claire, like, major, “Hey if Jamie dies, you want to break in another virgin?”

9. Gaelic scene is beautiful. The exchange between Murtagh and Jamie is wonderful. There’s no subtitles but you get the sense of the scene anyway. Murtagh is yelling at his god son because of the whole, ”not eating thing, and what about Claire?“, and Jamie’s all, “I don’t know what to do, because I have this head full of images I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy because he lives for that kind of shit, you know?” anyway, I wish I were dead, and Murtagh is all, “Dude, what did he do to you?

10

I’m assuming its hours later in the night, but Jamie is imagining randall as Claire, and that’s when he realizes she’s gone. He’s never getting out of this hell hole and he is totally trapped by this demonic mad man. This is another scene where he has bad things happen to him. And Randall’s machinations are complete, with a branding of Jamie, marking him as the property of Randall totally now. The look of satisfaction on Randall’s face is triumphal. He has won, and he likes it.

11. Then we are back at the abbey, and there’s talk of where they can take Jamie because the redcoat patrols are coming and they will find our intrepid party before the week is out most likely. So it’s Murtagh that decides to secure a ship and sail to France. Willie at one point asks Claire about her relatives in France, but she’s all, “Oh my god, you remember that line of bull I spewed like fourteen episodes ago? Man, you really are into me aren’t you?” and Willie’s all, “I only have eyes for mama Claire.”

12. Then Willie goes into the room to talk to jamie and tell him about the plans for the boat and all that. Then he says, “You can forget about all this,” Willie, you’re so naïve and precious. You have no idea the torment this man went through, do you? Which is a point where I want to say a little something about trauma and what it does to the psyche and how some people who have never lived through it have no clue about how to deal with those that do.
“Just get over it” and “It happened in the past” are not things that people who have been victims of this type of treatment ever want to hear. The trauma is long lasting, and is, for some, ever present. Rape survivors, soldiers, and anyone who has been through the type of stuff Jamie has really never get over it. Yes, it’s there, and they lead somewhat productive lives, but many have to get psychological help from professionals in the psychiatric field. I’m not going to preach about it here, because that’s not a platform. But if you are a friend or a lover of someone who has gone through this type of pain or trauma, there’s really no getting over or forgetting it. Ever.

So Jamie’s all “I want to forget it and here’s the quickest way. Give me that knife you are obviously carrying and let me end my life right now.” Well, Willies not about to do that, and he goes to tell Claire and Murtagh what happened.

13. In the hallway, Murtagh tells Claire about getting a ship and then she confronts him about Jamie wanting to die. Murtagh’s all, “Well, I was going to tell you, but it didn’t seem like the right time what with the redcoat patrols and finding a ship and all, so I’m sorry, lass.” and Claire won’t give up on him because, you know, love. But Murtagh says, “I’m not going to let the kid rot away like some rat in a trap. If it comes to having to put him out of his misery, I’ll do it.”

14. Claire faints, and she comes to with the help of Baldpate and Murtagh. They hatch a plan to bring back Jamie’s soul. “By going into the darkness with him.” so Claire goes full MacGyver here and puts together some oil of lavender. Which she uses on Jamie to exorcise the demons that Randall put there by doing the same. She also gives him power to fight her back, which he does. It’s a UFC Cage fight that in the books went o a bit longer and ended with them having crazy “Get rid of your demon” sex, but here is played really quickly for time. If they were to film this entire scene as it played out in the book, the whole thing would have been roughly half an hour.
SIDE NOTE: I have seen many people exclaim that this cure was too fast for Jamie to come out of that darkness. And to a certain point I agree. But here’s the thing with TV and Fiction versus Reality. The. Two. Are. Different. Yes, the producers and writers probably want to do something fitting here, but they just don’t have the time. So guess what, viewers, there will be other displays of PTSD that Jamie will have throughout the series from now on. He has just been through a lot of shit here, and she brought him to stage one, acceptance. There are a lot more stages to go.

“He made love to me, and I…” he says. “And you what?” she answers. And we get another long stare which leads to

15.

It is after hours of abuse that Randall finally makes Jamie HIS. He has won, beaten down the man and turned him into what he wanted from the start, a lover. He has been enthralled with Jamie since the beginning, and has seen Jamie as a challenge, a warrior just as fierce as himself, righteous and full of spirit and he has wanted to conquer him, to make him love Randall in all ways. By making it so horrible for him, Jamie has sought peace in pleasure, and has totally gone over into the darkness with him. Remember also that Jamie was promised a quick death to take away the horrors of this torture, so he never thought Claire would ever come for him at all, nor did he think he would be rescued. He would end his life in this cell, so whatever he could do to make the task less painful he would have done at this point.
This is when Randall uses the Oil, to its greatest effect. Not to heal, but to transfer the image of Randall into Claire. In his dementia, Jamie actually does this, as he thinks he is making love to his wife instead of the sick monster that is doing these despicable things to him. The scene is filmed beautifully, and Randall is tender, loving, and wants Jamie to feel pleasure. Because at this point I truly believe Randall does in fact love Jamie Fraser. And he says at the end of it when Jamie realizes what he has done and breaks completely, “I understand. How can Claire ever forgive you?”

And Jamie says as much during the next part, and says he doesn’t want to be her husband anymore. “Soul mates, yo.” is all she can say. And then, “If you want to die, then we’ll both go together because I have nothing after you. Except Frank, and who could go back to that after what he looks like and what his six times great grandfather did to you. And the whole Dougal marriage which is not what I am wanting at. All.”

And they finally hold each other after a few starts at it by Jamie, but then, you know, love.

16. So then Murtagh comes in and they do the “Taking the Brand off” sequence. Murtagh takes it out with a knife and Jamie takes it like a champ, throws it on the fire, and Randall is off of him forever. Which I think is totally true. That we never see Randall at all ever again. We won’t. He will never be in another episode of the show. Ever. Don’t believe anything you hear. He is well and truly dead. Ron D. Moore has even said so. J

17. Then it’s the “Saying goodbye to the secondary characters scene” on the beach. Willie and Rupert are all nice and respectful to Claire, but Angus, ever the jerk, goes in for a tongue lashing and cops a feel. Which is totally in character for what he would do, even though at some points he’s actually been kind of a douche to her, but at other times has been kind of nice too. He’s like the crazy uncle that doesn’t give a damn. He’ll give your new bride the tongue because he just don’t care.

Then it’s off to the ship, and Claire says, “Hey I got an idea. So I know all about the rising, and Culloden. Let’s try to change the future, yo.” and Jamie’s all, “hat about the time paradox and the yellow card men? And if you change the future too much doesn’t that mean your husband in the future doesn’t get interested in Scottish history and you never go through the stones? I mean, what about this idea you think is all wonderful? No Sassenach, it’s best you just leave time well enough alone. Besides, I’m the hero of this tale, and nothing bad will ever happen to me. I mean, in the sense of nothing worse could ever happen to me. It’s not like I’m ever going to die anyway, ye ken.” and she just gives him the look every wife ever gave her husband for talking so daft.

“Oh, and I’m pregnant,” she says, “how do you feel about that, Mr. Man?” and he’s ecstatic, like, “I thought you told me you couldn’t have one? What happened?” and she’s all, “Author Fiat I guess.” and they hug, and Murtagh is all, “Dinna mind me, just standing over here being stoic and shit.” and then the long shot of the boat sailing into the sunlight and it’s hearts and flowers and yet another Droughtlander for the viewers until they get on with airing season 2. Which if it’s Ron. D. Moore, and anything like Battlestar Galactica, we have a looooong wait on our hands.
So that’s the last one for the season. It’s been real fun, since last august throwing these out to the world and then you guys taking me seriously. I owe it all to you fans of the show, and the blog. Through a lot of upheaval in my life lately, it has been a bumpy ride for me. You guys have been patient with me all this time and I appreciate it. I really do. I’ve had a lot of fun met a lot of great fans on this outlander adventure. And I look forward to more over the course of the next season. In a few days I’ll post a few more things maybe. But I’m working on a novel over Droughtlander 2 so don’t expect to see me very much. Also, I’m going to be updating the website with all the new recaps and lots of other outlander gear to wear and read. You’ll also see me a lot on social media, but don’t expect much, I’m going to be busy.

So thanks again. And here it is, your Moony Eye Pic of the week.