Episode 304 Of Lost Things

 

 

Well, Where to start, huh? Because I don’t even have words at how emotionally rich this episode was. The ending literally had me in tears. Or as I like to call it, “My sinuses were acting up.”

Outlander is no slouch when it comes to addressing controversial topics, and this one had a subject that has been hotly debated online since the advent of chat rooms in the early days of the internet to social media. Everyone has an opinion about the Geneva Dunsany Affair. All of them have merit where it comes from the personal attitudes of the viewer or reader. However, I’ll let the original author herself explain the scene and be done with it. I happen to agree with her on all points.

 

I’ll talk more about my feelings on this scene when it comes up in the recap. Here goes.

1. We start in 1968 with Scooby and the gang looking over Old Man Wakefield’s files. They’re going over a very impressive backdrop about where Jamie could have wound up after Culloden. Prison records are doing them no good because Jamie wasn’t in prison until seven years after Culloden.

This fact is pointed out to them by Fiona when she brings in tea and talks about the Dunbonnet. And her scones, which she wants Roger to have because he’s much too thin. Apparently, Fiona is into pudgy well-fed guys and Roger doesn’t fit the bill yet.

Claire has a revelation when she is looking over the names from Ardsmuir prison and says she’s found him. Well, there it is in black and white, James Fraser of Broch Turach. Everyone is overjoyed, obviously. So Roger, who declares this is a great time to celebrate says, “It’s never too early for wiskey.” and dashes off to find some.

2. Then we are back in 1756 at Helwater, the Dunsany estate. The family is back from Italy, where Lady Isobel complains to Evans the butler that it was too hot. Geneva looks around for suitors to flirt with and sees none other than Farm Boy Fraser, the new groom.

After the introductions, Jamie is summoned to see the master of the house, Lord Dunsany. They have a short conversation wherein the good Lord tells Jamie that he knows he’s a prisoner, and he won’t tell his wife about it because their son was killed at Prestonpans.

“It just wouldn’t do to hear that we are harboring a notorious Jacobite criminal.” he says. “You’ll be paid, and if you can keep yourself out of trouble, everything will be fine.”

Jamie’s all, “I’ll try, but it’s kind of my thing to find trouble, or rather it finds me. So I’ll do my best, but this is a Diana Gabaldon novel after all, so there’s that, yeah?”

Try your best, anyway, would you please?

3. Roger and Bree are sitting by the side of the road nursing a car back to life. Well, Roger is trying. He has the hood up, which is a start, in the universal code to all other drivers on the road that “I’ve broken down and I have no fucking clue as to what I’m doing so could you help me out, please?”

Bree is teasing him about Fiona. “I thought at first she was your girlfreind,” says Bree, which startles him and makes him bang his head on the open hood.

“Girlfriend? Occh, no.” he says. Then She tells him to step out of the way so she can fix the car. Well, she reaches into the engine, snaps the zamaphrazit to the thingamajiggit coupling and tells him to try it again.

The car starts, obviously, because, in addition to being a time traveler, she’s also a regular Maguyver with machines.

4. Now it’s time for jamie to draw straws with the rest of the grooms. So he goes out to where the other guys are there, drawing to see who is unlucky enough to have to go with Geneva on her daily ride around the grounds. Some poor guy besides Jamie gets the worst pick, and as Geneva comes up she tells Jamie to go get her horse.

He does, but not quite fast enough for her, so she calls out for him to “Hurry up, useless Scotchman!” He comes out soon after, and the guy rides off with teenage hellion.

Lady Isobel hears the two men talking about her sister, and says, “Who needs what, the horse or my sister?” Well, they both look away guiltily, and are ready to apologize for the slight but Isobel says, “That’s okay, I think she needs a good slap too.”

Then she and Jamie share a conversation about Lord John. She starts out complaining that her father cages such magnificent creatures. Jamie’s all, “Yeah, you guys have the best stabels I’ve ever seen.” but she’s one of these tree hugging animal lovers and says, “A cage is still a cage.” with a very pointed look at Jamie. Like, “Is this your cage, Mr. Mackenzie?”

Anyway, she asks how long he’s been in the employ of Lord John. Jamie is adept at telling the truth here, even when it’s a certain blend of spin. He’s all, “Well, I’ve been in his charge for three years.”

I’ve been in love with him since childhood, and I find him to be a mysterious and delightful man.” she says. “I’ve thought about marrying him one day.”

5. Doctor Abernathy calls Roger’s house wanting to talk to Claire. He tells her about somebody that needs a surgeon. “I’m sure you can do that, can’t you?” she says. Abernathy looks kind of crestfallen that he won’t be seeing his Lady Jane any time soon. “I’ll be back next week. See you then.” Then just hangs up on the guy.

6. Dunsany and the ladies are coming down the Helwater steps with the Earl of Ellesmere, the man who is betrothed to young Geneva Dunsany. He’s an old codger that is only doing this for the money. Yes, this is what happened back when women had absolutely no say in their own love lives. The men in the family sold them off for tremendous dowries like property.

While the men are talking about the upcoming nuptials, Jamie is cleaning the shoe of one of the carriage horses. And taking his damn sweet time about it, which asshole Ellesmere remarks about.

Later, the men are drawing straws again but no, Jamie’s on the hook for this one. She asks for him personally. So, resigned to his fate, he gets the horses ready and they go off to ride along the muddy trails of the Dunsany estate.

She asks what he thinks of Ellesemere, and Jamie says, “He’s nice, in the kind of way a toad is nice to look at maybe? I don’t know I can’t really say.” She demands Jamie to tell him Ellesmere‘s greatest attraction besides money. He says, “I don’t really think of such things.” Then she calls him a liar. Well, Jamie stops. You can call him anything you want, but that.

He’s all, “I think we should go back,” but she isn’t having any of it. “It’s still light out, and you have to do my bidding.” So she rides off into the woods and Jamie pauses. Then his protective nature overcomes him and he goes after her.

A few seconds later, he hears a scream and comes around the path to find her sprawled on the ground, presumably unconscious. So he does the noble thing and runs to her. After picking her up, something you should never do without discerning injuries (did you learn nothing from Claire, Jamie? Shame on you.)

Then she opens her eyes and starts laughing. Well, if there’s one thing our boy Mr. Fraser doesn’t like, it’s being played for a fool. So he unceremoniously drops her in the mud and stomps off.

Later, Lord John and Jamie are out playing chess in the woods when the Ladies Dunsany show up with none other than General Melton, of His Majesty’s Tenth Dragoons. This scene is fraught with tension, and Melton must stand with this deception with Lord John because he looks kind of blind sided by the whole meeting up with Mr. Fraser.

Naturally, Melton can’t say a word in order to keep decorum. When asked by Isobel how they have done without him, Melton simply says “If it were up to me, I would never have let such a man go. But it was up to my brother,” he finishes.

Geneva doesn’t buy this at all, so she says “Let’s go play cribbage” to Melton and he agrees if only to get out of this tense situation.

Then he looks at his brother like, “Dude, one of these days I’m going to slap the shit out of you for this.”

7. The next day, Jamie and another groom are shoveling shit, which just looks to me like they are dumping it into a pile on one side of a wall, and then shoveling it to another side of the wall. This seems kind of redundant to me, but he, I’m not a groom and I’ve never shoveled shit, except that one time at my grandfather’s barn, but then I was putting it into a cart hitched to his tractor and then he took off and some of it rocketed out of the back of the cart and sprayed me all over so I was almost covered in it. Yeah, happy days.

Anyway, enough about my bucolic shit shoveling days. Geneva comes to him and starts casually mentioning to him that she doesn’t want to marry Ellesmere, and frankly no one can blame her. the dude could be her grandfather, which is eww gross.

She tells Jamie to come up to her room tonight. Well, he’s having none of that because reasons. and she says, Maybe I can convince you. See, I was talking to General Melton about you, and he told me an interesting story about how you’re Red Jamie Fraser, the notorious Jacobite who may have killed my brother at Prestonpans. And if my mother were to get ahold of this information, well… maybe you’d be back in prison.”

Well, Jamie ain’t going out like that, but he still refuses. he’s getting really pissed here and then Geneva drops another little bit of info. “By the way, I’m sure Lallybroch would be a nice garrison for the English.” and that’s his breaking point. Because it’s Lallybroch. Well that’s all home boy needed to make a decision. She won’t tell about any of this if he comes to her room that night.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and another rock.

8. Anyway, he does it. but not before making a lot of fucking noise coming into the house. The people who own this place are wealthy, wouldn’t they have put some WD-40 on that hinge?

He goes up the stairs to Geneva’s room and there she is waiting wearing just a nightgown. She says, “Thanks for coming, Jamie.“ but he says, “Don’t call me by that name. You threatened my family home and I’m not going to let you call me by the name they gave me. You can call me Alex.“ So she says, “Well, Alex, disrobe.”

What am I in a doctor’s office now? He’s thinking. But he starts and she looks away. but the female audience isn’t. they want to get every inch of that fine man’s body in their minds for later… He tells Lady Dunsany that she can look.

So he goes to her, but she doesn’t know what to do so he can teach her. “I want my first time to be with someone like you,” she tells him. and I’m thinking, “Doesn’t every woman? I mean, come on. this guy’s ass alone is the best on TV. in real life, I’m sure you could bounce a quarter off of it. What hot-blooded woman wouldn’t want to grab a handful of that?

So he teaches her the fine art of love in a bona fide JAMMF style love scene. When they’re done, he asks if he hurt her. She says, yeah a little but after a few minutes, I liked it. then she goes all virgin sorority girl to the player quarterback and says “I love you, Alex.”
Well, Jamie ain’t having any of that, either. he sits up and says, “You don’t love me. that’s your body talking, not your heart. Love is when you give your all for someone and they give theirs in return.” which is kind of a slap in the face to her because she knows he’s not all in for her because he’s still thinking about his wife.

SIDE NOTE: So there’s been all kinds of complaints on social forums about this scene. the common complaint was that it didn’t need to be so graphic, that it was too long, that it wasn’t necessary to show the whole scene from beginning to end in real time, etc. to which I say, Poppycock! this was the conception scene for a character that is one of the main ones in the later books. this was Jamie’s son they were making. People may say he wasn’t very honorable and he was just using her. And why not? He was put into the unenviable position of having to bed her to save his life and that of his family. He’s going to get something out of it, so he did. And I don’t blame him one bit. Ask any guy, they would say the same. Sure, he was gentle at first, but then he just let himself go and that was it. it was simply sex for the sake of sex.

Oh, and if you’re one of those that doesn’t like to see a lot of sex, I would remind you that the later episodes are going to be filled with it. Episode 6 is going to be a scorcher between Jamie and Clarie. and this is something we’ve waited over a year and a half for. So you know it will be a long one. just cover your eyes or fast forward through the naughty bits and you’ll be fine.

9. Later, we see a very visibly pregnant Lady Geneva Ellesmere coming home to visit the family and there’s Jamie like, “Aww yeah, my bairn.”
10. Wherein we have a few minutes in the future and Fiona gives Claire the pearl necklace that Jamie gave Claire on their wedding night. (Oy, you in the back! Stop sniggering! It’s not that kind of pearl necklace!)

Brianna sees her come into the room and is all excited because the library in Edinburgh has a huge archive of ships manifests. Claire is kind of wistful here because all she is thinking about is that night. Bree says, “Is everything alright mama?” and Claire gives her a hug saying “You haven’t called me that for a long time.”

Well, later on in the den, Roger and Bree are talking. She’s a bad person for not wanting her mother to go. What if she can’t get back, or what if something happens, or what if she doesn’t want to go? And Roger is all, “That just makes you a caring daughter. I don’t want her to find him either, because then you’ll be going back to Boston.”

And she’s so overwhelmed by this cuteness that she just plants a wet kiss on him. and they both agree that was unexpected. Well, it’s such a surprise that she gets up and walks away. Aww man, Roger, you missed your chance for a full on make out session in front of a fire on the couch? Go after her, you nerd!

11. All is not right with Geneva’s pregnancy. Isobel comes running to Jamie and tells him to make ready to go to the Ellesmere estate. So he goes with the family to find out what’s going on. And it is a hell of a lot.

Geneva is dying. But the child is safe and healthy so there’s a plus. Maids and family members are rushing around, while Jamie just stands there pacing like all expectant fathers throughout history. Then he hears Isobel down the hall crying. He goes to find out what’s up, and she’s pissed. When Jamie goes to comfort him, she slaps the daylights out of him. But he keeps his cool because he’s seen women going nuts before and the best strategy is to remain calm and let them get it all out.

“Geneva died in childbirth. Ellesmere knew the child wasn’t his. Geneva told Isobel everything, and Geneva loved you!” But before he can explain anything, a maid comes down the hall yelling, “Come quick, there’s trouble!”

And that trouble involves a very upset Ellesmere and Lord Dunsany. Now I’ve watched a few times and all I hear is “Whore, another man’s cock, and poltroon.” It’s all babbling to me, but they’re clearly upset. Ellesmere holds a knife to the baby. Dunsany pulls a gun. Ellesmere is threatening to send the baby to the hospital, Dunsany is going to send Ellesmere to the morgue.

But Jamie’s cool demeanor calms the guys enough to actually make Dunsany give him the gun. He tries to get the knife from Ellesmere, but the man just doubles down on the killing of the bastard and raises the knife to kill William. Jamie’s all, “Aw, hell no!” and straight up shoots the bastard in the face.

Then he runs over to get the child and see it safe. And Jamie holding a bairn is something we can all say is probably one of the most precious things on earth.

12. A few days go by and there’s the baby getting wheeled around the grounds by Isobel. She sees Jamie riding by and calls for him to talk. She tells him it’s all good, they named the boy William, after his father, and she’s sorry for the anger when Geneva died. “It wasn’t your fault, I just wanted to blame someone. My sister was a difficult woman, obviously, but you were kind to her. I mean besides dumping her in the mud that one time. But we’re cool. Oh and my mom wants a few words.”

Lady Dunsany comes over and explains that a court of inquiry determined that in his grief, the Earl of Ellesmere killed himself. Nothing was mentioned of the groom that saved the baby’s life. So jamie is in the clear.

“Also,” she says, “I know who you are. I know you’re a prisoner, and you fought in the rising and you’re a notorious criminal. But you’re cool with me and I’ve talked to the authorities and it’s been determined that you’re free to go whenever you want to go home.” So just like that, Jamie kills a guy and gets his freedom. Which is awesome.

But it kind of sucks because he’s looking down at his son and doesn’t want to leave so he says, “I’ll stay here for the time being if it’s all the same to you.” and she’s all, “What for? You’re free to go.”

“Well, if you knew my sister and what’s going on back home, I don’t think you’d want to go there either. And she also said she’d stay mad at me forever, and never forgive me and she kinda sorta sounded like she meant it, ken? And if you ever saw her pissed off, you wouldn’t want to be around Jenny either. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay here and hang out with y’all.”

So she says, “Okay, but whenever you want to leave, you’re free to go.”

13. Fast forward to 1764, and here’s young willie looking all handsome and Jamie like while riding a horse. Folks are starting to talk about how Willie looks like Jamie and they’ve been hanging around with each other an awful lot. You know, riding horses together, cleaning windows in carriages, etc. Jamie looks in the window at one point after looking at his son and sees what people are talking about.

14. We’re at the national archives, where Roger and the gang are looking through old boat manifests. They’re all wrong though, about a hundred years off. So Roger goes to the woman in charge and she says, “Sorry, that’s all we have.” So they’re out of luck on that front. Turns out trying to find a needle in a two hundred year old haystack is proving more difficult than they expected.

Later, in a bar, They’re all at the bar having a dram and commiserating. Bree says, “We’ll find him, don’t give up hope. Oh, and by the way, what are all these guys looking at?”

Claire, ever the feminist, says, “We aren’t supposed to be sitting here, but guess what, this is 1968, and we can go where any man can, even if it is a bar to drown our sorrows.” Then she says, “This is what Mrs. Graham warned me about. Chasing ghosts. Well the chase is over, so it’s time to go home.”

15. Jamie says the same thing a few seconds later to young Willie. Willie wants to go with him, but Jamie says he can’t go. “You have to do as I say, I’m your master!” willie says at one point. Jamie tells him to respect his elders. Well, the kid won’t be having any of it. He goes off on a tear, knocking over water pails and generally behaving like a stubborn Scot when he doesn’t get his way. Jamie grabs him and whaps him on the butt a couple of times and turns him around.

“I hate you!” the boy says. And Jamie answers that he’s not very fond of the boy at this very moment, ya wee bastard! Which happens to any father who encounters a child who is rambunctious and prone to temper tantrums in the street.

Well, this calmed Willie down enough to say, “Im not a bastard, take it back!” to which Jamie does because it was a Freudian slip and he regrets it the moment he says it and due to Sam’s acting skills, you can see it before he says anything.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have used that word,” Jamie says. “I take it back.” And then he hugs the boy and it’s all over. And my heart is breaking for these two because they won’t have the true father son bond that either of them really wants or needs.

16. Lord John and Jamie share a moment of friendship right out of the books and it’s wonderfully emotional. Jamie wants John to look after Willie for him. As a reward for this kindness, Jamie offers John his body.

But John is all, “Dude, no way. I’m going to marry Isobel. We’ll take Willie as our son and raise him. He’ll be fine. Jamie says “You will always have my friendship, for what it’s worth.” The men shake hands. And John says, “It’s worth quite a bit.”

And I’m just almost in tears because I love both of these guys. Yeah, I’m a big mushy dope.

17. Jamie is putting some stuff up on an altar and lights a candle in front of St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. Willie knocks on the door and Jamie tells him to come in. He tells Jamie “My granny says only stinking papists burn candles in front of graven images.” And Jamie says, “Well then I guess I’m a stinking papist.” Willie asks who he’s praying for and he tells the boy the people he has lost. Claire, Murtagh, and Willie, his brother, who is named Willie.

I didn’t know you were married, the boy says. Jamie says that he remembers her every day and that Willie will have a wife one day. “You’ll find her, or she will find you,” Remembering how he and Claire met the first time in that hovel with a dislocated shoulder.

I had forgotten that for some reason, which is another reason than blood to love the kid. And wee Clark Butler is really killing it here. He tells Jamie, “I want to be a stinking papist so I can say stinking papist more than any other person in any other show ever from now until doomsday.” Because damn they say that about ten times this scene.

Jamie christens him James and tells Willie, that’s his special Stinking Papist name.

Then he shows Willie the snake he carved for him. It’s got your name on it. And I’m just choked up right now because reasons.

 

 

Oh, and to all you child actors out there who look like Sam Heughan, get cracking on reading these books yesterday because in a few years you will have a chance at a great part.

18. Then it’s a montage of going home. Claire and Bree are leaving on a jet plane. Jamie is leaving on a horse, and Willie runs after him in a classic “Come Back Shane!” moment that has me literally bawling and it’s heartbreaking. When that first line of the Bob Dylan cover starts, “Where are you, my blue-eyed boy?” I can’t hold back anymore and I’m ugly crying at this point.

People are looking at me in the break room wondering if my dog died or something and I’m just, “No, it’s Outlander, duh!” And then I realize this is my favorite episode of the season and so is 104 and 204. What the hell, guys, one-third of the way through every season you knock it out of the stratosphere.

Anyway, that wraps it up. I’ll try to get 305 out on a timely basis but my work schedule will probably be murder next week so I’ll let folks know when it’s up. I don’t want to rush it, and due to the two-week hiatus, I’ll have a few days longer to take my time and get it right.

Oh, and you know that they’re’ going to end on the bell ringing in the print shop blackout, right? Because they totally are. And that is gonna suucck.

So here you go, your Jamie Mooney Eye pic of the week.

Sorry it’s with Geneva, but don’t fret, it’ll be with Claire in a couple of episodes.