12/28/2022 0 Comments Outlander season 1 recapThat rush to sew up these plots left both feeling hollow. Jamie immediately douses the flames of insurrection, though, by counseling Colum to seek peace, and to give his brother what he wants (with the gold) and let him "play the rebel." In the end, poof! Both Colum and Dougal are appeased in their understanding, much like Claire and Jamie. Colum is angry at Dougal for betraying him and the crown by collecting funds for the Jacobites, which starts to incite rumbles of civil war among the ranks. The same was true for the problems within Clan MacKenzie. It was like a tiny metaphor for their entire relationship. She starts out on top of him, and threatens him with a knife, then the two continue having sex on an equal plain, before he changes the position to be on top of her. The sexual scene between the two told a better story than any of the dialogue did. She had to fight tooth and nail, quite literally, to stop him from lashing her, and then things cut away to the next morning.Įverything moved very fast in "The Reckoning." Jamie rescues Claire, beats Claire, and then later begs for her forgiveness (and all, it seems, is fine). She was violently assaulted by Randall, and then violently assaulted by her husband. The men made fun of her as she pouted in the corner with a sore backside, and then she was largely pushed to the side for the rest of the episode until the end, where her freezing Jamie out of sex made her seem petty. What the hell? Claire, for the rest of the episode, was then portrayed as being petulant about the whole thing. He then ultimately laughed and said he was enjoying it (later admitting he was, apparently, a sadist), and then there was a cutaway to the next morning. But what was with the light-hearted music and comically-played spanking? There wasn't anything funny about it - Jamie beat her with a belt. It's easy enough to understand the motivations behind Jamie's actions, thanks to the overly-pointed explanations about "that's the way we do things," (as Jamie was doing what he felt he had to because of pressure from the group and their rules). This all culminated in the strangest part of the hour, when Jamie set about to punishing Claire. Maybe it was all down to the harrowing attack by Randall (following her deep desire to return home) that brought out her intensity against Jamie (who broke down and spoke about his love for her), but that coupled with the ham-fisted dialogue made it a bizarre outburst. She also knows that Jamie is easily impressionable, and that she has ability to change his mind about things. Claire, a modern woman, knows that that modernity is at odds with Jamie's 18th century thinking. When Jamie chastised her for running away and jeopardizing herself as well as his compatriots (saying that a wife should listen to her husband), she goes ballistic, and engages in a tirade about not being his property, and women not meaning anything in his world. The change in POV coupled with the disjointed pace of the rescue itself (and the difficult-to-distinguish nighttime raid) made for a messy entry back into Outlander's world, which was only muddled further by the aftermath of Claire's safe return. But even still, it was an odd episode to make the shift given the subject matter - we needed, more than ever, to hear Claire. Outlander's insistent voiceovers have never been the show's strongest suit, as they talk us through the emotions and dilemmas instead of letting us experience them alongside the characters. I don't know whether or not this is going to continue throughout the rest of the season, but it was a little off-putting. The major change, though, was that we are now experiencing these events from Jaime's POV, with his voiceover. For those who hadn't directly watched the preceding hour, it was extremely jarring and disorienting to leap right back to Claire, breasts bared and bent over a table, about to be assaulted by Captain Jack Randall. It picked up exactly where things left off in Part 1 of the season, which was of course mid-attempted-rape. Truthfully, "The Reckoning" was a strange hour.
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