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Ownership of the female body is a central (and pilliaric) tenet of the show, and the only way to break that is to take away ownership.
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But in terms of making television, there has to be a point where we believe she’s actually in danger.īut therein lies more danger: the only way she can properly be menaced and create believable tension is for something truly awful to happen to her, and that’s such a line to cross that I’m not sure if they would want to cross it. Look, I get that this show is about her pushing boundaries I am totally on board with that. So, she can challenge Dougal, and Collum, and Randall, and the Duke of freaking Sandingham, and nothing happens to her? Black Jack Randall is trying to rape her because he’s an evil bastard, yeah, but that’s just because that’s what he does he was going to rape her when she was pleading for help from him. But she still consistently challenges their authority, and nothing happens to her. Claire is constantly in danger from men who try to rape her and assault her. To piggy-back off the last paragraph: Claire’s penchant for being super aggressive makes for great feminist theory but for wonky world-building. So, how can she be only a little bit magical? What is the limits of magic? Is there even magic in the world at all, besides those random stones? And if those stones are magical, as we know they are, we know that Geillis is also magical, because she is connected with the group of people that worships the stones. How can Claire get transported back in time BY magic, and then not believe in it at all? This makes very little sense. Do you see the problem yet? How can Jamie claim to see through these problems with a rational eye and think it’s okay for him to whip his wife, according to similar tradition? How can Jamie be this progressive and then not that progressive?Īnother show-wide problem: magic. But Jamie sees right through this he gets that it’s a way for people to deal with these awful decisions and keep moving on. People have been doing this since forever, and blaming the death of their child on theft by the fairies. Jamie comes across Claire holding a dead baby one that was abandoned  by parents for whatever reason. The scene in which Claire finds the dead baby was fascinating it is the microcosm of every problem the show has. His whipping of her as a way of punishing according to the old ways makes zero sense when you put it in the context of the character we’ve always known. Jamie has always been a rational, smart, kind individual to see him foam at the mouth and even give the merest suggestion that Claire’s near-rape was her fault was, to be frank, astonishing. His outbursts in “The Reckoning” were totally out of character and overly aggressive, a side that had previously never been shown nor even hinted at. But it was fascinating, because having these two episodes side-by-side really highlight some of the inherent problems of Outlander. It was so much more interesting and subtle and engaging that it’s like the cast and crew were swapped out for upgraded models. The reason I am bringing this up is because this episode of Outlander was so superior to its predecessor that I almost can’t believe they were made by the same group of people. I did the former in my last Better Call Saul review. Two of my biggest weaknesses as a critic is a fear of pushing back against hard critical consensus, and against a show I was previously enamored with.
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I really soft-served my feelings on last week’s episode.