Not sure where the title of this episode comes from. We meet Clarence the mule! Bree and Roger have their dust up. That’s going to be an awkward drive back to Boston from NC.
Meeting Otter Tooth is a bit different than the books, but it worked out. Lest anyone shriek, yes, Claire has zippers on her boots. Those are the ones that were part of her batsuit so they’re from the future. Terry Dresbach knew and planned it that way.
For book readers, we got a few shout outs of things to come. Now, we need Marsali and Fergus up at the Ridge and Ian getting chummy with the Indian lassies.
The episode title refers to the folk song Roger sang, according to the producers’ segment at the end of the show.
Thanks for reminding me about the source of the boot zippers. I was already disgusted by Claire running off yet again to do something as Jamie implores her not to…
Yeah, it’s pretty clear that Ian is going to have a “native experience” at some point. I liked the jumping back to 1970s, although the dust up they had seemed rather contrived. And I felt a bit of a Walking Dead flashback when Claire went off alone to find the mule. Here we are, out in the wilderness with a storm coming, but let’s split up. :rolleyes: Writers need to lose that trope!
I thought the brief scene of Jamie doing some farrier work out there in the middle of nowhere was interesting. It’s not something that’s normally portrayed in historical dramas but it’s probably what people had to do when the nearest blacksmith was far away.
Clarence (the mule) had all of their supplies, including Claire’s medical kit. They couldn’t afford to lose it. This particular scene plays out differently in the book.
Claire and Jamie are already established in their settlement with a cabin. Claire is off treating some German neighbors nearby, when her horse, aptly named Judas, throws her and she spends the night in the rain. Jamie finds her shoes on their front porch and realizes she didn’t seek shelter with the Germans during the storm, so he goes looking for her.
I can see them telescoping some things to move the story along. Book readers joke that they’ll have to split up the next book, The Fiery Cross, into two seasons, because the beginning is the Gathering and it goes on FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER.
That didn’t feel awkward to me; Claire’s valuable kit was on the mule, and he wouldn’t go far - seemed very natural for her to saddle up and go after Clarence, while Jamie was re-shoeing his horse. It was a mistake, but it didn’t feel like a “Let’s split up and search the haunted house!” moment.
What wasn’t natural was that obvious green screen Claire and Jamie were standing in front of at the end of the episode. As Mrs. SMV said, “They can afford to fly all those First Nations actors to Scotland to portray Tuscaroras and Cherokees, but they can’t send Cate and Sam to North Carolina to film three or four shots on a mountaintop?!” For a show that’s really good about the little touches, like the way the theme song is now sung in an American accent, and the pipes in the background have been replaced by a banjo and fiddle, that’s a pretty glaring bit of shoddy.
I think there are a bunch of legal/tax reasons why they’re shooting in Scotland. It may have been a green screen, but so was the top half of Jocasta’s house. The River Run house astounds me.
Well, he fought it with a knife and Claire tried to help with a fish. They actually combined two bears in the show, a real bear and the ghost bear, and I thought it worked well.
Claire’s getting a she-shed!
The story is moving right along. Keep in mind Roger decided to not tell Bree about the fire that kills her parents. That’s important later.
OK, not a bad episode, and I wonder if the young, English speaking Cherokee woman is going to lose her husband and end up with Ian. I figure he’s going to end up with an Indian woman one way or another, so she would seem a logical choice.
So in the latest episode, Brianna did use the stones to go back in time. (I take it that the time shift via the stones is fixed at a particular number of years back, so you don’t just end up at a random time.) Wasn’t there something about how someone had to die to make the trip? And apparently she learned independently that her parents die in a fire, sometime in the next twelve years. (Although as someone who has not read the books, I suspect they don’t actually die but instead fake their own deaths, perhaps to avoid the war. No spoilers, please.)
And the series is showing us the beginning of the revolution. I don’t remember hearing the term “regulator” for colonists in favor of rebellion. Was that a North Carolina thing?
1768, so rumblings for the war, but we’re not there yet. Geillis mistakenly believed you needed a blood sacrifice. Claire realizes you need a person to focus on and stones help, no death needed.
Regulators are historically correct. Diana does her research. Geillis was even the name of a witch from the 16th century.
They brought back Murtagh! Huzzah!
As a book reader, I can tell you they’re telescoping some things. The Muellers, for instance, in the book, do become important for a secondary character. I assume they’ll work in that character’s story line in another way.
Yes, but the movement is not considered part of the Revolution. It was an anti-tax and anti-corruption uprising, akin to Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. The Regulators weren’t protesting against the Crown per se; they were angry at Tryon, and the merchants and wealthy landowners of eastern North Carolina.
I guess you could call it rumblings. Different people in different parts of the colonies were chafing on how the Crown was treating them, and things started to simmer.
There is a hysterical scene in the book where Willie falls through the hole in the privy trying to get Lord John’s pistol (he tried to shoot a snake and dropped it down the hole) so that’s what the opening scene winked at.
The young man who played Willie was a spitting image of Sam. What a wonderful casting choice. In the book Young Ian is also sick with measles but I liked the one on one with Claire and Lord John. They included a lovely line from the books, where Lord John asks if Claire knows what it’s like to love someone, knowing you were not born the right person for them. John loves Jamie, but he is content to have his friendship. I was a little surprised that he told Claire that Jamie had offered himself if John would take care of Willie, because
We find out later that Jamie did it as a test. If Lord John had taken him up on his offer, he would have known Lord John was not an honorable man and would have killed him.
Looks like next week we get more Bree and Roger, who apparently has shaved his beard!!
It looked to me that the Sam and Claire’s cabin had been upgraded. The fireplace had a sort-of fancy mantelpiece, and the table looked less rustic than last week.