My wife and I have been watching the first season of Outlander and have been a bit surprised by all the gratuitous torture, rape, etc. There is a lot of general nastiness we weren’t expecting. We just finished the second-to-last episode of season 1.
Does this let up or should we call it quits?
Ah, thanks for letting me know. Now I know that I won’t be watching it.
Outlander (the book series by Gabaldon), which the TV series is extremely faithful to, has quite a bit of this. It is unusual for what is basically a romance series to have its main characters get raped and then cope with it, without that being the centerpiece of the whole storyline. The Outlander series does, several times over.
The scene in Wentworth prison, on the other hand, is by far the worst actual sadism and torture scene I can recall from the entire series.
There are some other horrible things that happen to people, deliberate cruelties and uncaring abandoning of people to bad things and misguided twisted beliefs and perceptions that lead people to do awful deeds… but if it’s primarily the Wentworth prison stuff involving Black Jack Randall, you aren’t likely to run head-on into more of that if you stay with the series.
Thanks. We can deal with violence and some rapiness but the Wentworth thing was a bit much. We didn’t come to this show to be feeling a constant sense of intense dread and revulsion.
Gabaldon had the sense to put almost everything from Wentworth off-screen, as it were, both to avoid the gratuitous off-putting and because things imagined are always worse. The focus was on rescuing and healing afterward. Unfortunately the people in charge of the show aren’t nearly as smart.
If that’s what’s about to put you off then stick with it. I’ve been watching it and can’t remember anything else even close to being that bad. I’m pretty sure it pretty much lets up on the rape and violence after the first season. There’s a couple of battle scenes and fights, but nothing like that rape scene.
I’m a huge fan of the books and the show and I can tell you that was the best hour of television I will never watch again. The acting was top notch and dealing with the aftermath of rape is something you rarely see handled (cough Game of Thrones cough.)
That said, it was horrific, but it’s a twist in that the man is attacked and it’s the woman who rescues him.
They’re filming season four now. I’d say if you like the story keep watching.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen the finale of season 1 (just the next to last) then you better be prepared…the finale is even more brutal than the penultimate episode.
Fabulous show. Do keep watching.
This show is a bit bloody – you’ve seen worse elsewhere – but what makes it stand out is that it’s realistically portrayed, with all the consequences.
Casting a quick glance over the past three seasons I think there is no other violence that is quite so emotional as that scene in the first season.
I think the next worst scene for me is in episode two of the third season.
I started the first book and quit after the fourth or fifth rape. Ick.
Yes, my wife loves the series but I tried reading it and couldnt due to those issues.
The Wentworth scene is no doubt the most brutal one thus far. I’m saying that only because I have no idea what to expect this coming season (I haven’t read the books).
I’m not one for violence either, especially the up-close-and-personal kind which Outlander as a whole does very well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hidden my face so as not to watch details.
The non-violent parts, however, more than make up for them, as does the story line.
For me, the episode Faith in S2 has me weeping every single damn time.
The book series is addictively good. And the TV series is exquisitely faithful to the books as far as I’ve seen of it so far (I’m in Season Two, on DVDs).
Season Two corresponds to Book Two (Dragonfly in Amber) and I’ve always considered it to be her worst book of the series (too convoluted, too many half-finished 20th century sub-storylines abruptly interspersed between half-finished 18th century sub-storylines [even if she did eventually tie it all together], too much angst and soap-opera melodrama between Jamie and Claire)… but it’s still good stuff. I’m looking forward to Season Three which presumably will be Voyager.
Anyway, given what I know of the books, and given that the TV series is sticking so close to them, there will be additional rapes, someone will almost be executed (surviving it but not undamaged), an incident of genocidal violence, and other harsh and cruel things depicted. Bad things happen to our main characters, not just to ancillary characters wearing red shirts.
There will also be medical and surgical interventions. They were described graphically in the book and based on what I’ve seen of the TV series so far, you can expect to see parts of people not normally on display and a pretty convincing representation of patients in severe pain and distress.
^^^ This.
QFT - I love that the show (and the book) doesn’t show rape as just some minor inconvenience - it has real, life-altering consequences and they don’t shy away from it. As a survivor, this has been a powerful example, and one of the many reasons why this show (and the book series) is so good.