FOR THE LOVE OF OUTLANDER…
…because that’s what you’ll need to get through this. It’s gonna be long. Verra, verra long (I’m not kidding…it’s ended up being more like a thesis, and there aren’t any pretty pictures taking up space either). Get popcorn – or a double shot, if it suits. (Actually, you might as well grab the whole bottle.)
And - for any non-book-readers or those who haven’t yet watched…herein there be spoilers!
I didn’t intend to wait months before blogging my thoughts about the first half of Outlander Season 1, but here we are. In fact much of it has been written for weeks on my phone - mostly as disjointed sentences or ideas, added to and expanded upon as the thoughts crossed my mind…on the subway, during work meetings, while doing dishes…
As I put this together, I realised most of the focus is on particular aspects of episodes 7 and 8, and the characters/lead actors. So except for a couple of other comments at the start, I’m going with that. Trust me; this would be longer than an Outlander novel if I left in everything that was in my notes!
So:
- It amazed me how difficult it was to actually see vs. read about the flogging (The Garrison Commander)…which then struck me as a parallel to what Jamie had explained about not wanting people to see his back; it’s okay for them to know, but seeing would make them think about him differently. I re-read the scenes in the book (told there by Dougal instead of BJR), and this time had a much more intense feeling about it than I’d had for the past twenty years - I suppose because I was now picturing it in Technicolour horror, with a real face attached. By no means does this belittle what author Diana Gabaldon wrote, rather it highlights the incredible work of the prosthetics team and entire crew, and especially the actors who brought it to life.
- I may have missed something obvious - but how do the non-book-readers know that Jamie is a Laird? Were they confused when (Both Sides Now) he called Claire “Lady Lallybroch”? In the book, it was part of the explanation Jamie gave her about his family on the wedding night - so I initially assumed that in the series it had still been said, just not shown. But then it occurred to me that non-book-readers weren’t to have known. Perhaps something that explained it was edited from the final cut of another episode?
- The ‘not knowing his name’ thing (The Wedding). Yes - a beloved part of the book, and definitely belonged in the episode. However, at the end of the previous episode, Claire is staring morosely at the marriage contract - which very prominently reads “James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser”. In the book she never really has a chance to ‘be alone’ with the contract; the front page supposedly just said “Marriage Contract” and she simply signed where she was told, so it’s easy to assume she didn’t even see his name…but in the show it’s right there. Jumping off the screen. I’m probably overthinking it; perhaps she was too distraught to notice. Or more likely - too hung-over at the ceremony to remember. If this has already been addressed in a tweet or interview I missed, or podcast I’ve not yet gotten to…please let me know!
A small segment of viewers have complained about differences from the book. I have absolutely no issue with changing, deleting or adding things, as long as it makes sense for the story and characters. Obviously they can’t put everything in the show, and some things work better if they are changed to accommodate a visual medium. Other differences, such as the new storyline with the early introduction of Father Bain (The Way Out) are cleverly paving the way for events in the second half of the season. The explanations given for the changes by the production team make perfect sense - and as much as I love seeing favourite scenes come to life, it’s also exciting to have something new or unforeseen thrown into the mix, or given to us at an unexpected time.
This brings me to - as if enough hasn’t already been written about it - The Wedding. Done a bit differently from the book, but depicted so cleverly through humourous flashbacks and storytelling. Whether it was one or all of the writing/production team who came up with this structure, it was genius; allowing us to experience everything along with the characters, without having all the ‘sex scenes’ thrown together at once. After all - as perfectly as the pages and pages of Jamie & Claire wedding night dialogue flowed in the book, it would’ve crashed and burned for all but diehard fans if done that way on screen. Even with Sam and Cait saying the words!
But although the format was changed, the basic content was intact. All those wonderful scenes and words that some of us have waited decades to have brought to life.
It. Was. Beautiful.
(I encourage everyone to sigh deeply and smile knowingly along with me.)
Everywhere from mainstream press to fan blogs, much has been said about the ground-breaking depiction of sexuality on television and how this, for one of the first times on TV, catered very specifically to what a (straight) female would like to see. I would actually take that a step further: the scenes were written, staged, performed and edited in a manner to please all of the audience - female, male, straight, gay - everyone was well served. However, as one of those aforementioned females, I won’t deny that I felt like ‘we’ were getting more. It seemed as though Outlander was shouting from the rooftops (on our behalf) that yes, a man’s body is equally as appealing as a woman’s - and this show was willing to give it equal time. Perhaps even more time, at least it certainly felt that way. In actual fact we probably saw just as much of Claire as we did Jamie - but the difference is that we’re so used to seeing naked women running around the screen, that we’re probably a bit immune to it.
What I’m certainly not immune to is Jamie’s “…fine ass”, as so eloquently described by Diana Gabaldon. This comment - initially made at a fan/press event in New York last July - took on a life of its own, and ramped up anticipation of the episode to sometimes crazy levels. It didn’t help that both Diana and Jamie’s portrayer Sam Heughan devilishly continued to fuel the fire in interviews and on Twitter during the intervening months. Remember at that point we had NO idea how Outlander was actually going to handle the episode. We’d more-or-less had a confirmation of male ‘nudity’ - but what exactly? Yes, it was Starz, and yes, showrunner Ron Moore kept saying “if it’s in the book…”, but most of us figured anything on the Jamie side would be a fleeting glimpse, about the same afforded to men on any other cable show. (It seemed to be expected that Claire would be bare as the day she was born, as there was next to no chatter about her state of (un)dress…again exemplifying what we’ve come to accept as the norm.)
And those of us in other countries also weren’t sure how much we would or wouldn’t see, regardless of what Starz aired. I have to give full props to Showcase in Canada for airing the episode content in its entirety and unedited for the nighttime viewings - content that I guarantee must have knocked loudly on the ceiling of their censorship limits.
So, yes indeed: it turned out to be much more than a fleeting glimpse…for Claire and for us!
And as expected, that threw the fandom into a tizzy. Of course there were endless gifs, screenshots, amusing memes and ribald comments making the rounds of social media. Then a few people started to take issue by way of tweets or blogs: apparently we were wrong to objectify the male form - because, they said, it wouldn’t be acceptable the other way around. Well okay, yes…in an entirely different situation that would be true. But here it’s not that black and white. Jamie Fraser is a fictional character - created, as are all fictional characters - purely for our interest and entertainment, whether on the page or the screen. There is nothing wrong with this, or at least there shouldn’t be - as long as it’s within the law and not done with malice. (I’m not going into religious, cultural, or other moral, personal objections.)
After all, Claire pretty much objectified Jamie when she ‘looked’ at him (as did he with her)…why should it be any different for the viewer to have the same reaction? And Diana was right; he does have a verra nice arse! Definitely worth more than a brief glance, along with the rest of him. No doubt those who take pleasure in the female body were enjoying Claire in just the same, harmless way.The majority of the fandom was simply using humour to appreciate what Jamie had to offer - and what Sam Heughan has worked hard to maintain. This reaction was exactly what the production team and actors were already fully aware was going to happen - and indeed had been encouraging through their teases in interviews and on social media.
And they continue to do so: recently - around Hallowe’en - the real life owner of the aforementioned arse (in an ongoing twitter conversation with Diana Gabaldon about his and Jamie’s ‘buns’) told the Twitterverse that it “….tastes like pumpkin”. The buns? Or all of him, or…well, I’ll leave it there. Ahem.
Make no mistake. This is a man who - when he makes these sorts of comments, a clever mix of innocence and innuendo - usually knows exactly what he’s saying, how it is likely to be interpreted and what kind of reaction he’ll get. He’s found himself in a unique situation, figured out for himself how to deal with it (which can’t be easy!), and has chosen to remain down-to-earth and have fun with it - which therefore allows us viewers to do the same.
Sam Heughan is a publicist’s dream with his social media-savvy, and acceptance of/attention to, the fandom - both when sanctioned by the network and on his own. In fact pretty much everyone connected with the production is the same way. Starz got very lucky!
As for the actual ‘sex’ - as said it’s been generally agreed by media and the viewing public that what was shown on screen was very rare for television…and believe me, another thing I’m certainly not immune to is the raw attraction of those scenes. But the build-up was just as satisfying. The wedding itself; that moment Jamie sees Claire in her dress, the vows, the kiss. And later, the undressing, the gentle touches, the eye contact, the breathing; all equally if not more ‘sexy’ than the acts themselves. (Yes, even the ‘heavy breathing’ was perfect. It’s something so incredibly arousing when done right, but which is usually either ridiculously overdone - or forgotten/removed entirely in a final edit.)
It was ‘real’, too. Not la-di-da ‘everything is always perfect and covered in rose-petals’ as typically seen on TV for a wedding night. The episode stayed true to DG’s vision and gave us something honest and beautiful, especially in the progression of their love-making through the night.And yes, I cried.
It’s ironic (and a little depressing) that it took a show set in the eighteenth century to be so open-minded about sexuality, in this so-called enlightened & equal twenty-first century. For instance, making Jamie - the MAN - the inexperienced one, was an aspect of the book that’s been cherished for years. Yet to actually see it played out that way on TV without virginity being the sole focus (as many other shows would have done) was refreshing.
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Although this episode was still technically from Claire’s POV, it came the closest to giving us Jamie’s POV as well. He had considerable backstory and several scenes on his own, allowing the audience additional insight into his feelings about the marriage and what kind of man he was. Seeing Jamie as a “born storyteller” with Claire, and cracking jokes downstairs with his clansmen, was welcome growth for the character and the actor.Just because Jamie didn’t have a voiceover like Claire; didn’t mean the audience couldn’t see & understand everything going on in his mind - confusion, need, disappointment, elation…and the beginnings of real love.
Much of this was accomplished through non-verbal means - expressions, nuances and habits of Jamie the book-character, which have come out in the show. Sam Heughan said that he got many of them from reading the book, then collaborating with the director about what would work. But it’s one thing to teach yourself mannerisms - and another to completely embody them. Sam’s done it so well that we usually know Jamie’s state of mind without him saying a word, indeed so well that many have joked that he must be the actual reincarnation of a real-life JAMMF, haha.
But what was true was that many book fans - including myself - had a hard time remembering any other mental picture of Jamie Fraser from the moment they saw the onscreen version: that young man with a dislocated shoulder in a dark little cottage.
Which then made me wonder (because I think too much about everything) - did Sam become ‘our’ Jamie because he magically transformed himself? Or have we - the fandom - helped things along by taking some of Sam Heughan’s own attributes and ascribing them to what we know about the Jamie of the books? It’s obvious (from watching pre-Outlander performances and interviews) that some of the expressions described on the page by DG as ‘typical’ Jamie really do also belong to Sam (realistically, they belong to many people…but luckily for us - and no doubt for him in getting the role - he shares them too). So after throwing in the well-matched physical features - tall, strong, blue eyes and the (now) red hair, and crowning it off with that Scots accent…well, it wasn’t a huge stretch to merge the character on our screens with the one in our imaginations.
But to say it was all down to luck and a well-conditioned fandom isn’t fair - not to the fans, and definitely not to Sam Heughan. Seriously, it comes down to a damn fine acting job - probably even better than we already give him credit for. He was able to grasp an innate understanding of the character, adapt his own similarities while learning the rest, and deliver his lines just as we expected to hear them. He’s obviously worked very hard to bring Jamie Fraser to life - to the point that he’s really not ‘playing’ Jamie at all. When the cameras are rolling, he just is Jamie. ‘His Jamie’.
Of course none of this could have happened without stellar acting by all parties, and Caitriona Balfe has been just as successful. Unlike Jamie, Caitriona’s Claire has several physical differences from her book character. She’s taller, slimmer; her eyes are a different colour. But that hasn’t stopped her from becoming Claire. Now when I read the books it’s Cait who jumps off the page at me, regardless of what the character description might say…and that’s all down to her skill in owning Claire, completely.
It’s been said that Caitriona Balfe had the most difficult time during filming; as she’s been in almost all the scenes (at least for the eight episodes we’ve seen so far). Obviously that meant longer hours, definitely more lines to learn, and more behind the scenes requirements - from costumes to location travel to ADR. She also had to come back afterwards and match the tone of the narration to Claire’s mood in the scene. That may sound trivial, but I believe it’s extremely important: whereas a lot of Jamie’s character is revealed by his aforementioned expressions and movements, much of what we understand about Claire’s personality has come from her tone - in the voiceovers as well as in the scenes. The slightest change in her pitch or inflection allows the viewer to understand if Claire is wistful, amused, introspective, or tongue-in-cheek (one of my favourite aspects of Claire from the books, that Caitriona has got down perfectly). Just as Sam has done with Jamie, Cait portrays Claire in a manner that book-readers expect, and non-readers can easily understand and get to know.
The much-talked about chemistry between these two fairly jumps off the screen - and is a huge reason why the whole adaptation works so well. We believe it because they believe it, nothing seems forced. This is true of the entire cast - and I’ll probably have to write another blog about that at some point. They all deserve the highest praise.
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As previously mentioned, every single scene in the first eight episodes was told - just as in the book - from Claire’s POV. (Except, of course, the 1940’s Frank-left-behind scenes, which were not in the book.) Even scenes which seem on the surface to be independent of Claire - actually aren’t:
The punishment that Jamie took at Castle Leoch for Laoghaire, the oath-taking before Colum, the argument between Jamie and Dougal in Rent - Claire was always there, somewhere, watching. And of course, the events of Jamie being flogged at the prison were told to her by Black Jack Randall.
In The Wedding, all the ‘backstory’ scenes: Dougal with the priest, Jamie with Murtagh, Rupert and Angus with the ring, Ned with the dress - Jamie told these to Claire on their wedding night. Even when Jamie went downstairs to get food, what seemed at first like an ‘independent Jamie scene’ turned out to be another story: he told her about it afterwards as they ate.
I actually find all of those ‘story-scenes’ very interesting - because we viewers aren’t necessarily seeing what really happened, although it’s accepted as such. In truth, what we see is Claire’s interpretation of what she was told, often second or third-person by the time the viewer finds out. Yes, I’m overthinking again…but really, it’s fascinating!
Told as it is in first person narrative, in the book the reader knows only what Claire does. But with the series using the visual medium, they could have easily chosen to NOT hold with that, just as many other first person TV adaptations have done - because of the sheer difficulty of weaving scenes without the main protagonist into the overall story. And yet this series has done it masterfully, to the point you sometimes don’t realise how - until you go back and look again.I believe I read that in the second half of the season, some (one? partially? all?) of the episodes will be told instead from Jamie’s point of view. A departure from the book to be sure, but I think a very welcome one. I think the characters are now well-enough established within the TV show for this step to be taken, and it’s going to be very interesting to have another perspective.
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Right. We’re getting near the end of this now, so prop yourselves up and pour another dram. Just one more thing to discuss: Both Sides Now. I have a problem with it.
Don’t get me wrong - overall I ADORED the episode. Such brilliant acting. The Hugh character was lovely. The sequence where Jamie and Claire - who only want a little time alone to love each other, but end up killing their attackers - started out so funny and sweet…then quickly became shocking and sad. And the following scene, where a distraught Jamie tries to apologise to his trembling wife, was a shining moment for both actors.
However as much as I loved this episode, I have a hard time not being a little bit annoyed by it. I don’t even know if I can explain my feelings properly, but I’m going to try:
Although I completely trust the writers & showrunners, and as much as I’m enjoying it all and like the fact that there are deviations from the book, I can’t help but be a little disappointed that so much of the midseason finale was dedicated to Frank. Now that Jamie and Claire were married, it seemed important to have continued on from the last episode and explored their growing feelings a wee bit more. It didn’t even have to be a complete scene, just another couple of lines here or there…especially as this was the last we were going to see of them together for six months. And most distressingly (as many fans said), it felt completely wrong that Claire didn’t have at least one tiny thought for Jamie as she ran for the stones. Logic has allowed me to explain it as the shock she was still in causing her single-mindedness (I don’t know if that’s what the writers were thinking, it’s the only reason I could come up with), but my heart still missed what should/could have been.
After my first viewing, I honestly thought I must have missed something, and re-watched that section several times until I realised that what I was expecting to hear, simply wasn’t there. Even for the non-book-readers, it must have seemed a wee bit strange (or cold-hearted) that Claire was running toward one husband without even acknowledging the other existed.
Admittedly her ‘escape’ didn’t play out in the book as it did on TV - she didn’t make it to the stones, and it was days later so she was no longer in shock - but even so, in the book she was extremely conflicted, and spent some time rationalising how Jamie would fare without her. This could still have worked well in the episode without changing any of the existing events, just one little narration sequence before or as she started running across the field: “And Jamie - how could I leave him? But I had to go home. I didn’t belong here. And in time, he would forget about me, go on with his life.” (*Yes, basically paraphrased from what DG wrote.)
You may disagree, but I believe that sequence - which as I said was not in the novel - was built up to satisfy the drama of a mid-season finale and lend credence to the increased importance (in the series as compared to the book) of the left-behind Frank. I think it was a scene for the non-book readers to fall in love with, because as a book-reader it left me conflicted: it was a lovely moment in a stunning location, with a heart wrenching score, very cleverly thought out, exquisitely shot, and brilliantly acted by Caitriona Balfe and Tobias Menzies - but it left me struggling to enjoy it as much as I wanted to (yes I know I’m contradicting myself). Partially because of my annoyance that Jamie had been ignored, but mostly because I couldn’t help but see it as a ‘fake’. To me it was: “Okay, let the non-readers go into a six month hiatus feeling there’s hope for Frank. But the rest of us know he’s basically SOL. Even if we do see more of Frank, we know it’s still going to be Jamie all the way, so…”
I stated earlier that I don’t have a problem with differences from the book, and even here I still don’t have a problem in that way, per se. It’s more like I feel just a little cheated because it WAS so well done…and yet I couldn’t let myself enjoy it for what it was. (Admittedly, more recent viewings no longer leave me with quite such a negative reaction - I can now enjoy it, I suppose because I know what to expect - but that still doesn’t change my initial opinion.)
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So…if any of you actually made it this far, still reading - that’s it! And thank you! You’re brave. If you want to agree or disagree, I welcome comments on Twitter @juliechaston , or (if I set it up correctly and if you accessed this through the web instead of Tumblr) Disqus comments should be available below.
I think I might…only might…consider doing more frequent Outlander blogs for the second half in the spring, because I obviously can’t keep saving it up like this. And because I forgot to talk about the handsex! ;)
Toronto, 23 November 2014
