Outlander: Faith (2x07)

This was a big episode. The final culmination of the season's entire arc in Paris. So many major events took place. And... it was brilliant. The best episode we've seen this whole season.

Cons:

It's funny, but with this show I seem to come back to the same complaint over and over again. When you have such an intricate story with a lot of well-developed characters, a cool setting, and some truly incredible actors to bring the story to life, you don't need to spell things out so insistently. Most of this episode worked on a level of brilliant subtlety, so the few times that symbolism or meaning was shoved in my face, it really stood out to me. The biggest example I have of this is in the hospital, where Claire miscarries her child. There's a statuette of the Virgin Mary that topples to the ground and shatters. Later, the same image of the statue shattering is shown. Talk about heavy-handed. I also thought there could have been less explicit evidence of Jack Randall's rape of Fergus. I like the idea of seeing flashes of it, but honestly the less you show, I think the more horrific it becomes. This was a circumstance where Fergus' grief and trauma could have carried the story without us seeing the full truth of what happened. Maybe it's a personal preference thing, in this case, but still.

The episode begins with a flash-forward to Claire and her daughter Brianna in Boston in the 1950's. I get the idea, that we see Claire with her daughter in the future, and then we watch Claire lose her daughter in the past. But it felt a little bit too much like pandering. As cute as it was to see little Brianna, I feel like if I wasn't a book reader I'd just be more confused than anything.

Pros:

Oh gosh. Where to start. First of all, like I said, a lot happened here. But somehow, the pacing remained slow and every bit of the story really had time to make its impact. This episode made the very intelligent decision to stick with Claire throughout, as she goes through the grieving process. We don't really see much from other character's perspectives. Jamie only shows up at the very end. Because of this, I felt a deep connection with Claire throughout this lowest and most tragic part of her life.

So... to start, the plot. Claire miscarries her child. She lies in the hospital afterwards, severely ill, until Master Raymond comes in and removes the placenta from her, relieving her of her fever. Of course, his coming to the hospital was a great risk, since the king is still after practitioners of dark magic. Claire eventually comes home, at Fergus' bidding. Jamie is in the Bastille, imprisoned for dueling, and Claire learns that Jack Randall is still alive and recovering in England. Back at her home, Claire hears Fergus having a nightmare, and the story comes out: Jamie dueled with Jack because Jack raped Fergus. Claire gets an audience with King Louis to ask for Jamie's freedom. She is tasked with two favors before he will comply. First of all, she is asked to help determine the guilt of two people suspected of being involved in the dark arts: the Comte St. Germain, and Master Raymond. Claire tries to spare them both by making a "poison" that she says only the evil will die of. Raymond drinks the concoction and does not die, but he slips something into it before Germain is given the drink, and the Comte dies. The second task that Claire is required to complete is to allow the king to sleep with her. That being done, Claire returns home, and Jamie is released from prison. Claire says that she hated Jamie for what he had done, but she has realized that the loss of their child was her own fault. She was the one who put Frank ahead of Jamie and the baby, and asked Jamie to do an impossible thing. The two of them forgive each other and resolve to return to Scotland.

Okay. Before anything else, I need to praise Caitriona Balfe on her performance. From cradling her dead baby girl in her arms to submitting to King Louis' advances to pretending to be La Dame Blanche to comforting a sobbing Fergus to forgiving Jamie at the end... Claire went through a lot of different emotions in this episode, and Balfe was just killing it on all counts.

The tragedy of the miscarriage really came through. I teared up during multiple parts of this episode. Although there are many tragic moments to choose from, I think my favorite (read: the one that made me cry the most) was towards the end, when Claire is telling Jamie that she got to hold her daughter, Faith, in her arms before she was taken away. The scene is cut between Claire describing it and shots of Claire holding the child. Louise shows up and comes to Claire's side. Claire says "isn't she beautiful?" and Louise responds: "Oui. She is an angel." Louise then asks if she can hold her. This just gutted me. It was such a lovely role for Louise to fill. Calling the dead child an angel was just a brilliant line of dialogue. Louise can be very frivolous and out of touch with the realities of the world, but she is a good friend to Claire, and this moment really cemented that.

Another really touching moment is when Claire returns to the house after her stay at the hospital is over. Fergus helps her down from the carriage, and all of the servants of the house are waiting to greet her. They bow to her. Suzette kisses her hand. When Claire gets to Magnus, he starts to bow, but Claire stops him and instead bows to him, thanking him for his service. These servant characters have existed mostly in the background of the show so far, but this moment proved that they haven't existed in the background of Claire's life. She knows and respects these individuals. It was a powerful image to see Claire, so recently bereaved, bow to her servant in thanks.

Then we get to Fergus, who just broke my heart all over the place. As if Claire losing her baby wasn't enough heartbreak for one episode, we also get to see poor tiny little Fergus carry the guilt of this entire thing on his shoulders. When he started crying about how Milord would never come back... ouch. I mean, it's no surprise to anybody reading this that I have a bit of a Fergus obsession, but how could you not love the poor little guy after that scene? He blames himself for crying out while being raped, because if he had just kept quiet, Jamie never would have known, never would have dueled Jack Randall, and never would have ended up in prison. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Again, Claire is able to look beyond her own grief to offer comfort to the young boy. I might have wished for a tad more subtlety in the showing of the actual rape, because... you know... it was unnecessarily disturbing. But I definitely still felt for Fergus. I hope we get to see a scene between Fergus and Jamie in the next episode.

Then we get the culmination of many of our French subplots: King Louis, the Comte St. Germain, Master Raymond, and La Dame Blanche all come together for a brilliantly written and directed moment. I don't even know where to start with this. Claire looked gorgeous. The secret room where the king held this strange meeting was amazing. Claire's amulet, the one that changes color in the presence of poison, finally got its chance to shine. The Comte's death was, in some ways, anticlimactic, but in other ways that felt so appropriate. He was taken down by a cunning sleight from Master Raymond, and by Claire Fraser's ability to remain cool under pressure. I love the fact that his last words were a cliché directed at Claire: "I'll see you in Hell." Somehow, he managed to pull that off and remain menacing and yet oddly pitiable to the last.

Master Raymond's character is one of the stranger ones offered by the books or the show. I liked both of his scenes here. First, he saved Claire's life, and then Claire saved his. But neither circumstance was exactly normal, and the oddity of their relationship remained at the forefront of my mind while I was watching. I really liked the voiceover that Claire had when Raymond was exiting, having earned his freedom by passing Claire's test. She says that she was reminded of a quote from an old film: "I'll miss you most of all." This is what I'm talking about when I say that this show needs to trust its audience more. This is a perfect example of the voiceover done right. We're not being told what we can already see, we're not just learning some exposition. We're getting this clever little reference, and it's not being spelled out for us, but it reminds us of Claire's otherness, or rather the otherness of the place and time she finds herself in. She's certainly not in Kansas anymore.

King Louis has turned in to the character I remember him to be from the books. I remember being quite disappointed when we first met Louis on the toilet, because even if the scenes were being lifted from the books, it didn't quite work for me on a more serious level. But here, he's serious. Deadly serious. He finally felt like a king. Claire went to meet him knowing full well that she would likely have to sleep with him, but the buildup to the moment was just so unsettling. When King Louis kisses Claire on each of her rings, lingering over her hand, you could just feel Claire's squeamishness and fear. And then when he leads her out of his bedchamber and presents her to Master Raymond and the Comte, you think the danger has passed. The sex scene itself is little more than just Louis lifting Claire's skirts and Claire, as the voice-over tells us, closing her eyes and thinking of England. It was disturbing. Honestly it felt like Claire was being used as a receptacle. King Louis didn't even see her as a person. Honestly I'm not even sure he really wanted to have sex with her. It was just that this was a way for him to mark her, to make her feel used. Ugh. The whole thing makes me want to take a shower. I think my favorite thing is that early on, when Claire and King Louis first sit down, Louis offers Claire an orange. She sets it down when she goes with him to pass judgment on the two men, but after they go back into Louis' bed chamber, and after they've slept together, Claire takes the orange with her upon exiting the room. I don't know why, but I just love that small detail. Why shouldn't she take the orange? It was offered to her, wasn't it?

I mentioned earlier how this episode tracks Claire's journey through her grief. Another thing it tracks, quite expertly, is the idea of guilt. Fergus blames himself for their predicament, and Claire blames Jamie for dueling Randall. In the end, Claire admits to Jamie that it's her own fault, and Jamie instantly absolves her of that. This final scene between the two of them reminded me powerfully of the song "It's Quiet Uptown" from the Broadway musical Hamilton, which everybody needs to listen to immediately, if you've somehow managed to avoid it thus far. There's this line where Eliza takes Alexander's hand, silently agreeing to continue their lives together after the terrible loss of their son. The chorus sings: "Forgiveness. Can you imagine?" And that's what this scene was between Claire and Jamie. It's such a powerful gift to give one another. They have lost their daughter before they even got to know her, but even through their grief, they will not hold on to any lingering blame.

As the episode ends, we're left with a bunch of plot threads and characters in our wake. The Comte is dead, Master Raymond has fled France, Claire has lost her child, Jamie has wounded but not killed Black Jack Randall. From here, we venture back to Scotland, and several of our arching plot threads continue. Namely... the Jacobite uprising. I think the exclusion of Charles Stuart from this episode was really smart, because ultimately the loss of Claire's child was the biggest thing this episode could contain. All thought of the uprising and the plan to sabotage it falls by the wayside. Of course, the pieces will have to be picked up next week, and the fallout is not going to be pretty.

9.5/10