Outlander: The Hail Mary (2x12)

Alright... penultimate episodes are always intense, and this one was no exception, with a couple of major deaths and a final sealing of some tragic fates. Let's get going.

Cons:

We get a time jump in this episode, which was a little bit awkward. Other than Claire telling us that time had passed in some rather sloppy exposition, I didn't really get the sense that things had changed. There was a lot of telling instead of showing in this episode. For example, Jamie warns Prince Charles that the men are weak from lack of food and rest, but we don't really spend much time with these men, to see how run down and demoralized they've become. In fact, this complaint stretches into an even bigger one: there were two very important character-driven plots in this episode, but they took up so much space that the third plot, the one concerning the actual uprising, got relegated to a subplot. In short, Jamie manages to convince Charles to lead a surprise attack on the British camp. Claire finds out the location from Black Jack Randall, which I'll get to in a second, and the men all move out to attack. But Charles' troops get lost in the night, and Jamie's column of men is forced to turn back, unwilling to attack with insufficient troops. This means that Charles' original plan will follow: they will meet the British the following day on Culloden Moor.

I mean, this is important stuff, guys. The whole season has been building up to this fateful battle. And the plot leading up to its inevitable arrival was relegated to a rushed few minutes of screen time at the start and finish of the episode. It's difficult to complain too much about this, because the other plot threads were really intense and I enjoyed them a lot. But is this really the time to be pushing the Jacobite plot into the background?

Outlander: Vengeance Is Mine (2x11)

While perhaps not as solid as some other installments this year, I found "Vengeance Is Mine" to be compelling for a couple of key reasons, and I'm certainly still looking forward eagerly to the last few episodes of the season. Let's jump in.

Cons:

The reason I say this isn't as solid is that some of the big moments didn't feel as grand as they might have done. The decision to have Jamie sent away from Bonnie Prince Charlie happened in a moment, I didn't feel like the full weight of this switcheroo was fully felt. Basically, Jamie goes from being Charles' trusted advisor to being sent along to Inverness on a fool's errand, simply to get him out of the way. Jamie was the only of Charles' officers to encourage him to march forward to London, which Jamie knew would have changed the course of history. In failing, he also seems to have lost his position as the right hand of the prince. It should have felt like a serious blow, but instead the issue was muddled by the fact that we only find out about this switch because Dougal delivers a letter with the news, and suddenly our heroes are turning about-face and heading to Inverness.

The other big moment is the reveal that the Duke of Sandringham was a bigger villain than we ever knew. I think maybe the reason I sort of shrugged off this event was that it was just revealing that an obviously bad guy is a bad guy. Turns out, the Duke owed the Comte St. Germain money, and to ease some of the debt he agreed to have Claire attacked and raped. So it was the Duke who sent the men after Claire and Mary Hawkins. We also learn that the Duke is... dun dun dun... Mary Hawkins' godfather, which adds further levels of complication. While I appreciated a hell of a lot of the elements of this plot thread, the Duke's character came across a bit too camp, and a bit too comedic to ever feel like a proper threat. Let's just say that there was a lot of metaphorical mustache twirling going on.

Outlander: Prestonpans (2x10)

Nooooooo. Okay before I start reviewing this episode, I want to say that I straight up don't remember how this goes down in the book. I do know that our dearly departed character of the week played a significantly reduced role in the books, and didn't hang out with Claire and Jamie as much as he does in the show. I also know that I care a hell of a lot more about him in the TV version than I did in the books... in fact, I don't really remember his literary counterpart. Let's get to talking about this.

Cons:

This was one of those episodes that hit every emotional angle it needed to, and also had a lot of forward motion in the plot... but at the same time, I did feel like the top half of the episode was a little sluggish in terms of the pacing. We've been building up to actual battle for a long time, pretty much all season, and to have to wait so long for the fight within this episode didn't feel like the tense ramp-up that I think it was meant to.

Also, in regards to the death, they made it painfully obvious what was coming, which took away a bit of the horror of it all. But that's a small thing, and I was certainly still devastated.

Outlander: Je Suis Prest (2x09)

This is one of the better episodes this show has ever had. I'm getting mighty nervous for the rest of this season, because I anticipate a lot of angst. In fact, I'm pretty much guaranteed it at this point. Let's get talking about this episode.

Cons:

There were only two small things I'd call "flaws" in this episode, and they were more matters of slight discomfort for me. First of all, Jamie makes the decision to sentence himself to flogging in this episode for being lax with the security of his training camp. This isn't at all a bad decision from a leadership standpoint, but it all happened so fast, and the ramifications were so little dwelt on, that the whole scene gave me whiplash. It's like I knew this scene was supposed to teach me something new about Jamie or about the situation, but I couldn't quite figure out what.

The other thing is even more difficult to describe. We meet Lord John Grey in this episode (yay yay yay my excitement knows no bounds) and then we get Claire and Jamie cleverly tricking him into giving up information about his camp of British soldiers. How do they trick him? Claire pretends to be a British prisoner of the dirty Scots, and Jamie threatens to rape her unless poor teenaged John does the right thing and saves her honor. Now, in the books, this is much more subtle. John sees Jamie and Claire goofing off and comes to the wrong conclusion, hearing Claire's English accent. He actually confronts Jamie for the sole purpose of saving Claire's precious honor, and Jamie, perceiving that this annoying little intruder has got the wrong idea, decides to role with it, leveraging Claire's completely fabricated distress against John's helpful knowledge about the nearby British camp. I liked this in the books because the whole thing played off of John's unfair assumptions about Scottish brutality. He dug his own grave by making an unfair guess about his enemies. In this version, we get Claire and Jamie playacting sexual assault, on purpose, to force John to do what they want. Obviously as the viewers we know that Claire is fabricating this story to a) get them the information that they want and b) stop Jamie from having to cause the boy bodily harm. I just... I don't know. The presentation in the book of this same scenario is so much more subtle. In a show that deals very seriously with the consequences of rape and sexual assault, it's very jarring to see Claire and Jamie acting out such a scenario, even when I understand the reasoning.