Outlander: Unfinished Business (7x09)

We're back, at long last! It's been a million years!

Cons:

It's not the actress's fault, but I did find the re-casting of Jenny to be distracting. The reunion vibes, and the tension between Claire and Jenny, all that stuff - it just didn't pack the same punch because it was some random woman I'd never seen before in my life, you know?

Also, I'll wait until next week to judge, but I feel like this show is always lacking in the Ian Sr. and Jamie relationship. It makes sense that a great deal of time goes to Young Ian's reunion with his dying father, but I could have used more of Jamie and Ian together as brothers, here. A more emotionally poignant moment of return, the laird back in Lallybroch and seeing the man who maintains it for him.

I have had this complaint so many times over the years with this show, but the truth is, the voice-over stuff just does not work for me! There are times when it's less bad and times when it's more bad, but that's about it. Roger having a voice-over in this episode was distracting as fuck. I understand that it would have potentially been challenging to get across the revelation of Roger being in the wrong time without some sort of awkward statement of reality in the exposition, but they could have found a better way, I'm fairly certain.

Pros:

For all that the voice-over annoyed me, I still did like Roger's journey into the past. They really made a meal out of that moment when Roger shows up to Lallybroch. There's a knock at the door, and you think Jamie and Roger are about to be reunited, you're so relieved because now Roger is going to have his family with him on his hunt for Jemmy, and then... nope! Syke! It's such a good twist in the books and the show too. So fun to get to know Brian Fraser a little bit too, and to see young Jenny - it was easier to get on board with this different actress in the flashback.

Laoghaire is such an interesting character because her anger is motivated more by bitterness and heartbreak than by pure reason, and yet she's also not entirely wrong about Jamie screwing her over. It's funny how this character keeps turning up like a bad penny and then trying to murder Jamie right in front of our eyes, and yet you're still kind of hoping that Jamie will do right by her and make sure she's okay. The acting has a lot to do with it, I've always really liked her performance in the role. I also like that Jamie gets heated with her even when he's trying to be the reasonable one and offer his apologies. This is a story where the ex-spouses aren't going to be friendly with each other in the end, no matter that they're both in different happy relationships now. Some wounds don't heal.

What a treat to meat Joanie, and see her set off on her life as a nun! I liked her going to Jamie, her stepfather, and laying out the situation with her mother and the land she stays on. Jamie does the right honorable thing, taking care of his stepdaughter and making sure Laoghaire can marry her lover without losing her home. You hate that women are in the position to have to depend on a man doing the right thing, but you're glad knowing that this man always will do the right thing. I liked the almost girlish excitement Laoghaire displayed when she realized she was going to get everything she wanted, and how she tamped it down in front of Jamie and Claire. (Also, it is pretty ridiculous that Ned Gowan is still alive - this is a detail from the books that always made me chuckle.)

I think I mentioned in earlier reviews that Ian and Rachel's romance on this show (and also in the books if I'm being honest) isn't my favorite thing in the world. But given that she's absent in this episode, only evoked by name, I do like the role she plays in Ian's journey, here. He comes home after so many years, an entire life lived away from his place of birth. He's been married and divorced, he's lost a child. He's been adopted into, and then chosen to leave, a tribe that gave him a new cultural identity to lay alongside his Scottish origins. He's on the cusp of maybe making a new happiness with someone, only then he discovers that his father his dying.

So what does he do? He writes to Rachel to release her from any implication that she would wait for his return. He has to stay, to spend the rest of his father's life by his side. Then we get a sequence of scenes that actually did make me tear up. Jenny rips up the letter Ian wrote to Rachel, then takes him out to the family graveyard, where Ian sees that they've put a grave up for his infant daughter. They copied the Mohawk words from Ian's letter onto the grave, so it says "most beloved daughter." Jenny tells Ian that he'll have a place here to remember her and that she was on this Earth with him. And that he'll always be here at Lallybroch with them too, even if he leaves. As Jenny says, Ian's father wants him to go and live the rest of his life.

So... Ian's off with Claire back to America. The moment between father and son, when Ian comes out of the house and down the stairs, grievously ill and unsteady on his feet, the way they stare at each other and wave goodbye... god, there's something so definitive and beautiful and tragic about it. It's something that isn't really a part of our modern world in the same way. Ian Sr. doesn't have long left to live, and Ian Jr. is going very far away with no means of getting back quickly. They know they're looking at each other for the very last time, and they get the chance to say that goodbye with the full knowledge of that reality. It really tugged at my heartstrings!

Obviously because I am me, the thing that got me the most pumped about this show being back on the air is Claire getting that letter from Lord John. I always swoon when John uses first names with Jamie and with Claire, it feels like he's taking liberties in the best way. He implores her to come to Philadelphia to save his nephew Henry. I know the sequence of events that's about to be set off here, and I've got to say it's some of my favorite shit in the whole damn series. I am SO excited for the next couple of episodes - we even saw John in the "next time on," about to give Claire some bad news...... I am frothing at the mouth!

Ahem. Anyway. It was nice to be back in Lallybroch, I liked this episode quite a bit. Roger and Buck have run into Geillis, another bad penny, and we'll have to see how that goes when we check back in with them next week!

8/10