Outlander: Hello, Goodbye (7x13)

After the high of the last few weeks of so much Lord John, I was bracing myself to be a little less invested in this week's installment. But it was another really strong showing!

Cons:

I used to harp on this a lot back in the old days and then it seemed pointless to keep bringing it up, but I should mention here once again that Sophie Skelton is the weak link acting-wise on this show. There's this moment when she's all offended at the sexist police implying that she might have been having an affair with Rob Cameron, but Skelton's acting is so weird in the scene that it actually seems like Brianna is lying about that? I don't know. It's unfortunate that she's not as strong a performer, so when the dialogue isn't stellar she can't carry it off like most of the others. Also, why doesn't Brianna at least tell them that Roger wants to steal money from them? Why hide that? I understand she can't tell the cops about hidden gold and time travel, but not providing any reason for Rob to kidnap her kid just made her look guilty as hell.

I really liked the stuff with Roger and his dad, it was genuinely moving. But I do wish that the end of this episode's moment of realization had been framed a little different. Here, it's presented like the idea that Jem isn't here in this time is something Roger is just now realizing. Even though surely he would have had suspicions about this from the second he realized that his father was here in the 1730s. I wish it had been framed more as "I've been thinking it for a while now but I was in denial..." rather than it being a new idea just occurring to Roger. Especially since we the audience know that Jem is in the 20th century already, so there's no bite to it.

This isn't a flaw of the episode per se, but now that we're at Ian and Rachel wedding time, I'm missing Dottie. She's such a fun character, and I like the Dottie and Denzel stuff a lot in the books. I'm sad it seems that it's not making the cut, here.

Pros:

Like I said, though, I did really like the stuff with Roger meeting his father Jeremiah! It's always fun when one of our core time-traveling family comes across someone who's new to the idea, because it injects this fresh sense of: yeah, this is fucking nuts, isn't it! And Roger offering him a truth: "we win the war, because of men like you," was so sweet. It's a real tragedy, having Roger send his father back through the stones, when we know Roger grew up without his dad. Clearly, Jeremiah didn't survive the trip back, or at least he didn't make it back to his wife and new child. So bittersweet, that Roger got to have this short window of time to speak to him, and his father didn't even know he was speaking to his own son! Oof. Beautifully performed by the actors, my heartstrings were really tugged.

Then, back in our main timeline of the three that appear in this episode: we get a brief check-in with John, who stumbles upon some continentals and pretends to have escaped from royalists... that's going to lead to some fun stuff in next week's episode, I know it, but for now it's just a brief check-in with my fave.

John does get mentioned a few other times, once when Denzel tells Jamie that he helped him to escape from being hanged. It's so funny to watch Jamie figure out how to feel about the news that he almost got John killed, like, he's still too pissed off to be fully in friendship mode but also by now he's probably feeling pretty bad about the way he behaved, even if the anger is still there. It's deliciously complex. Also, it's absolutely hilarious and deranged that Jamie and Claire are staying together in Claire's room in John's house, like, having a scene of the two of them sitting up before going to sleep, when the last time we saw Claire in that bed, John was the one lying where Jamie is lying now? Like? What the hell. That is not a thing that happens in the books, I'm almost sure. And Claire is all "you're thinking about John?" as an opening to that conversation... look, the three of you should all just kiss until your problems go away. This is getting ridiculous. In the best way.

While I've been a flip-flopper about Ian and Rachel, I actually thought their Quaker wedding and their wedding night were really wonderful! One of the hottest, sweetest sex scenes this show has ever done, in my opinion? Like, Jamie and Claire have good sex scenes, the actors definitely have chemistry, but we also have a pretty similar dynamic for a lot of those sex scenes, we understand the rhythm of their physical relationship pretty well after seven seasons of doing this. Having the sweet, slow first time with Ian and Rachel was just so lovely, and I thought both actors did an amazing job with the performance!

And I liked digging into Denzel and Rachel's relationship as brother and sister, their complicated feelings about being put out of meeting in order to follow their principles, and Rachel now marrying a man who has killed and might have to kill again. We see Jamie looking very dashing in his general's uniform as he prepares to join the war effort once again - Claire seems to like the way he looks in it, but we know that she and Rachel will always worry, watching their men go off to fight. Claire points out to Jamie that the men aren't dragging their women into anything, though. They are going to where they belong, which is by the sides of their husbands.

So, yeah! I think next week we're going to get more of Lord John and now that I've been so thoroughly spoiled by the past few episodes, I can only demand more. But even with the focus finally turning elsewhere, I liked this episode quite a lot. Brianna's plot thread being a weak spot, at least we've got Jem back with his mom and we're moving the story forward!

7.5/10