Outlander: The Gathering (1x04)

Another solid episode. The more of this show that I see, the happier I am with the decisions they're making. However, I do think there was one rather large flaw here, which I'll have to talk a bit about. Let's start with a plot summary.

Castle Leoch prepares itself for a Gathering of the Clansmen, where everyone will pledge their loyalty to Colum as their Laird. Claire thinks that this meeting will be a good opportunity to attempt her escape, as it will be easier to dodge the men following her, and the distraction of the festivities will make the guards less vigilant.

Claire has been scoping out possible escape routes, gathering food, and even picking out a horse with which to make her escape. Geillis Duncan seems to suspect her, but doesn't try and stop her.

On the night of the Gathering, Mrs. Fitz insists that Claire go to the event. She dresses up and attends, staying only long enough to watch Dougal swear his fealty to his brother Colum. The other men line up to do the same. Claire ditches her constant guards and makes to escape. Laoghaire finds her and asks her for a potion to make a man fall in love with her. Claire gives her something, figuring that it couldn't hurt to give Laoghaire hope. Along the way, she comes across a group of men who try to sexually assault her. Dougal stops them and sends them away, but then tries to assault her himself. Claire slaps him, and then hits him over the head with a stool.

In the stables, as Claire tries to escape, she trips over Jamie in the dark. Jamie tells Claire that her escape attempt is foolish, since Colum posts extra guards during the Gathering. Jamie decides to escort Claire back to the castle. Along the way, the two are spotted. Now, Jamie is forced into going to the hall and swearing loyalty to Colum.

Only one problem: if he does that, he will be the next Laird of Leoch, which is a position Dougal holds at the moment. If Jamie swears himself to Colum, Dougal will have him killed so his position won't be threatened. If Jamie publicly declines to swear the oath, Colum will kill him for insulting the clan. If Jamie had kept out of the way during the Gathering, both brothers would have let their nephew get away with saying nothing. Now, because of Claire, he has to make his choice.

He goes up to Colum, and says that he can't swear the oath of the Clan Mackenzie, but that he will swear fealty to Colum as kinsman, for as long as Jamie might remain on Mackenzie land. It's good enough for Colum and Dougal, and Jamie manages to get away without either brother hating him.

Claire is now resigned to staying in the castle until she can come up with another escape plan. She goes on a hunting trip with a group of men, and is nearly killed by a boar. Dougal shoots the beast before it can harm her. Another of the hunters is not so lucky - Claire and Dougal stay with the man as he dies. Later, Dougal remarks that Claire has obviously seen men die by violence in the past. He tells her that he is going out among the Mackenzie lands to collect taxes and survey the moods of the people, and he tells Claire that she's coming along.

As the episode ends, we see Claire ride away from Castle Leoch with a group of men, including Dougal and Jamie.

My biggest problem with this episode was in the narrative arc of the individual story. As far as this episode advancing the larger plot of the season, it did a fine job. However, within this episode, I felt like we were lacking a climax. Jamie's pronouncement to Colum should have been the pinnacle of the episode, with a small tag at the end describing how Claire would wait for another opportunity to escape. The entire boar hunt was like an extra awkwardly tagged-on scene, and I don't think it flows very well with the rest of the episode.

The very end of the episode, with Claire leaving Leoch under the power of Dougal, rather than under her own, was a great scene. I would be find with ending the episode that way... maybe if the boar hunt had come earlier in the episode, before the Gathering? Something about the structure felt strange to me.

Another small flaw, although this might just be my personal tastes: I didn't feel the grandiosity of the Gathering like I think I was meant to. The earlier scenes in the season of the musician singing while everyone listened, or even just the dinner scene where Claire gets questioned by Colum, both felt bigger and more important than this Gathering. Not sure what went wrong, but the ceremony fell a bit flat for me.

But this was in fact a very solid episode, and it had a lot of important things in it.

First of all, we again see a subversion of Claire's expectations, reinforcing the idea that she has no control over her own situation, and that the world is working against her in certain ways. She plans to escape, and is thwarted, and yet by the end of the episode, she is leaving Castle Leoch, which is exactly what she wanted in the first place. However, the circumstances are wholly different from anything she could have planned for or expected. This keeps Claire on her toes - and it keeps the audience guessing, as well.

Geillis is very well developed - the more we see of her, the less friendly and the more sinister she seems, but there's no moment where she's suddenly shifted. It's a gradual sort of move, and the end result is still murky and unclear (I should say, unless you've read the book...).

One of the most brilliant scenes in the episode was when Laoghaire came to ask Claire for a love potion. I'll be honest, I can't remember at all if this scene is in the book or not. Regardless, knowing what I know about future events, I'll just say that this scene is the perfect set-up for something that comes later. It enforces the idea of Laoghaire as an innocent young waif, and also sets up Claire as a kind-hearted individual, who helps those around her, often at the expense of her own safety.

The hunting scene, while I think misplaced within the episode, was still excellently done. Claire faces the threat of imminent violent death, and I think it causes her to realize anew the full horror of her present situation. As earlier in the episode she had a moment where she seemed to regret the necessity of her escape, this moment served to reinforce the true danger of this place.

As Dougal and Claire sit with the dying man, we start to see a side of Dougal at odds with the man we've known so far. In the first episode, I remember questioning the casting choice for Dougal, but now I see that this actor is capable of pulling off the brutal and gentle sides of Dougal, and even juxtaposing them within a single episode. His attempted assault of Claire is a product of his drunkenness, his suspicion of Claire as an outsider, and the general attitude of men towards women in this time. However, we aren't led to believe that Dougal is necessarily a rapist - after all, once Claire has made her distaste for him abundantly clear by slapping him, Dougal does not attempt to overpower her again. (That is not to say that his behavior is not dangerous and despicable). But we see that unlike some other men in this world, Dougal does not discount Claire simply because she is a woman. He sees real human worth within her, and plans to use her skill as a healer to his own advantage. We also see that above all else, Dougal is a man loyal to his people. He cares deeply for them. The death scene in the woods is the perfect example of this, and I felt real sympathy for the dying man and also for Dougal as I watched from the outside, much like Claire was doing.

I've saved Jamie for last - this episode was enormously important for him. It's our first real glimpse of Jamie's intelligence and knack for political maneuvering. He is able to circumvent what seems to be an impossible tangle of loyalties and dangers. The fact that he is forced into an undesirable situation because he wanted to make sure Claire was safe just makes him all the more endearing. Jamie is both highly intelligent and exceedingly sweet - it is the sweetness that sets him apart from Dougal and Colum, the two other male characters that Claire has gotten to know. However, Jamie's sweetness is not innocence. He has been through a lot in his life already, and will go through a lot more.

His relationship with Dougal is a complex one, and will become even more complex as the story continues. We see a hint of that here, as he and Dougal play a violent game together, beating up on one another more than anything else. Dougal reminds Jamie that he taught him the game, and Jamie responds, "Aye, you did!" At first, Dougal seems to have the upper hand, but Jamie overpowers him in the end. However, the viewer is left with the sense that Dougal is not one to forgive and forget, and that he's also not one to let his guard down, even if Jamie didn't usurp his place in line for the throne at Leoch.

All in all, a very impressive episode that allowed us to dive deeper into Dougal and Jamie's characters. However, a structural misstep does force me to mark it down a bit.

7.5/10