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?

Pros:

So, like I said, it's hard to be too annoyed, since the stuff distracting us from the Jacobite plot line was really excellent. We get two parallel stories about brothers this week. They are about as different as can be, but each helps us to understand something new about some of our most complex and interesting characters.

To start with, Mary Hawkins is back. She and Alex Randall plan to get married, but Alex is very sick. When Claire goes to check in on him, she discovers that he is on his deathbed, and she tells Mary that he cannot recover. Turns out, Mary is pregnant, so this is especially horrifying news for her. Jack Randall shows up to see his dying brother. Jack exchanges information about the British army's whereabouts in exchange for Claire helping to ease Alex's pain, although his life cannot be saved. Alex asks Jack to marry the pregnant Mary Hawkins so that their child will have the Randall name and the protection of Jack's position. Jack is very resistant, but Claire helps to convince him.

That's a rather simplistic view of the plot - there is a lot going on here.

Murtagh acts as Claire's bodyguard during all of the scenes at Alex's bedside. He's there to protect Claire from Jack Randall. It's clear that Claire can hold her own against the vile man, but I think it makes Murtagh feel better to be there. Murtagh probably gets MVP for this episode. His loyalty and protectiveness towards Claire is really sweet. You can tell that just being around Jack Randall makes him twitchy, and he even gripes about Claire willing to go to all these lengths to protect the "mythic prick" Frank Randall. But in the end, he'll follow Claire's lead to the end. He even offers to marry Mary Hawkins in order to protect her from becoming destitute, but Claire knows that Jack will be better for her, especially if he dies and leaves her the protection afforded the widow of an officer.

Claire and Jamie spend most of the episode dealing with their own concerns, but they do have a brief conversation about Jack. Jamie, suffice it to say, is not happy about the idea of Claire hanging around Black Jack Randall, but he allows it with the provision that Murtagh is there as well. What I liked about this brief scene was that it cemented Jamie and Claire's relationship and the strength of it. Their bond was sorely tested after what happened in Paris with Faith, but Claire stands by her deal: if Jack doesn't die at the battle of Culloden, she will help Jamie kill him. That's a rather intense promise, and it lends weight to every scene between Claire and Jack. Jack, for all his cruelty, doesn't seem to have any active "murder Claire" plans in the works. But Claire? She's all for making sure this guy ends up dead - after he marries Mary, that is.

Claire is straight-up brutal in this episode. We finally get to hear Jack's date of death, the one that Claire whispered to him as a curse back in Season One. It's the day of the Battle of Culloden. This is where things get super interesting, because at this point in the episode Claire is still hoping that Jamie can stop the battle at Culloden Moor from ever taking place. But in gambling to have Mary get married to Jack, she is betting on Jamie failing in his mission, and the battle taking place anyway. Sure, she tells Jamie that she'll work with him and kill Jack another way if necessary... but I think Claire knows the score at this point. Culloden is coming down the pipe, and Claire can't do anything to stop it.

I want to talk about Tobias Menzies' acting in this episode. I never forget, not even for a second, that Jack is an evil sadistic bastard. But in this episode, you can really tell that Jack loves his brother Alex, and that all comes down to the nuanced and intense performance that Menzies always manages to give. The scariest moment is just after Alex takes his last breath, when Jack, overcome with grief and anger at the position he's been put in, lunges for his brother and begins to punch him repeatedly across the face, while Claire holds a terrified and devastated Mary in her arms. Mary has just gotten married to this man, and now she's watching him pummel the corpse of her love, the father of her unborn child. Yikes.

And speaking of said unborn child - the mystery is solved! Jack actually isn't Frank's direct ancestor by blood, although the blood ties are strong. The baby Mary is having with Alex Randall will be Frank's many times great grandfather!

And then there's the other major plot thread - Colum shows up at the Jacobite camp. He is there because he's dying, and he wishes to make Jamie his interim heir, so that Jamie can help raise Hamish and make the young boy ready to lead as laird of Clan MacKenzie some day. Suffice it to say, Dougal is not happy about this. It's a big slap in the face, to say the least, but Colum maintains that Jamie, even if he raises the banner and has the MacKenzies join the uprising, will always put the safety of his men first. He will get them out of there if the cause is lost. Dougal, on the other hand, will sacrifice lives needlessly in the heat of battle, all for the sake of idealism. Colum has a point, and even Dougal cannot deny it.

We also learn another important piece of information when Colum and Claire have a conversation. Colum asks Claire for a way to die with dignity, on his own terms, and Claire gives him a poison that will kill him painlessly. The discussion of poisons leads to a revelation about the late Geillis Duncan - her son survives. She was not burned until after the birth of her child. As a book reader, I'm so curious as to how they plan on handling... certain things... from the book. I don't want to say anything else for fear of spoiling it. Still, I loved hearing about Geillis again. I miss her and her crazy witchy ways.

Then we must get to what was probably the most powerful moment of acting in the whole episode: Dougal's goodbye to Colum. He's furious with his brother, understandably, but he does still love him. Throughout this show, we only see this contentious and complicated relationship from Claire's point of view, and we've hardly ever seen the brothers on good terms over the past two seasons. But now, here at the end, we learn about how Dougal used to see his older brother when they were children. We learn about how disappointed and betrayed Dougal felt when his brother got sick, and when he knew he couldn't count on him in certain ways anymore. It adds another layer to their relationship, and makes me understand both of these men better. Great acting from Graham McTavish here at the end. The moment when Dougal realizes that Colum is gone, and that he's all alone, is really hard to watch.

The death of Alex Randall in this episode is mostly remarkable for how it impacts the others around him. He wasn't in the show all that much to begin with. But Colum dying? That feels big. It feels like the first sign of a decaying Scottish Highland culture. Since we know that history is doomed to play out, and that the battle of Culloden Moor will spark the near total destruction of Highlander culture, it's tough to see one of the great Chieftans fall on the eve of battle. Colum will be missed. He wasn't always a nice person, but he was a strong leader, and a hell of a lot more trustworthy than Dougal.

Fergus Watch: not a lot of him in this episode, which is always a bummer, but it was adorable when he fell asleep while riding on a horse behind Murtagh, and Claire covered him up with a blanket when they got inside. Aww.

There you have it. Three different plots going on here. I was disappointed that the Jacobite plot was subordinated this week, but the stuff it was subordinated by was really amazing. I'm pretty anxious about what the finale will bring!

8/10