Outlander: Free Will (5x03)

This is a strange episode of Outlander for many reasons, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad one!

Cons:

With the foreknowledge that comes from having read the books, I'll just say I was somewhat surprised with the decision to keep this whole incident in place as it was. Not that it's a bad story or unworthy of being told, but structurally, it feels out of place. We've got the setup of Jamie and Claire leaving, along with Roger and Fergus, to go gather a militia and potentially fight. Marsali and Bree are staying at home with the kids and keeping things going at the Ridge. And then, there's an abrupt swing to a new little side quest, when Jamie discovers Jo and Kezzie Beardsley in the woods, and they go off to try and get their indenture paperwork from Mr. Beardsley.

I liked the material of this episode just fine, but when we're talking about a book that's over a thousand pages long, and there are so many moving pieces to the plot, I really thought they might cut out this little detour, or at the very least they could have shortened it and advanced Roger's story with the other men from the Ridge at the same time. There's some stuff that has to happen in next week's episode in Brownsville before Jamie and Claire show up, and they probably could have gotten some of it out of the way here, for pacing reasons.

Also, this is a small thing, but why on earth do they have the same actor playing Jo and Kezzie? You're telling me they couldn't find twins who could get the job done? That feels like a very odd choice to me.

Pros:

I really, really enjoyed the atmosphere of this episode. It was spooky in all the best ways. The Beardsley house was so dark, and sinister, and the nature shots outside with the leaves swirling in the wind, and the birds flying overhead... all of that was the perfect mix of spooky and genuinely upsetting. Even though I knew what was going on, it was still very frightening watching Claire climb up those stairs, going through the crowded, dusty attic to find the corpse-like body of Mr. Beardsley waiting there.

I also really admired the nuance present in this entire story-line. How you feel about each character and their behavior isn't necessarily a fixed thing. Something weird is clearly going on, and at first when you find out what Fanny Beardsley has been doing, you are rightfully horrified. Even finding out that he beat her doesn't make it any less distasteful, what's been done to his body. Then you find out about his prior wives, and that they've all been murdered. You find about that Fanny is pregnant with another man's child. There are layers upon layers here, and as each new puzzle piece reveals itself, it becomes less clear how a rational person should respond.

Then there are Jamie and Claire, and their behavior. Claire is a doctor. She can't just leave the man to suffer, but she also can't do anything for him, as he's had a stroke and cannot recover. Jamie ultimately gives the man the choice, and puts him down for the sake of mercy. But it's not at all clear what the right choice is going to be. At the start of the episode, we see that Marsali is still training and learning about medicine. We know how important this is to Claire, how much her life is built around her identity as a medical professional. And at the same time, she's aware that she is a woman out of time. She can't do anything for this horrifically injured and sick man. It is a mercy for Jamie to kill him. It's death with dignity, but with the added complexity that Claire knows what the future looks like, and knows what a clean, sanitary facility for a stroke victim to live in might look like.

And that leads to one of the themes running through this episode and indeed the whole season thus far - should Bree, Roger, and Jemmy go back through the stones to their own time? Claire says yes, Jamie says no. Claire argues it will be safer, but Jamie argues that they should stick together as a family. It's an interesting conundrum, and you can really understand why Roger and Claire feel the way they do, and while Jamie and Bree feel differently. It's a huge, huge decision and the implications are far-reaching.

There's probably a lot more I could say about this episode, but I think I'll leave it there. In many ways, it felt like a detour, so when I think about the season as a whole, and how much story there's still left to cover, I get a little concerned. But if I view this as a stand-alone installment, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on to enjoy.

7.5/10