Outlander: Evidence of Things Not Seen (8x07)

HEY! What the FUCK.

Cons:

I'm so mad lol. The term that keeps popping into my head is "unforced error." Like, the show is ending in three more episodes. They didn't have to do this. Why would they do this? Jesus Christ. The thing that's really getting to me is that I did not expect this at all. When the house was on fire, when the boys were on the roof, I thought I was about to see adorable little Henri-Christian die, and it would be so sad. And then when they did the fake-out and Roger caught him falling from the roof and it panned up to Fergus still standing up there I said, out loud, "oh, fuck no." And they fucking did it. They killed my boy. They killed Fergus, a thing that does NOT happen in the books, because frankly it's just too fucking awful and sad to think about. Why? Why would they do this?

A few months back, my friend and I were watching the final season of Stranger Things, which, for a lot of reasons, has been pretty panned by viewers. As we were watching we were noting the increasingly obvious foreshadowing hints that Eleven was going to die, and we kept saying to each other, okay, but, if she does, then Hopper will drink himself to death. Like, there's just no recovering from this for him. And instead, the show ends with Hopper apparently fine, like, sober and happy and completely at peace with the death of his daughter (for the second time, no less.) It made the death ring hollow, it made everything feel so cheap and lazy.

And as I watched Jamie making that coffin, and little Fanny holding his hand and calling him grandpa for the first time, all I could think is: realistically, Jamie would be ruined by this. Now, I'm not saying he'd never recover, I'm not saying he'd kill himself or anything. But. realistically, this would grind his life to a halt, he would be inconsolable for a long time, he would be drowning in grief. Claire too, to an extent, but especially Jamie. Fergus was his boy, his son. His first son, the eldest, and of all his children, the one he got to spend the most time actively parenting. The reason this is pissing me off is that I know we'll see a bit of Jamie's sadness in the remaining episodes, but there's so much other shit going on, the show isn't going to be about that at all. It's a minor fucking footnote. We'll maybe get a scene or two of Jamie visiting the cairn, we'll see Marsali being comforted in her grief, but life will move on and the main plot will take over and Fergus's death will be just this... this thing that happened, that didn't matter. Structurally, narratively, emotionally. I can taste it, and I hate it.

The thing is, it also makes the Faith stuff even more ridiculous. If you wanted to tell a story about Jamie and Claire grieving the loss of a child, you really did not need to bring back the memory of their stillborn daughter from 30+ years ago, if you were planning to actually kill their living son in this season. Like. Here's something that really steams me, and I promise I'll talk about the rest of the episode too, but I have a lot of feelings to work through: Jamie and Claire talk about how when they lost Faith, they were in such a bad place, Claire had told Jamie she hated him, because she wanted Jamie to feel her pain. What they don't remind the audience in this episode is how that all went down. Claire has a late-stage miscarriage upon viewing Jamie wounding Jack Randall in a duel, making him impotent and, as far as Claire knows, potentially making it so Frank will never be born. Why does Jamie go against his promise to Claire not to kill or harm Randall? Well, because Randall was trying to rape a little boy Jamie had come to care for very much. What little boy you might ask? Oh, I don't know, MAYBE FERGUS???? Like, how could they waste our fucking time with all this Faith stuff, and making Fanny their biological grandchild, and not even mention the part Fergus played in that whole situation? It just feels like such a slap in the face, such a dismissal of who Fergus is as a man and as a character in this story.

And, let's say something forced them to make this choice, let's say the writers had a gun to their heads and were told "Fergus has to die instead of Henri-Christian, some studio executive thinks it's more impactful." Okay, hey, I hate the choice, but let's pretend they were forced into it. In that case, doesn't it make much more sense, thematically, for Fanny to be an orphaned girl that they take in, and she becomes family, just because they grow to care for her and want to protect a vulnerable and friendless child? Doesn't it mean more for Fanny to reach out and take Jamie's hand and claim him as her family, if she's not literally, super duper coincidentally, his granddaughter by blood? Wouldn't it tie the story threads together more, if Jamie's paternal instincts to protect another orphaned young person living in a brothel, were paralleled explicitly with what he did for Fergus all those years ago? Making Fanny literally related to them is so stupid and actually makes it much less emotionally impactful, god damn it!!!!

That's not even to mention the stupid way that they're able to get such definitive proof so quickly about Faith. Fanny mentions having a grandmother in Paris who was a lace maker, and then Jamie goes, "oh yeah, I remember a place where I bought lace in a shop right across from Master Raymond's, and one time I went in there and heard a child crying." LIKE. Shut up, what the fuck, why would he have a clear memory of that decades later? And isn't it so convenient that Ian was able to find the notes from a journalist who interviewed Jane before she died, and Jane explicitly mentions the Lady Broch Tuarach connection? Like, Jesus Christ, if you're going to do this dumbass soap opera incredible coincidence shenanigan-filled twist, at least attempt a bit of subtlety and art in how the characters discover it all. And even with that end scene, we still don't understand why Master Raymond and Mother Hildegarde would lie to Claire that Faith was dead. There is still no good explanation of the reasoning there.

Pros:

The thing is, when big structural aspects of a story are stupid and bad, it doesn't matter how good the details and tiny moments are; it's rotten at the core. That said, I want to mark down for the record that there were moments, scenes, little tableaux in this episode that were lovely to me in isolation. If I weren't so angry and betrayed by Fergus's death, I would want to admire these bits. Like, Brianna's face screwed up to hold back a sob as Marsali rests her head in her lap and numbly talks about how she doesn't even have a body to hold. Roger holding Bree and them discussing how this time and place is their home now. Henri-Christian saying they need to go back to the print shop, because his father told him that words are weapons. Marsali sobbing the second she's in Jamie's arms, like she's finally allowing herself to collapse and grieve now that her father is there for her. Fanny taking Jamie to a cairn for Fergus, and holding his hand and naming him as family for the first time. The moment Jamie wakes up from a deep sleep with a foreboding sense that something terrible is wrong. That super manipulative montage of moments of Fergus over the years, that adorable little kid, the grown man, the moment Jamie first named Fergus as his, and gave him the name Fraser. These moments, if I try to remove the larger context from my mind, were lovely. Great performances from talented actors.

I also want to say, I know there are some nay-sayers regarding all the attention we've been putting on William in this final season of the show, but I continue to be impressed and really invested. William walking in on John and Percy sharing a smooch was not on my bingo card, but that, I think, is a good change and consolidation from the source material. We need to have some sort of resolution for William as he sorts out his identity and how he feels about both of his fathers. This doesn't happen in the books either: as far as I remember at the end of the ninth novel, William is still unaware of his father's homosexuality. But unlike Fergus's death, this change feels like it's serving a forward momentum, it's adding texture and propelling us forward into the end of the story for William. I'm intrigued about how it's all going to wrap up, with Amaranthus and Ben and all that as well. I would kill for a spin-off just about Lord John and his family.

William's response being so cold and betrayed, and John saying that he understands Amaranthus making the choices she did for the sake of protecting her son, and William saying he has no father, and the look on John's face, and Percy being such a creep but John just can't quite help himself... lots of delicious stuff going on here and I just wish we had more than three more episodes to fully explore and disentangle it all.

So... yeah. I'm so mad. I'm so upset about Fergus. It just, I know I keep saying it, but it feels so unnecessary, such a slap in the face. The show is almost over. Why did they have to make something so bleak happen at this stage, something the fans would never be on board with or enjoy? Sighhhhhhhh. I guess it's blessing in disguise that I only have a couple more weeks of this show's existence to be annoyed about this.

4/10