A strong, sensitive season 3 debut for Outlander tonight, with two parallel stories, excellent in different ways, as befits the splitting in time and space of Jamie and Claire that we saw at the end of the second season.Claire's story had lots of nice touches of life for her and Frank at Harvard in the late 1940s, including snobbish support for Dewey in the 1948 Presidential election and insufferable male chauvinism from just about every man in town, with the partial exception of Frank, who's nothing but understanding, or as understanding as he can be, under the circumstances. As in all time-travel conversations, our knowledge that indeed Truman would win, as Claire thought he might, makes her opinion all the more enjoyable to hear (and it testifies to her acumen, given that she has yet to travel into her own future, via the stones or any other means).
Jamie's story is far more harrowing, coming to the brink of death after the carnage of Culloden. Again, we know that Jamie cannot die that way - not because we know the future, Jamie is a fictional character, after all, unlike Dewey - but because he's too important a character to die, certainly at the beginning of a new season like this. (Though after what happened to Abby in another series on tonight, I guess anything is possible). But it was still engrossing to see how Jamie got out of the death sentence, despite himself, and after a lot of good people met their maker or whomever you might meet in a universe in which time travel's possible.
And one very bad person died, too - Black Jack, at Jamie's hand - but here I'll offer my customary point that unless you see someone's head cut off or blown off, you never know for this sure, and, again, especially so when time travel's afoot. (I haven't read the novels.) But I'd guess (and hope) he truly is dead.
Good to have this story back, and I expect I'll be back every week or so with a review.
See also Outlander 2.1: Split Hour ... Outlander 2.2: The King and the Forest ... Outlander 2.3: Mother and Dr. Dog ... Outlander 2.5: The Unappreciated Paradox ... Outlander 2.6: The Duel and the Offspring ...Outlander 2.7: Further into the Future ... Outlander 2.8: The Conversation ... Outlander 2.9: Flashbacks of the Future ... Outlander 2.10: One True Prediction and Counting ... Outlander 2.11: London Not Falling ... Outlander 2.12: Stubborn Fate and Scotland On and Off Screen ... Outlander Season 2 Finale: Decades
And see also Outlander 1.1-3: The Hope of Time Travel ... Outlander 1.6: Outstanding ... Outlander 1.7: Tender Intertemporal Polygamy ...Outlander 1.8: The Other Side ... Outlander 1.9: Spanking Good ... Outlander 1.10: A Glimmer of Paradox ... Outlander 1.11: Vaccination and Time Travel ... Outlander 1.12: Black Jack's Progeny ...Outlander 1.13: Mother's Day ... Outlander 1.14: All That Jazz ... Outlander Season 1 Finale: Let's Change History
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