Outlander's return with episode 4.1 was all too relevant and excellent, at turns splendid and brutal, which is the way Outlander has always told its stories.
The lynch pin is Claire's soliloquy to Jamie about what America will become. Looking west from Virginia in 1767, she tells him about how America will expand and become a vibrant home of opportunity for people around the world. Even then, Jamie counters with a question of what will become of the native inhabitants. She truthfully tells him, from her knowledge of mid-20th-America, that the native inhabitants will be killed and forced to live on reservations. A dream for one can be a nightmare for another, he sagely replies.
But even Claire can have no knowledge that in 2018, America will have a President determined to build a wall to stop immigrants and refugees and the American dream. The situation in the 4th season of Outlander, in America just before the American Revolution, couldn't have come at a better and more instructive time for us in 2018.
The new villain Stephen Bonnet is suitably charming and despicable, again combining the opposites than animate Outlander. His attack on Jamie and Claire and their kin and friends on the placid boat on the river at the end was unexpected but in retrospect thoroughly consistent with the struggles of our heroes in this story. Nothing comes easy for them and their love and the people they love.
As a devotee of time travel, I always enjoy the little and big ways that Claire uses her knowledge of the future to guide Jamie. In 4.1, she warns him that if he accepts the Crown's officer of land in 1767, he will be on the losing side of the American Revolution that will begin nine years later. Nice touch.
And, I always like the easy wisdom of Outlander. This time, it was Jamie's musing about different parts of the body and their different consciences that caught my ear.
And I'll be back here tomorrow with a review of the next episode.
See also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ...Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ... Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad ... Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan ... Outlander 3.5: The 1960s and the Past ... Outlander 3.6: Reunion ... Outlander 3.7: The Other Wife ... Outlander 3.8: Pirates! ... Outlander 3.9: The Seas ...Outlander 3.10: Typhoid Story ... Outlander 3.11: Claire Crusoe ...Outlander 3.12: Geillis and Benjamin Button ... Outlander 3.13: Triple Ending
And 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
It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...
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