"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Outlander 5.10: Finally!



Well, I've been looking forward to this all season.  I haven't read the books.   I've been told, by the people who had, that it wouldn't happen until a later season.  But I said, hey, a television show based on a series of books can change what was in the books any time it pleased.  And that's what Outlander did in tonight's 5.10.  And I was very pleased.

I have a standard, a gauge, that I use in reviewing television shows, about whether a character is dead.  Being choked into unconsciousness is not a sure indication that a character has been killed.  As we saw tonight with Jocasta, and several weeks ago with Roger, people can survive chokings and even hangings.  Same for falling off a boat or out of a plane.  Same for being shot, just about anywhere in the body.  Except in the head.  And, especially, except when the rest of your body, including your head, is tied to a stake planted in a rising tide.

So the death of Bonnet passed my test.  He's dead.  Shot in the head, on the verge of drowning, tied to a stake in the rising water.  But Roger asks Brianna a very good question.  Did she shoot Bonnet in the head to give him a death more merciful than drowning, or to insure that he somehow didn't escape his watery fate?

The answer is likely a combination of both.  As we saw in the long interlude in which Brianna was Bonnet's captive tonight, she had some real feelings for him, mixed in there with the horror.  She was maybe not as glad to put him out of his misery as she was to insure his death, but mercy was a part of her motive.  Ironically, though, for that very reason, that she had feelings for Bonnet, her killing him was also a mercy to herself.  By definitely killing Bonnet, she was setting herself free from that inchoate attraction she had for him.

All in all, one top-notch episode in a top-notch drama.

See also Outlander 5.1: Father of the Bride ... Outlander 5.2: Antibiotics and Time Travel ... Outlander 5.3: Misery ... Outlander 5.4: Accidental Information and the Future ... Outlander 5.5: Lessons in Penicillin and Locusts ... Outlander 5.6: Locusts, Jocasta, and Bonnet ... Outlander 5.7: The Paradoxical Spark ... Outlander 5.8: Breaking Out of the Silence ... Outlander 5.9: Buffalo, Snake, Tooth

And see also Outlander 4.1: The American Dream ... Outlander 4.2: Slavery ...Outlander 4.3: The Silver Filling ... Outlander 4.4: Bears and Worse and the Remedy ... Outlander 4.5: Chickens Coming Home to Roost ... Outlander 4.6: Jamie's Son ... Outlander 4.7: Brianna's Journey and Daddy ... Outlander 4.8: Ecstasy and Agony ... Outlander 4.9: Reunions ... Outlander 4.10: American Stone ... Outlander 4.11: Meets Pride and Prejudice ... Outlander 4.12: "Through Time and Space" ... Outlander Season 4 Finale:  Fair Trade

And 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

 

 

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