Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing 3 Body Problem; Bosch; Citadel; Criminal Minds; Dark Matter; Dune: Prophecy; Fauda; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; House of the Dragon; Luther; Outlander; Presumed Innocent; Reacher; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Surface; The: Ark, Diplomat, Last of Us, Lazarus Project, Orville, Way Home; True Detective; You +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Monday, July 31, 2023

Outlander 7.7: A Good Argument for the Insanity of War

A deeply powerful and disturbing episode 7.7 on Starz this week -- indeed, one of the most disturbing in the series, for several reasons, which I tell you about, after I warn you about spoilers.

[And here's the Spoiler alert again ... ]

Ok, there was one one really enjoyable scene in this episode -- Brianna and Roger in bed. Good to see them so together and happy. Of course, that happiness would be very short lived, since they discovered a few hours later that their little boy had been kidnapped by Rob, who was taking their son somewhere else in time ...

And that wasn't the most upsetting. For me that was the 1st Battle of Saratoga, and the sheer depravity of war that it so graphically displayed. There's always a discrepancy between the nobility and the insanity of war -- the wanton killing of people. And watching that battle unfold on the screen was almost enough to make me a pacifist. (But I always also think about Bertrand Russell, a dedicated pacifist until Hitler and the Nazis changed his mind.)

And then, in the end, there's Jamie, lying on the ground, unconscious. I'll restate my standards for whether or not a character has been killed in a television series: if you don't see a head blown off or literally severed, there's always a chance the character survived. So, Jamie passes that test, even though we didn't see him move at the end of this episode, and there was no sign of him in the next episode.

We'll find out for sure (I assume) in the next week's mid-season finale. I'll will say it's been a really enjoyable season, and I especially like the time travel as talked about and enacted by Roger and Brianna.

See also Outlander 7.1-2: The Return of the Split ... Outlander 7.3: Time Travel, The Old-Fashioned Way

And see also Outlander 6.1: Ether That Won't Put You to Sleep

And 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 ... Outlander 5.10: Finally! ... Outlander 5.11: The Ballpoint Pen ... Outlander Season 5 Finale: The Cost of Stolen Time