Outlander Makes a Verra Smart Book-to-Screen Choice in Episode 4 — Plus, Meet the Hunters!
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My prayers at the altar of Dougal MacKenzie, patron saint of bushy eyebrows, have been answered: Starz’s Outlander chose to condense the Great Dismal Swamp part of An Echo in the Bone so greatly, it all fits into a small piece of this week’s episode, thank sweet baby Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.
You all know I love Diana Gabaldon’s books. I’m usually very happy to meander wherever she wants to take me, and for however many pages she sees fit. But the chunk of her seventh Outlander novel that takes place in the Great Dismal Swamp just feels interminable. It might only last 10 pages. It might run for 500. I truly don’t remember, and I tend to skip over it during a re-read. Do I sympathize with William, who in both the book and the TV show sets off thinking he’s a master spy and then gets his gorget handed to him by mother nature and a feisty snake? I do. But do I need to tread every painful, fevered, weird-ass step with him while simultaneously getting an education in North Carolina wetland wildlife? I do not.
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Also: Making the swamp piece of this week’s episode small allows for SO MANY OTHER THINGS to happen. We meet the Hunters! Tom Christie comes back from the dead! Claire and Jamie to go war (again)! Brianna strikes a blow for 1980s feminism!
See? Lots to cover. Read on for the highlights of “A Most Uncomfortable Woman.” (And when you’re done, make sure to check out our chat with Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan and Mark Lewis Jones, who plays Tom.)
LALLYBROCH, 1980 | The MacKenzies are the easiest place to start, so let’s do. We’ve skipped ahead a few years from the previous episode, as evidenced by Jem and Mandy being older and the family living in a camper parked in front of Lallybroch, which is undergoing massive repairs. So massive, in fact, that Roger and Brianna aren’t quite sure how they’re going to pay for the work. Still, they’re happy, and things are going well.
Roger occupies his time watching the kids and writing a how-to guide for time travelers; one day, while lost in thought, he futzes with the musket ball from the chest and realizes that it’ is’s actually made of gold. Meanwhile, Bree interviews for a plant-inspection position at the local dam. “But you’re a woman,” her stunned interviewer (male, but you knew that) gasps. “And what aspects of plant inspection require a penis?” she wonders, sounding more like Claire than even Claire does. He’s very taken aback by Bree, but she proves that she knows her stuff, and she lands the job.
Roger offers only lukewarm congratulations when he hears the news, though. So she gently pushes and he eventually confesses that he wants to be the breadwinner, and that their changing history has shaken his faith in God’s plan. “Who’s to say that everything that happened wasn’t part of God’s plan?” she replies, trying to buck him up. He still feels like he’s failing, but she assures him he isn’t, and he in turn assures her that he is proud of her new job.
In other 1980 news: Jeremiah informs his parents that a nuckelavee, or horse-like demon from Scottish lore, is living on the property. And he knows because he met him.
A WEE DETOUR | Jamie, Claire and Ian make their way to Wilmington, the first stop on their trip to Scotland, with Ian thinking every small noise in the forest is Arch Bug coming to exact his revenge. (It’s not… at least, not yet.) In town, Jamie runs into Cornelius Hartnett, one of the Sons of Liberty. Hartnett tells Fraser that they need more soldiers at Fort Ticonderoga, and he’s not really asking. “You mean to conscript me?” Jamie asks, incredulous. Hartnett certainly does.
Jamie could ask someone to fight in his place, which is legal at this time though a major D move in any era. But he doesn’t want to. He wants to be part of the revolution, he tells Claire and Ian, “but not for the idea of freedom or liberty… but for you… for our family.” Ian agrees (“I love this land. I want to fight for it.”) and he sets off to ride through Virginia to talk with the Shawnee and see if they’ll join the fight. Meanwhile, Claire makes it clear that she’ll join Jamie in his new military duty, because the revolutionaries cu
BACK FROM THE DEAD | The next day, Claire is walking around in Wilmington when she bumps right into Tom Christie. Wait, what? He immediately grabs her face and kisses her (again, wait what?) and says, “You should be dead.” She bewilderedly replies, “So should you.” I don’t think we’ve ever seen Claire so nonplussed before!
They go to her inn, sit in the parlor and catch up. Tom was saved when the governor made him his secretary, and eventually there was no one to oversee his imprisonment and he was free. He never wants to go back to the ridge, but HE placed the obituary in the newspaper after hearing about the fire because he couldn’t stand the idea “that you, that all of you would vanish from the Earth with no formal marking of the event.” Tom seems at peace in a way we’ve not previously witnessed; even when he notes that he’ll have no peace while Claire is alive, he quickly adds, “Mind, I don’t say I regret it.”
In their room that evening, Claire fills Jamie in, and he immediately starts teasing her that she liked it when Tom smooched her. But she gets mad, pointing out that she didn’t like being touched against her will. But Jamie points out that Tom has proven he’d lay down his life for Claire, and that makes Jamie #TeamTom for life. Then they start to undress each other. He cheekily reminds her that when she was jealous of Laoghaire, back at Castle Leoch, “I liked it fine.” With an amused look on his face, Jamie notes that Claire’s hair still isn’t white, so “I’ve got a wee bit of time yet before you become too dangerous for me to bed ye.” I’ll say it again: This is how I like Big Red and the missus the most: chatty, lovingly teasing, still super into each other even after all this time.
After a significant amount of time has passed, we later see Claire and Jamie approaching Fort Ticonderoga: The Frasers’ Revolutionary War experience is officially underway.
WHERE THERE’S A WILL… | William is bored in North Carolina, still awaiting his orders. One night, when he’s out drinking with some fellow soldiers, they come across a Redcoat beating up a sex worker he claims has the pox. A crowd watches while the man throws the woman around, pours alcohol on her and sets her aflame. William is sickened to hear his contemporaries laugh and shout “Fire the ship!” while the poor woman writhes in pain. Eventually, Willie can’t stand it anymore and leaps in to smother the woman’s flames with his coat.
His superiors hear about the incident and call him in: They’re impressed that he stepped up when all the other idiots were paddling their douche canoes down the same river, and they want to give him an important assignment. He’ll ride through the Great Dismal Swamp, deliver a message to their allies and then head north to join General Burgoyne’s forces in New York. William is irked that he’s not being sent to the front immediately, but he sucks it up and accepts his job. “Depart today, as soon as you are able,” his superior officer says, “and see you don’t die.”
That last part proves harder than expected. While riding through the swamp, William’s horse, Jupiter, gets spooked by a snake and throws him, then runs off with his supplies. William winds up with a sharp stick through his forearm (ouch) which he removes and then binds the wound as best he can. He wanders, his situation growing more dire, until he runs into… Ian and Rollo.
HELLO, CUZ | Ian cleans out William’s wound, explaining that his uncle is a friend of Lord John’s and that they’ve met, but William doesn’t remember. The whatevereth Earl of Ellsmere is in pain and feverish, yet he swears he doesn’t need a doctor. “We’ll see about that,” Ian says wisely, looking pleased when Rollo curls up next to Willie. “He likes you,” Ian notes. “Already thinks of you as family.”
William’s condition has deteriorated significantly by the time the two men reach a house and ask for help. That’s where they meet Denzell Hunter and his sister, Rachel. Both are Quakers, and Denzell is a doctor. Denny quickly decides that William’s arm is too infected to save and needs to be amputated. But in a moment both really gross and hugely relieving, the pressure of the saw against Willie’s arm is enough to cause pus to burst from the wound, clearing out the worst of the infection and making it so the appendage can stay attached to the young Redcoat’s body.
The next day, as William recovers, Rachel and Ian flirt on the porch. He has to leave, but he leaves money for William to buy a horse when he’s better. Later on, William is feeling well enough for Rachel to shave him; she notes that his beard is red, and THEY proceed to flirt, too. Get down with thy bad self, Rachel!
She knows he’s not being entirely forthcoming about what he was doing in the swamp, but she doesn’t press too hard. Instead, she informs him that she and Denzell will be leaving the area in a few days because after he spoke in favor of independence at the last Friends (aka Quaker) meeting, he was “put out” of the gathering — aka, they’ve been ostracized. He’s planning to join the continental army as a surgeon, and she’s going with him… and it turns out that they know one of the men with whom William is supposed to rendezvous. So he offers to accompany them north for a while, and they accept.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!
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