Episode 711: A Hundredweight of Stones

I’m calling it now…this is the best season since the first. And lickity split…how it is moving along! Let’s discuss.

Warning- Contains spoilers from Outlander Episode 711: A Hundredweight of Stones.

First, apologies for the delayed post. Basketball and soccer kept our family busy all weekend…youth sports aren’t what they used to be, but that’s a blog for a different day!

Second, as a book reader I knew what this episode would entail, and I was both dreading and excited for it. But I wound up watching it three times, mostly because I adore David Berry and Caitriona Balfe and could watch them hold conversation about the phone book (remember those?). Although this episode kept very close to its source material, the superb chemistry and skill of both actors made the story feel entirely new.

And while the episode was faithful to the novels (indeed, so much of the dialogue was lifted verbatim from the books), it still found a way to weave a theme throughout its many story lines. For although our characters are mired in singular, individual, and very personal grief or dilemma, it is the big picture that sees them through. Claire’s world is shattered, but she clings to the larger purposes of family and independence. John implores Claire to think beyond their cloistered home…she must think bigger if they are to sell the facade of their marriage. Brianna is perhaps the most alone she has ever been, but she cannot wallow in her pain (literal and figurative) because finding Jem and Roger is paramount. Rachel and Ian tease each other about what has been said or not (Did you say you loved me? Did you ask me to marry you?), but on a larger scale they are committed to each other and that is understood. Roger stresses to Buck that he “can’t shake the feeling that it’s all connected somehow…that it’s all predestined.” There is a bigger picture at play, and that is the faith that guides these lost characters to the other side.

The episode opens with Claire taking marriage vows for the third time in her life, and it occurs to me that her wedding with Frank was perhaps the only one she approached with happiness and without trepidation. William’s presence, as the son of the man she is mourning, is understandably unnerving.

Ian’s building of the cairn reminds us that Claire is not alone in her grief. As he later tells Claire, Jamie’s death is like the loss of his second father. And although he says a prayer for Jamie’s soul, he concedes to Rachel that the afterlife is unknown. Life, Rachel tells Ian, is a sacrament…we keep moving forward because the whole of our life is sacred. It is our big picture.

Fatherhood as a theme also looms large in this episode. Just as Ian is beginning his grief for both his fathers, Roger has grieved the loss of his father since childhood. Did you catch the glimpse of the toy airplane in the next scene with Brianna? It calls to mind Roger’s toy airplane from childhood, last seen in Of Lost Things (Episode 304)…another episode where our characters are searching for each other across the centuries. Notably, it is also the episode where Jamie gives William an impromptu baptism into Catholicism and becomes “a stinking papist.” Put a pin in that.

It was also the episode where Lord John promised to love and raise William in Jamie’s stead. John loved Jamie, too, and when he topples the chess pieces we feel his grief just as profoundly as we do Claire’s. He made more than one vow of loyalty to Jamie, of which he reminds William when the latter questions the hasty wedding to Claire. When we are children we often cannot fully understand the motives and feelings of our parents. It is only later, as adults who have experienced love and grief ourselves, that we see the purpose of things we didn’t previously grasp…we understand the big picture.

Rachel’s assertion that our lives are a sacred carries through to the next scene with Claire. For all those who argued in the last season that Claire would never use ether self-medicate, this scene of suicide contemplation was taken straight from An Echo in the Bone. But as she confesses in the novel, “Perhaps it was the habit of years, a bent of mind that held life sacred for its own sake…there were those who needed me—or at least to whom I could be useful.” She is stopped by a force larger than herself.

And, oh boy, speaking of forces beyond our control. We knew this was coming, right? Lord John and Claire, both drunk with grief and alcohol, crash into one another…biblically speaking.

But however complicated our feelings (or their feelings) about this night may be, their pillow talk the morning after is quite sweet. These two characters have always been brutally honest with one another, for better or for worse. In that regard, as Lord John opines, their marriage is at least as sincere (or more) as other partnerships.

Lord John tells Claire of the white deer that occasionally graces his property in Virginia. It is a fleeting gift, never staying very long. Still, the knowledge of its presence is a comfort. And thus it is with other parts of our lives…we do not have to see something to know it is there and that it will eventually return. Claire cannot see much joy or hope in her world, but it is out there somewhere, waiting to return. Such is faith.

Two hundred years in the future, Brianna is caught unaware by the reappearance of Rob Cameron, a man decidedly less kind and empathetic than Lord John. After she wracks him upside the head with a frying pan we can see the realization on her face—Cameron’s presence in the twentieth century means that Roger is perhaps lost in the past without purpose.

Our brief check-ins with the 1980s also reminds us that social progress moves incredibly slow. Cameron is a man motivated by misogyny and greed, and in that regard he is a man who has not evolved much beyond the eighteenth century. And we see how much of a battle societal change can be, when Lord John expresses anger and dismay as Henry and Mercy Woodcock confess their love for each other. Claire knows there is a larger picture…Loving v. Virginia cannot happen without couples like Henry and Mercy risking everything. But Claire speaks of this larger picture from a place of relative privilege. As John reminds her, he has lived his life in fear of punishment for who he loves. The larger picture for John (and others who have to hide their relationships) is staying alive.

Thus he knows how important it is for he and Claire to present themselves to society as a functioning, traditional couple. Reputations account for much in this world, a point driven home when Captain Richardson later confesses to Claire that he is a double agent. Wars are won with craft and cunning, advises Richardson, and metaphorically this is true for John and Claire as well.

Director Lisa Clarke did a nice job with this episode, recalling past imagery when Claire descends the stairs at the Loyalist fundraiser. Reaching for John’s hands is reminiscent of reaching for Frank’s (and later Jamie’s) hand in Through A Glass, Darkly (Episode 201). And, of course, we are also reminded of Claire descending the stairs in Paris her infamous red dress.

As was the case in Paris, political machinations are afoot. But just as John and Claire are about to settle into the rhythm of Philadelphia society, Jamie rushes up the stairs, surprising everyone by being very much alive. The beautiful deer, it turns out, has been there all along, waiting to return. Je Suis Prest.

But not, of course, without chaos. William overhears the truth about his parentage….and that he is “a stinking papist.” British soldiers are chasing Jamie? Jamie takes Lord John as hostage? Like Claire we smile, knowing that this is how the world of Jamie and Claire is supposed to be. Buckle up, buttercups, the next few episodes will send us on a bumpy ride. And we know it will all be okay. Family, love, faith, loyalty, country, liberty and equality…the big picture sees us through.

Slàinte.

Screencaps provided by Outlander Online.