Category: Directed by Anna Foerster

Outlander (2014) s01e08 – Both Sides Now

At the end of this episode, I momentarily marveled at “Outlander”’s ability to bore and offend me for almost an hour, then make me care about the obnoxious characters on the screen. Then I realized it was just they’d finally threatened to rape Caitriona Balfe enough; I was moved when they didn’t. Especially since the second interrupted rape involved gleeful mutilation on the part of Tobias Menzies, playing an ancestor of time traveler Balfe’s husband.

The episode’s all about Menzies mooning over disappeared Balfe in the 1940s while she’s busy enjoying marital bliss with hunky highlander Sam Heughan in the past. Well, until it turns out public sex in 1700s Scotland is less safe than Balfe and Menzies’s public sex in 1940s Scotland, and a couple redcoats ambush them and decide to rape Balfe. It gets interrupted with a godawful slow-motion action sequence, and then Balfe wanders around recovering for a bit with emphasized side boob going on. Once again, it’s Anne Foerster directing, so it’s a woman doing her damndest to appeal to male gaze. And doing godawful action sequences.

In the present, Menzies is dealing with cops who don’t care—they’re trying to do them all folksy and charming, but they’re really just terrible men who hate women and don’t care what happens to them—and finally deciding he’s going back to Oxford. Turns out the figure he saw in the pilot episode was Heughan somehow in the future. Big yawn.

In the past, Menzies will catch up with Balfe—not caring she’s married to a Scot now—and she’ll blather in the narration about how she’s going to outsmart him using her future knowledge. It’s knowledge we got in the pilot, too, but it didn’t seem significant. Though none of “Outlander” is significant.

There’d be some potentially okay character development for Balfe, but it goes to pot for sensationalism and exploitation. Heughan’s gotten blander the more he moons over Balfe—I asked regular viewers if the stars ever got chemistry together, and they said yes, but I should’ve clarified good chemistry. Balfe and Heughan are so tedious together, the supporting cast is downright endearing when they show up. Including Graham McTavish, who’s not rapey this episode, so next one, beware….

It’s an exceptionally manipulative show, like the whole gimmick is how manipulative it can get, which I guess gives Ronald D. Moore (who gets the writing credit) something to do, but it’s atrocious storytelling. And Menzies is so laughably miscast they have to promise gore to make him threatening. But he’s still worse in the present as a potential cuckold.

At one point, it seems like Balfe might leap back home, and I know she can’t because there are a million more hours of this show, but for the sequence, I desperately wished she would, and it would be over. Alas, magical thinking is just that.

Anyway, Bill Paterson’s cute; shame he’s only it for three minutes.

Outlander (2014) s01e07 – The Wedding

I’m not sure how to take “Outlander” seriously. It’s somewhat offensive the show ever implies I should try; this episode makes me want to see if it somehow breaks my eighth amendment rights or something. It’s shockingly bad at what it’s trying to do, starting with what it’s doing in the first place.

The last episode ended with British time traveler from the future Caitriona Balfe agreeing to marry hot highlander Sam Heughan to foil evil British red coat Tobias Menzies’s plans for Balfe. Making matters worse, Menzies is an ancestor of Balfe’s husband in the future—also played by Menzies. Menzies doesn’t appear in this episode, which is fine. It’s got enough problems with the actors it does have.

This episode is all about their wedding night, including their sexy times. At this point, Balfe’s been living in the past for four months minimum, so you could think of her widowed four months. Except her plan is to go back to the future, where Menzies (the future one, not the rapist one) is still alive. Maybe. You wouldn’t know it from this episode’s narration, which might be the worst ever? And “Outlander”’s narration for Balfe is some of the worst narration I’ve ever heard, so… it’s an achievement to dig to a new bottom. Kudos Anne Kenney or whoever. Kenney gets the credit, but maybe it’s from the room; perhaps it’s from the source novels. Who cares.

Outside they’re decidedly dull nooky—it’s hilarious because Balfe and future Menzies were legit exhibitionists—they talk and flashback to Heughan’s day. While Balfe’s just marrying the sexy Scot barbarian because she doesn’t want to go to eighteenth-century prison, Heughan’s actually sincere in his wedding desires. Balfe’s a good match for him. Only the supporting cast has just recently become likable, and then they roll it way back with Graham McTavish, so spending an episode with them is tedious. But at least they’re not having boring conversations and bad sex. Though I think we get some man bum. There is lots of female nudity (the director’s a woman, Anna Foerster), but it’s still male gaze-y. All of it is unnecessary.

The episode never answers important questions—like how Balfe marrying wanted man Heughan makes any sense—and then probably some other ones. I don’t care. It’s so lousy commercial breaks would’ve been an improvement. Seriously, how did they decide to make this show but not decide the rules for Balfe’s narration—or, you know, figure out the character relationship with her and Heughan. In every episode, it seems like they’re strangers meeting for the first time even though they’ve known each other since the first episode.

I’m not sure if it’s unintentionally bewildering or just terrible, but given even usually sturdy McTavish can’t sell his latest mood swing, it’s probably the latter.