The Book of Life (2014, Jorge R. Gutiérrez)

The Book of Life has a very nice style once the story starts. Everything looks like it’s a miniature, like Life is a CG Rankin/Bass “Animagic.” Not quite as good, but there’s a charm to it. To the style. Not to the movie. Life’s oddly and relentlessly charmless.

It begins with the first bookend device: a group of behavior disorder kids arrive late for the school trip to the museum. They bully the first tour guide, but then a smoking hot lady tour guide winks at them the right way, and they’re all entranced. Life’s not going to get better about objectification of women. It’s the plot, actually.

Christina Applegate voices the tour guide. Why? No reason. She’s not good. She doesn’t have any personality. There’s not a deep “Married With Children” cut involving her character. There is a deep Labyrinth cut, so maybe someone else dropped out or turned them down. Doesn’t matter. The bookending device is just so the behavior disorder kids can mouth off. They range in age from toddler to tween, and their character design ranges from seventies theatrical Charlie Brown doofus villains to Baby Huey in drag. Also, they’re a drag.

Then Applegate starts reading to them from the Book of Life, mentioning far more interesting stories than the one we’ll watch. I foolishly thought it would be an anthology of Mexican folk tales. Instead, it’s all about how Zoe Saldana needs to marry Diego Luna or Channing Tatum so Ron Perlman can get a job transfer.

Perlman’s Xibalba, lord of the Land of the Forgotten. His lady love is La Muerte, the lord of the Land of the Remembered. Kate del Castillo voices her. Del Castillo de facto gives the second-best performance in the film. Luna’s a great lead. When he’s talking, you forget what you’re watching and think it might actually be all right. Then Saldana shows up, and that all right gets qualified. Then Tatum shows up, and that all right becomes impossible. Tatum isn’t even particularly bad—Saldana’s worse—but he’s charmless. His character is the town hero; he’s only the town hero because he has a magic tchotchke. It makes him invincible. When it looks like Saldana is going to marry Luna because of true love and all that jazz, Tatum says he’ll abandon the town and stop protecting it unless she marries him.

Luna’s the hero of the movie, but Tatum’s a good guy. Everyone trading Saldana is a good guy. She may spout off about her independence, but she’ll always immediately relinquish it. Director Gutiérrez and co-writer Doug Langdale don’t write a character capable of withstanding a gentle breeze. They’re all so thin.

Life’s got some original songs. Luna’s okay at them, but not any good. Then again, the songs aren’t good; some are better than others. All of them, much like the film itself, are tedious.

Gutiérrez’s direction peaks at middling. There are some rather poorly directed sequences; Gutiérrez’s always in a hurry like he’s convinced there’s nothing worth seeing anywhere in the film, which is funny because the production design is far more compelling than the story. Ahren Shaw’s editing doesn’t help things.

Book of Life seems like Luna’s charm will somehow carry it, but then it doesn’t. By the third act, Luna can’t hold it up anymore, not with everyone else pounding down on it.

Life’s a long ninety-five minutes.

Lilting (2014, Hong Khaou)

Lilting is not a character study. You’d think it’d be a character study since it’s studying two characters to the detriment of all else (including the actors’ performances), but it’s actually a flashback-filled attempt at lyricism. Except for Lilting and writer and director Khaou, lyricism just means flashbacks. And the same editing device where dialogue plays between cuts, so someone won’t be talking on-screen during a shot because the shot’s from after they got done talking, but the sound will be their dialogue over their unmoving lips in close-up. Khaou and editor Mark Towns must think this fracturing device adds something to the scene because they do it repeatedly.

Lilting’s a series of unconsidered narrative devices; they’re not bad on their own, sometimes even good (or potentially good); strung together, they don’t add up.

The film’s about an intensely dramatic situation. Cheng Pei-pei is a Chinese-Cambodian woman who’s been a British citizen for thirty years; she never learned any English. In old age, she relied on son Andrew Leung to negotiate the English-speaking world for her. He stuck her in an old folks’ home, decorated like the fifties and sixties, to try to confuse the residents into thinking they’re young, but it just makes them sadder.

Then he died.

It takes most of the movie to find out how and why he died.

But he died, and she thinks about him a lot, hence the flashbacks. Sometimes the flashbacks transition into the present day through editing hijinks. Khaou knows the flashbacks will have an emotional intensity, but he doesn’t want to do anything with that intensity. Just create it and let it sit, which is fine when the film’s building to something.

Only Lilting isn’t building to anything. Quite the opposite; it’s a denial of building to anything. But for most of the runtime, Khaou pretends it’s going somewhere to get some dramatic momentum.

Leung’s boyfriend, Ben Whishaw, comes to the old folks’ home to visit Cheng, and she’s not happy to see him. Unfortunately, Leung never told mom Cheng he was gay, so instead, she thinks Whishaw is her dead son’s shitty, bossy white guy roommate.

Whishaw hires an amateur translator, Naomi Yang, for Cheng and her old folks’ boyfriend, Peter Bowles. Most of the film will be Cheng and Yang talking in Mandarin without subtitles. There are some subtitles, but only when the movie wants the intended audience to know what’s going on. I wonder how it plays to native Mandarin speakers, especially moms over fifty who thought they’d be seeing a movie about Cheng. Instead, it’s mainly about Whishaw projecting on her. Sympathetically.

Whishaw’s a well of hurt, which makes him somewhat sympathetic, but he’s got no character otherwise. The film holds off on various reveals—which it misuses—until the third act. Before then, we mostly see Whishaw being kind of shitty to Yang, whom he meets at the beginning of the movie. She decides, through thick or thin, she will sacrifice her dignity for whatever Whishaw’s paying her.

Yang gets the least amount of character but puts in the work, acting-wise.

After her, there’s Bowles. He’s middling. Some of it is the script, some is the part, and some is just Bowles not having pizzazz.

Cheng’s good. She ought to be the way Khaou spotlights her unspoken grief and trauma. Shame it doesn’t inform a character or performance.

Leung’s unimpressive as the dead son in flashbacks. He either scowls with his shirt on or off, buffly. It’s really not his fault; there’s nothing in the script except pouting and being buff.

Lilting’s got some lovely photography from Urszula Pontikos, and the second act’s compelling, but Khaou bungles the conclusion. The first act’s awkward as Khaou tries to establish the narrative structure, but then he changes it for the superior second act. At least the first act builds to something. The third act’s all about throwing away the movie.

It’s disappointing. Cheng, Whishaw, Yang, and even Bowles put in enough work they ought to get a movie out of it.

Miss Meadows (2014, Karen Leigh Hopkins)

There are so many things wrong with Miss Meadows, it’s hard to know where to start. There are easy pickings, like Jeff Cardoni’s music. There are complicated pickings, like the film’s suburban mama bear fascist “everywhere you look there’s a pedophile no one will take care of, check that pizza shop basement” message. There’s the acting. Wow, is there the acting. But with the acting, much has to do with director Hopkins, her script, and Joan Sobel’s editing.

Because Miss Meadows isn’t just tedious; it’s exasperating.

The film opens with Hopkins’s best moment. Lead Katie Holmes walks down a suburban street where she gets accosted by a guy in a pickup truck, who threatens her with a gun if she doesn’t get in. So she shoots him dead. But before that interaction, she does a tap dance number. Hopkins cuts from Holmes walking to close-up on the tap-dancing feet, so it seems like it’s not Holmes (it’s probably not), but then they cut to Holmes tap dancing. She can do it, after all.

Best directing in the movie.

It’s like two minutes in, and Miss Meadows runs eighty-nine minutes. The story peaks in the first act, as Holmes meets local sheriff James Badge Dale, and they have a whirlwind romance. She’s a prim and proper substitute teacher (who threatens school administrators to keep the position, which the film drops right after introducing it), who also just happens to be a vigilante of the Charles Bronson Death Wish variety. Wherever she goes, she just happens across sexual predators or spree killers, and only Holmes can save the day.

Worse yet, they’re releasing a couple thousand felons early because of overcrowding, and it’s all the violent pedophile ones. For a while, the movie’s so on the nose you think it’s going to be about Holmes realizing Black and brown people get banged up for all sorts of bullshit by the corrupt criminal justice system and having to reexamine her hobby. But, nope. Miss Meadows does not, to its “credit,” villainize Black or brown men. There’s one Black guy—Dale’s sidekick, Stephen Bishop—otherwise, all white people. Holmes talks shit on the phone about the school she’s teaching at with all these poor kids. The Catholic Church is (not wrongly) demonized, but Holmes’s a good Christian girl who can’t stop talking about God. Apparently, the cops don’t do enough, including Dale, so it’s up to ladies like Holmes to keep the streets safe.

Of course, the one time Holmes really needs to be keeping someone safe, that person’s only a target because of Holmes’s shortsighted bravado.

It’s a messy, dull script with really long, really boring scenes, where Hopkins points the camera at actors and runs them to the ground. It’s worst with the kids in Holmes’s class; Hopkins isn’t good at writing the kids, but she’s worse at directing them. It’s excruciating, with Holmes not helping. When it seems like Holmes is in on the joke, she’s potentially charming. But there’s no joke; Meadows is just an ostensibly quirky Death Wish clone, and Holmes’s charmless in it. Especially once Dale becomes convinced she’s the vigilante. When Holmes has to act opposite suspicious Dale, Meadows crashes through the floor, plummeting towards the next new bottom.

Barry Markowitz’s photography is surprisingly good, and Jennifer Klide’s production design is solid. Otherwise, Miss Meadows is a complete waste of time. Including Jean Smart’s cameo; it’s definitely not her fault it’s pointless—it’s Hopkins’s fault; I didn’t even realize you could waste Jean Smart like Hopkins does.

At least it’s not eighty-nine and a half minutes. Or, heaven forbid–ninety.

Every Secret Thing (2014, Amy Berg)

There’s a lot to say about Every Secret Thing and nothing to say about it. And some things can only easily be phrased as complimentary insults, like Rob Hardy’s photography is valuable because the movie’s an object lesson in how not to photograph a film.

Or how director Berg’s a great example of why a director needs to be able to work with their actors and know what’s good and what’s not. It would also help if Berg were better at the visuals, but directing the actors would’ve made a big difference.

Though maybe not Diane Lane. Lane’s a celluloid vampire here. She sucks the life out of every frame. Well, every byte; Thing’s shot on video, so maybe Hardy’s just inept on the format. Though if he told Berg they could shoot a dark room with visible daylight under the shades and say it was nighttime… well, that one’s still on him.

Or maybe say something about Robin Coudert's omnipresent and lousy music. Billy McMillin and Ron Patane’s editing is about the only competent technical, and they clearly were cutting together a mess.

Because once you get past the snide not-compliments, Every Secret Thinghas serious problems. A lot of the acting’s terrible, some of it because the direction’s terrible, some of it because Nicole Holofcener’s script is terrible. I’m sure not all of it is Holofcener’s adaptation (the movie’s from Laura Lippman’s novel) because the narrative trickery and manipulation are straight out of middling crime novels. And, you know, incredibly famous crime thrillers, making the whole thing very predictable as far as villains, with some very convenient details withheld until the third act.

The film’s about eighteen-year-olds Danielle Macdonald and Dakota Fanning; they’ve just gotten out of juvie for kidnapping and killing a baby when they were eleven. There are flashbacks peppered throughout the film to reveal more and more about that incident, but Macdonald protests her innocence while Fanning mopes.

Now, the film will treat Macdonald as suspicious because she’s fat; mom Lane bullies her about it, and Macdonald talks about it at length to other characters. And the movie is all about demonizing her; I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything do fatphobia as phrenology, but Every Secret Thing wants to be a pioneer.

Separate from that treatment of Macdonald’s character, the movie also has a lot to imply about interracial relationships between Black men and white women. There’s also a vice versa couple (Black lady, white man) around too, but the film’s distracted during those scenes because they can do a “poor people are classless” thing instead.

So, again, the best worst things about Every Secret Thing are technical incompetencies because they distract from the more problematic issues.

Anyway.

Another little girl goes missing, and the original baby’s mother goes to cops Elizabeth Banks and Nate Parker and says to investigate the recently released duo. Banks was the uniform cop who found the dead baby, and she’s still got PTSD. It’s not actually important because there’s no character development in the movie, just timed reveals. Because it’s terrible.

Who took the baby, and will the good guys get there in time. There’s inherent tension—especially since the parents, played by Sarah Sokolovic and Common, are very sympathetic. Common because everyone treats him like shit for being a Black guy, including Black cop Parker. The movie threatens to explore Parker’s hostility but thankfully does not.

Acting-wise, the best performance is… Banks. Kind of by default. Macdonald’s bad in a terrible part, Fanning’s not good in a terrible part, Lane’s “pull out the thesaurus” bad. Sokolovic and Common are better than the main cast, same with Parker. But, of course, it doesn’t help the flashback children actors—Brynne Norquist and Eva Grace Kellner—are lousy, and Berg has even less ability directing kids than adults.

For a second, it’s nice to see Julito McCullum (Namond, Wee-Bay’s kid on “The Wire”) in a tiny part, but then you realize he’s in this movie. Sure enough, Thing ruins it.

Because Every Secret Thing is faulty. Sometimes it’s worse than faulty, but it’s always faulty.

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.

Outlander (2014) s01e06 – The Garrison Commander

How are you supposed to take “Outlander” seriously? There are three severe eye-roll moments this episode, two of them so close you don’t have time to refocus. The third is right after a thoughtful half-eye-roll when someone will decide to hinge a consequential decision on utter nonsense, and the other person in the scene won’t acknowledge it.

I’ll just identify the other person—Caitriona Balfe—because she definitely ought to comment on the last eye-roll and a half since she’s the narrator, and it’s dramatically relevant. However, not having her comment on the big cliffhanger, when “Outlander” just leans in heavy on being a cheap romance novel, is the show’s biggest failure to date, and “Outlander” ’s basically just a string of failures.

Of course, the show’s other two most significant fails also happen in this episode, and it’s just a race to the bottom.

The first big fail is Tobias Menzies as the evil ancestor of Balfe’s loving husband. Menzies chews and chews at the scenery, but he never manages to bite at any. Even as the show sets him up for too-easy-to-fail moments of villainy, Menzies overacts it, and the moments—even when they’re disturbing—flop. He gets outacted by every single person in the episode, including the bit part subordinates and a non-speaking Sam Heughan.

Heughan doesn’t have a good episode, but it’s not his fault. He’s just in flashbacks for most of it, and when he’s got to figure into the unbelievably basic, silly, and obvious finale twist, there’s nothing to be done. No one could do any better with the material.

Now on to the other big fail: Balfe. Her character makes some profoundly stupid decisions this episode, decisions the episode knows are profoundly stupid and can’t present in any other way. Except Balfe narrates the show, remember—does she really not learn from her mistakes or have any self-awareness whatsoever?

It’s another episode directed by Brian Kelly; I could check to see if they ever replace him but why bother. Ira Steven Behr gets the inglorious honor of the script credit.

There’s some okay support from John Heffernan as a dipshit British general and then Tom Brittney as the one good guy amongst the British.

I guess having Menzies flop so resoundingly does make Balfe and Heughan’s performances seem better. But the only actual good acting is Graham McTavish. Bill Patterson’s got a few seconds of screen time and no lines.

It’s a silly show. Historically accurate costumes and whatever aside, it’s a silly, silly television show.

Outlander (2014) s01e05 – Rent

New (credited) writer—Toni Graphia—same boring director, Brian Kelly. There are multiple points in this episode where it’s obvious all “Outlander” needs are actually creative people involved. The episode has a bunch of future flashes to historian and genealogy buff Tobias Menzies mansplaining history to wife Caitriona Balfe, lessons, and experiences she’ll remember a couple minutes late every single time in the past. Balfe’s on a rent-collecting trip with Graham McTavish and company. There’s Sam Heughan, of course, though the show continues to forget they’ve established any chemistry between the pair and then the regular C-listers.

Grant O’Rourke, Duncan Lacroix, and Stephen Walters are the C-listers. If O’Rouke and Lacroix have ever been named, I’ve long forgotten. Walters is memorable because he’s the rapey one, though this episode seemingly rids itself of that “subplot”—subplot, vague threat, what’s the difference—once and for all. Potentially for the betterment of the show. If Balfe’s not in physical danger at all times from her de facto compatriots, it’s a lot more entertaining.

There are a few significant developments this episode. First, Bill Patterson joins the cast as a learned lawyer working as a bookkeeper for McTavish on the expedition. He and Balfe bond over poetry in the first scene. Balfe’s reading of it is so bad it seems like it’s voiceover, but it’s not. She’s reciting to the lake; he overhears her, they talk poetry and asthma; fast friends. We know they’re fast friends because the narration tells us so, with the writing on it… well, not better exactly because it’s still reasonably awful, but at least the tenses agree.

On the road, Balfe discovers things she didn’t know about her hosts (or captors), stuff they don’t want her to know, so they talk in Gaelic around her because she can’t understand it. Then, in a particularly good scene—well, some of it—Balfe gets pissed about it. The scene goes slightly to pot, but it’s the first time “Outlander” ’s had Balfe think through a situation. At least without the narration doing all the work.

There’s also a scene where she bonds with some local women, which plays like a “Horrible Histories” scene before introducing guest star Tom Brittney as a British officer who takes an interest in Balfe’s situation with the Scots.

As usual, there’s good acting from McTavish and Patterson’s excellent in a thin but omnipresent part—he makes a lot of out it—and the change in tone in the second half works. Right up until the profoundly cheap cliffhanger.

“Outlander” isn’t really getting better, but it’s getting less bad in some good ways. Though Kelly’s direction is a snooze.

Outlander (2014) s01e04 – The Gathering

I’m profoundly disappointed this episode, The Gathering, did not involve all the dudes chopping each other’s heads off a la Highlander. I can only imagine the Quickening episode of “Outlander” will someday similarly disappoint.

“Outlander” ’s Gathering is where all the clan guys gather at the castle, pledge fealty to Gary Lewis, get drunk, and try to rape random women. Of course, if they aren’t lucky enough to rape anyone, they’ll take consensual sex, but it’s not the preference. Time traveler Caitriona Balfe is hoping to use the confusion to escape to get back to the time travel rocks so she can go back to the future. But she’ll find even after an indeterminate amount of time spent planning, getting away is more challenging than coming up with 1.21 gigawatts of electrical energy.

First, she’s got to distract guards Grant O’Rourke and Stephen Walters by siccing them on ladies. Though, to be fair, Walters is a whole lot less rapey this episode. He’s a more genial sexual predator. It’s unclear if it’s character development or just some of the episode’s weird character shifts. Matthew B. Roberts gets the writing credit, and in some ways, it’s the best-written episode. The narration’s terrible, the dialogue’s tepid, the continuity’s off, but it’s still a lot less manipulative than usual.

It also feels way too self-contained, with none of the previous episode’s character work actually mattering. For example, Lotte Verbeek is still snooping around Balfe, trying to discover her secrets, but it’s independent of their relationship arc. Ditto Sam Heughan, who’s barely in the episode—because he’s in danger of losing his head, though not for the Prize—when he and Balfe have scenes together, they’ve got less familiarity than Balfe has with any of the other characters. The episode doesn’t dial back their chemistry; it forgets they have any.

Once again, Graham McTavish is easily the best actor in the show, even if he’s not good at acting blackout drunk.

Brian Kelly directs and turns out to be incapable of action or suspense scenes, which is a bummer. Though someone on the crew has seen Evil Dead 1 and 2 thank goodness. But the slowed down and sped-up rugby match is a silly fail. Kind of like using pop music from the forties as background music for Balfe, though at least the music makes sense, bad or not. Trying to make the rugby look cool is nonsensical.

Though at least there’s not a bunch of weird nudity. Still the terrible narration, of course. They really don’t know how to make this show. Just fundamentally, they can’t figure it out.

Outlander (2014) s01e03 – The Way Out

With a new writer credited (Anne Kearney) and a different director (Brian Kelly), is “Outlander” all of a sudden much better?

No, but it’s less rapey. Even if the “Previously On…” reminds us lead Caitriona Balfe is constantly under threat of assault if she’s not with highlander hunk Sam Heughan. Heughan doesn’t live at the castle with her, however, so theoretically, she’s always in danger when he’s not there. So most of the time. Only even the regularly rapey guy (Stephen Walters) isn’t very rapey. He’s a dipshit, but not a dangerous one.

And the show is a little better. A little. At least it’s not as bad as it could be. Even though there are now daydreams, which look just like reality, the show’s got another device to deceive and manipulate the viewer instead of just telling a story. Though there’s a lot less narration this episode. There’s barely any in the first half of the episode, which has its own plot. Balfe hears about a village boy being possessed, and because she’s from 1945 and everyone in 1945 was an atheist, she knows he’s not really possessed. He must be sick. Will her hunky highlander and her knowledge of European herbs somehow save the day? Or will the backward villagers go with God, with very evil, very vicious priest Tim McInnerny?

There’s also some more with Lotte Verbeek as Balfe’s only friend, who stops being a friend in this episode to spy on her and try to discover her secrets. Balfe’s been considering taking someone into her confidence, but she’s convinced she’ll end up burned at the stake. Or at least nailed to a pillory.

We also find out Heughan’s extremely well-educated, which is why he talks with a vocabulary and cadence of a twentieth-century man, while everyone else is obviously Balfe’s inferior. Though Balfe does exhibit some cruel indifference and a pronounced drinking problem, living in a time without potable water can’t help. Everything’s booze.

The soft cliffhanger is exasperatingly apparent and silly. Ample narration doesn’t help things.

“Outlander”’s a strange show. It’s far from incompetent, but it confuses clutter with clever, and Balfe’s a flailing protagonist. It’s not her fault, it’s the concept, but they’re three episodes in, and they’re shakier than they ought to be. Maybe if there were better breakout performances, no one impresses yet. McInnerny’s cameo is fine—there’s also one from John Sessions—but inventive cameo casting when your narrating lead actor can’t hold the show is a flawed formula.

It’s a show with dire prospects.