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) 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) s01e01 – Sassenach

I’ve been operating under the misconception the home video version of Sassenach was an extended cut, and they’d added all the nudity. Nope, it was apparently in the original Starz version. Cool.

The nudity’s all of star Caitriona Balfe, who’s the narrator and protagonist of the show, but when it comes time to drop her drawers, the eyes are all director John Dahl’s. “Outlander” is a historical hard sci-fi romance. Except for the most history in this episode is Balfe’s husband Tobias Menzies droning on about his family genealogy. The only thing more boring than actual genealogy? Some boring dude talking about fake genealogy. Menzies and Balfe are in Scotland on a post-World War II holiday; they’re trying to reconnect after being apart for five years. He was in military intelligence—not an agent himself, but the office guy who sent them to their deaths—and she was a nurse.

Supposedly they’ve been having a rough time since the end of the war, but it seems mostly to be a lack of trying. In the tedious narration, Balfe explains whenever they’re having problems, all they need to do is get jiggy, and then they’re fine. Though they may need to get jiggy in public for it to work. Or at least be a little exhibitionist-y about it. Not to kink shame. Though it’s very unclear why Dahl’s so keen to ogle Balfe (especially since “Outlander”’s target audience is women, you can even google it) and not Menzies. Other than once Balfe gets to the past and runs into Menzies’s ancestor he can’t shut up about, it turns out the ancestor is an eager rapist and cruel piece of shit.

Eager rapists and cruel pieces of shit are two different things on “Outlander” because Balfe eventually ends up with a group of Scottish highlanders—there be many more than one—but only two of them don’t want to rape her. One because he’s not cool with rape (Graham McTavish, who gives far and away from the best performance) and one because he’s the hot guy (Sam Heughan). Everyone in the past is filthy and gross except Heughan, forecasting his and Balfe’s chemistry. Plus, he’s injured, and she has to nurse him over and over.

The present-day material starts dull and gets worse as Menzies gets more and more enthusiastic about the genealogy, but it also becomes clear the narration isn’t going to stop. I’m not sure if the narration’s from the source novel or the writers’ room (Ronald D. Moore got the credit, which is an inglorious one), but it’s terrible. And never once matches the corresponding action. It’s like an object lesson in why poorly executed narration is so damaging.

Once Balfe gets to the past, where she brings mid-ish-twentieth century mobile army nursing techniques, the occasional helpful future knowledge tidbit, and enough curse words to shock all her new wannabe rapist pals, the narration pretty much stops. At least until the cliffhanger. But the quiet’s nice. And Heughan and Balfe do seem like they’ll have sufficient charm together. But, wow, is it a rough and endless sixty minutes.