Actual reenactment of my face during this episode.
This was a rough episode to watch, people. Real rough. If my reaction to this episode was any indication of everyone else’s, I should have invested in Kleenex and Visine. If I had, I’d be rich enough by now to buy the world’s supply of bitter cascara – giving debilitating diarrhea to my enemies for the rest of my days.
Last week’s episode ended in a heart wrenching cliffhanger when Claire rushed to the scene of Jamie’s testicle skewering duel with Black Jack Randall. Jamie screamed Claire’s name, struggling against the gendarmes who held him back while she collapsed in pain, blood gushing down her legs. We knew things didn’t look good for the future of their unborn baby or for our happiness watching this week’s episode.
We were right.
Top Ten Moments from Outlander, EP 207: Faith
1. A Glimpse of the Future
Like all of you, I was prepared to watch this episode hugging a pillow in misery, so when it opened with a scene in 1954, I was into it. Especially when the camera panned up to a school aged girl with familiar looking red hair and her mother, Claire with perfect wing-tipped eyeliner.
My thought process went like this:
Claire has a daughter!
That’s so sad that her daughter looks just like Jamie but has never heard her talk about Scotland before.
Hey, nice manicure. It really offsets both of the wedding rings you’re making sure we notice.
Why is Claire getting so emotional about a big bird?
2. Where is my baby?
This first thing that struck me about the horrifying scene of Claire’s delivery and subsequent fever was the sound. The nuns were praying, Forez was shouting in french, the surgical instruments were clanging, the music was swelling, and yet you could still hear the sound of footsteps on the stone floor. It made the impact of seeing her silent tears as powerful as witnessing her bloody legs spread helplessly on the delivery bed.
Then, in juxtaposition with the cacophony of sounds from her delivery, there was empty silence when she opened her eyes, felt her empty belly where her child used to be, and desperately exclaimed “where is my baby?” The silence was palpable. She cried, “I need my husband” and in that moment I needed her to have him too. It was superbly done.
Be right back, crying.
3. Master Raymond’s magical fingers
Things weren’t looking good for our friend Claire. Extreme Unction had been given and she was shivering in the death throes of a puerperal fever which she conveniently defined in a voice-over (those things come in handy once in awhile) as infection from leftover placenta that has festered. Then in comes Master Raymond cosplaying as a Sith Lord to do some magical fingering.
This scene was weird. It’s weird in the book and it was weird on screen. I’m okay with confirming the whole Dark Arts story line, but you’ll never convince me that it was necessary for Claire to call out Jamie’s name while Master Raymond was elbow deep in her post-natal bits and pieces. Plus, I just felt bad for her. Sure she gets to live, but you know they’re just going to slip her some willow bark tea and a witch hazel salve. Like that’ll help. Where can a girl get some Percocet in the 18th century?
We Noticed That Too: That was one fancy bed they had lying in the wings at the ol’ L’Hospital de Anges. How long do you think we have to wait until it’s available to rent on airbnb?
4. Claire returns home
After a few weeks recovering and grieving in the hospital, Fergus finally convinces Claire that it is time to return to their Parisian home. As a mother, I cannot imagine the pain it inflicts to enter a hospital pregnant and leave it childless. Claire is now forced to return to their home without her husband or her baby, in a city and time she doesn’t consider her own. She could not be more alone. Yet, in a wonderfully unexpected scene with beautifully haunting music, Claire struggled from her carriage with the help of Fergus to find all of the servants lined up to grieve with her.
The tears rolled down her face while she walked past a distraught Suzette to stand before Magnus for the first time since he helped her to the hospital after she collapsed at the duel. He began to bow as he whispered, “Welcome home, Milady,” but she stopped him with a hand on his chest and thanked him with tears streaming down her face as she bowed to him instead. Magnus was all of us when briefly closed his eyes in anguish.
5. Fergus and Claire
After hearing Fergus cry out during a nightmare, Claire finally learned what caused Jamie to challenge Blackjack to the duel. Fergus was horrifically assaulted and raped at the brothel by Blackjack Randall. Honestly, this scene was really difficult for me to watch the first time through so I haven’t gone back to watch it again. Suffice it to say that Blackjack had that dirk to his dick coming to him.
I’ll be the first to admit that Claire’s previous treatment of Fergus has made me question her mothering instincts. Until this episode, she has treated him with disdain and annoyance. Then again, she has treated pretty much everyone that way, so I don’t know why I’m surprised; her resting bitch face is award worthy. However, in their shared brokenness, she and Fergus bonded. She may have lost one baby in childbirth, but she’s still a mother.
We Notice That Too: They still haven’t learned that you shouldn’t brush out curls. Next time try bonding over a nice leave-in conditioner, kids.
6. King Louis Makes a quick finish
Quick, everyone start singing “it’s a small world,” because Mother Hildegard somehow has an in with King Louis and can get Claire an audience with him. (If you want to know the nun’s connection to the King, read the comments section. I’m sure someone will well, actually me down there.) Claire has requested that the King release Jamie from the Bastille, but there’s just one teeny problem. Obviously, because this is Outlander, all the world’s problems are caused or solved by sex. So the king is definitely going to make her sleep with him in exchange for his favor. But first he’ll make us all uncomfortable by sexually slurping his hot chocolate with his Steven Tyler lips and pronouncing “tres bien” like the words were foreplay. I didn’t hate it.
We Noticed That Too: “I closed my eyes and thought of England” doesn’t work as a distraction during bad sex if thinking of England involuntarily makes you think of Prince Harry. Also, that’s just a weird thing to think about when you’re using your body as a transaction, Claire. Stop it.
7. Au Revoir, Comte
Have you heard enough about bitter cascara yet this season? Too bad, there’s more. In addition to having sex with her, King Louis also wanted Claire to use her La Dame Blanche powers to judge her bestie Master Raymond and her enemy Comte St. Germain for practicing the Dark Arts. Between you and me, Comte St. Germain deserved to go to the Bastille just for looking that good in a wig.
Rather than let a poisonous snake determine if the men were innocent, Claire convinced the King to let her make a concoction for them to drink. If they survived they were innocent. If they died they were not. Claire was going to rig the game by giving them, you guessed it, bitter cascara. Master Raymond reacted to the bitter cascara as expected which is to say that I’m pretty sure he pooped his pants; but, when Claire served it to Comte St. Germain her poison detecting necklace changed colors like the pensieve in Harry Potter. Both she and St. Germain knew Master Raymond had poisoned the cup. St. Germain’s face when he realized that he was going to die was masterful. A single tear fell from his eye in equal parts fury and fear while his hand shook. He drank from the Holy Grail cup and collapsed in a convulsing death.
We Noticed That Too: Nothing could be hotter than Stanley Weber speaking in French until you heard him speak in English for the first time this season.
8. Jamie is back
Claire’s barter with the King was successful, because Jamie returned to their Parisian home with a small animal living on his face. Oh wait, no, that’s just the beard he grew to show the passage of time. Once I unpaused my TV from laughing hysterically at his facial hair (that’s not where merkins go, makeup lady) I went straight back to crying, because the rest of this episode was heartbreaking.
Jamie was desperate to learn everything he could about their baby as he kept his distance across the room from a defensive Claire. You could sense her battling with her desire to punish Jamie with information as she flash backed to her experience in the hospital. She told him that they had a daughter named Faith and yes, she hated Jamie for her loss, but she mostly blamed herself.
My biggest critique of this season has been how selfish Claire is. In this scene, when she admitted her weakness and failures, I felt that the show acknowledged that aspect of her personality and made great strides in redeeming it. Jamie is right; they’ll never be the same, but they can still be together.
We Noticed That Too: In a book-to-show change that we can all applaud, Jamie didn’t get angry with Claire for sleeping with the King. I didn’t even realize how much that infuriated me until it was gone.
9. Time to say goodbye
Just in case you weren’t crying hard enough already we got to relive more of Claire’s grief in the hospital. The images of Claire rocking her stillborn child were emotional napalm. She brokenly sang “I do like to be beside the seaside” and counted her fingers and toes like any proud mother, only this mother wouldn’t be taking her baby home. Louise de La Tour arrived with her burgeoning pregnancy and I couldn’t even handle the comparison of grieving mother and mother-to-be.
Watching Louise take a deep breath as she prepared herself to speak to Claire was so well done. No longer was she this vapid debutante, she was Claire’s friend and she was there to help her say goodbye to her little girl for the last time.
10. Leaving Paris
At the end of their reunion, Claire begged Jamie to take her home to Scotland. He let out a big sigh of relief to be leaving Paris and all it represents behind, but said he had one more thing to do. Naturally, he needed to dig a little bit more of my heart out with the apostle spoon he left behind on Faith’s grave. I was so emotionally drained by this point in the episode that I was dying for him to bury the spoon deep in the ground beside the grave with his bare hands but instead he reached for Claire’s hand. The way they grasped at each other was desperate and raw. They grieved their little girl together and I curled up in a little ball of emotion until next week.
What did you think of Faith? Which scene made you cry the hardest? Who do we need to petition to bring Stanley Weber back?
