I’m halfway through #Savages and IN TEARS so I’m gonna go ahead and call this the best episode of #outlander I’ve seen in a good long while
— Beth (@bethorne) November 28, 2018
And I stand by it. Normally, when I sit down to write a Top Ten Moments, one or two of those moments are manufactured to just make the list as long as it’s supposed to be. “OHHHHH look at Claire’s cute hat!” “Oh, this upholstery is giving me the vapors!” Because sometimes it’s not that easy to come up with ten things I loved. Ten moments that took the stage and said: this is why we watch this show. This is why Outlander is excellent.
In fact, other than a few single episodes here and there in the past two seasons, I can’t remember the last time I felt this way about Outlander. And by “this way” I mean: happy, willing to tell my friends to watch it too, watching for the show itself and not just for the nostalgia of the books or the affinity for the characters. This episode, “Savages,” written by Bronwyn Garrity (who happened to write for another show I loved Good Girls Revolt) and directed by Denise di Novi hit all the right notes that this show SHOULD be hitting every week: high stakes, escalating action, a true climax, an emotional reunion and good call-backs, and a cliffhanger leaving us waiting for next week. THAT was what I was so excited about: OUR SHOW DID THAT.
Top Ten Moments from Outlander Episode 405
Foreshadowing Ahoy
I don’t know if they could have showed the passage of time in another way or not, but thank the Lord it was OBVIOUS that months and months had passed since episode 404 now that Claire and Adawehi can fully understand each other.
Hahahaha no. I couldn’t tell if we were supposed to assume that they knew a lot of one another’s language or none at all. But they have obviously become good friends, and I loved the matriarchal edge that this opening had to it. But the biggest takeaway I had from this scene was the endearing foreshadowing that Claire is going to need to expect her bairn. And maybe her bairn’s bairn. And that Adawehi is patiently dealing with Claire STILL not getting what she’s talking about.
Adawehi: *looks meaningfully around the space they are inhabiting* She is here.
Claire: *points to her chest* Yes. She’s here.
Adawehi: No, dummy, she’s … nevermind.
Fraser’s Ridge by Joanna Gaines
I don’t know how the Frasers and Wee Ian accumulated so many goods in so little time, but the interior of the home on the ridge looks like something out of Joanna Gaines‘ mood board. Textiles and pottery and drying herbs and colonial seating and leather drawer pulls and ALL THE GOOD #RIDGESHIT. I spent quite a while browsing through the “Fraser’s Ridge” that Starz brought to NYCC, but it’s clear now that they barely brought the good stuff. There is so much to get lost in. The details were incredible and I can’t wait to spend more time in there in the rest of the season before it burns to the ground. That happens right?
Romance on the Ridge
Let’s be honest. We are HERE for Jamie and Claire being romantic and secure and so … married. The opening scene was a perfect glimpse of what their life is like there together. Jamie looking for his hat while Claire packs a saddlebag and they talk about their stores of jerky. Jamie doesn’t want to leave her alone, and helps her with her shawl. It’s all so … ADORABLE and simple and perfect. What else needs to be said? That scene simply set up their different journeys for the episode but at the same time gave us a wonderful portrait of what the Frasers of North Carolina are like when they are settled and secluded.
Roger’s Quest
I have a feeling that if someone more industrious than me wanted to make a mashup of the Roger scenes this season they could make a pretty convincing trailer that his role in Outlander is a serial killer bent on Bree. Just start with that still of him staring angrily into space in his Oxford office, and then cut to all the creepy questions he’s asking the good folk of Inverness. Add a few scenes from {spoiler deleted} and you’ve got a horror story where Bree is the prey instead.
And am I the only one who is side-eyeing these Invernessians for giving some loner in eight chunky layers a bunch of personal information about a young, single woman whom he hasn’t proven he knows? Scotland has right to roam laws and right to my personal whereabouts, apparently. But despite all that, I loved seeing Roger’s desperation and frustration as he follows the bread crumbs to Brianna’s ultimate destination. I mean, he knows where she went and why. But walking through the process with him was important – for later especially.
Also, this lady? Made a point to mention that she’s Ms Baird, and then told Roger to find him a nice Scottish girl. Not a subtle hint. 
Book Jamie is ALIVE
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering exactly where James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser of Broch Turach is while watching this show, you aren’t alone. Sometimes he’s painfully and obviously absent – often in favor of some kind of nincompoop who can’t stand up for himself or some infant who needs Claire to explain How Things Be. Not so this week. Book Jamie, the one we all know and love, was ALIVE AND BESPECTACLED in Savages, and he hasn’t been this straight off the page since the first season.
Book Jamie quietly marvels at his dreams’ capability to give him insight into the future of his loved ones. He is humbled and awed but self-assured. He KNOWS he saw Brianna. He knows that birthmark. And he knows she’s his. Book Jamie knows he’s being propositioned and has no time for it, but lets a lass down easy. Book Jamie rushes to Claire’s side because he can tell what the look on her face means. Book Jamie endears himself to men from his homeland with ease. Book Jamie tells Wee Ian that he only needs one bonny daughter.
Book Claire is ALIVE too
She doesn’t disappear or hide behind her bangs nearly as much as Book Jamie does, but sometimes we have to sift through the melodramatics to find the Claire we are used to as well. But what could be better than seeing Claire bonding with a fellow woman of medicine, preparing to deliver a baby for a nearby family, swaddling said newborn, wrapping up bags of tea, feeding Clarence, stoking fires, boiling stew, KNITTING and drying herbs? OH, how about her de-escalating a volatile and potentially fatal situation by virtue of her courage and her connections? Seeing Claire do a mountain of #RIDGESHIT could have easily been every single moment on this list, especially calling the white sow a Christmas pork chop, but seeing her bridge the disparate peoples that she’s come to know and respect is the Claire I want to see every week. I much prefer her to the one who steps in it constantly or is so stubborn and unthoughtful that she brings hellfire and worse down on everyone she knows. Capable Claire is a much better match for Book Jamie. And I prefer them both.
Meat Pie McNeil
She got two scenes in the same doorway with the same DTF look on her face as soon as she sees Jamie. And I do not blame her one bit. Like Laoghaire, she is all of us. I love this scene for two reasons: it reminds us very clearly that Jamie Fraser is meant to be WAY hotter than most, if not all, of the men a woman like that would chance upon, AND it reminds us that Jamie himself has zero interest in indulging the lonely women of any neraby croft, cabin or commonwealth. Afterall, the meat pies on the ridge are slippery as waterweeds.
Murtagh Still Hates People
In one of the truly great adaptation moves that this production has ever come up with: Murtagh is still alive, bitches! We’ve known that this was likely ever since the 3rd episode of season 3 when Murtagh was transported after Ardsmuir, and we’ve been waiting for his return all season long. It provides Jamie with one of the strongest links to his past, as well as a true father figure.
And while it was little to no surprise to see that silver fox turn around and snark at Wee Ian, it was wonderful to see that Murtagh has not lost any of his surliness in the years since we last saw him. Also … kudos on getting THE BEST WIG of the SERIES, man.
THIS SCENE RIGHT HERE
Having Jamie and Ian begin to drive away with their repaired bit was a wonderful move by the writer that left us feeling like maybe … just maybe … Jamie would miss a reunion with his godfather. But no, the moment that Jamie burst into Murtagh’s smithy, righteously angry, was CINEMATIC. Duncan LaCroix’s face at the realization that he knows that angry voice perhaps better than anyone else’s was a thing of beauty. Not that I could see it through the tears.
THIS scene is what adaptations are all about. Giving the viewer something familiar, but brand new. Characters we know like the back of our hand, but situations we cannot anticipate and haven’t already memorized. The best part of this moment was experiencing it WITH Jamie (and Murtagh) (and IAN!) and not experiencing it through my own expectations.
Murtagh’s Lady
Despite how the intervening years have changed Murtagh from a bolstering bro at Jamie’s side to a bellicose leader in his own right, there is one thing that hasn’t changed: how much he loves Claire and loves Claire FOR Jamie. Ever since he told Jamie about her smile, he’s been not so stealthily stanning these two from the sidelines. He is SO disapproving that Jamie might have another wife, and then SO GIDDY to know that she is back and well and with him. His return to the ridge and their reunion is only ruined by the traumatic flashback to the worst episode of all time: The Search. Even Claire looks traumatized by the melody when she first hears it. Definitely the tune of her nightmares. (Or Caitriona’s – very meta of them).
Bonus Moment: This Jessica McClintock Realness
If I had one quibble with this episode it was how little Brianna featured in it (I KNOW! Have I been abducted by a pod person?) considering we have no idea still how she found out about her parents’ demise or how she made the trip. I kept expecting the episode to take us back to the 70s at different points, and that lack made the final scene a little jarring. But that dress. A LEWK.
GUYS. We did it. We finally watched an episode of Outlander that was so good we were all crying, and watching with goofy looks on our faces, and were surprised and elated and INTO IT. And we absolutely cannot wait to talk about it with you all tomorrow night on Hangoutlander. Join us MONDAY NIGHT at 9pmET/6pmPT as we chat ALL about it: the good, the great and the best (because we have NOTHING to complain about this time). OH … except … yeah. We know the drama. We gotchu. See you then!
