Outlander: Eye of the Storm Books Included

December 10, 2017 6:26 PM - Season 3, Episode 13

Claire plays a game of cat and mouse with an old adversary as she searches for young Ian; the Frasers race through the jungles of Jamaica to prevent the unthinkable.

Season finale. Droughtlander time.

posted by olinerd (21 comments total)

Ugh. So it turns out I’d forgotten about the Yet Another Sailing Disaster part of the book and watching it in the show I was thinking “ugh this is the most awful contrived bullshit, what terrible writing,” only to look it up afterward and realize I’d just blocked out that part of the book and that it is indeed contrived and ridiculous but at least true to the source material. Sigh.

THAT BEING SAID. I would watch a spinoff show with no one but Geillis and Lord John. Lord John’s scene in particular was amazeballs.

I commend Sam Heughan for his skill in delivering the sex scene lines which work well on paper but could really not work when spoken.
posted by olinerd at 6:29 PM on December 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

I was drawn into this show by my SO but even she was scoffing at the end-of-episode rescue. Yes, we know that these two will endure and achieve anything to be with each other, but tossing off such a scene in the last five minutes of the season seems, as said above, contrived.

Anyway, next season in the New World should be fun, if for no other reason that every episode won’t include someone trying to arrest Jamie for treason.
posted by ejs at 10:41 PM on December 10, 2017

Sam Heughan in the snow, Scotland, yesterday , with hat hair- celebrating Intentional Mountain Day. (Cameron McNeish, posted this while filming an episode of The Adventure Show - BBC Scotland programme featuring assorted hairy-arsed activities done outdoors)
posted by rongorongo at 2:07 AM on December 11, 2017

I'm surprised they killed Geillis. I know, haven't read the books here, but they were really setting her up as a wonderful time hopping adversary, I thought. It was all so sudden...
posted by Catblack at 5:25 AM on December 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

You'll see more of Geillis in later books....
posted by brujita at 5:52 AM on December 11, 2017

No ishmael...BOOO! He also appeared in a LJ piece.

....and Is it supposed to be more palatable for viewers to see Margaret to go off with a "model minority" than a black man?

Percy and Manoke sleep with lj in his pieces and we are told in Echo that he still is with Manoke; will we see it in bees?
posted by brujita at 7:57 AM on December 11, 2017

I love the Georgian family who discover Claire and Jamie shipwrecked - stick around to deliver a few lines of plot exposition - and then wander off to leave them to fend for themselves. "A couple of half drowned ship wreck survivors washed up on the beach and discovered by our daughter - shrug - nothing to see here then (last week it was a stupid jelly fish and now this; always wasting our time)"
posted by rongorongo at 1:02 AM on December 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

That Lord John scene was AWESOME. And yes, OMG, I got contact embarrassment from the sex scene, it works so well on paper and sounds so silly hearing it out loud.

The very obviously computer generated standing stones on top of the cave were a bit much, I think we all could have gotten the point without that. Otherwise, overall good episode for tying everything up and getting everyone set up for the next adventure. I could have really used more Fergus & Marsali, those two have really grown on me super fast.

Sigh. Another season wrapped up, on to Droughtlander. This book/season had some of my favorite scenes in the entire series, but also just the weirdest plot. I'm looking forward to the next one, which is a book that I recall not liking much when it first came out, but it grew on me during my re-reads of the series over the years (also, I am feeling so old, I can remember sitting in my first-year college dorm lounge reading Drums of Autumn, and now it's been like 20 years since then....).
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 5:35 AM on December 12, 2017

Yo, banjo_and_the_pork, I’m in the Boston Area now. We should have a meetup for the next season premiere.
posted by olinerd at 6:03 AM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yo, banjo_and_the_pork, I’m in the Boston Area now. We should have a meetup for the next season premiere.
YES! Totally!
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:11 AM on December 12, 2017

I don't remember Geillis in future books. When does she show back up again?

I kind of gasped aloud when they quick cut to Lord John's face. He is very pretty. Perfect casting.
posted by something something at 6:56 AM on December 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Spoiler:




In Mohb Roger and Buck wind up in the 1730s because they thought Rob Cameron forced Jemmy through the stones and R's father(also Jeremiah) has inadvertently tt'd there....and they encounter Geillis
posted by brujita at 7:44 AM on December 12, 2017

Here is Bear McCreary's blog entry about the music he wrote for the Caribbean episodes of Outlander. I am always fascinated to read about the huge effort that goes into aspects of a show that end up affecting how we feel but which we might not even notice at the time - for example Bear reveals that the 10 minute long score leading from the ceremonial scene with drummers to Geillis' murder - took 2 months to complete - and that the music we hear when Claire gets swept overboard is linked to that which is used when we see her losing a child.
posted by rongorongo at 12:05 AM on December 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

why would they all go below when they've just been dismasted

angry hiss
posted by poffin boffin at 12:47 AM on December 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

however the small child who poked jaime's ass with a stick has my full support
posted by poffin boffin at 12:48 AM on December 13, 2017 [5 favorites]

....and Is it supposed to be more palatable for viewers to see Margaret to go off with a "model minority" than a black man?

I took this more (in addition to consolidating for TV) to be a softening/redeeming of Yi Tien Cho's character, giving him something to do more than being on the run from a murder charge and saying awful things to Claire about non-Chinese women. They cut that whole part of the book, and I was super glad, because it didn't really work for me in the book when it turned out that he had been harboring such hateful and parochial views.

I hope that doesn't mean I'm just looking for a "model minority." It's just that he had been through a lot with Jamie and Claire, and it didn't make sense to me in the book that he would turn on Claire with such venom. It works, for me--for a guy who had been an intellectual and a celebrity back home--for him to see the value in a non-typical European woman.
posted by torticat at 12:40 AM on December 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I agree that a lot of the parts they cut out were ones that...shall we say did not showcase minorities well? I’m sure it’s a reflection of the times she wrote in but Still. Especially since Willoughby was on the run because of some foot fetish stuff at the party if I recall correctly, before the murder.
posted by corb at 9:38 PM on December 17, 2017

i am unable to let go of my concern about the ndn ian plotline next season, especially because he's so pale and ginger. they're gonna do redface aren't they.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:32 PM on December 17, 2017

Nah! They'll just do the tattoos and the haircut. That's all they need!
posted by torticat at 8:24 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I kind of gasped aloud when they quick cut to Lord John's face. He is very pretty. Perfect casting.

Also can I just say, before we go into full droughtlander period, YES to this! I love him so much & think his acting is spectacular. He has a lot to do in the next season and I'm looking forward to it. Wish he could be temporarily married to Jamie instead of to Claire! :)

Who is going to play grown-up Willie? Do we know yet?
posted by torticat at 8:34 PM on December 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Two potential episodes crammed into one. What a lousy end of season finale. Badly directed overall. Poor actors running "here & there" in search of Geillis. Not nearly as 'dark' as it could have been. Fumbling death sequence for Geillis. Not well choreographed at all.

And what the heck with the family on the beach that find Claire & Jamie??? The way they responded to finding two people shipwrecked was almost the same as finding a pretty shell on the beach! So wierd and flat. No: let us help you! Go for help! .... just "aw, yes, there are survivors 4 miles away..." and they walk off to continue their stroll, to apparently find other people washed up on the shore...???!!!

Really anti-climactic. C'mon writers, you can do better than that!!! And Ronald Moore -- what up?? Are you not keeping your eye on the ball?

That crane sequence zooming in at the end of the last scene....cheesy.

So glad I was binge watching this and could roll right into Season 4, otherwise if I had to wait between Season 3 & 4, you might have lost me.
posted by fantasia27 at 6:38 AM on December 20, 2018