Brianna and Roger Almost Get Together, Claire Almost Gets Lost and Things Get Weird in the Woods.
CONTAINS SPOILERS

At the start of this week’s episode we’ve moved forward in time and back across the ocean to 1970s Scotland, where Roger (Richard Rankin) has sold off the house (presumably it’s not the manse then?) and sold it to Fiona (Iona Claire) and her partner who I can only presume is incredibly wealthy to afford a house of that size. Fiona certainly didn’t save the deposit up from her housekeeping money.

As for Fiona, she seems to have got over her infatuation with Roger and rather kind-heartedly, considering how she used to feel for him, advises him to tell Brianna (Sophie Skelton) about his feelings for her as he heads off to America to take part in a Scottish festival. It turns out that besides being an Oxford don with a penchant for knitwear, our Roger has a side line as a Scottish folk musician.

Meanwhile Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) are preparing to depart River Run and leave poor Aunt Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy) behind. As Jamie puts it he has to leave to be ‘master to his own soul’.  It says something of both Claire and Jamie that they are prepared to wave good-bye to a sizeable property and fortune on account of their principles – their refusal to own slaves.  All the more so, when one takes into account that they are currently penniless.

Jocasta and Jamie’s parting is rather tender. It would seem that although Jamie’s reappearance in Jocasta’s life has been rather short, Jamie and Jocasta have a close family bond, no doubt intensified somewhat by the feelings they both share towards Jamie’s dead mother.

On the other hand, Jocasta and Claire’s farewell is much frostier. Jocasta may be blind but it doesn’t stop her seeing how much Jamie loves Claire, and Jocasta puts the blame for Jamie’s departure squarely on Claire’s shoulders. She’s indignant at the idea that Jamie is off to play printer in some colonial backwater when he could regain the role which according to Jocasta he was born to play and which he lost on Culloden Moor, that of laird. Not surprisingly, Claire takes umbrage at this though I suspect she may feel that Jocasta has a point.  Given how strong –willed both these women are, I suspect that if Jamie and Claire had stayed on at River Run, Jamie would have spent most of his time trying to keep the peace between these two.

But being strong-willed seems to be infectious as Ian (John Bell) stands up to Jamie and refuses to be shipped back off to Scotland. While en route with Jamie and Claire in deepest North Carolina, he then goes on to tell – not ask – Jamie that he is going off with John Quincy Myers (Kyle Rees) as the latter sets of to trade with the Indians.

This handily gives Jamie and Claire some one-on-one time whereupon Jamie declares ‘I would lay the world at your feet, Claire’. At which point thousands of women around the world no doubt go ah and reflect on their own love life (or lack of it).  This declaration is prompted by Claire asking Jamie whether he really wants to work as a printer (evidently Jocasta’s remark has hit home) or in order to be fulfilled if he might not need something more in his life. Jamie admits he’d be quite happy as an outlaw but with Claire, Ian and the rest of the gang to be responsible for he has to make other choices. This scene reminded me of the scenes back in Season 1 with Taran MacQuarrie (Douglas Henshall), where you got a glimpse of what Jamie might have become if it hadn’t been for his love for Claire.

Then Claire goes and does what Claire always goes and does; she does something on the spur of the moment; Jamie tells her not to do it; she ignores him and then catastrophe ensues. I’m the last to suggest a woman should do what a man tells her to do but in Claire’s case I’d be happy to make an exception, although admittedly it would make for a less dramatic TV series; just think about it, if she  had just listened to Jamie: she wouldn’t have got captured by the English while walking in the woods and then interrogated by Black Jack Randall; there would have been no witch trials and she would never have fallen overboard during a biblical like storm and almost drowned.

But no, true to form, Claire ignores Jamie and in her hunt for Clarence the runaway mule who also happens to have an internal satnav a homing pigeon would be proud of, Claire gets lost, is almost struck by lightning and then hides under a fallen tree in the rain where she takes her boots of, as you do, finds a skull and some kind of stone. She seems rather unperturbed by the find. I appreciate she’s a doctor but if I was lost in a forest at night, possibly peopled by indigenous folk not too elated I was on their territory,  and came upon a cleaved skull, I’d probably show a bit more concern. To top it all, Claire sees a ghostly figure appear among the trees, indubitably an apparition of the skull she’s holding. I don’t know about you but I’d be screaming my head off at this point.

To top it all, the next morning her boots have mysteriously disappeared, but have handily left a trail in the mud for her to follow that leads her back to Jamie. (I swear I am not making any of this up). Claire assumes it is the work of the ghost she saw, informs Jamie of this and neither of them seem to think it a particular odd state of affairs. And if that’s not mysterious enough; it turns out the skull’s teeth have silver fillings which means whoever the skull belonged to is also a time traveller.  Not surprisingly, Clare asks: ‘who were you?’ I’m guessing given that the writers have devoted so much time to this rather weird plot point we’ll no doubt find out pretty soon.

Meanwhile, in a neat bit of symmetry, her similarly headstrong daughter along with Roger are also heading to North Carolina where some Scottish Festival cum Highland Games is being held.  In fact, and I never thought I’d hear myself say this, as an avid Jamie fan, Roger and Brianna’s storyline is of far more interest than that of Brianna’s parents tramping through Colonial America.  It is the scenes featuring these two together which really hold your interest in this episode.

Both Brianna and Roger are in full flirt mode but Roger is holding back, aware that Brianna is still a virgin and, as we later find out, conflicted by the fact that he’s madly in love with her and wants to make her his wife and has rather old-fashioned ideas when it comes to sex and marriage.

Obviously frustrated that Roger isn’t making the first move, Brianne engineers a scenario to enable Roger to ‘seduce’ her and just to ensure he gets the hint, she takes her top off.  Apart from writing ‘fuck me’ on her forehead there is little else the poor woman could do. Luckily, even Roger picks up on the hint and they start passionately snogging whereupon he interrupts the canoodling in order to hand her back her blouse so she can put it back on (editor’s note:  last thing a woman wants when you undress for a man is for him to hand you back said item of clothing), then he proposes marriage and suggests they have four or five kids together.  At which point, Brianna, understandably overwhelmed, points out she’s not ready for that much commitment.

Roger then shows a side of him we haven’t seen so far. He comes across as petulant and controlling, angry that she’s happy to sleep with him but doesn’t seem to love him enough to commit to marriage. For her part, Brianna is angry at his double standards: he’s slept with women in the past but seems pretty keen to only marry a woman without a sexual history of her own. When Roger points out if he just wanted to sleep with her he could have got her on her back long before now, Brianna gives him a well-deserved slap. Mind you, as with Jocasta’s encounter with Claire earlier on, you have the impression that Roger hit the nail on the head with that remark which is, of course, what makes a statement like that all the more annoying. Later on, Brianna tries to patch things up but Roger isn’t having it:  he wants all of her or nothing at all. With such an ultimatum flung at her, Brianna wisely walks away and Roger is left literarily holding a flame for her (he’s holding a torch in the run up to lighting a giant wooden stag at this point – seriously don’t ask).

The episode ends with Jamie abandoning his plan to move to a backwater town and restart his career as a printer having fallen in love with some land that he and Claire have chanced upon. So enamoured with the countryside around him, Jamie decides to take up the Governor’s offer of a land grant despite the problems that this will cause further down the line and plans to set up home there. He’s even got a name for the place, Fraser’s Ridge.

To be honest, when the episode ended I did think to myself is that it? As with this season’s first episode nothing much happened apart from the Roger and Brianna storyline, and Claire getting lost in the wood and meeting up with skulls and ghostly apparitions which was just plain weird.  So far, the beginning of Season 4 has been a rather slow start. Let’s hope now they are finally at Fraser’s Ridge, it’s onward and upwards for the Frasers and Roger and Brianna finally get their act together.

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