TV RECAP: Outlander – Season 3, Episode 2 – Surrender

*SPOILER ALERT*

If you have not seen season 3, episode 2 of Outlander, stop where you are and wait! Do not read! Many spoilers are included!

**SPOILER ALERT**

 

 
As our episode opens this week, we see a British officer nailing a wanted poster for Jamie AKA: Dun Bonnet AKA: Red Jamie. The picture of Jamie shows him with scraggly long hair and a scruffy beard, topping it all off with a barret cocked at a jaunty angle over his one eye. We are at Lallybroch. We see the three boys searching the pigeon house looking for a gun that the youngest boy swears is in there and that he has seen before. When they go back up to the house, they see the British dragging Ian out of the house to question him once again for “harboring” Red Jamie/Dun Bonnet. Even though they have done this before and have cleared him of this crime. We see that Jenny is pregnant again. They tell the family that its treason to hide Jamie and lie about it. However, the property and house belong to Ian’s small son due to the paperwork that Jamie, Claire, and Murtagh signed before the Battle of Culloden. As they toss Ian into the back of a wagon and drive away we see Jamie come out from behind a clump of trees. Jamie goes into the woods to hunt. We see him stalking a large stag. He shoots it and we see him carry it back to Lallybroch. As he walks through the gates we see Claire turning towards Jamie. Suddenly Claire turns into Jenny and tells Jamie that he scared her. Jenny and Fergus help Jamie cut the deer up and Jenny tells Jamie that even though he is back home it is like he is still gone. We later learn that 6 years have passed since Claire went back home through the stones. We jump to Claire and she is having a dream about Jamie. We see him naked in a room, crouched by the fire. He looks up and smiles at Claire. They are laying next to each other in bed. The camera pulls back and we see Claire awaken and turn and look at Frank. In the next scene, we see Claire bouncing a happy baby Bree on her hip as she gets on with her life. She praises Bree as Bree has rolled over for the first time. We see Frank come into the room, complaining about the hot water heater, wearing nothing but a towel about the waist. Claire reaches out and touches his should as he walks away. It is the first time we have seen any form of affection from her towards him in a while.

Now Jamie is hunting and catching things. Carrying on with his life as best he can while living in a cave. A few days later Jamie goes to Lallybroch to do the ledgers like Jenny asked since Ian was still arrested. When Jamie arrives he hears Jenny screaming from inside the house. She has gone into early labor from the stress. Fergus and the boys see a raven perched on the top of the house and decide to shoot it since it is bad luck and they want nothing bad to happen to the baby. So they get the gun, Fergus loads it, takes aim and shoots at the raven. Unfortunately, some nearby British soldiers have heard it and, since weapons of any sort are against the law, they come to investigate. They arrive at the house to search it. Jamie has hidden with the new baby and Jenny, being the smart women she is, has told them that the baby was stillborn. They demand to see the body but Mary MacNab comes in right then and turns the gun over and apologizes. Jamie comes back into the room and quickly hands the baby back to Jenny and goes to look out the window at the British riding away. Now we are back with Claire. She and Frank are in bed. Frank is sleeping. Claire slowly reaches over and touches him. He wakes up and they have sex for the first time since she fell through the stones in season 1. Back in Lallybroch, Ian in being returned home. The soldiers tell them that they will not give up the hunt for Jamie. Fergus sneaks away. He thinks he is outsmarting the soldiers by leading them in circles. He starts to hurl insults at them and he eventually trips and is caught. As punishment, they chop his hand off. Jamie had been out in the woods hunting and heard and saw the events that unfolded. He gets to Fergus immediately and Jenny later said that his quick thinking likely saved his life. Jamie still feels responsible for Fergus loosing his hand. He realizes that Fergus reminds him that he still has something to fight for. Fergus asks him if he remembers the Paris agreement they made. That if he loses a hand in Jamie’s service that Jamie will take care of him for the rest of his life. Fergus seems quite pleased that he will be a kept man for the rest of his life. We are back with Claire. She and Frank are hosting dinner parties with their next-door neighbors. They start to have sex on the floor in front of the fire. Frank demands her to open her eyes. When she doesn’t he stops and asks her if she even enjoys it? He knows she is imagining Jamie as they have sex.

Back in Lallybroch, Ian and Jamie are talking. He is comparing his missing leg and Fergus’s missing hand to Jamie missing Claire. It hurts and it aches but you get on without it. Jamie decides that his family needs to turn him into the British. They will inform the British that they heard from him and at a set date and time he will return home and they will capture him. That way they will no longer be arrested or subjected to the searches and will also profit from the reward that is being offered. The day before his surrender Mary Macnab comes to the cave to bring him food and to shave his beard and cut his hair so he is not recognized. She offers her body to Jamie. She knows she is not Claire but does it anyway. Back in Boston, we see Claire getting on with her life. Pushing Bree in her pram through the park. Doing everything a wife should, cooking meals, etc. She says that something is still missing from her life. That something leads her to enroll at Harvard in the Medical School. The first day of school Claire is openly snubbed by the men in her class. That is until the only negro in the class enters. His name is Joe Abernathy. We are beginning to see the breakdown of Frank and Claire’s marriage as they are now sleeping in separate beds in the same room. As the episode comes to an end, we see Jamie “coming home” to Lallybroch and the British arrest him. You can tell by Jenny’s face that she really doesn’t want to do this. Claire is walking across a bridge in Boston and we see her come upon a man playing bagpipes. The music hits her hard. She opens her wallet and puts some money in his case.

I am still on the fence with this episode. While I was excited to see Dun Bonnet, I was a little disappointed with how they made him a lot more cranky and non-vocal than in the books. The cave he lived in? WAAAAAY roomier than the book. He didn’t seem so cramped. I am still slightly confused where Claire and Frank’s neighbor fits into this whole thing. Is Frank going to have an affair with her? Is it just to give them appearances of having a good marriage? What are your opinions? Once again waiting impatiently for next weeks episode

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