Wow, the cat’s out of the bag about William’s parentage and it could not be any clearer that the whole like father like son thing really holds up here. By which, of course, I mean that both Jamie and William are big time assholes in this episode. Furthermore, only one of these men has a reason for acting the way he does that is somewhat acceptable and that man is not Jamie. Jamie sucks here. And sorry, I don’t mean the good kind.
Okay, could Lord John have found a better way to let his buddy know that he had sex with his wife when he thought he was dead than waiting until they were alone in the middle of the woods and using the phrase “I’ve had carnal knowledge of your wife?†Big time. I’m not victim-blaming here, but yes, there are like 1,000 better ways he could’ve done this. Maybe, like, starting with I married your wife so she didn’t get hanged for being a spy, and we were both so utterly destroyed by your death and blitzed out our minds that we found a moment of solace, or, at least distraction. Jamie is, of course, allowed to have feelings about this and can be upset and taken aback, but John saved Claire’s life and risked his reputation doing it! And also they thought he was dead!! As Claire will tell Jamie later, it’s not like the two of them, clear-eyed, said, hey, let’s do this thing. But this is not how John goes about it, and by the time the guy says, “Neither one of us was making love to the other, we were both fucking you!†Jamie has lost all control over his anger, and he punches John’s lights out. I love, love the hard-F for John, but he could’ve selected a better time to let it fly.
Still, Jamie needs to cool his freaking jets. Lord John is his friend and has done so much for him and he is just pounding that man’s sweet little meat sack of a face in. It’s hard to tell if it actually is a good thing that some rebels come upon them in the woods and discover Lord John is related to Colonel Charles Grey and, believing him to be a spy, decide to take him as a prisoner back to their camp and Jamie lets them do it. On one hand, the rebels indicate that Lord John will probably be hanged; on the other, Jamie definitely would’ve killed him if left to his own devices. John’s face when Jamie just lets them take him is crushing. Now the guy is going full unhinged, and no one can blame him.
Just look at the two paths the men take during this episode. Poor John! He’s most likely going to lose his eyesight, at best he’s going to have to make an eye patch work for at least a month and I believe in him but that is a tall order; the man interrogating him at the camp is Colonel Smith, a turncoat he recognizes from London, which shocks him to his core (something weird is going on between these two, no?); he learns his cousin Charles Grey is responsible for the Paoli Massacre in which he led his troops to kill 100 men in cold blood and now John is going to pay the ultimate price for it; and the only way he has even a small chance of survival is the fact that Denzell Hunter turns out to be the doctor at the camp and he provides John with a small knife to escape in the dead of night. All of this because he saved Claire’s life.
Meanwhile, Jamie rides off to reconnect with Daniel Morgan and winds up getting not just introduced to General George Washington but being named a brigadier general in his army after delivering him secret, good news from their French allies. I love that Outlander tries to make it this momentous occasion with the patriotic, Colonial fife music in the background or whatever, but sorry, losers, we hate Jamie today.
He finally goes home to face Claire, and boy, oh boy, do these two have it out. Jamie wants to know all the details, and he wants to know them right in front of the bed in the room where it all happened. Jamie doesn’t really want to hear any of it and, at one point, tells her that he knows how she gets when she drinks and basically calls her a whore. When she slaps him, he has the audacity to say that he is the “aggrieved party here.†Claire tries to explain the pain both she and John were in, that she was on the verge of killing herself, that she was so numb, and that it was actually a blurry, confusing, violent kindness that John did for her that night.
She seems legitimately worried that Jamie has killed John. It’s not like there isn’t precedent! This definitely feels like it should be a red flag, but Claire and Jamie have been in this toxic codependency for too long, and it is difficult to change it up now. So have we all, if we’re being honest with ourselves!! At least this conversation gives Jamie a chance to take a breath and realize what a true asshole he is for hurting John and handing him over to people who want him dead. He remembers how John’s friendship “bandaged [him]†after the whole Geneva and William thing. He should probably, I don’t know, go make sure he isn’t dead.
But he can’t at the moment. Jamie is starting to see the situation for what it really was, but admits he’s still hurt by it, which is fair. He admits he’ll want to keep talking about it at a later date, which is also fair; it’s a complicated set of circumstances. But for now, all Jamie wants to do is make sure Claire knows she can never do anything to make him love her less, and he hopes it’s the same for her. And not to, like, bring up the whole murder-y thing again, but she has forgiven him and kept on loving him through a lot, so I don’t know why he’s worried. Finally, Jamie Fraser, the biggest wife guy to ever live, just wants to make sure that Claire is still his wife. Of course she is, ya big dummy, she assures him. Once that’s settled, now all Jamie wants to do is fuck.
And then Outlander proceeds to serve us an unhinged sequence of television in which we cut back and forth between Lord John Grey running for his life in the dead of night while being shot at by Continental soldiers because Jamie dicked him over and Claire getting dicked down by Jamie right on Lord John’s dining room table!! Something seems very unfair about all of this, and I do hope Lord John finds some kind of happiness when all is said and done.
Jamie’s son William is also being an ass, but it’s easier to feel bad for this guy since he just learned that everyone in his life has been lying to him and he has no idea who he is anymore. That’s a lot for anyone to handle, and William has never seemed like the most well-adjusted person to begin with. The first thing he does is try to get a little clarification from Claire, which is a great instinct. He wants to know how his mother came to be pregnant with Jamie’s baby. He wants to know if Jamie raped her, then he asks if there is any chance they loved each other. Now, either Claire is trying to soften the blow for William or Outlander is trying to gaslight us in regards to the whole Geneva situation because she tells him that they loved each other the best they could. But let us all recall that Geneva blackmailed Jamie into having sex with her. It doesn’t much matter what Claire tells William, though, again realizing how much he’s been lied to and the fact that he isn’t technically a gentleman or a lord, but the bastard son of a Scottish criminal really throws him. He runs out of the house ripping the place apart, smashing his own reflection in the mirror. The guy can’t even look at himself anymore.
Eventually, he runs into Rachel and Ian, back from an unsuccessful attempt to get the Quakers to allow them to marry, and that news, paired with the realization that Ian knew that Jamie was his real father sets him off again. He instigates a fight with Ian and then has him arrested for assaulting an English officer. To really sour his relationship with Rachel, he kisses her — she pushes him off and spits at his feet. She doesn’t recognize this William and you know what? Neither does he.
He also has a little run-in with a sex worker who goes by Arabella, but she eventually tells him her real name is Jane. She takes pity on his sad little face, but when she calls him a gentleman, the word, and believing he isn’t actually one anymore, infuriates him. He slams a glass down, soaking her dress, and she kicks him out.
William, though, gets to rectify both situations. He winds up at the same brothel the next night and after listening to a Captain Harkness go on and on about how he loves assaulting women — because Outlander can’t resist repeatedly reminding us how horribly women women were treated — William winds up paying to spend the night with Arabella/Jane in order to protect her. He winds up ending the night naked, crying in her arms.
As far as the Ian thing, Jamie happens to ride upon the soldiers keeping Ian (his face when he sees his uncle is alive!), and after he gets the scoop from Rachel, Jamie pulls William aside to give him a stern talking to. What a fun father/son moment for them! Just kidding: Jamie threatens to tell everyone about William’s parentage unless he gets the soldiers to release Ian and William agrees but also ends the conversation by telling his new dad “god damn you to hell.†So, not the bonding moment Jamie has been dreaming of, perhaps. William does get Ian released and you can see the shame on his face. The guy is in a bad, bad way! I think, maybe, we should all be worried about him.