Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) just can’t help themselves, can they? In the latest episode of Outlander, “Between Two Fires,” the duo stay true to form: meddling where they feel morally compelled to, regardless of basically anything except their internal compasses. But will his efforts to bide his time with the Redcoats until they lose the Revolutionary War and hers to advance medicine by 150 years serve them? Or will he just wind up in prison again and will she face another trial for witchcraft?
I don’t have those answers, but if you want to know what happens in Season Five, Episode Two, read on…
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Outlander Between Two Fires Recap
The episode opens with a graphic depiction of the Regulators tarring and feathering some men who enforced unjust taxes, with Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix) leading the pack. If you’ve ever made the mistake of imagining tarring and feathering as an inconvenient humiliation that likely involved public jeering and a sticky mess of gooey tar, this scene corrects that misconception. The victims in this attack are covered in scalding tar before being feathered, leaving one man with scarring that will be permanent and the other likely to die of his burns.
Jamie and Lieutenant Hamilton Knox (Michael D. Xavier) are bonding a little as they set out with Knox’s men in pursuit of the outlaw Fitzgibbons, when they are alerted to the riot that accompanied the tarring and feathering and rush to the affected town. The atrocity of the crime shocks Jamie, who hadn’t thought the Regulators capable of such violence. As he and Knox talk with witnesses, including the Governor’s friend, Edmund Fanning (Samuel Collings), he has to guard himself carefully to maintain the appearance that his allegiance to King and Country is pure.
The difficulty of keeping up appearances is at its peak when Jamie and Knox visit three captured Regulators in the local jail. Jamie convinces Knox to let him take the lead in their conversation with the men, suggesting that they may be more forthcoming to a fellow Highlander, but in truth he wants the opportunity to signal to prisoners likely to know him that they should not disclose anything about Murtagh.
When the prisoners are brought out, two are men Jamie tried to recruit to settle his land. They know him and his relationship to Murtagh, and they catch Jamie’s cues not to acknowledge as much in front of the Redcoat. Bryan Cranna (Martin Donaghy) keeps mostly quiet, but Ethan Mackinnon (Josh Whitelaw) can’t help but antagonize Knox… and he gets a sword in his belly as thanks. Jamie is as horrified by Knox executing a man without trial as he was by the Regulators tarring and feathering the tax man, and he pays the horrors forward by covering for Knox in front of the remaining prisoners, suggesting out loud that Knox had acted in self-defense.
Over drinks later, Jamie realizes that Knox is absolute in his view that the hanging deaths waiting for the other prisoners will be less honorable than what he did for Mackinnon. The way Knox talks to Jamie suggests that he knows very little of his life or military background. That night, Jamie breaks Cranna and his companion out and tells them he expected Murtagh to make himself hard to find, which his men are bungling. They surprise him by revealing that Murtagh was with them, and he warns them of the Redcoats guarding the town before they go their separate ways.
When Knox learns the prisoners have escaped, he realizes they’re closer to war than he’d thought. He tells Jamie to go home to raise a militia.
Elsewhere, the men Jamie freed return to the Regulators and suggest that Murtagh’s loyalty to his Godson may be at odds with his loyalty to their cause. He passionately defends Jamie, insisting both that Jamie will fight on their side when the time comes and that, like himself, Jamie is loyal only to his people– not to any government.
While the menfolk sow seeds of war, the women and “weaker” men are back home waging quieter domestic wars against things like illness and hunger.
Claire receives a patient whose wife’s application of the era’s remedies escalated a burst appendix to a swift death from mercury poisoning. Her “space-time continuum be damned” response is to secretly autopsy the corpse to determine cause of death (surreptitiously burying a coffin full of rocks instead of the deceased– with help from Roger (Richard Rankin)!). She then ropes Marsali (Lauren Lyle), a skilled butcher, into being her apprentice and using the man’s body for practice during lessons. She gets Brianna’s (Sophie Skelton) help in distributing flyers with recommendations against contemporary remedies, endorsed by “Doctor Rawlings,” the man who once owned Claire’s medical kit. And in a bold act of “F you, butterfly effect!” Claire tries to invent Penicillin by baking so much bread that her housekeeper thinks she’s gone mad and convincing Brianna to help her prepare it to grow mold.
When Brianna isn’t helping her mother subvert 18th Century medical practices, she’s trying to teach Roger to shoot and compulsively sketching portraits of the face of her rapist that haunts her nightmares. Her marksmanship is a little emasculating for the perpetually insecure Roger, and the fact that she’s so happily settled in the 1700s is hard for him as well.
Roger turns to Claire for an eye exam, looking for a physical explanation for his terrible shooting. Instead he finds confirmation that it’s probably psychological– and an unexpected ally in his belief that his little family would be better off in the 20th Century. There’s no way for them to try to go home until they know whether baby Jemmy can hear the stones buzzing, and it could take days or years before they know that. In the meantime, Roger can take comfort in knowing that Claire sees him as family and shares his perspective on what’s safest for them.
The timing of their bonding sesh is good, too, because it’s not long afterwards that Roger stumbles on Brianna’s stash of PTSD drawings. Baby Jemmy is taking his first steps outside, while Roger is discovering his wife’s continued suffering inside. Fingers crossed that he manages not to take it personally down the road, but let’s be honest: that would be evidence of serious growth for him.
This episode that opened with righteous violence in the name of freedom closes with gratuitous violence as a roomful of men wager on a knock-down, drag-out fight between two women. One of the wagering men is Stephen Bonnet (Ed Speleers), apparently free to move in certain parts of society. He’s introduced to one of Brianna’s former suitors just before having his pride wounded by another man who recognizes him as a cheat.
Bonnet challenges the man to a duel, and they sword fight immediately after the women’s match ends. Bonnet slashes the back of the man’s thigh, then ignores his cries of “Yield” from the ground. He draws a dagger and blinds the man, then explains his newfound restraint about killing the fellow as being because he’s a father now. He departs, likely to wind up out of Brianna’s nightmares and into her path pretty soon…
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