Keri Lumm reviews “Between Two Fires” for Paste—you can watch the video above or read the transcript below:
If you thought tarring and feathering people was just an urban legend, Outlander is here to tell you: It was real and it was terrible.
And worse, in this opening scene, Murtaugh is the instigator!
Back at Fraser’s Ridge, Brianna is still understandably stressed about Stephen Bonnet, working as her own sketch artist to create a facial composite of her attacker.
Meanwhile, her mother Claire is busy trying to keep people healthy, and fighting an uphill battle. At one point, it becomes clear that a man who is clearly almost dead was unintentionally poisoned by his wife.
Good intentions, bad results.
And Claire laments to Bree: It’s bad enough I’m fighting the disease; I’m also fighting the cure.”
She is especially frustrated because she could have saved this man. He had simple appendicitis and she is a surgeon.
Meanwhile, Jamie is out and about with Lieutenant Knox looking for Murtaugh and his gang of baddies.
When they come to town and find out that his crew were responsible for the tarring and feathering, Jamie is obviously disturbed, but still wants to protect his godfather.
They go to the jail to see who has been captured and in the way that we all love about Jamie, he finesses things so he gets to talk to them first. While the men clearly know him, he introduces himself as if they are strangers and the men go along with it.
Until one of them says, “I’m Murtaugh Fitzgibbons,” and Knox puts his knife through his belly and kills him.
No finesse in that move.
On the lighter side, Roger and Bree are newlyweds and even though they love each other and have a little house of their own, there are still things to work through.
One of them being that Roger needs to be more of a settler and less of a scholar. He is terrible with guns and Bree tries to help him, but he’s just awful, and really it is because he wants to be. He doesn’t want to kill anything. He even tells Bree a story about Tufty, a little squirrel character from modern day Scotland.
I’m with you Roger! Don’t shoot Tufty!
And yet, he feels he must since Jamie made him a Captain, and essentially in charge of Fraser’s Ridge.
He even has Claire check his vision because he wants something to blame other than just his lack of interest in shooting.
He wants to go home.
Home to modern day Scotland, but Brianna doesn’t want to leave her mom and the dad she is just getting to know. Ultimately, even if they want to go home, they cannot try until they know whether Jemmy can hear the stones. If he can, then it becomes an option, but as a baby who could know.
Claire is also missing things about her home—things like penicillin—and additionally, she has decided that it is time to get some help in her medical practice, and she chooses Marsali for the task.
At first Marsali is shocked to find out that Claire buried a box of rocks instead of the man who had passed away, but eventually comes around to doing an autopsy with Claire so she can learn how to assist in surgery.
Wow, a lot cheaper than medical school!
At the end, Stephen Bonnet is seen watching a girl fight and is up to more brutality.
I hope Roger learns to shoot if for no other reason than if he comes in contact with Bonnet …
Keri is a professional chatterbox who loves watching TV & movies, reading about pop culture, and gawking at any craziness on the internet. You can follow Keri on Twitter.
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