Outlander: Waiting for April [SPOILERS: First Season]

[Theda Baratheon]

1 minute ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

Jamie's sister was in Beowulf btw if anyone's seen it.

yesssss, i knew it. i love her in outlander! beowulf has been cancelled btw. i mean it wasn't very good but she was one of my fave characters in it...

[Astromech]

I enjoyed the first half of the premiere more than the second. It was odd to be thrown back into the 1940s but that was some great tension between Claire and Frank. However, Frank's condition has one glaring loophole in it that Claire can easily exploit. Or was that him giving her a pass if she manages to get back to the 1700s?

It will be interesting to see how this whole plan in France goes and I'm looking forward to the cinematography and attention to detail. I think it was much too easy to convince Jaime to betray the Jacobites, but, plot necessity. And of course, enemy number one. Was hoping it was Count de Money, but oh well.

[Dr. Pepper]

First, I just want to give some serious appreciation to Zorral, Crixus and others for fighting the good fight.  Wish I could join in, but I'm too busy metaphorically vomiting from the disgusting bullshit you're having to respond to.  

Second, lovely start to the season.  I miss the expansive views of the Scottish Highlands but I'm interested to see how the set designers create 18th century Paris.  Not sure how much can be discussed about the books, but I did notice excellent set up for future plots.  Will probably have more to say later.  Great episode.  

[FC_Lymond]

13 minutes ago, Astromech said:

I enjoyed the first half of the premiere more than the second. It was odd to be thrown back into the 1940s but that was some great tension between Claire and Frank. However, Frank's condition has one glaring loophole in it that Claire can easily exploit. Or was that him giving her a pass if she manages to get back to the 1700s?

It will be interesting to see how this whole plan in France goes and I'm looking forward to the cinematography and attention to detail. I think it was much too easy to convince Jaime to betray the Jacobites, but, plot necessity. And of course, enemy number one. Was hoping it was Count de Money, but oh well.

Yes, the first half was riveting.  Lots of tension.

[Humble AK]

Zorral,

Quote

In many ways the faux concern trolling about female porn and gaze and all the rest sounds a lot like unacknowledged anxiety of certain sorts of straight males, that the masculine nudity isn't for the benefit of women or of Claire (It's really for Claire) -- but for the homo erotic male gaze. 

Right, so since you can't actually present a logical, carefully considered retort to the viewpoints that you dispute (thus far, every attempt you've made has been cleanly dismantled), you resort to...what? Accusing those you disagree with of homophobia and latent homosexuality? And of course, the card of the weak debater, just waving all opposing arguments aside as 'trolling.'

Well, if your level of discussion is name-calling, go for it. I'm not going to join you in the muck.

No surprise with tactics like this that you would find support in the form of this:
 

23 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

First, I just want to give some serious appreciation to Zorral, Crixus and others for fighting the good fight.  Wish I could join in, but I'm too busy metaphorically vomiting from the disgusting bullshit you're having to respond to.  

Translation: I'm unable to present a good, logical argument, so I'll just go ahead and express disgust in the most disrespectful and discourteous way I think I can get away with.

Way to elevate the conversation, guys.

[Crixus]

Khione, Humble AK: agree to disagree, since I don't imagine we shall be seeing eye to eye on this topic any time soon. 

Haven't watched the premiere yet; saving it for tonight. 

@Theda Baratheon: Geilis is awesome and the actress is brilliant (I saw her in The Borgias and she was great there too). 

[TheKitttenGuard]

Did a complete watch this weekend.

Overall I enjoyed the show very much.  The premise is great and I am happy that is being done as a big show.

To Ransom a Man's Soul is one of the finest hour.of television ever done.  The slow and methodically dissection of Jaime's rape was outstanding.  It was a extremely necessary to break it up to get the full examination and to bring back Jaime's character. 

Tobias Menzies was my favorite part of the show.  "Black" Jack Randall is the best villain on TV right now without equal.  The character can be so ghastly tender was amazing to watch.

The Scenery is gorgeous and the shots are fantastic in making it a full and complete character of the Story.

Caitriona Balfe is a great and beautiful actress to watch. She is able command scenes and brings a great strength.

Sam Heughan is a fine and strapping Scotsman.  He definitely will want you want to throw it all away and can be an obsession.9

I really loved the moments that the 20th century was brought in with Wizard of Oz and The Andrews Sister.  I am sure there was more but it was two the most stand out.

 

Outside of Claire (and Jenny) I thought many of the secondary female character were on the thin side.  Laura Donnelly's Jenny was a great character but she was also Jaime's sister so it temper that it falls more in Jaime's great family.  Lotte Verbeek's Gellis was really good but I really had a problem with her ending since it felt it served Claire most overall.  Nell Hudson's Loaghair was just became a scorned lover and just did not like its handling.  Annette Banland's Mrs. Fritzgibbon was just your average, superstitious god-fearing, friendly servant.  The acting all around was great but was disappointed.
 

On issues of the use of nudity and comparisons that is drawn it terms of it being necessary.  It really more reinforce that I find it to be a non-debate.  There were scenes I found the nudity to be unnecessary in the end and other scenes where I would of very much to have some nudity.

Claire's is a modern feminist (1970s) and it causes moments where you know you are dealing with a work created in the '90s and you are not dealing with a character from 1945.  The scene it most jumped out is her reaction to Jaime's not wanting to be alone with her when they were on the road during episode 5.  It could be in the acting but I had problems that a woman from 1945 will find it something extremely antiquated and offensive regardless of how radical (for 1945) her view is.

I did not like the narration overall.  They should stick with Claire throughout (not a fan of episode 9) but will like it to be used less overall. 

Season 2 is to be 13 episodes and it is a very good decision to tighten the show.  There was a real feeling of drag in the 2nd half of season 1.

[Dr. Pepper]

5 hours ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

 

Season 2 is to be 13 episodes and it is a very good decision to tighten the show.  There was a real feeling of drag in the 2nd half of season 1.

Even though I read the series last year-ish, I can only vaguely remember the rough outlines of each book.  I do recall, however, that book two was really really plot heavy.  It felt like five books in one.  I tend to think most tv shows would do better with fewer episodes but I am really curious how this season will manage it considering how they started the season.  

18 hours ago, Humble AK said:

 

Translation: I'm unable to present a good, logical argument, so I'll just go ahead and express disgust in the most disrespectful and discourteous way I think I can get away with.

Way to elevate the conversation, guys.

Translation: Wah wah why won't you give me attention and validate my thinly veiled misogynist argument that I'm pretending is courteous, thoughtful, and logical?

 

[Humble AK]

51 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Translation: Wah wah why won't you give me attention and validate my thinly veiled misogynist argument that I'm pretending is courteous, thoughtful, and logical?

 

You can take or leave my advice, but you do yourself a disservice by engaging in this kind of mud-flinging. It doesn't hurt my feelings, and I doubt it hurts anyone else's feelings, but it certainly degrades the quality of conversation. I appreciate that you feel very strongly about your position, and perhaps consider that anyone who disagrees with it is totally wrong, but the mature thing to do is address why you think that person is wrong, not just say, I'm right because I say I'm right and therefore I feel entitled to insult people.

I don't think this attitude impresses anyone, even those who are currently arguing that Outlander uses sex for purely tasteful, feminist and artistic reasons.

[TheKitttenGuard]

1 hour ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Even though I read the series last year-ish, I can only vaguely remember the rough outlines of each book.  I do recall, however, that book two was really really plot heavy.  It felt like five books in one.  I tend to think most tv shows would do better with fewer episodes but I am really curious how this season will manage it considering how they started the season.  

Well, you have an advantage since I have not read the books.  I was reading up on Outlander's wiki and some book articles.

I do hope that they do overcompensate for S1 make the 2nd feel rushed.  If the 2nd book is as plot dense as it sounds, it will most likely be to the show advantage to break it up and move some events around.

[Dr. Pepper]

13 minutes ago, Humble AK said:

You can take or leave my advice, but you do yourself a disservice by engaging in this kind of mud-flinging. It doesn't hurt my feelings, and I doubt it hurts anyone else's feelings, but it certainly degrades the quality of conversation. I appreciate that you feel very strongly about your position, and perhaps consider that anyone who disagrees with it is totally wrong, but the mature thing to do is address why you think that person is wrong, not just say, I'm right because I say I'm right and therefore I feel entitled to insult people.

I don't think this attitude impresses anyone, even those who are currently arguing that Outlander uses sex for purely tasteful, feminist and artistic reasons.

Oh darn, I left my 'mature' need to impress people in the pocket of those jeans I wore when I was ten.  

[Humble AK]

18 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Oh darn, I left my 'mature' need to impress people in the pocket of those jeans I wore when I was ten.  

Hahaha, okay. Have it your way.

[Calibandar]

On 4/10/2016 at 4:22 AM, Dr. Pepper said:

First, I just want to give some serious appreciation to Zorral, Crixus and others for fighting the good fight.  Wish I could join in, but I'm too busy metaphorically vomiting from the disgusting bullshit you're having to respond to.  

 

Another one for the ignore list. Snore. 

[Zorral]

On 4/11/2016 at 10:15 PM, Humble AK said:

Zorral,

Right, so since you can't actually present a logical, carefully considered retort to the viewpoints that you dispute (thus far, every attempt you've made has been cleanly dismantled), you resort to...what? Accusing those you disagree with of homophobia and latent homosexuality? And of course, the card of the weak debater, just waving all opposing arguments aside as 'trolling.'

Well, if your level of discussion is name-calling, go for it. I'm not going to join you in the muck.

No surprise with tactics like this that you would find support in the form of this:
 

Translation: I'm unable to present a good, logical argument, so I'll just go ahead and express disgust in the most disrespectful and discourteous way I think I can get away with.

Way to elevate the conversation, guys.

 

Um,  where did I call out anyone by name? 

Um where is the dismantlement of feminist argument here, beyond you are defying what I am telling you? Where is the rational dismantlement of argument that Outlander is somehow from satan beyond I am telling you it is all sexist rape-rape-rape and unfair to men and you refuse to say I am right? While in actuality many commentators here have explained many times with illustrations of comparison and contrast of Outlander with the way matters of women, sex, degradation, empowerment, love, lust, delight, joy, are depicted on screen and within the story's arcs with other shows?  Yikes!

 Time to 

In the meantime, there's this, which again, explains, with illustrations from the writers, the viewers and what the show itself gives us, why the depiction of "The Best Sex On Television is a Scottish Time-Travel Feminist Sci-Fi Fantasy on Starz" by Jennifer Vineyard:
 

Quote

 

For a series ostensibly about time travel, politics, and being a stranger in a strange land, this relationship, and this night, is the true beating heart of the show, showrunner Ronald D. Moore says. “I think couples enjoy it because it’s neither a male fantasy nor is it a gauzy boudoir bodice ripper.” As much as it’s a fantasy-adventure story, Outlander, which returned for its second season on April 9, is a fantasy about how sex can be between two passionate people and, even more fantastically, how that sex can possibly even change the world. Other shows might have more explicit sex (see Game of Thrones), but more often than not, such encounters are brief, dangerous, and relatively degrading. On Outlander, the sex is none of those things. Instead, the show uses sex as a way of understanding marriage, intimacy, and female agency. It’s a show that lets a woman have it all, in two different time eras, with two different husbands. “Not only was I bigamist, but I enjoyed it,” Claire says in the episode, considering her two wedding rings. . . . .

That’s not to say everything that happens on Outlander fits a feminist utopia — especially not the part set in the 18th century, so there’s plenty of war, rape, torture, and general injustice. But even how Outlander treats sexual violence is remarkably different from other television shows. One character subverts her would-be rapist when he can’t get it up by laughing in his face. (Props to actor Tobias Menzies for going full-frontal for a reason necessary for the story). When another character was raped at the end of season one, we witnessed the horror of his rape (yes, his rape), but we also stayed with him throughout his long recovery. We weren’t allowed to flinch, to look away, or to ignore it. “Hopefully, more shows will go that way,” Heughan says. “It’s unsettling, it’s very dark, it’s very sensitive, and it has an equal outlook.” Claire takes issue with how rape victims are treated, and in a scene during season one, she debates a Scottish laird about rape. That wasn’t a scene in the books. “The show does push the feminist angle somewhat more overtly,” Gabaldon says.

By season two, Claire and Jamie’s relationship is deeper than sex — although sex is certainly the foundation. It’s how they build trust and how they establish an equal partnership. She’s told him she’s from the future, he accepts it, and they’ve embarked together on her new mission to try and actively change the past. “Last season, I feel like Claire was very reactionary,” Balfe says. “All of these events were coming at her fast and swift, and she didn’t really have time to absorb any of them, really. It was all fight or flight and survival.” But now, Claire is making choices to determine not just her own fate but the course of history, in an era where agency is unheard of and consent is a murky notion. I watched Balfe in a scene shot at Drumlanrig Castle where Claire makes a duke answer for a gang rape he orchestrated. Later on, during a muddy outdoors scene shot on horseback, she takes on a lord involved in the Jacobite uprising. “I often see her as the lady with the scales,” Balfe says. “I mean, she’s out there fighting for justice all the time. But it’s in the small, everyday things, where she demands acceptance and respect and that people treat people fairly, where we see the biggest effects.” Fairness and equality in and out of the bedroom, or the daybed, or the dusty table in a ruined castle.

 

Have a  day!

[Zorral]

Me, personally, have never thought of the book series, or even, now, the television series as particularly 'feminist.'  There is a woman's pov in the center, but that isn't necessarily feminist, nor does it have to be either.  I don't think of either Jane Austen or the Brontes as feminist writers either, but they do their fellow women and men the honor of showing us that women's lives, women's desires, women's aspirations matter too, and that women can and do have impact on the world around them.  And sometimes these women also are mistaken, don't have all the information, just like men, and therefore don't get it right.

I think this series really shows us all of this -- the full gamut of what makes up a woman's life.  Sex and reproduction, particularly in a world without reliable, woman-controlled contraception, make up a large proportion of a woman's life in very many ways -- and beyond the thrusting.  What does it mean to be a woman, who has a physical crisis to handle, or just plain daily physical jobs and work to do, and who is breast-feeding and has another or more small children?  We see this being handled in season 1 by Jamie's sister. We know women were always doing whether they were pregnant or not, breast-feeding or not, and even women of higher rank than poor women had lots of work to do.  But with this we see the delights of marriage and relationships, including parenthood.  There is so much about women's lives here, which we seldom see in other movies or on television -- and particularly not in comix or vid games, etc.

At the same time we're seeing very beautiful people acting out all this -- and that might be the only criticism I might have -- except that I enjoy so much seeing these fully developed, attractive, flawed human beings working with each other and together, for their relationships and families, and for other objectives that reach out much further than that.  When do we see all of this taking place in the same series, with the same group of people?

 

[Mladen]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Me, personally, have never thought of the book series, or even, now, the television series as particularly 'feminist.'  There is a woman's pov in the center, but that isn't necessarily feminist, nor does it have to be either.  I don't think of either Jane Austen or the Brontes as feminist writers either, but they do their fellow women and men the honor of showing us that women's lives, women's desires, women's aspirations matter too, and that women can and do have impact on the world around them.  And sometimes these women also are mistaken, don't have all the information, just like men, and therefore don't get it right.

Nicely said

The "feminist aspect" to the show, IMO, reflects on the idea of exploration of female sexuality without resorting to the usual vernacular that includes slut, whore, harlot etc. I do believe, as the piece you quoted above that this is not just about one woman's perspective, but also about how a woman can indeed enjoy the sex and that we should not shy away from admitting such natural fact. So, in terms of what makes this show feminist is that we have an ordinary woman, not some New-York promiscuous lady, designed to be "the open-minded one" or the golden-heart prostitute. Claire is basically relatable to any woman. There is nothing special about her and that is what makes her journey and all that she encounters throughout it so close to many of the viewers. Simply, as article said, equality in and out bed

[Zorral]

Quote

 Claire is basically relatable to any woman. There is nothing special about her and that is what makes her journey and all that she encounters throughout it so close to many of the viewers. Simply, as article said, equality in and out bed 

I love that you said this!  Because, yes.  All these women who became nurses in the wars satarting with the Crimean, and making nursing a respectable profession, which, here in the U.S., the Civil War made very clear was needed, and that happened.  Claire comes from this whole history which she was taught as part of learning her profession, on top of what she'd learned from her unconventional uncle archeologist.

Things are set-up to have Claire (at least the first two books -- I didn't like them after that and quit -- got too Anne Rice for me blahblahblah) make sense.  Since she met the right guy when she went downline.  People are like that.

I've been on tours in a very difficult place with people who are musicians, speak more than one language, etc.  They understand group dynamics, they understand how to keep problems that begin to sprout from blooming.  They help all the way around to keep the tour as a group as opposed to people hating each other (I've been on those too).  People like health providers and musicians are among the best people one can be with to go into other cultures.  Which is why I believe in Claire (among other reasons).

 

 

[TheKitttenGuard]

I find the Feminism on the show to be on Claire wanting her relationship with Jamie to be one of full equals and not an acceptance of male and female spheres.

Claire knowledge of plants and use of medicine are more on the special end for me.  Even with the war there is access to modern medicine.  I may of missed more but she appears to know the exact plants or herb for everything. That is a very encyclopedic mind that very few people will have.

She also extremely fortunate to have been present for a conversation with some very pertinent information just before she back.  Like to know why she was fortunate to been sent to that precise time.  She would of been in far worst shape if the conversation did not take place.

Vineyard's article demostrate how different the focus is from GOT.  Outlander does have a focus on female agency.  GOT does not care much for anyone agency.  I will also I found Outlander's sex scene far more graphic than anything on Game of Thrones.  There is more casual nudity on GOT but Outlander's sex scenes are far more graphic.

[Calibandar]

14 hours ago, Zorral said:

 

 Time to 

In the meantime, there's this, which again, explains, with illustrations from the writers, the viewers and what the show itself gives us, why the depiction of "The Best Sex On Television is a Scottish Time-Travel Feminist Sci-Fi Fantasy on Starz" by Jennifer Vineyard:
 

Have a  day!

That article is hilarious. At first I read it and thought, wow, where to start, how biased and twisted can one person's opinion be? And then it just kept going on and on and it actually started to make me laugh. What a wonderful world of denial and incorrect opinions this person has enveloped herself in.

 

[Theda Baratheon]

what on earth is going on in this thread why cant we just talk about how handsome jamie is and his lovely, lovely red curls