islagirl

Thanks, I never picked up on that. I think at that point of the book I was still trying to keep all the names straight and surely missed some of the nuance.

Pierre isn't related to Prince Vasili Kuragin. It wasn't a given that Pierre would inherit Count Bezukov's estate because he was one of many illegitimate children (granted his father's favorite). Prince Kuragin was a good friend of Count Bezukov's and thought he had a chance at inheriting. Unpleasant surprise for Kuragin to discover that the Count legitimized Pierre so he could inherit the title, AND he left him all the money.

I really liked him in that movie. Granted I haven't read the graphic novel, but I never understood all the flack that he was miscast.

I love the looks on Ethan's face when he gets philosophical, though. We see a side of Ethan with him that we don't see with the gang. The prosthetic was great - it really did look like that half of his face had a big claw come through.

I always find myself repeatedly rewinding any instance of Ethan and Vanessa calling each other by their first names. I love it when the Victorian walls come down.

I was trying to do the math on that, too, but I guess a month could have passed. Ethan's changing/disappearance on the moors was early in the Little Scorpion episode, so they could easily have burned a week or two throughout the rest of that episode. It's feasible that the beginning of this episode is a few weeks later.

I'm also wondering what the relevance will be of the arm the inspector lost. Lost limb, open to the concept of supernatural explanations...what is his backstory?

I think we're just seeing different things from Frank. I really like show Frank, but what I saw on their second honeymoon is a man who was fine with bringing her along on his expeditions or allowing her to go off on her own, but never actively took part in something that was about Claire. We never saw them have an activity or conversation focused on her interests, despite many conversations and visits focused on his genealogical quests. If she wanted to do something related to her unique interests, she was on her own. She played the dutiful wife following her husband (except when it came to sex, where they were again out of balance with her initiating every encounter). Overall, I see a lot of her accommodating him, but very little him accommodating her. Perhaps it would have been okay with her over the long haul if she'd never gone back, but after being thrown back and experiencing a world where she was useful and needed and loved with a passion that matched her own - and by someone who loved who she actually was, as opposed to a role she was adapting herself to - she couldn't go back to what she'd had in the future. Mileage will vary, of course, that's just what I see.

Absolutely this. Even if Claire herself doesn't say it, give some thought to who Claire would be in each world - give her some agency aside from who she loves. The Claire I see would choose the life of adventure and growth, where she is useful and valuable, over the quiet life as the Oxford professor's wife chatting over tea in the kitchen with the other wives. We all wonder about the road not taken, and Claire got a chance to walk that road. Add in the passion for Jamie and I think she realized she could never go back to 1940, knowing what she gave up in 1743. I always think people would enjoy it (and everything else) so much more if they would quit borrowing trouble from the future. So much stress over something that may not come to pass. Go ahead and rail against the crew if they screw it up. But at least give them a chance to show what they can do before you freak out about it.

Has it been more than once on the show? Aside from the flashback to the first time at Lallybroch and the subsequent flogging at Fort William - when Claire wasn't even around - I'm pretty sure this is the first time Jamie has been hauled off. Claire has been in more physical jeopardy on the show, requiring rescue by Jamie.

She sure did - the Marquis de Sade was just a child when she explained to Jamie what a "sadist" was.

I have always seen this a bit differently. Jamie took Laoghaire's beating to save her shame, not to protect her from a physical beating, he helped the boy just to be in with Claire, and his scars are offensive to him because of the injustice. I have never taken any of these as indicators that Jamie objects to corporal punishment as part of his character. In his conversations with Claire on the road after the spanking he explained his history with corporal punishment and didn't seem to have any objections to it. In the book he only apologizes to her to get back into her bed. Others have said it, as well, but to me this is about anger. Claire struck him in anger. Had he lost control and slapped her back in anger, I'd be horrified and I'd have seen it as abusive, just as I see Claire hitting him in anger as abusive.

Trying to thing like a screenwriter adapting a novel - is it really critical to include Jamie's seasickness to the degree that DG did in the novel? It's been a long time since I've read the books in succession, but it seems to me like you could make it a more minor issue and didn't require that level of intervention, if you needed to cut the Willoughby character. Or am I forgetting some plot-critical element that the seasickness plays in the narrative? If the character is included, I trust this team to do it well, but as this evolves I'm playing with the adaptation scenarios in my head, trying to determine what elements can be removed entirely, given to another character, and which must be depicted on-screen or it changes the spirit of the story.

The way this is going down is almost exactly how it was with my dad, very recently. He went home four days after surgery, and didn't start cardiac rehab for almost six weeks. In the interim my mom had to figure out what was expected, push a depressed post-op patient to get back to it, and intuit what should be a cause for alarm. You only get home health care if you arrange for that yourself, and when we pretty much forced my mom to ask the surgeon he said they didn't need it. In retrospect my mom says if she knew how hard it would get she would have been more proactive in getting some help in, but the immediate aftermath is so overwhelming and they really don't know what's coming, and the US system doesn't make it easy to figure all this out on your own. The experience they are showing is very similar to my parents' experience - I'm very impressed by how they're portraying it.

Please yes! It would be wonderful if they let him survive.

I've been terribly upset about this since the end of Rent, when Claire looked around at all the men and realized what was coming for them. I'm much more attached to the secondary characters in the show than I was in the books. And while I was fascinated by the Dougal character in the books, I will be absolutely gutted when his final day comes on the show, much more so than in the book. Graham McTavish is amazing. Now that I think about it, there will be mutiny when we get to that point of the show. Viewers love the Dougal, Rupert, Angus and Murtagh characters and actors on the show...it will be devastating to lose them. Way worse than the Red Wedding, which was shocking but not heart-breaking to me.

Perhaps it's that I just can't take my eyes off of him, but I see him use his Adam's apple and his breath control to much better effect than any actor I've ever noticed. He really uses all the tools at his disposal. I'm totally with you on this. I love book Jamie, but sometimes the character feels like how a woman wishes a man would be. I love the way they're writing show Jamie and especially how Mr. Heughan is playing him. He oozes charisma and his presence looms large every time he's on screen, even when Angus, Rupert, Dougal and Murtagh are stealing the scene. Yet he remains relatable, which is just as critical because while it's Claire's story, it's a non-starter without a believable Jamie as the cornerstone.

They boot you pretty quickly even after open heart surgery. My 78yo dad had an emergency quad bypass last July. He was sent home (in what I thought was rough shape but he was ready to go) four days later. And yes, the blood thinners would be a huge issue - my dad had to go back into surgery overnight to find a bleed, and that was just having had aspirin sometime in the week before surgery. Not that I want to watch a realistic depiction of how awful it is right after open heart surgery (it would be very poignant TV but it's too fresh for me to relive), but that was ridiculous. My dad didn't wake up in the ICU until 14 hours after his first surgery, he was vomiting and incoherent for his entire stay in the ICU, and couldn't fit his shoes or belt on four days later to go home because of all the IV fluids. I guess Zeke's ring of strength really did bring him right back to normal within hours. My eyes are going to roll out of my head if he goes right home to climbing all the stairs in that Victorian of theirs. Cynicism aside, since they went down this road I hope they mine this storyline for all the dramatic potential it has, and really examine the shift in family dynamic that can come with an elderly parent's serious health issues. This show has always been best at the intimate family interactions, and I'd love to see a return to that in these closing chapters.

I was thinking the say thing. Willie is clearly Dougal's man; I figured he and Willie Coulter who pops up in DiA are one and the same. I love these minor characters being more prominent - there are so many layers to this world!

I didn't see that as Claire being kind, I think Claire would think it's magnificent. She's not all that sentimental a person about objects but very much about people, and she was touched by the effort Jamie and his sidekicks had gone to in order to give her a wedding ring (even if she didn't want to be wed). In a sense, it means - to a woman who has never belonged anywhere - that she's no longer an outsider. I think she'd think that is magnificent.

I hope they cut Mr. Willoughby from the third season. You could do it without him. As many others have said - there's SO much there they'll need to edit copiously. The key arc is tracking Jamie, the reunion, and following Ian. There are a lot of ways to approach that in the spirit of the book and a lot of capers that aren't necessary to that story.

This is part of what I'm loving about the way they've handled the show so far. Diana is a fantastic world builder and writes engaging three dimensional characters. Sometimes, plot and flow get a little sidetracked in favor of well-researched detail. She indulges in her strengths as a writer. I'm glad she does, because what she does on those ends is wonderful. But it's amazing to have Ron Moore take that world she's already built and smooth out some of the plot and narrative issues. Overall, I think it's a better art for the collaboration.

Claire is the definition of an unreliable narrator in the case of the beating/spanking. I think that leaves a lot of room for Ron and company to interpret it in a way that fits the context, and they'll need to be careful not to alienate too many viewers (ratings being key in this medium, and all).

I know these words, but put together they make no sense.