Dust Bunny

No longer Team Jay. Wow. He didn't just throw Taylor under the bus, he bombed the floor under him, a la, "Speed". I almost wanted to give Taylor a hug with the "dumb surfer" line. That was Mean Girls-esque. I have a feeling Jay is feeling ashamed. He's young, and I think he'll learn from this. There's self-preservation, but there's also class in the midst of it.

You guys are great, but this fandumb drives me nuts, sometimes. Even Terry Dresbach wrote a mean-spirited tweet this morning. Granted, it was politics-based, and I know how crazy this election is (just 3 more days!!). Still, if there's a reason why I step away from this forum periodically, it's because I need to step away from the dumbness. Again, you guys are great. It's just that sometimes I need a break from the Droughtlander madness.

Roger was studying at Edenton to get ordained, and Bree and Jem were at River Run. Jamie and Claire sent them away to protect them from the accusations that were building. That sets up Bree's abduction. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Jeff totally hid a smile when Jay looked Michaela right in the eye and said, "Yeah. I did it." I loved that moment. Absolutely ballsy. He owned every part of that move. It was brilliant and entertaining as hell. Team Jay the rest of the way.

I hope they include that too. Having been there, I'm so glad they're including Culloden. In the amazing visitor center, the last room is a 360 immersion video of a reenactment of the start of Culloden, and you stand or sit smack between Jacobite and English lines (including British flanking maneuvers on the side). I got emotionally nauseated (those words seem to describe it) in that room. The actual moor is like Gettysburg or Shanksville, Pennsylvania: you can feel the power of what happened there. That land is holy. (I was expecting to be sad. I did NOT expect to be furious at how the Jacobites may have been led into slaughter, via treason, but that's a whole other story.) When my friends from my trip and I saw the EW cover, we were all so thankful they're depicting the actual battle. Culloden is so damn formative, not just for the characters, but Scotland's identity itself.

Lauren Lyle is beautiful, and she does look a bit like Nell Hudson. She and Cesar are going to be so cute together. I'm glad they aged Marsali up a couple years. Nothing is really lost, and it's one less issue that unnecessarily needs to develop. It'll be fun to see a protective step-father. I always loved the parental dynamics on the ship. We still don't have confirmation there is a Duncan, right?

Young Ian, Older Fergus... seeing these casting announcements, I feel like it's Jamie nesting before bringing his boys home (we're a couple seasons out before Jamie refers to Roger as his son). Weird way to describe it, but it just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to imagine the hopefully awesome dynamics Sam has with younger guys. Not to mention a small boy who will probably be cast shortly - if he hasn't been already. After the scene with baby Katherine, my heart will melt into a puddle when William shows up. Does anyone know if Sam and Cait have seen each other much on set? I was also imagining how interesting it would be if they tried to stay away from each other until the print shop block episodes, for a little method acting experience. I'm so excited to meet Marsali! She has her own journey in Voyager. I hope that wedding is as fun as Woody's wedding in "Cheers".

The easiest way to answer that is to direct you to the tour: Scottish Dream Tours' Romancing the Highlands. I can't recommend it enough. The tour guides are outstanding guys, and it's a small group experience. Only 10-11 people are on each tour, which makes everything better. They've been doing it for 10+ years, but, surprise surprise, it's really taken off the last couple years. This is the first year they've sold out, and I'm sure that will continue. I love Outlander, and I'm a huge history buff, but I fell in love with the land. For me, it really was heaven on earth. And you appreciate that kind of stuff as a cancer survivor. :) It's also about the people. The 10 of us came from all over the country: Oregon, Washington State, New Jersey, Colorado, Kansas, and yours truly from Minnesota. We bonded right away. It was pretty awesome. It was quite a thing to see these huge coach tours come to the sites: people get out, walk around, take pictures, then get back on the bus to spend most of the day on the road. This tour is a 180 from that. We drove on local roads, saw so much land and towns, and got the local and authentic flavor every step of the way. Seriously, it's awesome. It really was the trip of my dreams. A few of us are going back on a different SDT trip in a few years. They're also on Facebook and Instagram. I kind of didn't want to post this, so it could stay a lesser-known treasure, but that ship has sailed with their 10,000 likes on FB. You get a lot of intimate experiences that you would never get on big group tours. (And the best Tattoo seats in the place! The guys wait HOURS to snag those.) Nothing against large coach tours for people who like those (it is a great travel option for some people), but these tours live up to their name. ETA: Make that 50,000 FB likes. Yeah, that ship has sailed.

I'll answer in the small talk thread.

I got back from my kick-ass Scotland trip two weeks ago. It's all about layers. There can be a 15 degree difference between sun and shade, especially when you factor in wind. I wore short sleeve shirts with a sweatshirt and a jacket. There were 15 minute intervals when I would take off or put on one or both of the top layers 2 or 3 times. Incidentally, I spent over three hours trying to decide which pants to bring. Just before I left, I tossed in a second pair of shorts, just in case. I ended up wearing those two pairs of shorts 75% of the time. I like freer legs for walking and climbing, and I'm from Minnesota. As long as I was warm on top, I was good. It's all relative and about personal comfort.

Maybe it's a Claire-Frank flashback that's in a 2nd or 3rd block episode.

He looks like mini Sam Heughan. Damn. I thought it'd be impossible to find a William. Now I hope they can find another one to actually play William. And he was the boy who played Creet in Doctor Who in the Utopia episode in 2007?! Geez, where do the years go.

Oh funny - my first name also starts with those 3 letters, with the emphasis on the second syllable of three. Wow - I guess I was pronunciation-biased without knowing it.

I've said it "mar-Suh-lee" all this time, but I do like the emphasis on the first syllable. I'm changing it in my head from now on. (Watch, it'll be something completely different, on the show.)

Sometimes his tweets annoy me, but then I remember Boston Legal and all is forgiven. Wouldn't it be fantastic to see a charity promo YouTube of him and Sam in chairs drinking whisky on a balcony? Ok, now that I have that image, it needs to happen. Make it so.

The other mystery I'm hoping is revealed is who planted the forget-me-nots by the stones and when. Someone would probably have to leave the colonies and go back to Scotland. I hope we find that out.

I kind of love those Chris Albrecht articles. It shows Starz isn't dependent on Emmy acknowledgment to support their shows. Seasons 5 and 6 would be outstanding. The vocal group of fandumb just needs to keep from pushing the cast and crew away.

See: Geneva Dunsany. According to OutlanderWiki, she was 18 when she died. So there's... that.

I didn't have any expectations in the actor categories. The Academy (even the Tonys, sometimes - it seems kind of cliche-y) tends to be either "wash, rinse, repeat" or wanting to prove they're trendy. "Orange was the New Black" was trendy the last couple years, and this year it's not nominated. "Mr. Robot" is the flavor of the year (don't get me wrong - it's a decent show). I hope at least the costume award is presented at the big event, and not at the Creative Emmys. I want everyone in that theater - and at home in prime-Twitter-time - to hear the title "Outlander". Get more of that name recognition going.

So they have to be heavily in the midst of casting, right? I'm excited to see adult Fergus and Young Ian, of course, but I'm also really excited to see Marsali. She's one of my favorite secondary characters in the series. She's strong in so many ways, and you'd never imagine that at the beginning of Voyageur. And she has one of my favorite non-Jamie-and-or-Claire sentences in the entire series: "I dinna like ye, and I reckon ye ken that, but Da says you're a wisewoman, and I think you're maybe an honest woman, even if ye are a whore, so you'll maybe tell me." They better keep that line in the show.

I'm wondering if Toni and Matt each took one of the centuries. That way there can be consistency in tone for each century. The problem with doing it that way is that it's jarring, with little smooth transitions. And since the Culloden story happens in such a short time-frame (hence the minutes shown), it feels a lot more choppy, as you noted. I'm not sure how that could be fixed, outside of showing the 1700s first and then the 60s afterwards. I can't imagine how this episode could ever be 60 minutes. As for the Bree discussion, I think there's much more expectations for her than other characters. She's supposed to be the offspring of two beloved characters. Those beloved characters aren't compared to their parents, and we don't know Roger's parents either. I think that plays to Brianna's character not measuring up for book readers too. That's why I appreciate Claire's line about how she came to love Brianna for herself, and not as Jamie's daughter. I'm taking that approach and giving Sophie room to breathe and grow. Again, we know that at least one of the audition scenes are from book 4; So, at this point, I trust in the casting, since they've seen more of her than we have.

Watching live. Just caught something new. BPC quotes Jesus' "blessed are those who have not seen but believe." The next line is Jamie's "It's a blessing Colum didn't live to see this day." That's some good writing there. I really love how they (and Diana) write Jamie's faith. BPC has the words, but Jamie has the spirit.

Yeah, they never brought it up. In The Gathering, when Claire is in the stable trying to escape and explaining how she had to knock Dougal out because he was close to sexual assault and saw she had packed to leave, Jamie says something like "I hope you left a mark so he remembers his error in judgement." While saying that, he puts his hand to the back of his head. It seemed an intentional choice, and I've always thought that's Sam nodding to that injury for the book readers, even though the event wasn't brought up on the show. Similar to his tapping his fingers or squeezing a ball of rags to exercise his healing hand.

It reminded me a bit of a scene in "Saving Private Ryan", when one of the soldiers is killed like that; it was awful to watch. This one was a little less graphic than that, but it was still awful to watch because we see a nephew forced to kill his uncle. Said nephew couldn't do it himself, so his wife has to give him strength - physically and emotionally. I really like how that was written and directed.

Agreed. I, too, read some negative comments about Sophie on Reddit, after I watched. I had no problem with her either. She kind of came of as naive, compared to everyone else. That works for me, since she's younger than everyone else (8 years younger than Roger) and hasn't been as hardened by life as others. She lost her daddy, which is traumatic, of course, but she's been raised in a very white collar world. Even Roger grew up in the wild country of Scotland and, as we learn later, worked as a seaman for a time. Brianna gets exposed to more intense things as the series goes on; Sophie has a lot of time to demonstrate that. We saw Sam bring it this this year with the development of Jamie becoming the King of Men. I remember one of the audition scenes was when Brianna tells Claire she's pregnant, which will be in season 4. The casting has been stellar so far; I trust that they saw that Sophie can carry Brianna's development. I feel the same way about Richard/Roger. I don't know what were the Roger audition scenes, but I like to imagine the fight between Jamie and Roger when Roger arrives at the cabin after Jem's birth in Drums of Autumn was one of them. Richard would have to show he can stand toe-to-toe with Himself (i.e., Sam's Jamie) and earn Jamie's respect. And Richard also brings Roger's quiet and peaceful nature, like when he calms Brianna. You can already see how he'll become a minister several years down the line. I agree about the chemistry between Sophie and Richard. They're adorable together. It's different than Claire and Jamie, but it is in the books as well. I'm looking forward to seeing their relationship develop in the 60s.