absnow54

They replayed Outlander pretty much on the hour every hour yesterday, and I swear I stopped to watch that scene every time. The way he says "Well then," and then glances down at her mouth before finishing the line, and then that disbelieving smirk at the end? Perfect casting.

This is a good point, and there are probably a few medical uses for it (I distinctly remember a scene from Pearl Harbor where they start gathering the nurse's hosiery for tourniquets) so if she were wearing any, she'd probably find some use for it.

Sam may have been talking about his kiss with Laoghaire, maybe? That happens pretty early on. There's also a scene right after Claire removes Jamie's bandages in her chambers after she'd been drinking. She says that that night she has unsettling dreams that she would not recall come morning. I always thought that given the sexual tension when she was tending to him, that she'd had a sex dream about him, so maybe there will be some sort of fake out, fantasy kiss. I think the first half of the season will end with Jamie's rescue of Claire from Randall and then pick up with the spanking in the second. I think the action of the rescue will be a more interesting note to end on, because the danger the party is in will be fresh. But, given how controversial the spanking scene is, they'll probably end with that so people have something to talk about during the hiatus.

Your sister and nephew were murdered at your wedding, and you still went on your honeymoon? For shame!

I admit, I disliked that change, but it wasn't just the "but that's Jamie's thing!" aspect of it, it was the change to Frank's character in general. As Frank is presented in the first handful of chapters, he seems somewhat selfish, and oblivious to Claire's needs. They go on a few day trips together, but often Frank leaves Claire to her own devices while he goes off to do his historical research and even when Claire is invited along, she feels ostracized (the tea scene goes very differently in the book.) Also, at this point, I think they're actively trying to start a family, which is another strain on their relationship, and I got the impression that although they enjoyed one another, the sex wasn't primarily for pleasure, so oral didn't make sense to me. I do agree though, given how confident and in tune Claire is with her sexuality, it's silly to think that she'd never been gone down on. I mean she did it for Jamie... with teeth, so it's not like the concept was completely foreign to her. He did use a horse analogy as his inspiration.

The 20 year time jump between the first and second book is very abrupt, so I don't they'll pay anything more than a few passing mentions and the occasional flashback to Frank raising Brianna.

I thought it was a nice subtle tie in where Frank assumes the mysterious ghost was a soldier that Claire had treated, and then, at the end of the episode, after Claire has treated Jamie, she refers to him as soldier. It kind of foreshadowed the journey Claire was about to take. I do suspect that Frank sought comfort during the war. Claire implies that he lost a lot of men behind the lines and that it troubled him, and it was also established that both used physical intimacy to solve their problems.

I know in Outlander especially, Claire slips into Jamie's POV, where she'll begin discussing something with Jamie through dialogue and then in the narrative fill in details as to what she learned from their conversation. Another example is Jamie's first encounter with Randall. Jamie speaks for several pages and then at one point, Claire takes over recounting the tale to the reader. I know I got a little tripped up in those types of scenes because it was hard to remember who was speaking and for whom they were speaking for. I think the recounting of the rape scene is similar.

I love that the flowers at Craigh na Dun are the first things to be vibrantly colored before Claire is swept back in time. It's a nice contrast against the unsaturated 40's coloring.

I assume they'll recast, which is unfortunate, because I really like the current actors they have in the roles. Cait and Sam are both in their 30's so they're already fairly older than their characters in the first two books, but I don't think I'd buy them as parents of a 20+ year old a few seasons down the line. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if they departed from the books and stayed in the 1940's/1740's time to deal with Claire's reappearance, but I also never got into the later books, so the new cast of characters don't appeal to me.

I was so impressed by the first episode. Caitriona Balfe is brilliant as Claire and embodied both her fire and her humor perfectly. I agree that two weeks is too long to wait. I can't wait to see the rest of this series.