S07.14 Ye Dinna Get Used to It

[GHScorpiosRule]

The truth about Lord John Grey's mysterious disappearance is revealed; Brianna faces off with the foes threatening her family.

Seems we see Claire workin' on Lord John's eye!

 

 

[Ziggy]

1 hour ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

 

 

Seems we see Claire workin' on Lord John's eye!

 

 

I was NOT looking forward to this part. Thankfully, they didn’t show anything or really even explain it. The look of horror on Jamie’s face was enough for me!

Edited December 27, 2024 by Ziggy

[Night Cheese]

Well I was wrong about them skipping the Percy Beauchamp storyline. John's eye repair wasn't nearly as gruesome as in the books and actually more tame than some of the surgical scenes in the show. Other than that... not much happened. Of course Claire just stumbles upon the Marquis de Lafayette. She always seems to be in the absolute right time at the absolute right moment, without fail.

[ch1]

29 minutes ago, Night Cheese said:

Well I was wrong about them skipping the Percy Beauchamp storyline. John's eye repair wasn't nearly as gruesome as in the books and actually more tame than some of the surgical scenes in the show. Other than that... not much happened. Of course Claire just stumbles upon the Marquis de Lafayette. She always seems to be in the absolute right time at the absolute right moment, without fail.

Personally I found this and the dinner with Washington/flag giving to be really forced and eye rolling.

Nice of Jaime to blame LJ for getting caught up with the continentals seeing as it’s his fault he wound up there. Imagine getting recaptured in land that is in the American’s control.

Am I the only one who doesn’t really care about Jane and Fanny?  

This has nothing to do with anything but  I think the actor who plays Hal would have worked as Washington.

 

[Ziggy]

Between Ezekiel Richardson and Percy Beauchamp, we are 100% into the plot I didn’t know I was reading until “Bees.”

[Night Cheese]

21 hours ago, ch1 said:

Personally I found this and the dinner with Washington/flag giving to be really forced and eye rolling.

Yep, Jamie and Claire being seemingly the only people in the entire city of Philadelphia is remarkable. And we also got Benedict Arnold this season. When the Marquis mentioned dancing with the Queen, I said in my best Claire voice, "well I slept with the King and even got an orange afterwards!" 

21 hours ago, ch1 said:

Am I the only one who doesn’t really care about Jane and Fanny?

You're not alone. Seems like as much as I want to care about William and his life, Diana always assures me that she will be writing the most boring storylines for him that I can just skip right over. Looks like the show has adopted this as well.

Edited December 28, 2024 by Night Cheese
Assure not ensure

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, Ziggy said:

I was NOT looking forward to this part. Thankfully, they didn’t show anything or really even explain it. The look of horror on Jamie’s face was enough for me!

Good to know! Because Gabaldon was so descriptive in the buik, it grossed me out.

And as I've stated in last week's thread, Roberts and company don't really give a crap about this show any longer, and are just zipping through to get to 8? 9? because they're focused on the prequel (which I have NO INTEREST in), and don't care that non-buik readers are left at sea.

I didn't care for buik William, Rachel, or even Lord John Gray. David Berry sold me on the character. I still don't give any blue dilly fooooks about Show William, Fanny, Jane, Rachel, and the rest of the lot.

Just Claire and Jamie, but the writers are making even that difficult.

Methinks I'll go back tae seasons 1-3.

[Cdh20]

19 hours ago, Night Cheese said:

Yep, Jamie and Claire being seemingly the only people in the entire city of Philadelphia is remarkable. And we also got Benedict Arnold this season. When the Marquis mentioned dancing with the Queen, I said in my best Claire voice, "well I slept with the King and even got an orange afterwards!" 

 

I said out loud for Claire “ oh I knew her husband, the King!” 🥴

19 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Good to know! Because Gabaldon was so descriptive in the buik, it grossed me out.

And as I've stated in last week's thread, Roberts and company don't really give a crap about this show any longer, and are just zipping through to get to 8? 9? because they're focused on the prequel (which I have NO INTEREST in), and don't care that non-buik readers are left at sea.

I didn't care for buik William, Rachel, or even Lord John Gray. David Berry sold me on the character. I still don't give any blue dilly fooooks about Show William, Fanny, Jane, Rachel, and the rest of the lot.

Just Claire and Jamie, but the writers are making even that difficult.

Methinks I'll go back tae seasons 1-3.

The books at this point (7, & 8) are scarce on J&C, with so many other characters’ storylines, & perspectives so the show is following the books.  I read them only a few years ago, & Roger, Bree, & William’s current storylines were the most interesting at this point, but then I’ve about had it with this war, & wish Jamie & Claire felt the same.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I’m waiting for Claire to be shot, and for Jamie to write “I QUIT” in her blood and leave at this point. And if I recall, Gabaldon wrote this week’s episode. While I sneer at her purple prose in the buiks her show writings tend to be good, but other than Lord John? Boring as FOOOK for this one.

[nodorothyparker]

The show is compressing the crap out of the books but it's also pretty faithful to the last three (7-9) books in that they're very much ensemble pieces instead of just Jamie and Claire's story. They're both 60ish now and so much of it is about children and grandchildren and all of these lives that either existed at all or became intertwined because of time travel and our core pair.

I'm mostly just relieved that the show seems to be making the final approach to wrapping the 1980 story to get Bree and Roger back into the main storyline. Much of it has been better than expected, mostly I think due to the actors playing Roger and Buck being able to sell the weirdness of it all, but it's run its course. Bonus to the show confirming that the very very minor character of Mike Callahan in his blink and you'll miss it cameo at the Lollybroch shootout is indeed our final time traveling big bad Ezekiel Richardson. Gabaldon herself wrote this episode, which has to be a bit weird for her in setting up the resolution to this final story that she hasn't written yet in the books.  I sort of remember her being kind of smug when the disaster of the Game of Thrones final seasons passed those books, basically saying at the time that they still had several books to adapt and that she would definitely have an ending. And now here we are. 

Jamie is finally slightly less assy this episode but still pretty dismissive of the mess he left Lord John in. He also seems pretty comfortable continuing to play house in John's house and entertaining what John would have considered a pack of traitors there with no regard to how it may look to John's British cohorts. Jamie might as well be peeing on the walls of the Philadelphia house to mark his territory in hanging the colonial flag over John's mantle and you could see that that wasn't lost on him. The dinner with Washington and Lafayette was pretty clunky, as if the show felt like it needed some of the revolution's greatest hits cameos even it didn't really amount to much. 

I love how much of Jane's story the show is managing to keep intact even with all the condensing it has to do. Even in her limited time, she's such a catalyst for Jamie and William's relationship going forward and brings Fanny into the Fraser family fold. I've always liked on the page that Claire and Rachel both intrinsically get how nonexistent Jane's options really were. The actress also has tremendous chemistry with Charles Vandervaart, who continues to do great work as someone nearly stewing himself alive while trying to do anything else.

 

Edited December 29, 2024 by nodorothyparker

[Jodithgrace]

I actually laughed during the cold open, when she made sure we all understood where Lord John got his alias. Was anybody really wondering about that?

I just finished rereading Bees, but I hadn’t read the previous books in quite a while, so I couldn’t remember exactly what was changed. I can’t remember exactly how Roger gets reunited with Bree and the kids and end up on Fraser’s Ridge at the correct time, so it will be interesting to see.

I know that DG has said that the series will end differently than the books. It makes sense because the season 8 ending has already been shot, while book 10 is still in the works. But unlike Game of Thrones which went off on its own, I hope DG will control the ending, since it is based on books which have been written. 
 

I still love this series, and get goosebumps during the theme song watching the American soldiers marching.

[Ziggy]

38 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

I'm mostly just relieved that the show seems to be making the final approach to wrapping the 1980 story to get Bree and Roger back into main storyline. Much of it has been better than expected, mostly I think due to the actors playing Roger and Buck being able to sell the weirdness of it all, but it's run its course.

I am absolutely thrilled with this!!!  This story was really spread out in the book and, dare I say, dragged out a bit!

The one question I have is, will Bree find Frank's letter?

45 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

Bonus to the show confirming that the very very minor character of Mike Callahan in his blink and you'll miss it cameo at the Lollybroch shootout is indeed our final time traveling big bad Ezekiel Richardson.

Blink and you'll miss it was right!!!  I froze the image of him staring at the van driving away and asked my sons if they thought it was the same actor.  They said, "Definitely!"  I was having trouble seeing it, but I thought it had to be.  Otherwise, why bother pulling off the mask of one of them and focusing on the face?

[nodorothyparker]

3 hours ago, Jodithgrace said:

I actually laughed during the cold open, when she made sure we all understood where Lord John got his alias. Was anybody really wondering about that?

I read that as they were re-establishing who the Greys, Hal Grey in particular, are as far as why Richardson is so specifically targeting them. Telling us where Lord John got his alias just felt like a bonus thrown in. We haven't seen Hal onscreen since he briefly appeared at Helwater all the way back in season 3. I don't know if we're supposed to think Hal is still in England three years after that scene is set when his book counterpart is actively running military campaigns in America when he's not periodically running back to London as Duke of Pardloe to make influential speeches about the war in the House of Lords or if it even particularly matters. Richardson believes Hal has enough sway in British government to keep support for the war going until the Americans can be defeated. Hal is, after all, the same guy who executed all the Jacobite leaders after Culloden excepting Jamie.

Edited December 28, 2024 by nodorothyparker

[Cdh20]

5 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

The show is compressing the crap out of the books but it's also pretty faithful to the last three (7-9) books in that they're very much ensemble pieces instead of just Jamie and Claire's story. They're both 60ish now and so much of it is about children and grandchildren and all of these lives that either existed at all or became intertwined because of time travel and our core pair.

I'm mostly just relieved that the show seems to be making the final approach to wrapping the 1980 story to get Bree and Roger back into main storyline. Much of it has been better than expected, mostly I think due to the actors playing Roger and Buck being able to sell the weirdness of it all, but it's run its course. Bonus to the show confirming that the very very minor character of Mike Callahan in his blink and you'll miss it cameo at the Lollybroch shootout is indeed our final time traveling big bad Ezekiel Richardson. Gabaldon herself wrote this episode, which has to be a bit weird for her in setting up the resolution to this final story that she hasn't written yet in the books.  I sort of remember her being kind of smug when the disaster of the Game of Thrones final seasons passed those books, basically saying at the time that they still had several books to adapt and that she would definitely have an ending. And now here we are. 

Jamie is finally slightly less assy this episode but still pretty dismissive of the mess he left Lord John in. He also seems pretty comfortable continuing to play house in John's house and entertaining what John would have considered a pack of traitors there with no regard to how it may look to John's British cohorts. Jamie might as well be peeing on the walls of the Philadelphia house to mark his territory in hanging the colonial flag over John's mantle and you could see that that wasn't lost on him. The dinner with Washington and Lafayette was pretty clunky, as if the show felt like it needed some of the revolution's greatest hits cameos even it didn't really amount to much. 

I love how much of Jane's story the show is managing to keep intact even with all the condensing it has to do. Even in her limited time, she's such a catalyst for Jamie and William's relationship going forward and brings Fanny into the Fraser family fold. I've always liked on the page that Claire and Rachel both intrinsically get how nonexistent Jane's options really were. The actress also has tremendous chemistry with Charles Vandervaart, who continues to do great work as someone nearly stewing himself alive while trying to do anything else.

 

That dinner was just an excuse for Claire to meet historical figures. I loved her expression eating eel🤣. 

 

Jamie  marking his territory 🤣🤣

William’s face when he was called a groom ( Charles is killing it)! 
 

I am not a  big fan Diana’s books, but I like her scripts, I kinda loved this episode. 

Edited December 28, 2024 by Cdh20
Adding a thought

[Haleth]

9 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

Mike Callahan in his blink and you'll miss it cameo at the Lollybroch shootout is indeed our final time traveling big bad Ezekiel Richardson.

Was he?  I blinked and missed it. It’s been too long since I read the books.

I do remember being confused about John, his brother, Percy, and whatever else was going on with them  

So this season is covering multiple books?  Just goes to show how bloated her writing is that when it’s pared down the show can blow through them with lightning speed. 

[Ziggy]

1 hour ago, Haleth said:

So this season is covering multiple books?  Just goes to show how bloated her writing is that when it’s pared down the show can blow through them with lightning speed. 

My understanding is that the show got the green light for Season 8 well after Season 7 was all planned out.  Because they thought Season 7 was going to be the last one, they chose to end with the same ending as Moby.  When they did get the green light for Season 8, they said, "Ok, we're doing Bees."

I might be wrong, but I thought I read that somewhere.

[FnkyChkn34]

I come to the book talk thread because as a non-book reader (well, I made it through book 4 before I couldn't read them anymore, awful writing but decent storytelling), I have no clue what is going on.

Who is Percy?  Who was the robber at Bree's?  Maybe I don't pay close enough attention, but I don't pick up on any of this, and it's frustrating that I'm supposed to.  "Beauchamp" wasn't John's step-brother, but his ex-lover, right?  Who is he other than that??

The Bree and Roger storyline lost me last season.  I really thought there would be more with Dougal and Geillis and less just wandering around the countryside aimlessly.  Roger's father was a nice touch, but also - had we ever even heard of him before?  Roger should have told him who he was.  But also, how long had his father been in the past and still couldn't figure out what happened?  Just days, or years?  Claire figured it out within hours, and this guy didn't?  Hmm...

I don't care about William; he's a brat.  I don't know who Jane and Fanny are, but I guess I'll give them a chance.

I know she's a Quaker, but I can't stand the way Rachel talks.  I like Ian, but they don't have much chemistry, or maybe it's just because I think Rachel should be a nun instead...

Years ago when Claire went back, she dyed her hair so Jamie didn't see the gray.  What's she using to dye it now?  There are like a dozen strands of gray and she should be totally gray now.  So should he.  They are the hottest 60-somethings in colonial times ever.  🙄

[Night Cheese]

1 hour ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

Years ago when Claire went back, she dyed her hair so Jamie didn't see the gray.  What's she using to dye it now?  There are like a dozen strands of gray and she should be totally gray now.  So should he.  They are the hottest 60-somethings in colonial times ever.  🙄

This season's Scotland scenes with Jamie standing next to a fully greyed Ian while still rocking his naturally red (albeit lighter now that he's older) hair was wild to me. 

I also never understood how, in the 1960s scenes, Claire often wore glasses, but now we get Jamie teasing her about needing spectacles. I assume her needing spectacles is about needing reading glasses, and that she was near-sighted in the 60s scenes because she wore them driving, but how did her near-sightedness go away when she went back to the 1760s?

[nodorothyparker]

People gray and age at different rates. I'm six weeks older than my husband and I've been dyeing for years. His hair is still pretty much the same color it was when we met more than 20 years ago. But the real answer has always been that the show is only going to let its leads age so far. It is still TV. They both still have to look reasonably good.

5 hours ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

Who is Percy?  Who was the robber at Bree's?  Maybe I don't pay close enough attention, but I don't pick up on any of this, and it's frustrating that I'm supposed to.  "Beauchamp" wasn't John's step-brother, but his ex-lover, right?  Who is he other than that??

The Bree and Roger storyline lost me last season.  I really thought there would be more with Dougal and Geillis and less just wandering around the countryside aimlessly.  Roger's father was a nice touch, but also - had we ever even heard of him before?  Roger should have told him who he was.  But also, how long had his father been in the past and still couldn't figure out what happened?  Just days, or years?  Claire figured it out within hours, and this guy didn't?  Hmm...

Percy's real name is Wainwright but he was calling himself Beauchamp because of an advantageous marriage he made. Yes, he's both Lord John's former stepbrother AND former lover. (It's complicated in the books, but Claire and Jamie both pick up on this without Lord John spelling it out for them.) Without bogging down in all the frankly tedious details, Percy is an opportunist who has his finger in a lot of pies and isn't really loyal to anyone but does at least appear to still have some genuine feeling for Lord John, even if he's screwed him over in the past.

Rob Cameron read Roger's guide to time travel and later Jamie's letters talking about the hidden Jacobite gold. He kidnapped Jem to try to force him to tell where the gold is and set the whole fakeout that sent Roger and Buck back through the stones into motion. I don't think the show has explained that one of his two accomplices we saw, Mike Callahan, has been working on the renovations to Lollybroch and thus has had access to the house but it did make a point of name dropping him this episode and showed very briefly that he's the same guy calling himself Richardson in the colonial timeline.

The books make it clear that Claire really lucked out hooking up with Jamie when she accidentally went through the stones, all the great sex and one true love stuff aside. She was provided for and protected while she figured it out and luckily had a usable skill set and knowledge. We're presented with numerous time travelers like Wendigo Donner who went through and promptly got themselves in trouble or killed because they didn't know what they were doing. We're told Roger's father has been stealing food from local villagers because he didn't know what had happened or how to fix it, which is why the locals were after him and Roger didn't really have time to tell him much. All the wacky hijinks with time travel aside, it really doesn't amount to much on the page either.

 

Edited December 29, 2024 by nodorothyparker

[Ziggy]

4 hours ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

Who is Percy?  Who was the robber at Bree's?  Maybe I don't pay close enough attention, but I don't pick up on any of this, and it's frustrating that I'm supposed to.  "Beauchamp" wasn't John's step-brother, but his ex-lover, right?  Who is he other than that??

I really don't think you're "supposed" to know any of this.  I think if you read the book and noticed ... bonus.  I seriously don't think you are going to miss out at all if you didn't.

Percy Beauchamp was just introduced for the first time, so you are definitely not to supposed to already know who he is.  He is both Lord John's step brother and his former lover, but I really don't know if those details really matter ... other than to establish that they have a history.  The Beauchamp part, as far as I know, is still unresolved in the books.

"Who was the robber at Bree's?"  Please tell me you are only aware of that because you read the book thread, because if you are curious just from watching that scene, I have absolutely know clue what you saw :-)  (and I'm even less observant than I thought!).

I think they are looking for gold or trying to find more clues about the gold.  One of them comes back in the 9th book, "Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone," but I don't think there were really any clues that that would happen.

Who knows, maybe I just missed it.  I only read books 7-9 one time, and there is so much information.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Ziggy

[FnkyChkn34]

21 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

"Who was the robber at Bree's?"  Please tell me you are only aware of that because you read the book thread, because if you are curious just from watching that scene, I have absolutely know clue what you saw :-)  (and I'm even less observant than I thought!).

Correct!  I had no idea that I was supposed to realize anything about him until I read it here. :-) 

[Jodithgrace]

It’s interesting that Claire’s hair color is actually a thing in the books, but I can’t recall if the subplot about Claire’s healing abilities has made it into the series. Supposedly Claire will come into her full power when her hair is white which happens in Bees.  
 

Without that plot line, it really doesn’t matter what color Clair’s hair is. She and Jamie do look young for their supposed ages. 

[Ziggy]

1 hour ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

Correct!  I had no idea that I was supposed to realize anything about him until I read it here. :-) 

No, you're not!

The only reason I knew anything is that once I read about it in Bees, I used the search on my Kindle to try to find all the times he appeared in the book.

The only reason I was certain it was him was that as the van is driving away and Rob gets out of his car, he yells the guy's name.  Even then, I wasn't sure what he yelled until I replayed it with the captioning on.  THAT is how much of a "blink and you'll miss it" moment it was for Book readers.

[Haleth]

I’m sure most people missed it. Poor direction. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

I saw it, and the bloody face of Callahan. But I swear, it didn't look like the same guy when he's Richardson. And if he's Scots, how'd he lose his burr, eh?

Guess I'm overthinking it, as I'm wont tae do. But as far as this portion? I dinna care.

And since I only read through buik 8, I guess I can now be considered a non-buik reader because I'm lost as to what from buik 9 has been used. All I remember is when Gabaldon would provide teasers and there was a scene with Roger and Jamie, talking about Claire and her rape and how she was still dealing with it or something. Unless it didn't make it to the printing page?

So I'll head over to the buik thread to see what's discussed so I won't be totally lost.

But as I posted up thread, at this point, I'm waiting for Jamie to quit and how he does it. I hope it's just like in the buik, because that was AWESOME.

[Atlanta]

Fun fact about redheads (I'm married to one) is that they rarely go gray. Their color will pale and eventually go white. My husband is 52 and no grays.

[FnkyChkn34]

31 minutes ago, Atlanta said:

Fun fact about redheads (I'm married to one) is that they rarely go gray. Their color will pale and eventually go white. My husband is 52 and no grays.

I worked with a guy who was a strawberry blond (I guess? definitely had a shade of red) and he was white by his mid 30s.  While red hair doesn't change in the same way as other colors, I think everyone is still different and it can fade at any age.  

[Ziggy]

On 12/29/2024 at 5:34 PM, Haleth said:

I’m sure most people missed it. Poor direction. 

Not poor direction at all.  Excellent direction!!!

Clues were dropped, but that's all.

1.  Two men (who are not Rob Cameron) were inside the house.  Bree pulls the mask off of one of them, and the camera focuses on his face.  Why?

2.  Rob yells out a name ... just one name.  Why?

These questions are left unanswered.  Intrigue!

Yes, if you've read the books you know some of the answers, but only because you read past this part.  At this point, you didn't know any of this mattered.