Outlander: Season 2, Episode 10: 'Prestopans'

Claire runs into a corpse in the woods, as you do, when caught smack dab in the middle of a revolution. A decomposing highlander with a spider crawling along his grey, bloody face— some guy unlucky enough to “run afoul” of a Redcoat patrol. “How many men had I seen killed in war?” Voiceover Claire asks herself and us, reminding all of last week’s episode with its unofficial PTSD public service announcement—when we saw our heroine in her World War II gear. This time, Outlander continues to ponder “War, what is it good for?” (SPOILER ALERT: Absolutely nothing!)

Prince Charlie listens to his advisers, Jamie chief among them, as they argue over tactics. After a bit of debate over boggy ground and the exact reach of the British muskets—fifty yards? A hundred? Who knows? Technology often wins the day in these things—some want to do that glorious highland charge thing right at the army facing off them across a grassy field while others, like Jamie, worry such a direct fight assault favors Cope’s army. Finally, Prince Charlie speaks, in his self-important, over-enunciated dramatic fashion. “Mark Me!” he starts, and tells Jamie he wishes Claire, in charge of all casualties, to tend to the British wounded before the Jacobites! First, why does this guy always have to say every sentence with “Mark Me”? Second, what the hell, man?! Claire won’t do it, no way, Jamie answers. And then the Prince, in that spoiled royal brat manner, makes Jamie kiss his hand. Don’t you just hate this guy?

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Poor Jamie. He'd just love to tell the Prince, "You're the worst kind of guy and your wig looks super stupid." But alas, he cannot. Wartime sacrifices and all.[/caption]

Meanwhile, the troops are growing restless. Angus spits ale on some guy just for laughs, almost sparking off a testosterone-fueled knife fight. Dougal, tipped off by Jamie, rides his horse straight across the battlefield, taunting the enemy to fire! In doing so, he discovers just how difficult and muddy the field is and exactly how far their weapons will reach. Shots are fired at his feet! His horse is stuck in the mud! The hat is knocked off his head by a bulllet—and the guy, cool as a summer night in Edinburgh, just smiles! Whatever else he is, Dougal is a badass. But this means that glorious charge is not an option.

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Come at me, bro![/caption]

Cut to Claire training some ladies at the makeshift hospital with her magical 1940s medical knowledge about things--like honey water to keep blood pressure up, replace fluids and prevent shock. (Future medical knowledge is somehow a surprisingly cool superpower. Watching her shock and awe people with it makes you wanna go back a few hundred years with a suitcase full of antibiotics to perform miracles and start your own cult. If you could somehow avoid getting burned for witchcraft, it would be so easy!) It’s even more satisfying later on when Murtagh looks to her for reassurance. “We win the day, correct?” And she can say yes. The “promise of history” is not something that really benefits them in the long run—considering what the history books have to say about the Jacobite cause in the end—so it’s odd they’re banking on it for this particular battle, but whatever comfort you can give a man facing possible death is probably a good thing. Claire’s been in enough wars to know that.

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I prefer the "take what you want and leave the rest" theory of time travel.[/caption]

Meanwhile, adorable scamp Fergus grumbles over being stuck with the women, but he seems resigned to it. Nothing is really happening yet anyway. Until he brings a local boy named Anderson to Claire. He knows a small hidden trail that the Jacobites can use to surprise the English in the dark! It’s on!

On the eve of battle, the men worry over what will be, promise to take care of each other’s families with spit-filled handshakes—“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine!”—and wonder if their deaths would have any meaning. And like 10-year-old kids anywhere, Fergus has decided he wants to be where the excitement is. He makes his case to Jamie and Claire.

Will the brave, precocious lad follow their orders and stay behind safe and sound? Or secretly head into battle with his lord? Who knows? Fingers crossed he stays out of the bloody fray—even though that would obviously be a much less dramatic option for the show itself. I mean, this is kind of the perfect time for an emotional example of how war deforms the young and emotionally scars them for life? Well, I guess it could go either way.

Hopefully, this kid will get a short break after this. He’s already been the victim of a violent sexual assault by Black Jack Randall since being semi-adopted by this pair. And now he’s in the middle of a battlefield filled with gore and spilled guts? “I killed an English soldier, milady!” he tells Claire after it’s all over, obviously traumatized. It's gonna be tough to appreciate this little guy as cute comic foil after all this. That whorehouse actually might have been a better place for him to grow up—and how often can you say that?

Speaking of spoilers, although the title of this episode is “Prestopans,” after the first battle of the Jacobite Rising of 1745, we won’t discuss whether the Jacobites or the Hanoverian army won the day of this episode. Sure, it’s all over 250 years in the past, but even so, we’ll let the plot unfold for those who aren’t fully up to speed on their Scottish battles. But we’ll reveal this: It’s bloody! Using the element of surprise thanks to that local kid, the Jacobites sneak up on the still-sleeping British army and slice them apart! Heads get smashed, limbs are severed, and throats are slit in a melee of slow-motion confusion. It turns even more brutal later on when Dougal roams the battlefield killing the wounded. That guy really hates the English! Really, really hates them! He even tries to kill a couple more at Claire’s hospital, earning Prince Charlie’s contempt in the process.

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A pissing joke works even when blood-soaked after killing a bunch of people.[/caption]

Finally, an odd bit of comic relief comes in at the end with a literal pissing contest—to show that these men are all the same, deep down—even with all the death and dying and nationalism, but the episode still finishes on a somber note. Claire tends to the wounded, Dougal is semi-banished for his savagery and there’s a heartbreaking death of an old friend. A young boy loses what little is left of his innocence and Claire adds a few more men to her list of the dead. For all the kilt-dropping sex Outlander usually provides, it really knows how to pile on the grief and horror as a wartime drama as well. “War tastes bitter no matter what the outcome,” Jamie says. What is it good for, Claire? Absolutely nothing. Say it again!