BOMB Episode 106: "Birthright" (SPOILERS!)

Here are my reactions to Episode 106 of OUTLANDER: BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, titled "Birthright".

*** SPOILER WARNING!! ***

There are SPOILERS below! If you don't want to know yet, stop reading now.

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PLEASE NOTE: As always, what follows are my personal opinions only! You're certainly free to watch and make up your own mind.

I thought this episode was easily the worst of the whole season so far. It had one or two good moments, but the vast majority of the episode was awful, all but unwatchable. I'm not going to attempt a detailed recap, just a few reactions.

Julia's entire storyline in this episode was like something out of a horror movie. The sequence with the women conducting what amounted to an interrogation (or inquisition) of a woman in labor (!) was horrific, and dragged on far too long. I was half hoping Julia would respond to their repeated demands to know who the father of her child was by gasping out, "Henry Beauchamp," just to get them to stop, for God's sake!

I found that whole sequence nearly unbearable to watch. It felt like torture, as though the women didn't even consider Julia a fellow human being. No empathy, not even a shred of human decency, for a woman going through such an incredibly painful ordeal.

The cruelty and general lack of kindness, empathy, compassion, and human decency among most of the 18th-century characters forms a major theme in this episode. The whole idea of Lord Lovat proposing to force Julia to marry him while she's in active labor (so that the baby will be his legitimate heir) was just ludicrous, to put it mildly. Lovat came across as a madman, so determined to get his way that he won't listen to reason.

I have to say I really liked the priest, despite his small role, because he was willing to take a stand in favor of simple human decency and morality, and say (paraphrasing), "No, this is wrong, and I won't go along with it!"

Brian continues to demonstrate that he is a genuinely kind and decent man. I particularly liked his line, "I will do as my honor and my conscience dictates, and so should you. If you have any decency at all, you'll leave this chamber."

Still, the overall impression I'm left with in this episode (and the series as a whole, to be honest) is that the people with power will always use it in the most cruel and heartless ways imaginable. What a grim, depressing view of the world!

And it's not just in Julia's storyline. I was struck by the casual cruelty in the way Arch Bug paid off that woman to tell Henry a completely fabricated story about his wife and baby having died in childbirth, "buried in a pauper's grave".

It reminds me of Dougal lying to Jamie about his sister becoming a whore to BJR, which is what kept Jamie away from Lallybroch for years after Ft. William. But it's worse, in this case, IMHO, because Henry's sole focus has been his search for Julia, and Arch (by his actions in paying the woman to lie to Henry) dashed those hopes so thoroughly that Henry might actually suffer permanent psychological damage from it. Arch's defense, such as it was (the laird ordered him to do it) just made me mad. That's no excuse!

Poor Henry appears to have suffered a psychotic breakdown of some sort. He's apparently lost touch with reality, unable to tell the difference between Julia and a whore in the brothel he frequents, and worse, unable to distinguish memories from real life. He runs down the road, joyfully shouting the news that the war is over, thoroughly startling the 18th-century people he passes.

"Oh, Julia! As long as I have you and Claire, I can survive anything." But he doesn't have either of them, and it doesn't look like he ever will.

I really disliked this turn of events! Henry appears to have suffered severe and possibly permanent psychological damage. Is it a coincidence that Danielle Berrow, the writer of this episode, also wrote OUTLANDER Episode 607, "Sticks and Stones", in which we see Claire suffering severe psychological effects from PTSD, tormented by the image and voice of Lionel Brown? (You may recall that I was quite upset by that at the time.)

About Davina Porter's role in this episode: I understand what the writers were trying to do, in showing the (many) parallels between Julia's situation and Davina Porter's. Davina was raped by Lord Lovat as a young teenager, resulting in Brian's birth. She was subjected to the same verbal abuse and harassment that Julia suffers in this episode, for daring to bear a child out of wedlock, and I do feel some sympathy for her on that account. But Davina behaved just as hatefully toward Julia, for most of this episode, as the women conducting that "inquisition".

It seems that she did have a genuine change of heart with regard to Julia, when she banished the "inquisitors" from the birthing chamber at long last, and I was glad to see her finally speaking her mind to Lord Lovat, saying, "When have you ever cared about what's right in the eyes of man or God?"

So Julia has given birth to a son. (Just a reminder: as I said in my Episode 101 post, in the books, there is no hint whatsoever that Claire ever had any siblings!) For me, the flashback scenes showing Julia giving birth to Claire only serve to emphasize the glaring fact that Henry and Julia have another child, whom they rarely even think about and likely will never see again. That's a depressing thought.

Finally, I did like the scene between Brian and Lord Lovat starting at 23:16, where they discuss the "Fraser name" and what Brian has made of himself so far. But that was the only scene in the whole episode that I really enjoyed, and it was FAR outweighed by my horror and disgust at the rest of it.

I won't be watching this episode again.

Look here for my reactions to the other BLOOD OF MY BLOOD episodes, and please come back next week for more!

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