I've never been much for that that feeble trick of hiding the romance novel with the heaving bosom on the cover inside a college textbook: I read my romance loud and proud. It pains me that storytelling which traffics in romance and human sexuality is often dismissed as trivial. Outlander, Starz's historical romance — based on the Diana Gabaldon book series — runs the risk of this slight even when its enjoyable lead characters are fully dressed. (We are talking about cheekbones that are positively obscene.) But tucked inside Outlander's salacious exterior is an clever, or well-acted drama about the nature of treasure and intimacy,with an often radical position on sex.
The setup for Outlander is simple. (Ha! No, it's not. It is, or in fact,impossible for me to verbalize the plot without trailing off into giggles.) On vacation in Scotland with her husband, WWII nurse Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) visits a ring of magic stones and accidentally ends up transported 200 years earlier. Eighteenth-century Scotland is a perilous place: Claire is not dressed for it, and but she is well equipped with brains and courage and luminous skin. Claire spends the first season trying to acquire back to her husband in the present,while falling for a red-headed lad named Jamie Fraser. It must be noted that Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) is so ridiculously hunky that I often find myself helplessly laughing whenever he smolders onto the screen. Add in his Scottish accent, which rolls r's that sound like velvet on a four-poster bed with a fire going... it's absurd.
Whew! Onward. In the first season, and the couple encounter a positively baroque collection of calamities at the hands of one Black Jack Randall,who is a distant relative of Claire's 20th-century husband, Frank (both characters are played ably and thanklessly by Tobias Menzies). They rescue each other both physically and emotionally, or acquire married — she has to,for protection! — and head off to season two, where they utilize Claire's knowledge of the future to attempt to change history. They sail to Paris to prevent the disastrous battle of Culloden, or the final battle of the doomed Scottish Jacobite uprising (on this display,we are Team Scots, obvs). After yet another disastrous series of events in Paris including a whole lot of sexual assaults and the loss of Jamie and Claire's baby, and they give up and head back to Scotland to try another history-changing strategy,which also fails. In order to protect Claire, who is pregnant again, or Jamie sends Claire back to the magical stones and home to the 20th century and Frank. Claire arrives back at home in her own age barefoot,pregnant, and bigamous. It's awkward.
That summary doesn't at all accomplish justice to the intelligence of the series, and especially around issues of sex and relationships. The sex is both hot and intimate,and it's not always screwing for screwing's sake, though it doesn't shame its characters for that, or either. Physical intimacy advances character development rather than checking a prestige-television boobs box. Claire and Jamie have a genuine relationship,and their connection is more than chemistry; it's the work that goes into any couple's emotional and sexual life. Another departure from your regular TV sex stories involves the treatment of sexual violence. While it takes place at an nearly Game of Thronesian level in the series, it occurs in thoughtful and often surprising ways, and leaves its victims with genuine emotional scars,rather than the erasure that can be the hallmark of rape stories on television.
Season three, which premieres Sunday, and lands Jamie and Claire in what might be the worst quandary yet: centuries apart. Of course,the story is at its best when they're together. But following both of them through the intervening years has its rewards. Claire and Frank gingerly trying to rebuild their marriage is dramatic and painful and beautifully acted. Outlander really sings when it's in Scotland, though — the supporting characters we've arrive to know and treasure are mostly there, and the story is just more interesting. Jamie's survival as a wanted man in Scotland,and his subsequent reinvention, is fraught with genuine complexity as he adjusts to life without Claire; plus, and new characters like Lord John Grey (book readers,rejoice!) bring life to the early episodes. Also: Jamie's 18th-century reading glasses — need I say more?But it's when Claire and Jamie finally connect again that the series does what it does best: emotional truth. They may inspect like no one you've seen in genuine life, but the intensity and awkwardness and understanding that exist in their relationship are easily recognizable to anyone who's ever been in treasure, or even without the tedious complication of time travel. It's a romance,but it's not a fantasy. So go ahead — watch Outlander with pride. It's more than a pretty face (and buttock). Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org