(This is a Work In Progress)
Outlander is a curious television show. I'd never have guessed that I'd enjoy a historical romance drama centered on a 20th century woman who magically travels through time to mid-1700s Scotland. But I count myself a fan. Years ago I read that the reason the movie Titanic was such a huge success is that it was a love story (appeals to women) in an action/adventure setting (appeals to men). Outlander is like that, too, kinda, although expanded to include homosexuality, non-consensual sex (including rape with male and female victims), some weird kind of BDSM stuff that I don't completely understand, and to top it off, the (highly attractive) male and female lead characters occasionally get very naked and film hot sex scenes. I should note that these are (often) husband-and-wife-married-to-each-other scenes, which I approve of in the general sense that the world would be a happier place if all married couples got along in bed like Claire and Jamie.
There's a lot more to Outlander than just the sex, nudity, and the occasional odd descent into torture-porn: the show has evolved over its 4 seasons (FYI, it's been renewed for seasons 5 and 6), and you can see the production values rise from "good" to "outstanding" as the show became more popular and the network threw more money at it. My general sense is that everyone who works on the show is having a good time. The attention to historical detail is exquisite and the quality of the writing is extremely high. I have a problem with many long-running television shows that run out of steam after achieving success and devolve into 'soap opera mode', where the writers ring changes on the characters and there's no real plot. Outlander has so far skillfully managed to avoid that. The major narrative arc is essentially "The Perils of Pauline", centering on Claire's life in the 18th and 20th centuries. The writers do a good job of keeping things interesting: Claire and Jamie both travel about the world quite a bit, which keeps things fresh. And speaking as a long-time fantasy and science fiction fan, I like how the show treats the time travel element: it exists, and the few people who get clued in on it are remarkably and pleasantly chill about it.
One of the personal pleasures that I take from Outlander are the dastardly villains the show has spawned. I kinda have a 'thing' about movie and tv villains, and Tobias Menzies as Captain "Black Jack" Randall is on my Top 10 Villains Of All Time list. Actor Simon Callow chews the scenery in a grand manner - imagine an evil, scheming Oscar Wilde - as the odious Duke of Sandringham. And actress Lotte Verbeek as Geillis Duncan has her own unique and memorable spin on 'bad girl', but I don't want to spoil things.
Lest I gush too much, there are aspects of the show that I don't like. The villains that I enjoyed so much have all run their courses, and Stephen Bonnet - the latest Big Bad - just doesn't have the villainous charisma to compete with Captain Jack and friends. I didn't like the character of young Fergus during seasons 2 and 3: it seemed like a heavy-handed attempt to introduce a cute young kid into the mix, and it just didn't work for me. And I'm not crazy about how the show treats Native Americans: it's not a SJW thing, it's just that the storylines so far have been insipid. And the NAs dress like Simon Stalenhag's Scandanavian Robot Crisis of 1989. Which, to me, is not an entirely bad thing, but it's a bit jarring in a show that has previously gone to such great effort to be historically accurate.
I should note that I'm aware that the show is based on novels by writer Diana Gabaldon, and that I've read none of her books. My understanding is that the show varies significantly from the book in places. I'm cool with that and I believe I've read that Ms. Gabaldon is, too.
Targeted Viewing Guide: Let's get back to the reason behind this post, namely: what are the hottest scenes in Outlander? I am a bit hampered in not having access to convenient YouTube videos of the individual scenes - YouTube would delete them for copyright and content violations - and so I'll try to supply the episode, the approximate time of the scene in that episode, and a small description. Additionally, I'm going to perhaps unwisely give in to my temptation to include scenes that - while they didn't really work for me, personally - I believe were intended to give some large part of the audience "the vapors".
(sorry to be a tease - this part is not ready yet)
Some random notes:
- The show has developed a large fan-base. A lot of women fans are in it exclusively for Jamie and think that Claire is a huge bitch.
- There are 'aggressive' fans who rabidly promote the notion that Cat and Sam are a couple in real-life. They are not.
- Brianna is almost universally disliked. I don't know if it's the actress or the lines she is given, but she comes off as a whiner.
- There's an unrequited homosexual thing going on between Jamie and Lord John Grey. I don't have a problem with it except that Lord John Grey might be one of the kindest, most decent characters to ever appear in a television series that wasn't about Jesus. Unrequited love can be really sucky, and LJG deserves better.
- There is this weird D/s-BDSM-I-dunno-what thing between Randall, Claire, and Jamie. It doesn't really do much for me, but - and I say this as a God-fearing American heterosexual male - there's a brief scene (S01E15, I think) where Tobias Menzies does a couple of seconds of full frontal male nudity after raping Jamie and yeah it's icky but I gotta say: Menzies is an extremely well-put-together fellow.
- Season 5 begins on 16 February 2020.
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