Outlander: The Wedding Recap

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJ2SvpRu3M]

Outlander: The Wedding (1×07)

Synopsis: Claire and Jamie get married!

Rating: ★★★★☆

For lack of a better description, this week’s episode was most definitely not safe for work.

As we found out last week, Claire must be a legitimate Scottish woman in order to escape the clutches of the sadistic Black Jack and the British laws. Without much of a choice, she must marry Jamie.

I’ve known the steamy scenes would eventually come out, since Outlander (though belonging to many genres) is still a romance novel, and as some of you might know I am quite a big fan of romance novels (hold your jokes and insinuations). So I was interested to see how the wedding would play out on Starz, they’ve definitely been known to be a little racy, and we got a taste of that in the pilot, however I thought they did a tasteful job, without getting too explicit or reining too far back (let’s remember these are the people who did Spartacus aka merkin paradise).

Ok before we get too deep into a disturbing merkin conversation, let’s talk about the wedding. It’s honestly the first time we get to see Claire and Jamie have a conversation beyond twenty minutes. And while we’ve seen the two get on quite well, it’s nothing like the level of closeness she had with Frank when paralleling the two marriages. It’s clear in her flashback with Frank that they also got married on the fly, but clearly there is an established relationship between the two.

Claire doesn’t learn anything past Jamie’s real name before she gets married to him. Although this might be a custom in Jamie’s time, it’s obviously startling to Claire, not to mention with her plagued by her loyalty to Frank. Hell, she refers to herself as a bigamist and an adulteress.

Because of this unfamiliarity, the two spend much of the night talking and learning from each other instead of getting right to the deed. We learn Jamie’s real last name “Fraser” and Claire gets to know her husband. While these moments are sweet, they are also harangued by the MacKenzies, who must await their consummation below. It gets to the point where even Angus and Rupert burst into their room to see if they might catch them in the act.

Despite these distractions and their inexperience with each other, they do warm to one another and eventually do copulate. It’s funny that the most endearing scenes in the episode are of Jamie and his inexperience as a lover. From thinking that you must have sex from behind because that’s how the horses do it, to the incorrect fact that women do not enjoy sex nor can they orgasm. Oh Jamie, listen no more to your inattentive relations. Let a modern woman show you the world.

While I have been vying for loyalty to Frank in my recaps, I find myself rooting for Jamie, as he recalls his three requests before his wedding. Despite serving Dougal, he refuses to simply obey him and requests a ring, a church wedding, and a wedding dress for Claire before they tie the knot.

He has a heartwarming scene with Murtagh who brings him a Fraser tartan so that he can wear for the occasion. Murtagh, who’s always been a little bit of a grump, has been a favorite of mine. When Jamie asks him if his mother would approve of Claire, Murtagh replies that his mother had a smile so sweet that warmed you to the bone, and that Claire’s smile was just as sweet. Awwww, Murtagh.

A ring is made from a key that Jamie has on him, the priest is bribed with some finer accommodations, and the wedding dress, though beautiful, is bought from a whore house by a flustered Ned. Their wedding is beautiful, and soaked in warm sunshine and a tidied up Jamie. It’s clear from Claire’s face that at that moment she’s clearly conflicted with her feelings. In fact, she seems to continue with this conflict throughout the episode.

It’s understandable since up until now she’s been married to the love of her life. And while it’s one thing to flirt with someone while you’re married, it’s a whole other thing to marry someone else. Skewed timeline or not, her life is seriously confusing.

The episode is sweet and it’s nice to finally get some more Jamie screen time (not to mention a view of that fine ass) but it’s darkened a bit by Dougal. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now. Dougal is the most confusing character in this whole series. I’m never sure if I like him, or I hate him. He comes onto Claire strongly after she’s spent the night with Jamie, and seems to disregard wedding vows pretty quickly. It’s easy to see that this is a man completely ruled by his impulses and his emotions.

After a little more cuddling and love making (I’ll hold back my innuendo jokes about Claire getting a pearl necklace from Jamie, they’re Scottish pearls, by the way), they wake up in the morning ready to set off. The episode closes as Claire finds her wedding ring from Frank and stares at her hands, each wearing a ring from her two marriages. It’s a good throwback to the pilot, when Mrs. Graham reads her fortune for the first time and accurately reads her future.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsmdvxXLY8E]

Update: For those of you who didn’t get to see the wedding pictures, here they are!