OUTLANDER: BLOOD OF MY BLOOD | 1X08 “ A Virtuous Woman ”
the worst part of personally enjoying the idea of a character having a child in the far future is that literally everyone else who does this does this in an evil misogynistic way
Spoilers ahead, don’t read.
I want to like Blood of my Blood more than I actually like it. I cannot shake the sensation that this show is a little… Soulless. I mean… Bear McCreary is right there, but there’s still not even a musical reference to Outlander. I was hoping for a reference to Dance if the Druids or The Wedding, even Skye boat, when Claire was born, nothing big, just a few notes, but still not even that.
The whole unwalking walk of shame for Julia was uncanny and unnecessary. It reminded me of Passion of the Christ more than anything else.
And what? Did we lose Henry? Is he going to be permanently disconnected from reality from now on?
As usual, the best student of the class is Brian’s actor: the way he defended Julia was a good parallel to Jamie arriving at the witch trial.
nooo dont make that woman into a stay at home mom who bakes bread for the family and singlehandedly raises all the kids while her husband goes out and has all the fun adventures. fucking stoppppp
nooo don't make that woman into a perfect 10/10 mom without any flaws that doesnt have any personality outside of being a mom. you're literally gonna make me cry
nooo dont assume that woman having children will automatically make them 100x happier with their lives and that they if never had them they wouldve been forever miserable and unhappy, and then make them be a stay at home mom. im going to rip your spine out
Y'all’s bad taste in romance is ruining things again.
I’m gonna say my piece as clearly and unapologetically as possible. I’m not a big-big fan of romance as a genre. I like romantic subplots when they’re well done, or I like BIG STAKES time period romances, cause Brazilian telenovelas ruined me as a teenager (looking at you Martin and Maria das Dores). There’s almost no in between.
Then there’s Outlander. Say what you want and I am aware of Gabaldon’s obsession with SA and stuff. But it’s an odd, powerful, all encompassing romance. I think it is super unique. Y'all’s romantasies don’t hold a candle to Outlander’s power, Outlander’s characters and Outlander’s way of using sex scenes. You don’t want to be Claire Fraser, cause you know you can’t replace her in Jamie’s life. Even when it’s written in first person, you can’t self insert, cause she’s alive, and she’s too towering to be moved to make space for little you. And I think that’s amazing writing in the genre. She’s not a new adult, she’s a woman. Jamie is not some brooding dark daddy, he actually has a personality besides smirking and leaning on things. He’s naturally cool. Both of them are, so much so that they keep you engaged in their romance when they’re much older than fifty. No 19 yo Dragonrider will ever be as cool as a highlander and his doctor wife.
And then Blood of my Blood happens. And it happens without Gabaldon’s pen to support it.
The casting is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I believe every single one of them to be the younger versions, or the parents of everybody. Brian’s actor even did his homework: there are a lot of Jamie’s quirks in his father’s younger self.
The writing on the other hand… It’s very weak. And it’s as tropey as nowadays romance novels popular on TikTok go. Ellen McKenzie stepped out of some novel where “she’s not like other girls”. Her father treated her like a son, ok? She doesn’t want to marry, ok? She falls in instalove with grandiose unearned love declarations, ok?
I don’t hate her, nor her ridiculously square-faced lover. I just think she’s not well written, she’s made to appeal to an audience that’s making romance become silly again. Silly as “scapist women’s opium” silly. Not only the actress’ accent is inconsistent (she has other actoral virtues, chemistry in spite of everything is one of them); her writing is inconsistent as well. You’re told for the first two episodes that she has enjoyed a lot of freedom throughout her life, because she was her father’s favorite. Now I just watched her saying she has never had a free choice ever in her life, before choosing Brian.
Ok I used a lot of words to say as much as many people are saying: this instalove feels unearned and we, as an audience, are having trouble rooting for them, unless we become fans of “just silly romance” against the backdrop of gorgeous cinematography.
Claire’s parents’ romance on the other hand is super earned, but the writers did commit another mortal sin of fated lovers instalove with them. I can buy the way they fell in love, but I hated the way they met in person for the first time. Until now, it has been the only sin in their love story though. We’re all rooting for them.
And those are my thoughts about Blood of my Blood. I still like it and it’s characters, but these TikTok popular romantic tropes are a poor replacement for Gabaldon’s pen. I thought there was going to be only one bed at any moment.
It’s absolutely insane to me how people didn’t clock Kevin as abusive when he literally reported the car as stolen even though he knew Allison had it!! All because she didn’t answer the phone when he called. He did it as revenge for her not being constantly at his beck and call.
One of the things I keep coming back to about the Kevin Can Fuck Himself finale is that the switch happens as the laugh track starts to cheer for Allison. Like yes it's representative of Kevin losing control but it's also representative of Allison having support. Since Kevin is in charge every time he's on screen, you can certainly read it as Kevin using the framing to remove Allison's support - like he always does
I was watching Kevin Gan Fuck Himself with my Dad and he kept getting annoyed and saying Kevin was 'so stupid' or 'what a fucking moron' or words to that effect. And when we got to Kevin reporting the car stolen I actually snapped and said 'he's not STUPID he's doing this on purpose'.
My Dad saw a man call his wife 60 odd times while she was on a girls trip and then report the car stolen to cause issues for her/prevent her from getting away from him and saw that as him being 'an idiot' instead of as the calculated act of abuse it was.
And I realised that as a woman I was watching a drama with occasional sitcom-ified scenes. And my Dad, as a man was watching a sitcom that sometimes went grey.
Thinking about how Pete used to be a priest and Kevin's (unnamed) mom was a nun. The fact that Pete was clearly stripped of his title. And we don't hear anything about Kevin's mother beyond the fact that she's dead. Thinking about how Diane says that she thinks of Pete as her "creepy uncle" and hates him. Thinking about how Kevin being born was likely a huge scandal for Pete and his mother and led to him being kicked out of the church. Thinking about how Pete doesn't seem to have any remorse at all for the potential abuse of power that occurred which led to Kevin's conception. Thinking about how Pete was the one most likely to make jokes objectifying women with Kevin. Thinking about how Kevin was likely raised believing he was some sort of miracle or chosen one, destined for great things solely because acknowledgment of the shame surrounding the circumstances of his birth would require Pete admitting fault. Thinking about how normalized it must have been in his childhood to see women being talked down to, objectified, sexualized and made into nothing more than plot devices to powerful men. Thinking about the sense of entitlement he must have had baked into him, and the deep fear hiding underneath all of it that one day everyone is going to realize he's his father's biggest skeleton in the closet. Thinking about this show having one of the most nuanced and complex portrayals of the cycle of abuse and patriarchal violence that I've ever seen!!!