Outlander 5×12 “Never My Love” is, sadly, the episode we expected it to be. There’s nothing surprising about what happens, and there really shouldn’t be, all things considered. The books are there, and the show has never really deviated from…

There’s a lot of Outlander 5×11 “Journeycakes” that’s setup. Setup for another horrible event, setup for a season finale that’s sure to break our hearts, and setup for …well, the next stage of this journey for both The Frasers and…

Outlander 5×11 “Journeycakes” is, in many ways, a transition episode. There’s a lot to set up for the finale, for next season, for what is, perhaps, another part of this journey for The Fraser family. But that doesn’t mean there…

Outlander 5×10 “Mercy Shall Follow Me” is an uncomfortable episode, one that asks us to sympathize too much with a man like Stephen Bonnet, and one that’s more plot driven than character driven in most regards, and that’s why, despite…

Outlander 5×10 “Mercy Shall Follow Me” is the type of uncomfortable, yet necessary plot-heavy episode that is hard to love and yet impossible to totally hate, either. It’s not a soft episode focused on character heavy moments, not a romantic…

Outlander 5×09 “Monsters and Heroes” is the best episode of season 5, by far. This is a tall order in a season that, as of late, has delivered emotion after emotion, great performance after great performance, and unforgettable moments after…

One of these days Outlander will deliver an episode that doesn’t feel like an all-out assault on our emotions. Outlander 5×09 “Monsters and Heroes” is not that episode, however, as the hour runs the gamut of emotions by focusing on…

Outlander 5×08 “Famous Last Words” is as emotional as last episode, albeit in a very different way. We lost Murtagh last week, and we lost him suddenly and that was a gut punch, a shock, sudden pain the type that…

Outlander 5×08 “Famous Last Words” is an intensely emotional episode, even if the emotions the episode invokes in us are different from the ones invoked by the last episode. There are less gut-punches in this one, but that doesn’t mean…

Outlander 5×07 “The Ballad of Roger Mac” is an emotional gut-punch, from beginning to end. It builds up and builds up to what you think is the punch, the moment that leaves you gasping for breath, tears streaming down your…

Outlander 5×07 “The Ballad of Roger Mac” is quite an episode, not just for Roger, as the title suggests, but for Jamie too, and of course, for Murtagh, and for our feelings, which, I promise you, will remain engaged throughout…

Outlander 5×06 “Better to Marry than Burn” feels much more like an episode where things actually happen in a season that has taken a lot of time to get to the point. Still, the episode doesn’t have the breakneck pace…

Outlander 5×06 “Better to Marry than Burn” feels very much like a mid-season episode, with a lot happening within the hour, even as the show continues to set up what’s certain to be a season finale confrontation. The character moments…

Outlander 5×05 “Perpetual Adoration” introduces the long-awaited Adso the cat, who absolutely steals the hour, but it also gives us one of the best Bree/Roger moments the show has seen so far, as well as a scene with Jamie and…

Outlander 5X05 “Perpetual Adoration” picks up the pace plot-wise, and oh yes, it brings some cute surprises along the way, but it still mostly seems to be setup on top of setup with a cute side-serving of yes, you guessed…

Outlander 5×04 “The Company We Keep” continues the setup trend, but it does so in the way we don’t actually mind: with enough attention paid to Jamie and Claire, with emotion and with the promise of other characters that we…

Outlander 5×04 “The Company We Keep” is peak early in the season Outlander: full of setup and foreboding, and yet managing to interrupt the sense of doom and gloom by giving the characters we love a chance to shine in…

Outlander 5×03 “Free Will” is a better, more compelling episode than “Between Two Fires,” there’s no doubt about that. And yet it still feels like the show is running on fumes, like they’re saving all the good, emotional stuff for…

Outlander 5×03 “Free Will” picks up the pace from a slow “Between Two Fires,” if not plot wise, at least emotionally. It helps, of course, that Jamie and Claire are together again, and that the episode isn’t happening on two…

Outlander 5×02 “Between Two Fires” was a transitional episode, the kind that does more to setup what’s to come than to surprise us by what is happening. Despite that, though, the episode had its important moments, including the return of…

We’re back to weekly episodes of Outlander, and if we’re being honest, it feels good. At least, most of the time it does. But we’re not going to go into the issues with Outlander right now, no. Instead, we’re going…