Absolutely. And if you read voyager, this episode was pretty much right on the money with the beginning of the book. I'm so excited for this season. And yeah I thought the scene at the cocktail social was pretty powerful with Claire being able to bite her tongue, as well as showing us the forced anesthesia by the birthing doctor, reminding us how far we've come as people. Gonna be a great season.

I am just finishing Dragonfly. I like to stay a little behind the show, so I pace the books accordingly. The books help to clarify things.

Another great episode last week. I think these scenes are some of the best acting by Catriona Balfe to date. Hopefully we haven't seen the last of Tobias Menzies, although it seems likely at this point. He could still appear in flashback, I suppose.

This season is better than last season but I will say this. Tobias Menzies is a strong actor and while Frank and Black Jack were on the show you tended to miss his characters when they weren't in the plot and the show felt weaker. Now that Frank and Black Jack aren't on the show it's an okay show. Did you know that Menzies is going to be in a new adaptation of "King Lear" with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson?

I'm watching season 4 presently. Brianna is with Jamie and Claire at Fraser's ridge. Roger has followed her after getting free of his obligation to Stephen Bonnet, the murderer and rapist turned ship's captain. Jamie, having been told that Roger is the man who raped Brianna, has beaten Roger and young Ian has sold him to the Mohawks. Brianna finds out that her charge Lizzie was mistaken and thought Roger had raped her, and that she saw Roger on the road and told Jamie.

Brianna bursts into the cabin and displays her anger. That is all she displays, anger. I have to say this is a weakness in the way the script is written. Brianna displays an attitude which is not uncommon in our present day culture. She is the wounded victim displaying righteous outrage, and that is all she is. She displays not a trace of recognition that Jamie acted in her defense based upon the best information he had at the time, the assurance of her servant girl. She doesn't take any responsibility for her part in the error.

We have seen Brianna angrily insist that no secrets be kept from her, that she is an adult and strong enough to handle the truth, however painful it might be. She insists that she not be shielded from the truth, and no secrets be kept from her.

Yet she tried to keep the truth about the identity of her rapist secret, and when her mother found out who it was, she swore her to secrecy, saying she thought Jamie might feel bad if he knew the truth. Her secrecy directly contributed to the error which her servant girl Lizzie made. But even so, had she been honest with her dad about the facts of her rape, he would not have beaten Roger. She won't acknowledge responsibility for that, she only blames Jamie and young Ian. She only displays anger and righteous outrage. She seems to revel in it.

When Jamie learns that it was Stephen Bonnet who raped her Jamie becomes angry, likely at Bonnet, and himself.

But Brianna shouts at him "NO, you don't get to be more angry than me!"

Oh my God. Could she sound more petulant? She is the righteous, wounded victim, blaming others while accepting no blame for her own role in the tragedy. Those who acted in good faith to protect her from perceived danger, she can only find fault in. For her role in the error, she only blames others. Not only is it disgusting to see someone behave this childishly, it doesn't ring true. She would feel a mix of emotions, and display a mix of emotions, but all we see from her is a constant, toxic, flood of angry blame shifting and outrage. It doesn't work for her if Jamie is angry, she wants him to feel guilty, since she has cast him as her oppressor.

Later when Lizzie begs forgiveness for her error, Brianna tells her "you were just trying to protect me". Then Lizzie asks "what about your father? He would not have done what he did if I had not told him what I did. Will you forgive him also?" And Brianna tells her that she cannot forgive Jamie, either for beating Roger or "for the way he spoke to me".

No, Brianna won't give up her injured victim status. She holds on to and nurtures her wounded feelings, despite knowing that Jamie had spoken as he did in order that she might realize that the rape was not her fault, that fighting back harder would only have gotten her killed. He was trying to alleviate her guilt by what he said. But Brianna is able to find bad hidden under the good, and she focuses on it tenaciously. Even when Jamie is trying to relieve her of her feelings of guilt and shame for the rape, or when he is trying to protect her from further trauma, Brianna is able to re-frame it all so that Jamie is a villain, and she is an injured, wounded victim. This justifies her feelings of outrage and anger, and she doesn't have to accept any responsibility when she can blame it all on others. I can't stand to see the other characters treating her petulance seriously, humoring her, enabling her as she postures and blames.
It was she who pushed Roger away to begin with, throwing a histrionic fit because he failed to tell her about a newspaper article about her parents' death about 200 years previously. Then she told him to leave and go back to the future. Why? Because Brianna has a bad mental habit of posturing as the offended, injured, victim who is justified in angrily blaming others. With her constant angry blaming she is like the boy who cried wolf. So much of her troubles are of her own making that I have lost sympathy for her.

Claire is headstrong, much more so than most women in the 18th century, and that sometimes causes friction with people of that era. Yet she is a responsible, intelligent, thoughtful, and empathetic person who is easy to like. So even though there is some cultural tension at times, she is a mature and responsible adult, and people like her. Brianna shares so little with her mother.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the series up to now. And even though I hate the way they are writing Brianna's character here, I still love it.

Interestingly, my sister who is a genealogy nut, has found that our own Fraser ancestors followed the same path as in the show, coming to Wilmington and then settling in North Carolina within a few years of the dates in the show. I recall as a child my maternal grandmother explaining her maiden name to me, that it wasn't Frasier, but Fraser, without the i. As I get older I find I appreciate our family history more and more.

I'm watching season five and while it's better than season four and I'm enjoying it being in North Carolina the depiction of the German scalping the Native woman was infuriating. I was initially thrilled to see a German settler family in rhe Carolina backcountry because many Germans and Swiss settled North Carolina in the 18th century but the Germans did NOT scalp people much less Natives! Are the showrunners trying to depict Germans as being more savage than the British? Give me a break!