Outlander, Season Six (2022)

 

One of the better seasons of this epic time-travel saga finds Claire (Caitríona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) living in the last few years ahead of the American Revolution in Fraser’s Ridge. While desperate to recover from her post traumatic stress disorder after being kidnapped and raped, Claire has developed a primitive form of ether to help put her patients to sleep… and which she uses to quell her own panic attacks. Her reputation among those outside the clan is not positive, either, since many thereabouts consider her a potential “witch” due to her knowledge of medicine.

 

Among the newcomers is a man from Jamie’s past in prison, Thomas Christie (Mark Lewis Jones) and his two grown children, Alan and Malva. Malva (Jessica Reynolds) takes a liking to Claire, and an interest in her medical studies, and becomes her avid and eager assistant at the surgery, but her brother attracts the wrong kind of attention when caught stealing from others. The ever-patient Jamie oversees his punishment, but frets about the state of affairs. The British want him to serve as their Indian agent, and he reluctantly agrees, even though he knows they will need to part ways with the British before the Revolution. Their children, adopted and non, face their own struggles in life; Fergus (César Domboy) turns to drink in his misery for having failed to protect Claire and his wife from assault.

 

Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and Rodger (Richard Rankin) also hope to get pregnant again, and Brianna bides her time in the meantime inventing modernizations that make their lives easier, from a spinning wheel to a matchstick. But even as they settle small disputes and face family turmoil, a war creeps ever closer to them, with no guarantee any of them will make it out alive…

 

This season of Outlander is better than some in the past, because it does not feature a prominent rape scene at any point, but it still  revolves around rape. Claire has PTSD from her assault, so we deal with that, just as we dealt with it for Jamie in season two. I’m not too keen on how much this author constantly writes rape into her stories, forcing all of her main characters to experience it and work through its trauma. Using it once to create drama/tension was enough; it’s not realistic to have every member of the Fraser family suffer from sexual assault. Every season also relies on Jamie and Claire being torn apart and/or one of them being imprisoned… over and over again, as if the author can’t come up with anything else to create tension. That being said, I don’t mind repetition and I did enjoy both it, and seeing how these relationships have developed. Brianna and Roger have a lovely marriage, even if it hits a rocky patch when his insistence upon helping a widow woman causes Brianna to get jealous. I also found myself liking Malva, so the twist midway through that threatens to tear the entire family apart was truly heart-wrenching.

 

I do get tired of hypocritical characters, though. You can have a moralistic man like Tom be annoying and rigidly adhering to his faith, without also having him demanding his adult daughter expose her naked backside to him so he can beat her for disobedience. Gross. And some of the drama seems contrived (as if Claire would really wonder if Jamie had cheated on her). It’s lovely to see the early American fashion of the pre-war times, and the series enjoys delving into some of the early inventions. Their beautiful home and their friends all feel real. Plus, it ends in a terrible place, so we’ll all have to wait to see how their fate pans out next season. .
 
Sexual Content:
Five sex scenes, all of them long, some of them including nudity; a girl accuses a man of having fathered her illegitimate child. We find out later that she had sex with several different men. A girl confesses to having slept with two twins and refusing to choose between them; she cons two separate people into reading the engagement bands, which means she’s technically married to both of them. A girl asks if sex is sinful, and Claire tells her it’s quite nice and to be enjoyed. A man exposes a woman’s breast while she’s giving birth and rubs/suckles it to “help bring on the baby.” Claire leaves them alone, and overhears them having sex (others get embarrassed and leave the room). A man reads a few dirty sentences in Tom Jones, and sends it back to Claire, calling it a “filthy book.”
  
Violence:
People are shot, hit with arrows, stabbed, beaten up, knocked out, etc. There are some grisly wounds Claire patches up and we watch her perform surgery on a man's hand.
 
Language:
One or two f-words, scattered profanities, uses of s**t, and Claire often takes Jesus' name in vain ("Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!" is her favorite exclamation).