Outlander, please get better
Outlander is a love story, yes, I got that pretty quickly. That alone probably wouldn't have hooked me in, though. I mean, I'm a sucker for good romance and steamy sex scenes are always a bonus, but I thought the show set up a much bigger story than it actually seems to be telling. Now that the first season is over, I'm feeling rather disappointed.
Being more a watcher of fiction than a reader of it, my interest in the show was based solely on the raves of others rather than expectation from knowing the story. The performances and production quality haven't let me down at all. It's a well done show no matter how it ultimately plays out. I'm just wondering if all the interesting stuff that made it seem like a layered story is actually going to come back into play.
My favorite episode from the second half of the season was the "The Devil's Mark", with the revelation that Geillis was also a time traveler. Cool! And Claire tells Jamie she's from the future. Yay! Then 5 more episodes go by with nothing more about any of that? Grrrr. What was the point of Geillis saying "then it was all for nothing"? Am I too impatient? Is this one of those r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w stories that will eventually come back to the bits it drops along the way or am I wasting my time?
Setting all that aside, what really made me step back and rethink this show was the completely ludicrous story arc in which Jack Randall halts Jamie's execution because he hadn't yet tapped that ass. Seriously? I'm supposed to take that seriously? Puh-lease. That was just dumb. Really, really dumb. Yeah, BlackJack is a masochistic pervy perv. That's been well established. But unless he's also complete loon, MUST FUCK HOT BOD JAMIE BEFORE HE DIES (AND MAKE HIM ENJOY IT!!!!), teetered on a jump-the-shark moment for me.
I'm invested enough in the characters now that I know I'll watch when it returns for season 2. Whether or not I'll keep watching beyond the first few episodes, though, remains to be seen. I hope it gets better. I want this to be the show that I originally thought it was: a romantic, historical drama with a sci-fi twist.
Being more a watcher of fiction than a reader of it, my interest in the show was based solely on the raves of others rather than expectation from knowing the story. The performances and production quality haven't let me down at all. It's a well done show no matter how it ultimately plays out. I'm just wondering if all the interesting stuff that made it seem like a layered story is actually going to come back into play.
My favorite episode from the second half of the season was the "The Devil's Mark", with the revelation that Geillis was also a time traveler. Cool! And Claire tells Jamie she's from the future. Yay! Then 5 more episodes go by with nothing more about any of that? Grrrr. What was the point of Geillis saying "then it was all for nothing"? Am I too impatient? Is this one of those r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w stories that will eventually come back to the bits it drops along the way or am I wasting my time?
Setting all that aside, what really made me step back and rethink this show was the completely ludicrous story arc in which Jack Randall halts Jamie's execution because he hadn't yet tapped that ass. Seriously? I'm supposed to take that seriously? Puh-lease. That was just dumb. Really, really dumb. Yeah, BlackJack is a masochistic pervy perv. That's been well established. But unless he's also complete loon, MUST FUCK HOT BOD JAMIE BEFORE HE DIES (AND MAKE HIM ENJOY IT!!!!), teetered on a jump-the-shark moment for me.
I'm invested enough in the characters now that I know I'll watch when it returns for season 2. Whether or not I'll keep watching beyond the first few episodes, though, remains to be seen. I hope it gets better. I want this to be the show that I originally thought it was: a romantic, historical drama with a sci-fi twist.