We open on some other bitch putting Jamie’s tie on as he leaves for work. I mean, it’s not like I expected him to be #foreveralone, but surely 20 years isn’t too long to wait? This is clearly the day Claire is about to bust in and surprise him, which is good, because I want to see this from every possible angle. I am surprised instead to see it’s his whiskey-running buddies, who are completely incoherent, so thick are their accents. Jamie has made treasonous pamphlets for them to distribute. Why must he always try to get in trouble?
Jamie’s more respectable-seeming employee, Jordie, leaves, and we are finally back to the exact moment I’ve been waiting for. (My interest in 18th-century printing presses is minimal at best, so every minute of this is agony.)
Sure enough, we hear the doorbell ding, he hears Claire, he sees Claire, he faints. We are now ready to enter this episode in earnest!
When Jamie wakes up, Claire is standing over him. We get all the “You’re real! You’re here! I thought you were dead!” stuff out of the way. He’s spilled ink all over his junk and hesitates about removing his pants in front of her. They’re so jerky and nervous!
“I would very much like to kiss you … may I?”
This is the best kiss in the history of anything, no one will be disappointed in this kiss. He’s crying, she’s crying, it’s amazing.
Jordie swoops back in and accuses Jamie of immorality (and before noon!) for making out with some lady who isn’t … his wife? I mean, he is still lacking pants. Jamie invites her to go to the back of the shop with him, to, you know, locate his pants. He suddenly remembers Brianna, and Claire has brought photographs! Obviously it seems like witchcraft to him, as per usual. He’s embarrassed that he needs to wear glasses to read now, like he isn’t still obviously young and hot with some fake gray. She admits to having grays of her own.
“Time doesn’t matter, Sassenach. You’ll always look beautiful to me.”
Jamie has a billion questions about Brianna, which is very, very sweet. Flipping through the photos is absolutely adorable. It’s like looking at someone’s holiday pictures, but you really, really wanted to see them. The bikini shot at the beach throws him for a minute, but Claire explains that all the girls wear bathing suits in 1968.
Jamie’s sudden mood change is not from the bikini, but from a need to tell Claire about Willie. He has a little engraving of him, which he shows her. Claire reassures him that when she came back, she knew he would have a life. Jamie asks about Frank, if she told him the truth, etc., before realizing he has to dash off to a prior commitment, with her in tow.
A very grown Fergus is there! He’s cute as a button, and he’s so happy to see her. She realizes he’s missing a hand, which is only a momentary bummer. Claire tells him she’s been in the Colonies, which is … not untrue. Fergus has something he needs to speak to Jamie about in private, but he can barely tear himself away from her.
We start to get a few glimpses into Jamie’s real work, including his delightful Chinese associate, Mr. Willoughby, a bribe given, and some of the usual cloak-and-dagger business that shows use to telegraph that things are not quite on the up-and-up.
Claire, unsurprisingly, is not super stoked to find out that Jamie lives in a literal brothel, but I think she adapts to the situation rather well, considering. They dine in their room, catching up, talking about Roger, and so on. Claire assures Jamie she doesn’t plan on leaving him, and Jamie assures Claire he’s still just as into her as ever he was. The sexual tension is amazing, and goes on much longer than you would think possible, considering they are in a brothel and you can clearly hear customers going at it in the next room. Then Jamie asks if she will accompany him to bed.
SWOON.
I will draw a veil over the activities of Claire and Jamie’s first night back together. Suffice it to say that Starz has richly provided us that which we needed most: a very extended mutual-undressing scene followed by luxurious and energetic sex between two people who love each other deeply and truly and thought they would never get to have sex again. It was worth waiting for. This scene also goes on for what seems like 40 minutes, but that’s absolutely fine by me.
The next morning, Claire has breakfast with the women who work at the brothel. Assuming she is a new colleague, they nicely share some DIY abortion tips and advice on soaking her junk to recover from what they assume was a really difficult first night of work. Needless to say, the women are obviously quite shocked to discover she is in fact not an employee, but they don’t seem overly offended to have spilled their guts.
The disturbing situation we end with this week is, unfortunately, Classic Outlander in the worst way: a brothel customer busts his way into Claire’s room and refuses to accept that she’s not available for purchase. We fade out just as Claire is five seconds away from being raped, a position we have seen Claire in more than once, and I suspect we’ll see her in several times before the show wraps up for good. Will Jamie burst in to save her? Probably, but we’ll have to wait to find out.