TV Review: OUTLANDER: Season 5, Episode 7: The Ballad of Roger Mac [Starz]

Outlander The Ballad of Roger Mac Review

Outlander: Season 5, Episode 7: The Ballad of Roger Mac is the best episode of the season thus far. It has what most-if-not-all of the episodes this season have not possessed – horrific, unforeseen, life-ending consequences. The best part about these consequences is that the viewer never sees them coming in The Ballad of Roger Mac until they land in their metaphoric lap.

The Hanging Tree

Roger Wakefield MacKenzie (Richard Rankin)’s behind-enemy-lines mission is seen from the outset as a necessary but probably uneventful excursion – there is no way the battle will not happen, even when Murtagh is told the truth about its outcome. In effect, it’s a talk mission with no feasibility of success.

This season of Outlander has not been as strong as the seasons before it. It’s lacked the narrative ebbs and flows that have made previous seasons so compelling. The ‘explosions’ this season have been muted or they have not occurred at all. That all changes with The Ballad of Roger Mac.

The main events at the end of the second act and the entire final act of this episode are those of a well-orchestrated, bitter-sweet play. Watching James “Jamie” MacKenzie Fraser (Sam Heughan) don the red jacket of a British soldier is painful but no where near what Jamie feels in that moment. That jacket was Black Jack Randall’s armor. It protected him from the consequences of his many crimes, including those against Jamie. The absolute disgust on Jamie’s face as Governor Tryon (Tim Downie) drapes that garb on Jamie’s shoulders shows the gravity of the potential situation, the Battle of Alamance, and why it is of the utmost importance for Jamie to suck-it-up and hold fast. Only something of that magnitude could subvert Jamie’s refusal to wear that jacket and visually associate himself with the British army.

Jamie’s resolve and decision-making on this day works out for him except in two, unforeseen ways  – the death of Mutragh and what Jamie finds at the hanging tree.

As soon as Jamie, Clare, and Brianna get to the hanging tree with bodies swaying underneath its branches, the viewer knows something is wrong and the dread hits – he’s up there. Roger is one of bodies. When it’s confirmed by his clothing and white handkerchief, it’s a magnificent narrative moment – something profound and right out of the blue with zero lead-up or precursor. When Ned Stark got his head cut off in Game of Thrones, there was build up to the event but the viewer thought it was not going to happen. With Roger’s death there is no build up. It just happens. Like real life. It’s an example of wonderful writing in the screenplay and excellent execution in its on-screen presentation. It is like Jamie Lannister’s hand getting cut off all over again. It doesn’t have those ramifications since Jamie was still alive afterward and Roger is dead but still, shocking.

The worst part of Roger’s death is that he wanted to leave for the safety of the future for sometime and the only reason that he didn’t was because Bree wanted to stay with her mother and father. Claire wanted Roger, Bree, and Jeremiah Fraser to leave for the future. Jamie asked Claire to banish the thoughts from her mind in Free Will. Now Roger is dead. I can’t image the waves of guilt Bree and Jamie are going to feel after Roger’s death.

Roger represented the major driving force for Bree and Jeremiah to travel to the future. Now that driving force has been eliminated. Will Roger and Murtagh’s deaths raise the danger profile for the time period in Jamie and Claire’s minds significantly enough for them to agree to send Bree and Jeremiah away to the future (their ultimate safety location)?

Perhaps.

Jamie’s argument that the future and past are both equally perilous is becoming increasingly hard to sustain following the rape of Brianna, the death of her husband by hanging, and the killing of Murtagh. When Clare renews her plea to send Brianna and Jeremiah to the future, Jamie will no longer have much of an argumentative leg left to stand on. With the threat of Steven Bonnet still present in their time period, it might be prudent move.

Death of a Life-long Friend

With everything Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser (Duncan Lacroix) has been through in Outlander, the viewer just assumes that Murtagh will survive the Battle of Alamance as he has every other challenge that has come his way. What really happens in The Ballad of Roger Mac is set up perfectly because Murtagh has cheated death so many times. Murtagh being shot is so shocking that two-of-the-three people on-screen during the scene can’t believe it. The viewer can’t believe it because a.) Murtagh is actually shot and b.) from its location, it’s obvious from the outset that it is a mortal wound.

From Jamie’s reaction to Murtagh’s death, Jamie has never conceived of a world in which Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser is not alive, so much so that Jamie’s immediate rejoinder to the event is completely irrational. Jamie’s response at the tree and in the tent sell his bewildered emotional state and his utter disbelief and non-acceptance of this pivotal event in his life.

Jamie hoped he could play both sides with no consequences. He thought that if he could just get through the battle and wait out Governor Tryon’s transfer to New York, that things would die down and get better, giving Jamie a chance to save his countrymen. None of that happens, to the betterment of this episode and the season in general. Things needed to be shaken up on Outlander and The Ballad of Roger Mac did so and then some.

The War of Words

The substance behind what Jamie says to Governor Tryon at the conclusion of the Battle of Alamance should have been said a long time ago. The build-up spills out of Jamie’s mouth uncontrollably because of grief and sorrow, sorrow that he can not speak of in front of the Governor. Jamie wants to say more to Tryon, a lot more, the viewer can see it within the anguish on Jamie’s face but he has to restrain himself. It’s a balancing act like before. If he says too much, it will land him in prison, on trial, and at the end of a hangman’s noose. So Jamie filters what he wants to say to Tyron, British soldiers, and The Crown through the prism of that single day, of that battle, and the people that fought and died in it. Jamie is still thinking on his feet even-though he has been emotional weakened.

The Battle of Alamance is the end of a dark chapter in Jamie’s life but it will have reverberations. Some of the survivors of that battle, those from Jamie’s homeland (especially those that saw him wearing the British Red), will never look at him the same way again.

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