TV Review: OUTLANDER: Season 5, Episode 8: Famous Last Words [Starz]

Outlander Famous Last Words Review

Starz‘s Outlander: Season 5, Episode 8: Famous Last Words has a clever framework, an effective duality storyline, and a premise that places the trauma-recovery shoe on the most unexpected foot.

The framing of Famous Last Words through the lens of a black and white silent-film camera is inventive and highly entertaining, even more so to a cinephile who is a fan of the bygone medium. The viewer is drawn in by this archaic mode of entertainment, especially how it is mixed with key dramatic moments in the episode.

One moment in particular that stands out is when James “Jamie” MacKenzie Fraser (Sam Heughan) lowers Roger Wakefield MacKenzie (Richard Rankin)’s corpse down from the hanging tree and realizes that Roger is still breathing.

It is a extremely surprising moment in Famous Last Words. The “What?” factor is exceedingly high – I thought Roger was dead (I haven’t read the novels…yet), but it is another in a long-line of fruitful narrative turns for Outlander, zigging where the viewer thinks the show will zag.

When Dr. Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) says that Roger’s airway is blocked and that she needs to open it up (to paraphrase), the viewer thinks, she isn’t going trach him (perform a tracheotomy), not in this time-period. When she does so, effortlessly I might add, the best storyline in Famous Last Words is initiated – Roger’s mind and body recovery from the emergency medical procedure.

Personal trials and growth are a strength of Outlander and they are exemplified in Famous Last Words. As Roger begins his trek back towards normality in the episode and Brianna “Bree” Randall Fraser (Sophie Skelton) expresses her torment at his silence, the viewer sees that Bree has come full circle and is now able to perceive  her rape from all angles  – the incident, how see felt afterward, its effect on others, how she grew from the experience, and whom she is now. Roger is at the beginning of that process. Bree recognizes this and tries to guide him and expedient the mental healing process through love and understanding.

Their moments during this time period are touching and sweet. It’s Roger’s reticence at her entreatments, however, that make their earlier interactions in Famous Last Words so enjoyable following his throat being sewn shut and the mechanical ability to speak being restored. The viewer knows that these initial interactions are not going to go the way Brianna wishes them to go, that Roger is still cloistered and tormented within himself, and that there is where he feels safest.

Also cocooned with his traumas in Famous Last Words is Ian Murray, Jr. (John Bell). Ian and Roger’s storylines run parallel to each other in this episode, bolstering each other in significant ways. Where Ian can physically speak of what has happened to him but chooses not to, Roger, on the other hand, has a near-universal impediment, both physical and mental, and would rather dwell in silence than try to re-capture the part of himself that he believes he has lost.

What emerges from their interactions is a brilliant dichotomy of two similar souls thrust together on an adventure of healing and coming to terms with their new realities, as black and twisted as those new realities may be.

Roger and Ian have much in common, most-notably that they want to die. Both are in tremendous mental anguish and want their pain over, no matter how or whom their deaths will affect.

Each is given a moment to deal with their death-urge in Famous Last Words, with Roger’s cliff moment being far more visual and dramatic than Ian’s subdued and quiet suicide attempt. What Roger sees during his moment of tenuous gloom and joy, what he feels inside, the love of his life, doesn’t suddenly heal him completely, allowing him to walk away from the cliff the same old Roger. In that key moment, he does, however, realize what he thought of on the hanging tree, what kept him alive, what he should try for in-the-here-and-now, and what he should live for. When the paper plane flies off the cliff, so to does Roger’s urge to end it all.

The Ian that returns from the Mohawk is not the Ian that left Jamie, Clare, and Roger. Though his appearance has changed, I am referencing Ian’s countenance, demeanor, and personality. In those regards, Ian is a shadow of his former self. The new Ian is troubled, haunted, and alone even-though he is surrounded by family-members at the Fraser’s lavish estate.

Ian’s trauma is nebulous at this point. Ian only hints at what he has been through, why he left the Mohawk, and why he traveled for months from upper state New York to the Frasers’ new estate in North Carolina.

From what he mentions in Famous Last Words, it seems that Ian found love within the Mohawk but was ejected from the Mohawk, having to leave that love behind. Was he banished? Were all the Mohawk massacred (my guess) and Ian can’t speak of the horror he witnessed (not being able to do anything to stop it). Was Ian allowed to live because he is white? I have no doubt that it will eventually be revealed but this is only Ian’s reintroduction episode, where his pain is merely alluded to, and a poultice is smeared on his turmoil. It is Roger, in a three-part arc, who is fully exposed in Famous Last Words, and whom truly traverses a journey of healing.

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