Pop CultureMarch 2, 2020

Outlander recap: Jamie Fraser is the original G.O.A.T.

Staff writer

Something smelt strange in Outlander this week, and for once, it wasn’t Claire’s mouldy bread. Tara Ward recaps episode three of season five of Outlander.

Outlander would be nothing without goats. Without the goat in season one, Claire wouldn’t have been noticed by the Redcoat, taken to see Black Jack, and forced to marry Jamie. Without the goat lady in season three, Clarie wouldn’t have jumped off the ship and might have been separated from Jamie forever. Most importantly, without this week’s herd of feral goats shacked up in a tiny cabin in the North Carolina mountains, we would have missed Claire delivering the finest line my sweet ears have ever heard.

“That smell?” Claire declared as she walked through a putrid cloud of colonial stench, “It isn’t goat.”

It isn’t goat, Your Honour. IT ISN’T GOAT. Put it on a t-shirt, paint it on the Idiot Hut, tattoo it across Lord John’s furrowed brow, because the goats were the MVPs in an episode filled with crazy times. Crazy flowed like the pus from Mr Beardsley’s septic legs, like Claire saying “pig skin is a good substitute for human skin”, and Jamie claiming it was so cold he couldn’t find Little Colonel Fraser when he went to pee. And the mould! There was more mould than you could shake a crusty loaf of bread at, and yet, not a skerrick of penicillin to be seen. Just goats, just taking over the world, one Outlander episode at a time.

Family fun time at the Ridge was over, as Claire and Jamie hit the road to build a militia so big and testosteroney that it would put the shits right up the Regulators. Their plans were derailed when a thief in their camp was revealed to be the twin of Josiah Beardsley, he of the inflamed tonsils from episode one. The Beardsley brothers were bonded to a local man who mistreated them, which made Jamie mad. Nobody hurts the men he wants to send into battle. Nobody puts the Beardsleys in the corner on his watch.

Tell that to the goats. The goats roamed through the Beardsley cabin like they owned the place. At night, they probably ate at the table with tiny goat cutlery and and drank from tiny goat goblets and slept in tiny goat beds. While Fanny Beardsley tortured her sick husband upstairs, those goats carried on like it was Love Island and they were goaty bombshells, ready to shoot their shot and see if any other goats were their type on paper.

While most of us have the good sense to turn from disaster, the Frasers always run straight into the storm with arms wide open. Claire and Jamie were met at the Beardsleys by a horrific stench, a furious wife, and an old man rotting to death. Mr Beardsley was in a right state, having been immobilised by a stroke and now being slowly tortured by his fifth wife Fanny, who liked to burn his feet in revenge for the abuse he dished out to all his wives.

But Jamie needed the indenture paperwork to free the Beardsley twins, and he needed an 18th century Marie Kondo to help him find it. While Mr Beardsley dripped through the ceiling, Fanny went into labour with a child that was not her husband’s and Jamie let a horny goat out of a locked cupboard. That thing is probably still rutting its way around America today, dreaming sweet dreams about the ginger giant who gave him his freedom on that cold, bleak day in 1771.

Look, if you think I’m talking about goats because nothing much happened in this episode, then you’re wrong. Stay with me, my little Outlander cherubs. Stick to me like you are mould and I am a chunk of crusty bread and together we are trapped under a bell jar of destiny. If you listen closely to the winds, you will hear the impatient cries of Outlander fans, screaming “BUT, FANNY” and “THE BEARDSLEY TWINS” and “WHAT ABOUT JAMIE GOING INTO THAT HOUSE WITH THE TERRIFYING GOATS?!?” Indeed. It all happened, and just like the lovely timelapse of bread going mouldy, I will never forget.

Fanny disappeared into the night, just like Claire’s dreams of inventing penicillin 157 years early. She left Claire holding both the baby and the goats, and Jamie holding the indenture papers. What to do about the evil Mr Beardsley? He blinked twice to tell Jamie to kill him, and the sound of the bullet sent millions of birds into to the sky and into our nightmares. Fly free, little birds, because as Fanny said, “you need more than love to survive in this world”. You also need goats, a lot of mould, and a time-travelling doctor with a hot potato husband to help you sort your filing system.

New episodes of Outlander arrive every Monday on Lightbox.

Read the rest of Tara Ward’s Outlander recaps here.

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Pop CultureMarch 1, 2020

Meet the dog who is absolutely mad for Country Calendar

Alex Casey

Senior writer

To celebrate the return of Country Calendar to TVNZ1, Alex Casey tracks down the show’s biggest canine fan.

This Sunday night at seven o’clock, Suki will run to the television and demand that her parents turn on TVNZ1 so she can hear her favourite theme song. She’ll then sit, nose against the screen, to watch the return of her favourite programme Country Calendar. She’ll be hoping that there are pigs, perhaps some farm dogs, but won’t be as interested in watching bees. Suki is a 12 year old border collie, and she’s loved Country Calendar her whole doggone life.

“She started to get interested in television when she was just a puppy,” Suki’s owner and Greytown resident Maura Marron says. “During the soccer world cup we’d be getting up in the middle of the night to watch games. There’d be food and clapping and lots of noise, so I think she associated TV with having a bit of a party.” Even after New Zealand was booted from the world cup, Suki continued to wake up at 2am and run to the TV, whining for it to be turned on.

Ever since then, Suki’s appetite for screentime has been insatiable. “After the world cup she got really into watching anything with animals,” Marron remembers. “One night we were channel surfing and the movie Babe was on TV. She particularly likes pigs, so she just sat there and watched the whole movie, she was just fascinated.” Marron has since bought Babe on DVD for Suki, who she says is now familiar with the story and “cries in the sad bits.”

But not even Babe compares to the weekly joys of rural life on Country Calendar, Suki’s paws-down favourite thing to watch. New Zealand’s longest-running television series has been on screens since 1966, and was a huge favourite in the Marron household well before Suki arrived. “My parents always used to watch it,” says Marron. “I always like it when they look at beekeeping or fishing, but Suki is not so keen on those bits.”

By the time she was one year old, Suki was able to recognise the opening twangs of the iconic Country Calendar theme song and would rush into the lounge from outside as soon as she heard them. “It’s her absolute favourite programme,” says Marron. “Every Sunday she’s right up in front of the screen. If an animal is in pain or something she tilts her head to the side, her ears prick up and move around – she’s definitely watching and understanding it.”

What makes Suki’s obsession all the more impressive is that she somehow knows what day of the week the show airs. “She knows that when the news finishes on a Sunday, Country Calendar is going to be on. She won’t get excited at the end of the news on a Tuesday or a Wednesday or a Thursday night, but after the news on the weekend she’ll start to bark because she knows her music is about to come on,” says Marron. “I don’t know how it happens, but it happens.”

Suki hates the summertime because that’s when Country Calendar goes off air. Luckily, there are safeguards in place for the dry season. The neighbours are dog enthusiasts and sometimes have Suki over for a slumber party to watch their Country Calendar box set DVDs. Marron keeps a couple of episodes recorded on the MySky and brings them out when the withdrawals set in. “She will wait for the TV to be switched on when it’s Country Calendar time. If we are sitting in the kitchen, she’ll go sit in front of the TV and start whining until someone turns it on.”

Marron doesn’t know exactly why Country Calendar has struck such a deep chord with Suki for over a decade. “She just knows what she likes, I suppose. I’m no dog psychologist but it’s clearly a show that she enjoys and its got a distinctive theme song. When she hears it, she knows that her favourite show is about to come on and she’s about to have a great half an hour.”

Watch Hyundai Country Calendar tonight at 7pm on TVNZ1.

This content was created in paid partnership with TVNZ. Learn more about our partnerships here.