A terrible illness, an alarming accusation and a shocking murder took place on Fraser’s Ridge this week. Tara Ward recaps episode six of season six of Outlander.
Mates, after this episode of Outlander, there is nothing of me left. I am lying in the vegetable patch, I am hallucinating snakes and storm clouds, I am Claire Fraser with a bad haircut wandering around town asking strangers for a poo sample. There may only be eight episodes this season, but each has been fuller than one of Jamie’s futuristic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and episode six was so packed with drama that it exploded like the corpse of the fingerless sin eater.
Do I exaggerate? Shit, no. In fact, the whole of Fraser’s Ridge had the shits this week, as dysentery spread through the settlement like fetid wildfire. Claire discovered the illness at the Macneill home, where everyone inside was either dehydrated or dead. Claire went straight into boss mode and announced that whatever Malva, Lizzie and Bree did while visiting the shit shack, they must not touch their face.
Lizzie, meanwhile:
But somehow it was Claire, not Lizzie, who was struck down by illness. The last time Jamie was this close to death, Claire saved him with the power of her naked body, but did we see him strip off and return the favour? We did not. All Jamie did was sit by her bed and hold her hand, so it’s no wonder Claire had angry hallucinations. Her feverish mind saw storm clouds, a snake, and her heart in her hands. I’m not Roger at the pulpit, but you don’t have to be a singing historian lay preacher to know that trouble is coming.
It began in the form of a bad haircut, after Malva and housekeeper Mrs Bug cut Claire’s hair off to ease the fever. Poor Claire. Jamie was tortured, imprisoned and left on a battlefield to die and never once did a single ginger lock come asunder, but poor old Claire gets the shivers for a week and somehow loses the lot. See you at the employment tribunal, Mrs Bug.
Maybe the bad haircut scared the germs away, because Claire recovered and was determined to find the source of her illness. While Jamie believed a rotting elk in the river caused the dysentery, Claire believed both she and Tom Christie had been struck down by an unrelated illness. She asked Tom for a fecal sample, but poo is where Tom draws the line. First a witch with no hair shows up uninvited, and now she wants him to crap in a bottle? Absolute filth.
You don’t have to be an amoeba under Claire’s microscope to know that Malva Christie was probably behind the poisoning of her two favourite people. She was certainly behind the scheme to blame her pregnancy on Jamie Fraser. That’s right, the woman who makes love spells out of human fingers announced that she was with child, and that Jamie from the Broch was her baby daddy.
It was like Roger preached at church: the snaketh cometh, and thy big long tongueth telleth stories. Malva convinced everyone of her tale by describing the location and appearance of several Jamie Fraser scars and birthmarks, features that would only be known to someone with intimate knowledge, or someone who had watched him rutting in a barn, or a lonely TV recapper who keeps a faithful record of every single pox and blemish that dared to tarnish his herculean fuselage during the past six seasons.
Jamie was horrified to become entangled in Malva Christie’s sordid little scheme, especially after he and Claire had only just enjoyed a romantic chat about how faithful they both were. But he also alluded to having calluses “down there” during that conversation, so let’s move on, and quickly.
Now Jamie had the shits as well, but only the emotional ones. Malva’s accusation made him confess to Claire that he had been unfaithful, but it was years ago when she was in the future and he had Scottish cave sex with Mary McNabb. Everyone knows cave sex doesn’t count, and his long hair had blinded his heart, or something. The Frasers will be fine, even though everyone on the Ridge hates them now. They are stronger than dysentery amoeba, tougher than the sin eater’s fingers. Nothing will tear them apart.
Well, dead Malva Christie in the vege patch might do it. Claire had an ether-induced hallucination that saw her threaten to kill Malva, only to wake and discover Malva’s dead body lying amongst the peas and carrots. With garden knife in hand, Claire performed a cesarean to try and save Malva’s baby. She was too late, and now Claire has a problem in her front garden that will make love spells made from human fingers look like an absolute dream. Good luck to us all.
Outlander screens on Neon, with a new episode every Monday night. Read more of Tara Ward’s Outlander recaps here.