Welcome to episode 508 of #Outlander , which is officially the worst episode of the season so far. If you haven’t watched it yet, you may consider yourself lucky and watch something that’s actually good instead.
(Seriously, watch Unorthodox instead. It is fantastic.)

This is the episode where the writers decided that they didn’t want to work ("Coming up with good dialogue and compelling storylines is way too hard!"), so they decided to let style be more important than substance.

And showing the proper amount of respect for the source material is so boring and outdated! No, those dusty old books can go hang - just like Roger.

The episode is called "Famous Last Words," but it might as well have been called "The Producers Ruin Another Storyline." We start off in a flashback to show what a wonderful couple Broger make. This would have been believable if they’d had an ounce of chemistry, but they don’t,

so the only thing we get from this scene are: A) The really bad attempt at hiding Roger’s long hair in 1969, and B) Bree is now an engineering genius since people who haven’t read the books would have no idea what her skills are based on the show.

And then the insanity of the episode truly rears its ugly head. Silent movie footage?! I am not exaggerating when I’m saying that I was yelling at my screen.

Silent movie footage interspersed with regular footage might (might!) have worked if this had been a show about a time traveller from the 1920s going back to the 1770s. However, it’s not.

Even Claire was 9 years old when The Jazz Singer (aka. the first movie with synchronised dialogue) was released, so even she wouldn’t have been particularly nostalgic about silent movies.

And Roger? He left the 20th century in 1971. This was the era of Love Story. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Rosemary’s Baby. James Bond. Midnight Cowboy. Easy Rider. Not exactly Charlie Chaplin and silent movies.

Apart from the fact that I can’t remember ever hearing Roger talk about silent movies, this show has also never broken its own style. This is so jarring and ridiculous that it takes the horror out of the hanging and leaves us wondering what on earth the producers were thinking.

In S1 C would hear (or sing) '40s music to remind the audience that she was a stranger in a strange time. That worked b/c she'd use that as an anchor. This didn’t, b/c it was an obvious attempt to look cool & artistic instead of doing what was right for the story & the character.

As for Roger himself, his time convalescing in the book was also a long and difficult process, but at least he had his family rallying to save him. (They even botched the scene where Claire performs emergency surgery to save his life.) He felt separated from everyone here.

Furthermore, as my good friend @lcb257 pointed out earlier, his healing process ends up revolving around Young Ian, who is simply being used as a teaching device to make Roger see he has something worth living for.

Apart from the fact that these two did not even get to know each other back in season 4, this was an odd pairing from the start. The actors tried to make it work, but when the script is this bad, not even the actors can elevate it.

What it all boils down to is that Roger deserved better. This is the most traumatic thing that has happened to him in the books so far (and arguably in the entire series), and they ruined it. They turned his trauma into a cheap and ridiculous gimmick just for fun.

This was Roger’s time to shine. We were supposed to see why he’s one of the major characters in the books, and why so many readers love him. Instead, we’re left wondering why TPTB felt the need to ruin his big story arc.

As for the other characters, Marsali/Lauren Lyle is an absolute delight in every scene she’s in, and Fergus needs more lines. These two are so wonderful, so can they please get more to do?

Meanwhile, Jamie and Claire had barely anything to do in an episode where Claire in particular should’ve played an important part in Roger’s healing.

Jamie, who still hasn’t had a proper conversation with Bree apart from her calling herself his "wee girl" (?) in 501, isn’t even allowed to be there for her as her da in this ep. Their relationship has been a fiasco since she hit him, and it doesn’t seem like they want to fix it.

#Outlander has had a lot of bad episodes, but this one stands out this season because the source material covered in this episode is actually interesting, but they did such a terrible job adapting it.

Furthermore, if this is the "artsy" way they’ve decided to depict Roger’s hanging, I’m absolutely terrified to see how they’ve decided to portray Claire’s upcoming trauma.