It's Ruined

Spoilers!!

What’s worse than your favourite show ending? Your favourite show losing all its magic and continuing on for 5 more seasons before ending in a fizzling, anticlimactic montage of previous episodes and a false death.

In 2015, I stumbled upon an article probably called 10 books you should read before the show ruins them. I can’t remember the whole list or even if these books were on it, but I think the two that stood out to me were Normal People by Sally Rooney and Outlander by Diana Gabladon. I’d read the first already and was excited to see it adapted for television, although that excitement was now tempered by anxiety over whether it could be as good as the book. The synopsis for Outlander made me want to read it there and then.

It was marketed as a time travel historical romance fiction novel about a married English woman who falls through time and falls in love with a Scottish Outlaw and has a torrid affair with him which requires her to choose the soft, kind English man in the future or the rugged, dangerous Scotsman. The way it was written, I thought the main character would flit back and forth through standing stones, struggling with a love triange that would ultimately be her undoing.

I should probably preface what I’m about to say with this. If you haven’t read the books or watched the show, this post may not be for you. I won’t be outlining the entire 8 seasons in great detail.

The book is about a young couple, married five years prior who have just taken their honeymoon in Scotland now that WWII has ended. The husband, Frank Randall, is a history buff who is searching for information about his ancestors, one of which is Jack Randall, a captain of the British Army serving in Scotland during the 1700s. Claire is an ex-army nurse with dead parents and an archeologist uncle who had taken her from dig sight to dig sight as a child, leaving her with a sense of adventure. During their honeymoon, Claire and Frank go to some standing stones near Inverness (they don’t exist in real life, I looked it up) to see the druids do a sunrise dance, and later Claire falls through the stones. She ends up traveling to 1743, having a runin with the not so honourable Jack Randall, being kidnapped by Mackenzie Clansmen, and being held on suspicions of being a spy.

I loved the first book, although I never would describe the relationships between Jamie, Claire, and Frank Randall as a love triange, as the relationship between Claire and Frank seems tenuous at best, and her match with Jamie is a forced marriage for the purposes of her survival and to further Jamies’ uncle Dougal’s (also War Chiefton of Clan Mackenzie’s) Jacobite cause.

What I loved about the first book was getting to dive into the history of Scotland a bit without having a boring history lesson on the Jacobite Rising, which if you took history class with me you’d know would have been a bunch of dates and battle names and nothing more. I liked reading about the day to day life. I liked the romance. I liked the characters and the Scottish superstitions and the drama revolving around Gallis Duncan and witchcraft and the price on Jamie’s head. I could have done without all the Jack Randall drama. It was a bit too much for me. But I did enjoy the danger of it. I also loved that the two periods in the book were two of my favourite times in history for clothing. And when I watched the show, I loved all of those things as well.

I bought the first book at the airport bookstore just before I got on a flight to Texas to see my parents in 2015. When I found my seat, the girl who was sitting next to me mentioned that she’d read Outlander but could only make it through the first two books before getting bored. I was disappointed. I was deteremined, also, deteremined to prove her wrong. And I did. In a way. I got through three books before giving up.

I thought maybe it was just me, maybe I was too distracted. There was a time when I spent all day and all night working on my photography website to increase the SEO using tags and alt text and building relationships with wedding planners, florist, and other photographers on social media that I didn’t really read as much as I wanted to. So I got into the show. And I loved the first two seasons minus a few episodes here and there that I still fast foward through to this day when I’m doing a rewatch.

The third season came, and it was fine. The book was better. The show aged Jamie and Claire a bit too much for my taste, and I felt strongly that I did not like the depictions of Roger or Briana. Then came the fourth season. I think I’d read half of this book and hoped the show would be better. It wasn’t.

From the moment that the characters landed on American soil, I was bored to tears. The books and show had become exactly what I hated about history class. The show stopped being about Claire and Jamie and Frank. There had never been enough bopping from one time to the other, there had been no love triange. That, I accepted, as I had realised I didn’t want Claire to leave the past and go back to Frank. And when Claire finally did go to the future, I didn’t feel like the show gave me enough of the future life to fall back in love with her relationship with Frank. His character was different than it had been. Now, the show and the book had done several things I don’t love.

First, the author and show writers had changed Frank’s character from a loving, doting husband who just needed to get his wife back to a angry, drunk cheater who only loved his daughter. This gave the audience an excuse to love Jamie more, and I hate that. Make me conflicted. Please.

Second, the storyline went from being a dramatic love story with danger and intrigue, quirky characters where the history lessons and the battles are part of the story but not the main theme to the battles and history lessons being the main story and everything else just a bit of thinly spread buttercream on a dry cake.

I did not want to hate Outlander. And I don’t. I don’t hate the first three books or the first three seasons. And there are episodes here and there from season four on that I kind of enjoy. But I never loved it after season three. The characters became weaker as the show went on. The story had no umph to it. Hardly anything happened. I spent years watching it, hoping Jamie and Claire would go back to Scotland, enjoy life with their family, have scirmishes with the other clans behind the British backs, fight to have tartan reinstated, grow potatoes, support causes from Scotland, maybe even have a hand in the French revolution rather than the American one.

Maybe it’s because I’m American and have had American history shoved down my throat for the better part of my life, but no. I think I’m right on this one. The books and the show became boring. The characters stopped being interesting. The magical elements that made sense in Scotland and even in season two when the characters are in France had vanished. The story was merely battles and talking of battles.

I have to give credit where credit is due. I’m sure writing 10 books, yes there is a 10th coming out if you’ve made it that far, is hard. I certainly have never done it. Gabladon’s premise was exciting at the beginning, and I’m sure she knew she had a knockout. But at what point is enough enough? I often wonder if she meant to keep writing the books, if she always knew the story would head to America and be less about Scotland or if she’d intended to end them but had been forced to continue by a publisher. I am not going to ask her. I’d rather not offend her, especially knowing I could never do what she does. Maybe one day. Maybe I will. But for now, I’ll stick to writing these and complaining loudly about the flaws I see in other people’s work. Yeh Ken?