In almost every other way, though, it’s a flat episode - in large part because it struggles to recover from the brutality it introduces with Jamie’s torture.
It’s hard not to feel entirely consumed by the brutality of the scene. It is meant to be stunningly awful, and so it is.Īs a feat of performance, “To Ransom A Man’s Soul” is incredibly successful. The camera does not cut away from the torture imaginative lighting does not screen the audience from the abuse. And in what Jamie says, later in the episode, was the worst deprivation of all, Randall manages to arouse Jamie enough that the captive orgasms. Randall brands Jamie with his seal, heated to red-hot in a brazier. Jamie is forced to orally service Randall. Jamie vomits (from the pain or emotional trauma, it’s not clear). He kisses Jamie, rapturously, and tends to his wounds, before raping him again.
He pounds Jamie’s hand with a mallet, and then nails it to the table. Randall anally rapes Jamie, so much so that Jamie screams in pain. This particular scene comes to life in spectacularly brutal fashion. Any scene, rendered from text to screen, becomes more tangible. In the show, the torture is conveyed to the viewer directly. But in the book “Outlander,” this story is narrated to the reader as it is told to Claire, who discovers the details of Jamie’s imprisonment in the weeks following, as he’s struggling to recover. Jamie (Sam Heughan) makes a devil’s bargain with the sadistic redcoat captain Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies): In exchange for his wife Claire’s safety and the dignity of a clean death, Jamie will allow Randall to have sex with him. A few films, here and there, have surpassed the horror of “To Ransom A Man’s Soul” - but it’s significant, I think, that the few I recall are all about genocide, such as “The Killing Fields” and the Canadian film “A Sunday In Kigali.” “To Ransom A Man’s Soul,” the first season finale, tells the same story as the books. Last night, “Outlander” aired the most upsetting scenes I’ve ever seen on television. Content warning: This post discusses an episode depicting violent rape and other forms of mutilation, assault, and torture.