juste milieu

So…umm…I didn’t expect Outlander to get any Emmy love this year.

It was a weak season. Really weak. The story telling was awful at times, mediocre at best. Yes, the acting the superb, yes Caitriona and Sam both deserved some love, especially Cait…but it’s hard to get that nomination when the show you’re on is less than stellar.

And Outlander was this season. It was way way way too plot driven. It was bad thing after bad thing happening without a chance to breathe. It was heavy and depressing and constantly dramatic. It went from being something special and different to being every other historical story that’s ever existed.

And because it was soooo plot driven, it hardly gave the actors a chance to sink into their characters and really show the depth of the performance. What they did with what they had was brilliant, make no mistake (I firmly believe Sam, Cait, Duncan, Stanley, etc are the only reason this season worked at all) but…what they were given wasn’t exactly great.

I’m glad it didn’t get rewarded. There was nothing special or magic about this season and I desperately want them to do better.

Outlander works best when it’s not afraid to be itself and this season was doing everything it could be to be something else.

I feel bad for Sam and Cait (and happy for Terry and Jon, who did deserve it, even if all attention was paid to them so of course they got the noms) but…the show really needs to do better.

I have one thing to add. And this is MY opinion and only mine. Disagree if you want. 

The fault of a less than stellar season lays squarely with the book it is based on. Dragonfly in Amber is a lumbering mess of overly complicated plots that don’t mean anything to anyone in love with the original love story. The show’s writers had to pick and choose what to use out of the book, knowing that leaving the Comte and Master Raymond out would create a void during the Paris section. So much of what Claire does has to do with them while most of what Jamie does is “off-scene.” Book purists limit how far away from the source material the writers are able to go. Just look at the screaming done when Laoghaire was brought back into the story. (Which I liked, btw.)

It may just be me, I don’t know. But every single time I see this on my dash or on someone’s blog or anywhere else, I kind of just breathe a sigh of relief. That’s one more person who cares. That’s one more person who doesn’t hate me.

Because it means so much, especially when all the media is spewing out is that I’m a terrible person and no one wants people like me near them. It means so much because I’m tired of people who won’t sit next to me in class, or who choose to join the longer line at the grocery store because they don’t want to be beside me and my family. It means so much when I have to lift my head any time someone says the words Islam or Muslim because I’m scared that they’ll say something that’ll hurt, when I have to pay attention to the news because who knows what so and so is saying now, who knows which of my people are being attacked now, who knows what’s going to happen to me now.

It means so much because I’ve been given the idea that the world is against me. And a huge part of it may be, but at least I’ve been reminded that some of it, just a small group of people, acknowledges that I’m a person too. That people like me are just that, people.

u little shit

how dare you