So, I’ve come to realize that I’m giving these extremely long recaps of the episodes with the information on how something was different from the book Dragonfly In Amber. So I’m going to make a change. Instead of writing a 2900 word recap/review, I’m going to write the review like I do for books but include where the episode is different from the book. At the top of the post, I’ll include the episode trailer and synopsis, and then go from there. (The long posts were taking me forever to write and I wasn’t really enjoying it.)
So with out further adieu, on to Episode 3!
Summary from Starz.com
Jamie’s days and nights are dominated by political machinations, while Claire finds solace in her healing skills. As their plan to stop Culloden progresses, the past threatens to derail their forward momentum.
DO NOT CONTINUE ON IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
This episode has a lot going on in it. You have Jamie spending his nights with Prince Charles and his days playing chess with Lord Duverney and running the wine business. He isn’t spending much time with Claire, who is stuck at home. Claire is beyond bored. She needs something to do other than going to tea or playing cards with French Aristocracy.
During one of those boring tea and card games with “her ladies” (as Jamie calls them), Claire and Louise discover how innocent Mary is.
Mary tells Louise that she is from Sussex. This leads to a flashback for Claire. She remembers looking at a Family Bible with Frank and the top of the family tree shows Mary Hawkins married to Johnathan Randall. In the book, Claire remembers just as she and Jamie are getting amorous in bed.
When Claire comes home, she is round about the axle. She believes that she has to be the one to make sure that Mary and Jack get together and produce a child which is Frank’s direct ancestor, but because of what Jack did to Jamie, she is torn about keeping Jack alive. This whole thing has always bugged me. In the book and now in the TV series. Claire chose Jamie when she had the chance. Why would she be so worried about his survival? Then there is the thing about her gold ring. When they thought Jack Randall was dead, the ring didn’t disappear. As we all know from Back to the Future (and various other time travel stories), that when something changes it will affect the main character in some way, e.g. the high probability of Lorraine marrying Biff instead of George, leads to Marty’s picture changing. If Frank wasn’t going to exist due to Jack being dead, than Claire would not have his ring. But maybe it’s the comfort knowing that Frank lives is what drives her. She can’t imagine how her life would be now, if Frank hadn’t been in it previously. I don’t know.
Jamie and Lord Duverney do play chess. But for some reason, Jamie is traveling from Rue Tremoulins (the Jared’s townhouse) to Versailles. Which would have taken most of Jamie’s day to do. In the book, Lord Duverney lives in Paris as well and comes over to the house to place chess in the study. I’m not sure why they changed the location for the TV show. In an interview that the Set team did, they said that many of the locations from the book were consolidated because of the cost and time to create the sets. If they had stuck with the book and had the chess matches at Rue Tremoulins, they wouldn’t have needed the beautiful library set. But without that, a future scene would have been different.
Claire returns to Master Raymond’s Apothecary, this time in search of birth control for her Lady’s Maid, Suzette. When she arrives, Le Comte Saint Germain is leaving. This is where we get a wonderful shot of Master Raymond’s beautiful coat. Terry Dresbach, show costume designer, did a wonderful blog post about this coat and her inspiration. This visit combines a few visits that Claire pays Master Raymond. In the show, they don’t have the King’s singing-master, who tells all the Ladies of the Aristocracy about L’Hospital des Anges. He also is the one who takes a group of the ladies to the Hospital. Instead Master Raymond is the one who tells Claire about L’Hospital des Anges. Claire goes by herself without discussing it with Jamie first.
While Mother Hildegarde at L’Hospital des Anges isn’t as tall as she is described in the book, Frances de la Tour does a wonderful job of bringing her to life and making her a force of nature. You might know Frances de la Tour from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She played the giantess, Madame Olympe Maxime, that became Hagrid’s love interest. I am so glad that they have Bouton (the dog) at L’Hospital in the show. Both are pretty integral to the story.
There is a scene in the book where Jamie is upset that Claire is at L’Hospital des Anges instead of being home when he comes home in the middle of the day and needed her guidance. I feel that in the show, Jamie was more harsh than he was in the book. To the point that he left the house and returned to Maison de Madame Elise to get drunk. While there he watches a boy picking pockets. Jamie hires him to steal the Princes’ letters. In the book, Jamie accidentally goes to Maison Elise to hide from some men who were following him. That is where he finds the boy and hires him. Jamie changes the boy’s name to Fergus from Claudal. So far, I like the show’s version of Fergus.
My only real criticism of this Season is about Jamie. He isn’t the confident young man that he is in the book and TV Jamie is more emotional than book Jamie. I realize that they are approaching how Jamie deals with Wentworth differently on the TV show. Instead of quick –yet painful– recovery like in the book, they are being more realistic in his recovery. I always thought his recovery in the book was too fast, but I feel that the show has really changed the foundation of Jamie. He isn’t as involved with Claire, not sexually, but emotionally and socially as he is in the book. By this stage in the book, they had talked about names for the baby and disagree on if it will be a boy or a girl. Yet in the TV show, Jamie seems to be avoiding it, except to worry about Claire and the bairn’s health. Hopefully in the following episodes, he will starting wanting to help prepare for the new bairn.
Now for the next episode:
Tales From The PonyTails Blog 