Recap / Outlander S 3 E 3 All Debts Paid

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Recap of Outlander
Season 3, Episode 3:

All Debts Paid

Now in prison, Jamie encounters a familiar face from his past and forges a tentative alliance. Meanwhile, as Brianna grows older, the divisions in Claire and Frank's marriage grow wider.

Tropes

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: When Frank asks Claire if she would've forgotten Jamie in time if it weren't for Brianna, Claire gives him a definite 'no'.
  Claire: "That amount of time doesn't exist."
• Almost Dead Guy: Duncan Kerr survives just long enough to pass on information about a treasure to Jamie.
• Armor-Piercing Response:
  • Lord John Grey is trying to establish himself as benevolent but unquestionably in charge. When informed that there are rats in the prison cells, he orders cats be assigned to the cells. Jamie politely points out that the prisoners won't take kindly to the cats filching their rat supply. Grey chuckles and rhetorically remarks that surely the prisoners aren't eating the rats.
    Jamie: Only when they're lucky enough to catch one.
  • Claire tries to read Frank the riot act over his mistress, but Frank is having none of it, pointing out that they agreed he could have outside relations. Claire is still furious, demanding to know if Frank slept with the woman in their bedroom. Frank scoffs, obviously thinking her anger ridiculous since she married another man and she and Frank are raising that man's child.
    Claire: Have you fucked her in our bedroom?
    Frank: I think our bedroom is far too crowded already. Wouldn't you agree?
• Beware the Nice Ones: Claire makes her anger very clear to Frank when he invites his mistress into their home during Claire's graduation party, and later when he voices his intention to move to England with said mistress and take Brianna with him.
• The Bus Came Back: Lord John Grey, who last appeared in Season 2's "Je Suis Prest" as a 16-year-old would be assassin, is the new prison warden of Ardsmuir, the prison where Jamie is being held.
• Call-Back: Jamie sneak attacks Lord John while the latter is taking a leak, the exact same way Lord John attacked him many years ago. He addresses Lord John as "William Grey, second son of Viscount Melton", the same way Lord John introduced himself then.
• Commonality Connection: Lord John and Jamie bond over having lost someone they deeply cared for. Unfortunately, that brief moment of connection is shattered when John unintentionally presses Jamie's Trauma Button.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: Lord John Grey can be considered a replacement for Jack Randall as the British Officer constantly recurring in Jamie's life, but the two could not be more different. Whereas Randall reveled in harming others, Lord John has a very strict code of honor and does his best to help Jamie even as Jamie resists overtures of friendship.
• Cultured Badass: Lord John is surprised to discover that in addition to being an omniglot, a diplomat, and a chess master, Jamie also has a solid knowledge of French cuisine, more so than Lord John himself.
• Deadpan Snarker: Frank, when Claire is trying to chew him out over having an extramarital affair.
  Frank: What? Are you jealous now? Green aint your color, Claire.
• Death Seeker: After failing to find Claire on the Selkie's Island, Jamie tries to goad Lord John into killing him. Fortunately, Lord John is too honorable to kill an unarmed man.
• The Dreaded: As a Jacobite commander with a fearsome battle reputation and a history of escape from multiple English prisons, Jamie is the only prisoner who is kept in chains at all times. Colonel Quarry openly admits that all of the guards are afraid of Jamie and the prisoners view Jamie as their leader.
• Flashback Cut: After Jamie sneak attacks Lord John, flashback cuts are used to remind the audience of their previous encounter, including John's unsuccessful attempt at a sneak attack and being fooled into giving up military intelligence.
• Food as Bribe: With food sparse and the quality even worse, food for the prisoners is a bargaining point between Jamie and Lord John.
• Foot-Dragging Divorcee: Frank refuses Claire's demand for a divorce because he doesn't want to lose custody of Brianna. Claire swears she would never take Brianna away, but Frank reminds her that she's not great at keeping her promises (like to have and to hold, forsaking all others) and he won't risk it given that judges in that time period are more likely to side with the mother in custody battle and Brianna very visibly is not Frank's biological child.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Subverted. Lord John clearly remembers Jamie, but Jamie tells Murtagh that while the new governor looks familiar, he doesn't quite know why. The two continue to interact as though new acquaintances until the day Jamie attacks Lord John the exact same way John attacked him nearly ten years ago and calls him "William Grey, second son of Viscount Melton", the exact name John gave Jamie at that time. John is shocked that Jamie remembered. Jamie says he put it together the first time they actually talked.
• Friendship Moment: Jamie is very suspicious of Lord Grey after he is separated from the other prisoners. Lord John explains that since Jamie is a convicted traitor, John can't give him a sentence commutation like the other prisoners, but he can set him up to serve with the Dunsanys, the closest to freedom he can grant. Jamie asks John why he would do something like this when Jamie refused his advances. John tells him because he shared something personal with Jamie and Jamie did likewise. This honesty allows Jamie to let go of some of his animosity towards and suspicion of John.
• Gilded Cage: Their marriage has become a metaphorical one for Claire and Frank.
• Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Claire's view of her and Frank's extramarital relationship. She sees her relationship with Jamie as good, an unintentional and inevitable coming together of soulmates. She refuses to believe the same of Frank's relationship with Sandy, viewing it as fleeting and tawdry, despite the fact that Frank seems to have deep feelings for the woman, gets very upset when Claire calls Sandy a harlot, and eventually expresses his intentions to marry Sandy.
• Happy Marriage Charade: Both Claire and Frank pretend that their marriage is a happy one, for Brianna's sake.
• Hope Spot: For Jamie, when Duncan Kerr tells him of a 'White Witch' who is searching for a brave MacKenzie. Jamie believes he might be referring to Claire and travels to the Silkie's Isle in an attempt to find her. Unfortunately Claire is not there, and Jamie's disappointment is so painful that he asks Lord John to kill him.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Lord John's reaction to finding out that the infamous Red Jamie is housed in his prison.
• Hypocrite: Claire is furious to have to witness evidence of Frank's infidelity, his girlfriend showing up to the house earlier than expected, while Frank has spent the last decade with her despite her obvious love of another man, raising a child who has that man's flaming red hair, a never ending reminder of Claire's infidelity. She's particularly appalled by the idea that Frank may have had sex with Sandy in the house where the Randall's daughter lives. You know, the daughter who was fathered by Claire's other husband.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: Jamie initially refuses to help Lord John with the Gaelic speaking stranger, stating that he's a prisoner, not an interpreter.
• Incompatible Orientation: Lord John is enamored with Jamie, but has to accept that it's not meant to be. Jamie is heterosexual, deeply grieving over the loss of his wife, and (unbeknownst to Lord John) repulsed by homosexual proclivities after having been brutally raped by Jack Randall.
• Indentured Servitude: The Jacobite prisoners are sent to the colonies to serve 14 years as indentured workers, even though most of them have already served around ten years at Ardsmuir. Jamie is sent to work as a groom at Helwater for an indefinite period of parole.
• Internal Reveal: Jamie reveals that the English woman Lord John saved from him was actually Jamie's wife, Claire.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Although Lord John's affections are unrequited, he still shows a great deal of concern for Jamie's wellbeing. As he is not able to commute Jamie's sentence to transportation to the colonies, he arranges for Jamie to be paroled to Helwater, an estate owned by family friends of the Greys, and promises to return quarterly to make sure Jamie is still okay.
• Killed Off for Real: Frank, in a car accident near the end of the episode.
• The Leader: People naturally flock to Jamie for guidance. Even as a prisoner, he is treated as the De Facto leader of the Highlanders, speaking up for the men when conditions become unbearable. The English begrudgingly accept that their job is easier when they have Jamie's cooperation.
• Living MacGuffin: Duncan Kerr is on the screen just long enough to present a problem that requires Jamie and Lord John to work together, pushing them to hash out their grievances and kindle the beginnings of a friendship.
• Marriage of Convenience: Claire and Frank's marriage has become this, as they agreed to live separate lives while remaining married to one another.
• Meaningful Echo: In season 2, Jamie tells John Grey, "I give you your life. I hope you use it well." Now, as Lord John is releasing Jamie to parole, he echoes the words back.
  Lord John: You gave me my life all those years ago. Now, I give you yours. I hope you'll use it well.
• The Medic: There's a short moment near the end of Claire in her doctor role in the hospital, comforting a patient's husband.
• My Greatest Failure: Lord John is still ashamed of having given information about British troop movements to Red Jamie. He's even more embarrassed when he learns that Claire, the catalyst for his capitulation, was a rouse.
• No Peripheral Vision: The Redcoats are so focused on monitoring two prisoners who have excitedly bounded off to check their snare traps for rabbits that they completely miss 6'3", redheaded Jamie Fraser take off in a dead sprint in the opposite direction, his cloak flapping in the wind like giant wings, two other prisoners in tow. The two prisoners hide Jamie in a dug out ditch, covering him, and make it back to the line before the Redcoats can notice anything amiss.
• No-Sell: When Lord John suspects that Jamie is not being fully truthful, he threatens to force Jamie to talk. Jamie, who has been through hell in back, is not the least bit intimidated, telling him that there's nothing he could do to Jamie that hasn't already been done, but he can try if he feels he must. Lord John backs down with a vague threat that they'll speak again.
• Officer and a Gentleman: Grey refuses to keep his promise to kill Jamie, declaring that he does not murder unarmed prisoners.
• Omniglot: Jamie speaks Gaelic, English, French, and Latin. In an earlier episode, Jamie says he also speaks Greek and in the books he speaks Hebrew, some Chinese, and several indigenous American languages.
• Prophecy Twist: Duncan Kerr tells Jamie that the gold is cursed and the White Witch connected to it is looking for a MacKenzie and will eventually come looking for Jamie. Jamie assumes that it's a reference to Claire, but later episodes will reveal that it's actually about Geillis Duncan who is attempting to change history and will seek Jamie out because of the sapphire he takes from the treasure box. However, Jamie's interpretation is also correct since Claire will eventually discover he's still alive and return to find him.
• Racial Face Blindness: Invoked with nationality. Murtagh says the British all look the same. Jamie reminds him that the British say the same thing about the Highlanders.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: Played with in-universe. Lord John Grey asks for Jamie's help because he does not speak Gaelic. Even though he's listening as Jamie and Duncan speak, everything goes over his head, even as the audience is able to pick up names and Gaelic words that have been used repeatedly over the past three seasons.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: The English are holding the Jacobites prisoner but do not provision them with nearly enough food leaving the men to supplement their diet of cold mush and stale bread with rats and watercress.
• The Reveal: Claire and Frank have agreed that they're free to discreetly pursue other people and Frank has a long-time mistress, Sandy.
• Single Tear: Lord John cries a single tear after Jamie brutally rejects his romantic advances.
• Silent Treatment: When Lord John forcibly removes Jamie from Murtagh and the other prisoners without explanation, Jamie refuses to speak with him for three days.
• Spared by the Adaptation: This episode reveals that Murtagh did not die at Culloden, but was captured and imprisoned in Ardsmuir.
• Taking the Kids: Invoked by Frank as the reason he refuses to give Claire a divorce. Particularly important as Frank is not Brianna's biological father and there are even newspaper articles to prove that Claire came back to Frank already pregnant.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Invoked. Claire complains that Frank's indiscretion over his affair embarrassed her in front of her colleagues. Frank implies her that her behavior, her refusal to show any dedication to be his wife, has been embarrassing him in front of his colleagues for years.
• Time Skip: Claire's scenes take place over a period of eleven years. Her first scene in this episode occurs around seven years after her last scene in the previous episode. Jamie's scenes take place three years after his capture by the English in "Surrender".
• Tranquil Fury: Jamie when Lord John makes a move on him.
• Trauma Button: John's touching and rubbing his hand, a tentative come on, is one for Jamie. Having been raped and tortured by Captain Randall the last time he was in an English prison, another English jailer taking physical interest in him triggers a sharp fear response.
• Verbal Salt in the Wound: Jamie is trying to goad Lord John into killing him so he makes fun of John for failing to kill him. Jamie ordered John tied to a tree for John's brother and his men to find. Jamie asks if John was there long enough to shit himself before the men found him. Lord John says his actions that night where the actions of a foolish boy and the memory still makes shame burn in his gut.