Wee Caps are written at 1 AM after the midnight release and are my immediate reactions/feelings about the episode. 

PrestonPans

History tells us this was a 15 minute victory for the Scots.  And to win in 15 minutes, you kill and wound a lot of people.  So the one thing I will tell people is that this episode is graphic and violent, from the first minute.  If that sort of thing bothers you, this episode will be harder to watch.  I did grimace a few times.

The title card shows the juxtaposition of the Highlander music and the British army music.  One that wails in the night, the other that is rigid yet direct.  It is a symbol of things to come over the next few episodes.

I can see why Sam was proud of this episode.  He was in and out of it for the whole hour but  it was really the rest of the expanded cast that had the spotlight.  But whenever Jamie is on screen, the camera just finds him.  This episode explored his relationship with everyone in his life who is at the camp with him.

I thought it started a bit slow.  We got 2 of the 3 MarkMe early on.  You can see that even when other men/generals are arguing, Jamie is always thinking.   One of the most accurate lines of the night about Jamie is when Dougal tells him that something he just engineered (on his feet) was smart and cunning and that he reminded him of Colum. I wondered if Dougal recognized at that moment why Colum wanted Jamie to succeed him and not Dougal.

The actor that most impressed me tonight besides our two leads?  Young Romann.  He was good, I mean really really good.  I love the relationship that has developed between Claire and Fergus as well.

The scene that was in the preview where Fergus interrupts a kiss?  I could tell they weren’t going to kiss because Jamie didn’t lick his lips.  But don’t worry, there was some great kisses in this episode.  Jamie had what can only be described as battle lust in his eyes both before and after the skirmish.

There is a scene with the specimen bottle that shows boys will be boys no matter what the circumstances.

The parallel stories between the two soldier friends Rupert and Angus and the two farmer friends Ross and Kinkaid were nice but not exactly original writing by Ira.

The set production/cinematography was really good, I actually would love to see that on a big screen.  The use of the morning fog was excellent.

The scene with Claire and the women at the hospital while the battle sounds began shows that sometimes waiting and wondering can be just as hard as swinging a sword. Claire was back in field hospital taking charge mode.  I wonder if she hadn’t worked through her PTSD with Jamie last week if she would have had a hard time at the hospital.

The music was superb and the heartbeat type sound before the battle was unique sounding and really captured the adrenaline of both nerves and excitement that I would imagine precedes a battle.

With war comes loss.  Loss of life, loss of innocence, loss of stability.  And PrestonPans is no different.

I wonder how many times they had to film those scenes, it must have been exhausting.  I also wonder if those were the scenes that Sam filmed while Cait was doing Faith.

I look forward to watching it again on my HDTV tomorrow to catch the little things that one misses on first watch.  It certainly isn’t the kind of episode that you watch over and over like last week but it was very important in many ways.

Even though this was Sam’s favorite, I’m glad it was not submitted for Emmy.  He had deeper performances in other episodes in terms of meaty scenes that voters like.  But I loved watching his eyes in this episode.  I’m glad they are continuing to show how intelligent Jamie is.

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