Review of 'Outlander' 4.5

All kinds of chickens and baser things coming home to roost in Outlander 4.5, another fine episode filled with Colonial culture and danger.

Measles and superstition were the real villains in this episode, as the illness fells a mother and her newborn baby—delivered by Claire—and her grandfather thinks the culprit was not ultimately an illness but a curse put in his water by the native Cherokee. Again, Outlander in 1768 portrays some of the irrationality that grips some of America today, where some people think illegal immigrants are the source of all the problems that beset our world.

Meanwhile, Jamie runs into Murtagh, who turns out to be an American revolutionary, or one in the making. This is another kind of chicken coming home to roost for Jamie, who was warned by Claire that, as a holder of land granted him by the Crown, he'd be on the wrong side of the American Revolution, just a few years away.

But the best—at least, as far as time travel is concerned—was saved for last, as Brianna travels via the stones to the past in search of her parents, on a quest to warn them of the deadly fire that awaits them. As a chilling prelude to that, we have just seen the Cherokees burn down the grandfather's house, after he kills the Cherokee woman healer who became Claire's mentor and friend.

The course of history never did run smooth, as I often say, especially when time travel is involved. And I'll see you here next week after the next episode is on.