If you strip away all of the big, sweeping scenes – the daring escape from Fort William, the controversial spanking, threatening your husband with his own dagger before engaging in steamy make-up sex – from “The Reckoning,” which has quenched the aching Droughtlander thirst millions have been suffering from since “Outlander” finished up its first eight episodes last September on Starz, what’s left at the core is something far more satisfying: The evolution of Claire and Jamie Fraser’s (Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan) relationship into something resembling a modern marriage.  That – not the fiery sex scenes (and don’t get me wrong, they’re awesome, and I don’t want them to go away), nor the violent scrapes that Jamie and Claire inevitably get into – is what makes “Outlander” such a fantastic series. Creator Ronald D. Moore (click here for my interview with him) has succeeded in putting together a show that, without talking down to the audience or bombarding them with excess information that they can’t possibly ever sift through, is without a doubt the one of the most engaging hours of television you will experience right now. To be fair, I say “one of the most” because “Mad Men” returns Sunday, and “The Americans” still has three episodes left this season.  One of the smartest things Moore did with this mid-season premiere episode was to shift the first-person narrative from Claire, the WWII combat nurse who, while visiting Scotland in 1945, was mysteriously thrown back in time to the early days of the Jacobite Rebellion in 1743, to her now-18th-century Highlander husband, Jamie. Although Diana Gabaldon‘s bestselling book series – upon which “Outlander” the TV show is based – is told from Claire’s point of view, Moore made the creative decision to bring us back into the fold with Jamie as our guide. Because, as Moore told me – and you’ll see on the show — this is indeed now Claire and Jamie’s story.  But, a big part of that story is the fact that while these two have an unyielding physical chemistry and deep admiration for each other, they are from two extremely different worlds, and that must resolve itself before they can hop back into the sack and make all that whiskey we bought for the episode-watching occasion worth it.  Crisis Solved, Band Happy. Oh, Hell No  “The Reckoning” kicks off with a brief homage to the “Outlander” series premiere, in which Claire narrated what was about to happen to her. But this time, it’s Jamie’s voice-over we hear, repeating Claire’s line from episode 101, “Strange, the things you remember…” The peaceful setting belies what’s ahead – Jamie skipping stones along a calm river, the lush Scottish landscape a pleasant reminder of what we’ve missed during Droughtlander – because the rest of the episode is anything but chill. His opening narration is important to keep in mind, though, because while his arrogant, stubborn behavior during the episode will have many viewers shouting, “Hey, Claire! You don’t have to put up with this, you know. Frank’s waiting for you back in 1945!” he’s actually already telling us how much he’s grown as a man, and as a husband.  Because “The Reckoning” is from Jamie’s point of view, instead of picking up exactly where we left off during episode 108′s cliffhanger, we also get a brief, pre-credits scene to catch us up on what Jamie was doing while Claire futilely tried to outwit her captor, Captain Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall (the incredible Tobias Menzies): In short, the meeting with Horrocks, the man whom Jamie hoped could clear his name, was a disaster, and all Jamie got for it was the news that his wife had been captured by Redcoats. Soon enough, we’re at Fort William, where Operation Rescue Sassenach commences.  As we remember from the end of episode 108, Jamie busts through the window of the room where Black Jack is holding Claire captive, pointing a pistol at his enemy. But since we know her rescue is a given, it’s the interaction between Jamie and Black Jack that holds our attention more than anything else. It’s already been established that Jack has a both disturbing and complex fascination with Jamie – go back and watch episode 106, “The Garrison Commander,” to see what I mean. Immediately, Jack asks Jamie, “How’s my handiwork looking these days?” And by handiwork, he means Jamie’s permanently scarred back that came courtesy of his 200 cat o’nine tail lashes. Jack becomes so myopic upon Jamie’s presence – almost forgetting he’s holding a bare-breasted Claire with a knife to her throat, he requests a looksee at our ginger-haired hero’s back – and although this will be the last we see him this episode, he is never far from anyone’s mind, least of all Jamie’s. And he shouldn’t be.  That pistol Jamie was holding? It was unloaded, so, naturally, when Jack demanded Jamie hand it over in exchange for not slitting Claire’s throat, Jamie was all, “Mmmkay.” That way, when Jack inevitably fired it at Jamie and nothing happened, Claire was able to take advantage of her captor’s distraction and get away with her husband. One explosion and one terrifying jump into the dark waters later, Mr. and Mrs. Fraser are ensconced in woodland safety – and that’s when the real drama of the episode begins.  What follows is the first real test of their marriage. It is a raw, no-holds-barred fight that is not altogether unfamiliar to anyone in a loving relationship – because they’re both right. Jamie doesn’t understand why his wife isn’t immediately offering up an apology for straying from the spot where he “ordered” her to stay, and she’s all, “Um, I was just nearly raped?” This is where the whole 18th-century vs. 20th-century difference comes into play, because, and this is why it was so important for the episode to be told from Jamie’s perspective, he knows no way other than for a wife to be unquestionably obedient. And, because how could he possibly understand Claire’s pull back to the stones at Craigh na Dun, where her life, and her 1945 husband, Frank (also played by Menzies, even though we won’t see Frank anymore this season), remain, unchanged?  Claire, however, is to be commended for only going so far as to slap the jealously idiotic Jamie, because he deserved much worse, especially after accusing her of running off to punish him after her almost-rape (sensing an upsetting pattern here? 1945 isn’t looking too shabby at this juncture) by deserting British soldiers in episode 108. She stands up to her husband brilliantly, but, as with so many of these kinds of intense arguments, the anger – from both sides – comes from a deep love, even if neither one is prepared to admit it to the other yet (Jamie’s voice-over reveals that he is “falling in love” with her). When Jamie breaks down and cries, “You’re tearing my guts out, Claire,” it makes it easier to stomach what’s about to come next.  If this were the 21st century (or even the 20th), Jamie and Claire’s tender declarations of apology and forgiveness at the end of their argument would have been enough. But, since this is 18th-century Scotland, and, more importantly, we’re only about 18 minutes into the episode, things are about to get far worse in this marriage before they can get any better.  The much-hyped spanking scene wound up being immensely enjoyable because Moore and his team – and Balfe and Heughan – did an excellent job pulling off something that, in the wrong hands, could have permanently thrown “Outlander” off the rails. From a plot perspective, Claire’s spanking had to happen because, as Jamie explains, she put all of the men of Clan MacKenzie in danger by getting captured. If it was just the two of them involved, that belt would’ve stayed around his waist. He was carrying out this act solely to maintain the balance of the clan ecosystem. If she isn’t punished, both of them will lose the protection and support of Jamie’s kinsmen.  The really entertaining part of this scene, however, was, of course, watching Jamie and Claire, two very worthy adversaries, going at it. Because we see this scene from Jamie’s point of view, we have a better understanding of how this type of behavior is all he’s ever known. He really thinks this is okay – as demonstrated by the twinkle in Heughan’s eye as Jamie tells his wife, “There’s such a thing as justice, Claire. You’ve done wrong to all the men. And you must suffer for it.” Even if you haven’t read the books, it’s pretty clear how this scene is going to end before Claire puts up a very admirable defense – throwing things, kicking Jamie both in the nuts and in the nose. And though Claire does indeed suffer physically, again, the choice of Jamie’s perspective here lessens our level of disgust, because his next voice-over has him admitting that the ways of his parents aren’t going to work for his own marriage: “Justice done, problem solved. I thought the page had turned in an unpleasant chapter. But I had precious little experience as a husband. Or I would never have had such naive expectations.”  “You Are My Home Now”  Upon the Frasers’ return to Castle Leoch, Claire has, understandably, spurned Jamie, and he spends the rest of the episode making sense of those words from his opening monologue: “Every day a man has a choice, between right and wrong, between love and hate, sometimes between life and death. And the sum of those choices becomes your life. The day I realized that is the day I became a man.”  It’s a busy time for Jamie once back at his mother’s ancestral home: First he has to fend off the advances of his rejected paramour, the luscious 16-year-old blonde Laoghaire MacKenzie (Nell Hudson), who packs a mean arsenal of weapons under her innocent demeanor. Although at the start of the episode we see a blurry image of a blonde girl approaching Jamie during his Quiet Scene of Stone-Skipping Contemplation By the River, it’s not until later that she reveals herself to be Laoghaire, who, in an act of humiliating desperation, throws back her cloak and offers up an episode of “Eighteenth-Century Girls Gone Wild”: A heaving bosom covered only by a corset (no shift, no blouse, just two perfect mounds of pure white flesh). Jamie refuses her, which translates for us as, “Spanking? What spanking? You’re good peeps, James. Go get yer wife back.”  But, before he can do that, he’s got one more lesson to learn in this episode’s docket: Playing the peacemaker between his uncles, the Jacobite rebel and clan war chieftain Dougal MacKenzie (Graham McTavish), and Clan MacKenzie laird – Dougal’s brother – Colum (Gary Lewis). His burgeoning role as diplomat works, with Colum allowing his brother to, in Jamie’s words, “play the rebel” for the time being, even if the laird doesn’t agree with Dougal’s beliefs. When Jamie realizes that Colum, “a rigid man,” could “bend,” well, then, why can’t he?  Call it love, call it 21st-century television, or call it a suspension of disbelief, but by the time of the climactic bedchamber scene between Jamie and Claire, the headstrong Highlander is talking about dispensing with the Fraser family formula of Wives Obeying Husbands and Disciplining Them When They Don’t. “Maybe, for you and me, it has to go a different way,” says the possibly nascent feminist.  There’s a chivalrous – and overly dramatic, but we like it anyway – blade-to-the-chest pledge that he will never raise a hand to Claire again, and it’s here that he makes the heart-melting declaration of “You are my home, now.” That’s enough to get Claire back into his arms, but she has one more condition before she agrees to try again at this marriage-in-the-1700s thing, and brava on her. Holding the same blade to his throat, she threatens something far worse than the point stabbing him through. He tries something like spanking her again, and not only will she “cut [his] heart out,” but she’ll “have it for breakfast” too.  And she may want to threaten him with cannibalism every night from now on, because the end result was several rounds of scorching make-up sex that takes everything we loved from the “Wedding” episode in the first half of the season and kicks it up several notches.  But their bliss is short-lived – although it contains the best post-coital vocabulary lesson ever (“What does ‘f–-ing’ mean?”) – because it’s true what they say, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”: There’s a sinister-looking bundle of branches and bones under the bed, an “ill-wish.” As Jamie explains to Claire, this anti-bouquet is “meant to bring pain or harm. Or even death,” and there’s no doubt in his mind who left it for them.  Next week: Claire resumes her role as first-person storyteller, which is good, because women tend to be better at dealing with silly, vengeful teenagers. They’re not as distracted by boobs.  ‘Outlander’ airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET on Starz. Follow our recaps all season long. Follow Sarene Leeds.  For the latest entertainment news Follow @WSJSpeakeasy
Sex and spanking are only two of the exciting things welcoming us back to 18th-century Scotland as we toast the return of "Outlander."