Recap. Episode 14, Season 3. “The Engagement”

Subtitled “Wait, what?”

When last we left our heroine, she was tweeting about the size of her co-star’s penis, and likened it to a specific crustacean.  Apparently she is familiar with his crustacean.  Although, I’m not completely sure if that’s true.  I think that’s what she wanted us to think.  She may call “backsies” on the whole familiarity thing later on, so I’ll just sit back and watch this one play out.

Auditions for Sam’s penis, in case my book ever becomes a musical.

In this episode, we begin with a chat show host in London who apparently likes Sam. She was given a big old poster of him and she posed with it.  She told everyone how happy she was with her brand new present on her Instagram account.  She may have tweeted it, too.  I don’t remember.  Chapter One.  Illus. A. The Girlfriend’s Guide to Getting Sam Heughan’s Attention.  1) Be blonde.  2) Be pretty (not so fast, Mauzy). 3) Be a model, or in the entertainment field.  4)  Say how much you like him and/or Outlander.

Never one to turn down a little friendly banter with a high profile fan, Sam engaged with the host and invited himself and Caitriona as guests onto the show.  The pretty female host issued an open invitation.

A few days later, huzzah! Cait found out that she was nominated for her third Golden Globe award!  Congratulations, Cait! Well deserved!

Again, Sam was overlooked.  This was probably the last season that either of them will be considered.  Sam congratulated his co-star, for the 3rd time.  It was bittersweet.  A lot of us were like

Boy deserved some cuddles.  He acted his little heart out in Season 3.

The next day (?) it appeared as if Sam’s sweet talking must have done the trick, because Cait tweeted that she was going to London for the interview with the cute blonde chat show host.

Yay!  Can’t wait.  Sam and Cait are always cute together in an interview! Just like Sam wanted!

Not so fast.  Cait tweeted out that sadly, Sam would not be joining her because he had to stay in Scotland and continue his filming commitment.  Wait, what? Wasn’t Sam the one who was pushing for this interview?  When did they break for the holidays?  What happened to the traditional posting of the ugly Christmas sweaters?  The holiday parties with bad lighting featuring Tony’s body parts on various crew Instagram accounts?  What happened to pictures of mince pies and staff members dressed like elves?  Trailers decorated with garland?  When did prepping the fans for Christmas break become Sam responding to Cait’s tweet with “No thanks.  I’m good.  Not working.  Done until after the New Year.  Definitely wrapped for the holiday season.  Not working.  No conflict.  Maybe next time.  But thanks for asking.”

Did he just…?  Did that just…? Was that…? Is she…? Wait, what?

Easy there, big fella.  

Looks like someone’s got a bee in his bonnet.  Don’t see that too often around these parts.  Wonder what’s got him bugged?  He’s gonna lose out on the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet unless he apologizes to her right quick for making her look like a liar.

Nope.  Not gonna happen.  Last seating is all booked up.

Cait appeared on the chat show.  I watched it.  It was forgettable.  I’m still not exactly sure what went down or why this show was booked in the first place and why Sam bailed.   I guess it was still airing in the UK?  Was that the reason?

“Well Holly, and guy next to Holly, I’m at a loss as to why I’m here in the first place. No one held up a poster of me ::guy next to Holly::.  Did I tell you I’m going to Australia over break?”

Caitriona left for Ireland shortly thereafter.  We know that she left for Ireland, because she told us.  She told us when she was leaving and she told us she saw nuns when she arrived.

The Irish will come up with any excuse for a party.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Scotland, our hero Sam was busy liking awesome pics of his super serious girlfriend.

It’s easy to see why he would “like” these two posts in particular and not her 3-day birthday hashtag-a-palooza.  (#it’smybirthday!!!) Those were just her posing on bridges and mountains.  These?  These were deep and artsy and soulful all at the same time.  It’s almost like he forgot she was his girlfriend for a few months and had to play catch up real fast.  Also, mountaintops.

Stanley Weber showed that he’s twice the man with half the baggage by posing in one of Cait’s World Child Cancer charity sweatshirts.  We all wanted her to ditch the ginger and hook up with Frenchie.  Hah!  If we only knew…

Cait graciously thanked Stanley for his support by “liking” this post.

The stage was set for our heroine and her hero to be at odds yet again for this holiday vacation.  What did we have in store?  Who could have dreamed? We knew we wouldn’t get away unscathed, because Caitriona was telling us so.  She devised a clever hashtag campaign about gratitude in order to tell us when she was leaving for Australia and what she was up to.  Very clever that one.

“I’m going to pretend that this janky photo is artsy.  Then I’m going to throw in my signature Caititude is Gratitude. If I pretend to hashtag my way through this, it won’t look like I’m force-feeding you my plans for the next ten days.”

Cait arrived, as promised, on Australian soil.  Almost immediately we were treated to a photo of her with people who are either fans, or family friends of her traveling companion, Tony McGill (I’m unclear since I didn’t read the Outlander forum production notes for this episode).

Oops.  Wrong photo.

“Hey, everyone!  I’m hashtag grateful that I ran into these strangers and they posted a picture of me with my serious boyfriend, Tony McGill. This way you know that I’m in Australia with my serious boyfriend, Tony McGill — NOT SAM — but I don’t have to lift a finger to let you know that.  These fine people have done it all for me.  Tony and I have agreed that it’s best if we pretend we don’t want to touch each other.  That way I can maintain the privacy that I crave and deserve.”

A day later, a fan video was released.  It was a phone video taken during September premiere week.  It was a video of Cait’s serious boyfriend waiting for her, along with the rest of her entourage, after Cait’s appearance on the Colbert Show.  Cait is off camera but apparently emerges from the theatre and gets into a car which will take her to her next destination.  Upon leaving and getting into the car, Cait doesn’t acknowledge her serious boyfriend.  Her serious boyfriend does not stand by the car door to make sure she is inside.  He does not kiss her goodbye or even say a personal goodbye.  He does, however, say goodbye to the rest of her entourage, lifts a heavy canvas satchel onto his shoulders and walks off by himself into the night to catch the B train to Brooklyn.

How you doin’?

It was kind of like this, but a little less embarrassing and not as cold outside.

Because of this video, shippers everywhere were able to identify beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tony McGill is indeed, Cait’s personal assistant.  How embarrassing for Cait who has been talking about her financier boyfriend from London for a few months now.  Amanda and Puffy joked to each other “Watch her double down on this now.”

i·ro·ny¹

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sam is more or less MIA.  Apparently he was spotted in Scotland a few times. He posted his usual year-end cryptic Instagram post, this time about starting fresh in 2018.

As a viewer, I needed time to recalibrate this new turn of events.  Sam and Cait seemingly switched roles.  Sam was now the normal, down-to-earth, chill guy and Cait was the annoying, in-your-face-connect-the-dots narrator.  They clearly have decided it’s a one-year-on, one-year-off kind of thing for them.

“Memba me? Stick ’em up!”

Oh yeah, her.  Let’s not leave her out of the equation.  She may be relegated to the nosebleed seats these days, but with this crowd you never know when she’ll pop up again wearing her Sam Heughan for Barbour casual weekend wear in 85 degree weather on the beach in southern California.  When she’s not posting pictures of bridges the day after Sam’s, she’s busy pretending that she’s dating a first-string football player for the Seattle Seahawks.  Mackenzie Mauzy seems to have been demoted to bit part status in this episode.

For a few halcyon days in late December, all was quiet.  Not a creature was stirring not even Cait, although we all knew exactly what she was hashtag doing and who she was hashtag with. Christmas came and went.  Cait hashtagged her favorite movie and told us all it was best watched in bed with a heaping helping of gratitude.

Sam tweeted that he had taken the scenic route from Glasgow to London, which was code for “Hey, everyone, now I’m traveling.  I’ll bet you’re nervous that I’m headed to see Mauzy.  Well, guess what?  I’m not going to tell you.  I’m going to let you hang. I’ll give Mauzy that last drop of attention she craves while you try to figure out where I’m going.”

A few days later, Sam posted his feet on the beach with a caption that stopped just short of “Also, waves.”  Where was Sam?  Was he in LA, or was he in Australia? We knew he wasn’t in Seattle with Clan Mauzy.  She was busy attending a football game, sitting in the not VIP seats, cheering on her boyfriend team.

Maximum sand exposure for inevitable forensic analysis. White toes means newly arrived at destination.  Must cross-check with later skin tones once subject has arrived in Los Angeles. 

On New Year’s eve, as the first terrible awful no good very bad shipper year was coming to a close, we were all treated to the very first photo of Cait and Tony pretending to be looking like a couple.  Cait’s friends seem to protect her privacy as much as Sam’s did when the Amy pool video was dropped.  That’s nice.  We all need friends like that.

Thanks to her friends, we were able to see her on the beach with her very serious boyfriend and later looking suspiciously thinner in a bikini than she had only days earlier at the airport.  Through it all, the audience was craving Cait’s own Instagram pictures of her adventure.  We missed the step-by-step of her Italian summer vacation of 2016.  The one where she posted a picture of her feet where her legs were the color of a baked potato, a tone literally 100% of all Irish people combined will never achieve.  That one.  That looked like a fun vacation for someone else.

“I know that none of you have ever seen me look like I enjoy touching my very serious boyfriend, but I love getting all sexed up with him.  I want you to remember this photo 24 hours from now. Tony is hear to stay, y’all.”

“Put me in, coach.”

The photo that was posted of Cait and Tony on the beach was so popular, in fact, that the international icon, the “captain” himself, deemed it worthy to tweet out to his 2 million plus followers.

He’s a huge Cait Balfe fan.  He follows her friends on Instagram so he can get the latest.  He thought it was adorbs. You know what’s not adorbs?  A 53 year old balding, parade float queen using the word adorbs and pretending it’s coming out of the mouth of an 86-year old grandfather.

The plot took on an even more bizarre twist when the tweet caught the eye of someone else, too.

 “Hey.  I own a random music company based in Glasgow.  I just happened to see your tweet today.  It’s so crazy, because that woman literally lives downstairs from me in Glasgow at 85 Main Street, Glasgow, Scotland.  I’m in the music business, as I guess you could tell from my Twitter name.  Her very serious boyfriend, Tony McGill is also in music. Small world. I can’t believe I saw this tweet.  Today of all days.  I’ll have to tell Caitriona that you said hi the next time I run into her at her house on 85 Main Street, Glasgow, Scotland.”

Wait, what?  What just happened????!! 

Some random neighbor of a working actor on a popular tv series just blatantly outed the actor’s address on social media?  I don’t even know what to say.  The criterion for knowing that this is not ok is small.  It includes being able to feed oneself.  That’s about it.  Knowing that this was not ok is what separates us from the animals.  This person clearly is not able to feed himself.  Either that, or he is being held hostage.  It is empirically impossible to believe that at that very moment in time, a music company owner in Glasgow, Scotland who happens to live above Caitriona Balfe, saw the photograph of her on William Shatner’s twitter feed and had the incredibly bad sense to out her home address and never mention that he knows Tony, as well.  It’s not possible.  I’ll say it again. How do these things happen?

Moving on.  NEW YEAR’S DAY.  2018.  A new day.  A new chapter.  A fresh start. The birds were chirping.  The air was fresher.  We were looking forward to a new beginning.

“Hi, Mr. Bluebird.  Hello, woodland creatures.  2018 is going to be soooooo great!  It’s a new day.  We’re starting over, everyone.  Things are looking up.  We’ve almost made it over the holida…”

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECHHHHHHHHH.

 

WAIT, WHAT?????

No sooner had some of us rubbed the sleep out of our resolute eyes on January 1, 2018, then we were treated to the announcement that Caitriona Balfe had just become engaged.

Engaged???????????????????? The happy news was announced on an Australian journalist’s Instagram account, where she tagged Cait, and posted a photo of her to prove she wasn’t full of shit.

Happy New Year!!!! This is completely normal.  Only days after Tony is exposed as a working stiff for Cait, and her address is outed on twitter, an announcement of this heretofore private woman’s engagement was made on the Instagram account of a journalist she had met that very day.

 Things I’ve learned on social media.  1.  Using all caps makes it true.  2.  Saying you have integrity makes it correct.  

There you have it.  A journalist with 48,000 followers was the chosen one.  It was she who was chosen among all of the journalists with whom Caitriona has a relationship.  This woman was selected to release the news on January 1, 2018.  Because she has integrity.

So much so, that the post’s caption changed a total of 7 times before it was finally deleted.  A sure sign that the person issuing the earth-shattering news had her shit together.  Jim Comey, step aside.  There’s a new truth speaker in our midst.

Caitriona Balfe’s surprise engagement to a man she had never been seen hugging and gazing into his eyes, or was rarely even seen touching, was made known by a journalist she had ostensibly just met that very day.  Someone who, at the very least, if they didn’t know anything about her personal life, certainly knew who she was.  Someone who, at the very least with her status as an entertainment journalist, knew enough to know that a celebrity’s engagement is never announced on someone else’s social media account.  Unless it is sanctioned.

Which it was.

Here’s how I know that.  The Australian journalist was tagged.  “Where you at, Melissa Hoyer?”  That was their tacit way of telling everyone that this woman wasn’t making anything up that they weren’t already aware of.

“Please ignore the odd shadowing around my belly area.  Tony put the lotion on it all weird like.  That’s just tan lines.  But nice how it looks like I have a flat belly and hip bones, no?”

Yes, friends.  This episode took a rather unexpected turn.  It left the audience in shock.

For the next 12 hours or so we were treated to not one, not two, not three and not even four iterations of Melissa Hoyer’s message.  We were treated to seven.  Seven changing messages, some that included the engagement information and some that didn’t — before it was deleted.  Sloppy?  What happened on New Year’s Day gives sloppy a bad name.

This show sucks.  I’m totally dropping my Starz subscription.  This new storyline is for suckers.  Who are the writers for this, anyway? I’m for sure not watching Season 4 and they must not give a shit about a Season 5.

For 6 whole days the audience waited and wondered what exactly had happened on New Year’s Day.

But, then, like a miracle from the gods of karma, this distraction happened.

Why, dear lord, do you hate shippers so much??????  Why do you taunt us so???? How could you give us this manna from heaven and not give us a clear playing field in which to enjoy it?????  Why, when we’ve waited this long do you do this to us now, of all times????  Curses!!!!  (Sidenote.  I’ve used Proactiv.  It’s a little drying, but it does the trick. You guys should see if she can hook you up.  Maybe DM her on Instagram or leave a comment.)

Enough with Mauzy.  Our hero and heroine have bigger fish to fry in Los Angeles.

“Lalalalala. Life is so normal.  Here I am with my best friend, Sam. My possible fiance, Tony, is right off camera range.  We do this kind of thing all day long.  That’s one of the reasons I love my possible fiance, Tony.  He doesn’t mind that I’m sleeping posing with my costar. See?  No ring.  No engagement. All a misunderstanding.”

“Come and knock on our door.  We’ve been waiting for you.”

I love it when I get pictorial proof of what people want me to know.  Because I am a dumbass and I can’t figure this out for myself.  From these photos I know a) Cait and Sam always pose this way, even when Cait’s rumored fiance is standing a foot away.  We have obviously been misreading the poses for 3 years and b) Tony and Sam know each other.  Yay!  Narrative set.

Most of us assumed that our heroine, who had stated last year that the Golden Globes were “about business” and therefore she would be accompanied by her agent, would repeat that sentiment in Season 3.

Sad trombone, we were wrong.  The producer’s of this episode wanted to ensure that we never, ever watch another one as long as we all shall live.

Dum, da da dum…..

I give you….The Sassenach… “I’m gittin’ married in the mornin’.  Ding dong the bells are gonna chime…”

WAIT.  WHAT?????????

I hate this fucking show.  They promised me one thing for 3 seasons and then they turn around and tell me it was all a dream.  Screw you, season finale.  And screw you, Outlander.

An exclusive statement was released to People Magazine.

“It happened over the break.  I’m very happy,” gushed the bride-to-be.

If I may digress for a second.  I remember very well the day I became engaged.  I’ll bet all of you married ladies remember yours, as well.  For me, despite the fact that like Cait I had been with my fiance for several years prior, it was nonetheless one of the happiest, most carefree, giddy times of my life.  I dressed differently so as to properly show off my ring.  I spoke differently.  I thought differently.  I thought it blasphemous at first to take off my ring, even when washing and sleeping, let alone attend a public event with my fiance (which we did shortly after we were engaged) without it.  I looked at my betrothed differently.  I saw him as a new man, one who was ready to take me on an adventure I could not have previously imagined.  We were going to have children together and grow old together.  That missing piece of my heart was now complete.  I needed to touch him.  To look at him.  To subtly show the world that this beautiful man by my side was mine forever more. I experienced all that and more from a simple “Will you…?” My story is not unique.

What is unique is the weak script we’ve been handed for this twist of fate.  Less than a week after saying “yes!”, this is how our heroine acts with the debut of her fiance.

“Lalalala.  I’m going to see Josh Horowitz.  I may be late.  I’m walking fast.  I think I have everything I came with.  Purse? check.  OK. Hi, Josh!”

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.  PLEASE PLAY THE VIDEO BELOW WHEN READING THE BALANCE OF THIS POST.

 

“I’m seeing nothing suspicious from this angle, chief.”

Agent Provocateur. “No, chief.  I swear I’m not burned.  No one knows who I am.  Literally.  No one.”

See?  No one else was holding hands at the event.  It’s usually discouraged at these work-type event…Oh never mind.

So, there we have it folks.  We’re left with a cliffhanger.  Will our heroine acknowledge her fiance?  Will her costar do the same?  Will she set a date?  Will we see her in a gown?  How many pictures will she share?  How many times will we see her before spring? Is Sam done with Mauzy?  Is Mauzy really dating a football player? Will she get that white Lexus? Will Sam have a new, more likeable girlfriend soon? Does anyone really care?

So many questions.  So little answers.  Guess we’ll have to tune in to find out.

Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

— P.