Black Sails

I had actually completely forgotten about this show until they started airing ads for its new season premiere. Glad to hear people are enjoying it! 

This might just me a one-man thread, but seeing as AVC isn't reviewing the show anymore, I need somewhere to post stray thoughts. I suppose I could start me own reviews on the board here for that, but we'll see. So:

Holy cow, that's Billy Bones washed up on the shore at the beginning of the episode! I had to see it again to figure it out. Good, he (seemingly) left the show too soon.

I noticed Randall in the credits for the last episode, and here he appears. All the carnage this crew has been through shows that John Silver had it right: the safest job on the crew.

Flint playing the game to win back the captain's seat has really been something to see. After last week's performance he was seeming just a bit too superhuman (and there's a bit more here when the merchant captain knows his name), but the episode does a good job of showing just how difficult it is to be a successful pirate.

The preview makes out the next episode to be Charles Vane vs. Ned Lowe, the new psychopath in town. I have mixed feelings about that. Lowe is terrible but Vane is not very compelling, and the latter's relationship with Eleanor Guthrie is already uncomfortable. Vane must be spoiling for a fight - he "sentenced" Jack Rackham to stay on land and rot, but that's pretty much the same as being holed up in the fort.

Oh yeah, Jack: still damn cool. Anne getting with Max still has me rolling my eyes, but Jack is taking it in stride like every other situation.

One thing Lowe has going for him is understanding his crew's base nature and exploiting it. John Silver is getting up to the same thing, though as True Neutral instead of Chaotic Evil.

Boo, AVC promotes the premier on What's On Tonight and gloats that it no longer reviews the show. I can't go anywhere else to read reviews of the show, lest I scroll down and read comments. The last time I did that I saw nothing but complaints than Flint was bisexual.

A very suitable continuation of last season tonight. Flint has remained on the warpath against England, which killed his friend and lover, and anyone who prosecutes pirates (standing in for those who killed his other friend and lover). He is a reckless death seeker without Mrs. Barlow, but he is still the best damn captain around.

The would-be English governor says to Eleanor Guthrie that he comes to offer all that the powers of Nassau dream of. And yet this cannot be the case, because that didn't fly 15 years ago, and it's not going to fly now than the pirates are that much more feared. Eleanor would be a fool to take him at his word, but then again she doesn't have many choices toward her own safety. She's ready for revenge; who does she incriminate as the great barrier to English progress in Nassau? The camera would suggest Charles Vane, but Flint is just as good an answer.

Jack Rackham, coolest guy on the island, is playing politics now. He currently fills the roll that Flint used to before the latter became a revenge monster, looking toward the independence of Nassau. At least he was decent enough not to suggest that the slaves were better off being made to serve in Nassau than where they would have gone otherwise (and Vane would have fucked him up for it, too). That was a decently-done bit of exposition on how our three favorite captains formed a pact in between seasons.

Likewise Max is filling Eleanor's old roll. As she came up through a very different path, I hope she does something interesting now that she's there.

Speaking of the need to be interesting, please give Ann Bonny something to do. She's too awesome to be sitting around.

Black Sails still has the best show opening outside of Game of Thrones.

Keep watching!  The first season left with the Orca gold cliffhanger, and you've got to see how Flint wins his way back.

One thing about the show is that Flint is almost too capable, but it's fun to see how he finds his way out.  Like Columbo.

Now I will run a most scientific test to see who reads this thread, and I will use the most exacting of scientific instruments for measurement: tumblr.

These are gifs of Charles Vane, who does not always wear a shirt. Let's see who upvotes this.

   

It should go without saying now that every comment here will be a full-throated plea for viewership. For all last week's effects, XXI had such great character drama.

Jack Rackham, Mouth of the South (Sea): Such eloquence and confidence. Teach calls this the survival of a dog?
Max: not just cleverness, but real wisdom.
Flint: so haunted and pained. Also, still Superman. Killer of sharks, bringer of wind.
Silver: coming around, after all. He shows his strength to Flint, partially by admitting his vulnerability. Had he kept the leg, things might be different, but this is what it is.

So Teach did indeed step in to offer his leadership, because he wants Vane again for a son. Now Charles really has to get out of Dodge with the whole island after him. His loyal friends like Rackham will fight for him, presumably as counterpoint to Teach.

So that's it for the pardon? No more piracy and all is forgiven? Fine, but where is the proposal for how to live without piracy? The Guthrie-Flint-etc. proposal, before it went to hell, had this all mapped out.

So yeah, I do indeed adore Jack Rackham, in all his devious, snarky, attempted-clothes-horse glory, but I don't find him attractive at all.

But although I feel like I shouldn't like Silver on mere principle - he's just too obviously the lady-bait with his face and his I Am Karl Urban's Equally Hot Cousin-ness and it irritates me when they do that - I have to, because I am a sucker for pragmatist con-men who give not one single fuck about anyone's welfare but his own...until he does.  It's the fall-from-grace/lost-all-faith in reverse, and christ knows I've never been able to resist that *coughcoughNorringtoncoughcough*

Also Luke Arnold apparently played Michael Hutchence in an Aussie miniseries (and looked creepily like him in some of the screenshots), so I...pretty much was sunk no matter what.

There is not nearly enough Billy Bones, and I will fight anyone who doesn't like Max.

I pretty much just love everyone in this bar, although I could do without Eleanor. I do think that's actually an actress issue, and not a character one; she grates on me, and I don't feel she really ever comes across as badass or threatening in the slightest.  She can, however, pull off duplicity and ruthlessness like a motherfucker, and that helps a lot.

I am currently S3E03, but I have watched up to 5; I just sorta accidentally ended up re-watching because I needed something in the background while I was doing other things.

I will not apologize for flatigious hypen-abuse.

The show came back last week and I caught the season two premiere over the weekend. I continue to thoroughly enjoy it.

ganews I read it but I was a kid so it's all vague now.

The first time anyone pirate of real import dies on Black Sails, after almost three seasons.  Two in the same episode even, although Mr. S never got enough to do even though he was apparently secretly badass.  There's also the old cook and the accountant who finally got stomped, but they were plot devices as much as recurring characters.

There was so much cannon fodder on the Orca in the first two seasons, I'm always happy to see familiar crew faces still alive.  Like Mr. Degroot who gets spoken lines, and the tall Asian guy who doesn't.

NOW KISS  oh for fuck's sake Silver that was the perfect moment what is wrong with you

I think Anne Bonny just displaced AnnaMarie as my pirate girlfriend.

Okay! I can probably start in about a month. My final project is due on April 27th.

Is there a site that streams it?

Yes, I do have to say I quite appreciate that they haven't made Silver the charming rake type, which is what they do so often with attractive dudes -  he's really just too busy being a charming, manipulative, weasel.  

That's not an insult.

Jack nearly capering with glee while he watched Anne sneak on board the ship was just fantastic. "That's my girlfriend!"


Honestly it's too bad the name "Long John Silver" is so embeded in the cultural conscience. It's kind of a terrible (and unimaginative) nickname unless the guy is super-tall, massively endowed, or owns a chain of fast-food restaurant.

Ok, I'm going to try starting it sometime this week. Hope I can find a good place to watch.