Black Sails 3.01
Jan. 24th, 2016 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakMy pirates are back!
As opposed to the s2 opener, which because of the cliffhanger nature of the s1 finale had to start right where s1 had left off, s3 uses the season break (and non-cliffhanger ending) for a time jump to a few months later and gives us a new updated status quo: with the biggest surprise being that Flint and Vane didn’t simply take the gold from Jack & Co. by force but came to an arrangement. (BTW, good storytelling decision. Much of s2 was Flint versus Vane, and it would have been hard to believe Jack could fight off both of them militarily, so skipping forward to the longer fallout is doing the suspension of disbelief a favour.)
Flint being on a roaring rampage of revenge and destruction was no surprise, but what makes Flint such an interesting character is that he’s not just doing it out of loss and nihilism but still thinks strategically, and gives it a framework for the pirates by staging it as retaliation for the hanging of pirates. Also, the blank face when he shot the magistrate’s wife and the show not only staged it very similar to Miranda’s death but explicitly had Flint flash back to it: I didn’t get the impression he saw it as satisfying revenge but that he was fully aware he wasn’t any better than Ashe’s sidekick.
Loved the scenes with Silver, too (as per expected; this ever evolving dynamic remains a highlight of the show to me): “You’re not welcome in my head.” But he is there. When we saw Silver up and about, I at first felt a bit let down because adjusting to only one leg is a big step, no pun intended, but then as the episode progressed it revealed he hadn’t adjusted yet (still in denial about needing crutches), nor has he that agility that Treasure Island era Silver who had decades to adjust displays. Which fits the emotional and physical reality of a man used to having a healthy, complete body and suddenly being minus an important part of it. Since part of this show is The Education of John Silver, it also goes with adjusting to his new role as Quartermaster (and learning more about the sea trade from both Billy and Flint; one of the things that make John Silver smart is that he’s aware of what he doesn’t know).
Meanwhile in Nassau: Jack has found out that you can throw money at pirates but you can’t make them work for it if you’re not also intimidating, and his solution to this is the logical one for the time: slavery. Here’s another part of why I appreciate Black Sails: it doesn’t sell me Nassau as Utopia with miraculous equality for everyone. There are black pirates, and sometimes when as in late s1 a ship full of slaves is captured, allying with the slaves is useful for the pirates. But they’re also not above using slaves themselves. And instead of differentiating between “good” pirates against slavery and “bad” pirates (like, say, last season’s early episode psycho) for it, here we have Vane (i.e. one of the most ruthless pirates) who is generally against it because he’s been a slave but is persuadable when it’s his gold and future security at stake, and Jack, whose character description could still be “Jack Sparrow in a more realistic environment” and who is the most easy going of the pirates as the one who has the initial idea of using slaves and tricks Vane into procuring them.
(BTW, I also appreciate that Anne’s faith in Jack actually having a plan isn’t shown to be wrong: he does have one, he’s not just ignoring the problem and partying away. )
I also thought the Max and Anne scene showed us more about Max than we’ve seen in a long while: that she’s very aware her current position in Nassau won’t last forever, and that what’s waiting for her, unless she can somehow find a way to make the safety gold buys last, at the end is being back on the bottom of the hierarchy as a whore.
And in England: Eleanor gets a life saving offer from new character Rogers (spelling?), the appointed new governor of New Providence, who has the wits to figure out he needs local knowledge going in. This being Eleanor, the show doesn’t let her waste any time on posturing on how she’ll never betray her former comrades. It’s her neck at stake, of course she’s going to use the opportunity. Cue cut to Charles Vane when Eleanor says there is only one name who counts as a serious opponent to Project British Rule. (Mind you, for a while I speculated whether or not the show wasn’t using that cut to Vane as a visual red herring/bluff, because we haven’t heard Eleanor say the name and the camera carefully didn’t show what she wrote; I wondered about a later reveal maybe showing us she named Flint instead. But Eleanor doesn’t know (unless someone told her in prison?) that Flint has said goodbye to Lawful Rule In Nassau and hello to Roaring Rampage of Revenge, because when she was kidnapped, that hadn’t happened yet. So the name must be Vane’s.)
As I speculated in a previous post, the show will use Eleanor as the pov character (of uncertain loyalties) in the British camp, as we’re leading up to a war storyline.
In conclusion: a good season opener. I’m happy the show is back!
As opposed to the s2 opener, which because of the cliffhanger nature of the s1 finale had to start right where s1 had left off, s3 uses the season break (and non-cliffhanger ending) for a time jump to a few months later and gives us a new updated status quo: with the biggest surprise being that Flint and Vane didn’t simply take the gold from Jack & Co. by force but came to an arrangement. (BTW, good storytelling decision. Much of s2 was Flint versus Vane, and it would have been hard to believe Jack could fight off both of them militarily, so skipping forward to the longer fallout is doing the suspension of disbelief a favour.)
Flint being on a roaring rampage of revenge and destruction was no surprise, but what makes Flint such an interesting character is that he’s not just doing it out of loss and nihilism but still thinks strategically, and gives it a framework for the pirates by staging it as retaliation for the hanging of pirates. Also, the blank face when he shot the magistrate’s wife and the show not only staged it very similar to Miranda’s death but explicitly had Flint flash back to it: I didn’t get the impression he saw it as satisfying revenge but that he was fully aware he wasn’t any better than Ashe’s sidekick.
Loved the scenes with Silver, too (as per expected; this ever evolving dynamic remains a highlight of the show to me): “You’re not welcome in my head.” But he is there. When we saw Silver up and about, I at first felt a bit let down because adjusting to only one leg is a big step, no pun intended, but then as the episode progressed it revealed he hadn’t adjusted yet (still in denial about needing crutches), nor has he that agility that Treasure Island era Silver who had decades to adjust displays. Which fits the emotional and physical reality of a man used to having a healthy, complete body and suddenly being minus an important part of it. Since part of this show is The Education of John Silver, it also goes with adjusting to his new role as Quartermaster (and learning more about the sea trade from both Billy and Flint; one of the things that make John Silver smart is that he’s aware of what he doesn’t know).
Meanwhile in Nassau: Jack has found out that you can throw money at pirates but you can’t make them work for it if you’re not also intimidating, and his solution to this is the logical one for the time: slavery. Here’s another part of why I appreciate Black Sails: it doesn’t sell me Nassau as Utopia with miraculous equality for everyone. There are black pirates, and sometimes when as in late s1 a ship full of slaves is captured, allying with the slaves is useful for the pirates. But they’re also not above using slaves themselves. And instead of differentiating between “good” pirates against slavery and “bad” pirates (like, say, last season’s early episode psycho) for it, here we have Vane (i.e. one of the most ruthless pirates) who is generally against it because he’s been a slave but is persuadable when it’s his gold and future security at stake, and Jack, whose character description could still be “Jack Sparrow in a more realistic environment” and who is the most easy going of the pirates as the one who has the initial idea of using slaves and tricks Vane into procuring them.
(BTW, I also appreciate that Anne’s faith in Jack actually having a plan isn’t shown to be wrong: he does have one, he’s not just ignoring the problem and partying away. )
I also thought the Max and Anne scene showed us more about Max than we’ve seen in a long while: that she’s very aware her current position in Nassau won’t last forever, and that what’s waiting for her, unless she can somehow find a way to make the safety gold buys last, at the end is being back on the bottom of the hierarchy as a whore.
And in England: Eleanor gets a life saving offer from new character Rogers (spelling?), the appointed new governor of New Providence, who has the wits to figure out he needs local knowledge going in. This being Eleanor, the show doesn’t let her waste any time on posturing on how she’ll never betray her former comrades. It’s her neck at stake, of course she’s going to use the opportunity. Cue cut to Charles Vane when Eleanor says there is only one name who counts as a serious opponent to Project British Rule. (Mind you, for a while I speculated whether or not the show wasn’t using that cut to Vane as a visual red herring/bluff, because we haven’t heard Eleanor say the name and the camera carefully didn’t show what she wrote; I wondered about a later reveal maybe showing us she named Flint instead. But Eleanor doesn’t know (unless someone told her in prison?) that Flint has said goodbye to Lawful Rule In Nassau and hello to Roaring Rampage of Revenge, because when she was kidnapped, that hadn’t happened yet. So the name must be Vane’s.)
As I speculated in a previous post, the show will use Eleanor as the pov character (of uncertain loyalties) in the British camp, as we’re leading up to a war storyline.
In conclusion: a good season opener. I’m happy the show is back!
