The final season of one of the best shows on TV that no one is watching started a couple of days ago.
It’s a serialized show, so if you’re new, you’ll have to go back and catch up from the beginning. It starts off slowly, but really builds into greatness in the second season. It’s very thoughtful, with great characters, good acting, and well-written dialogue.
So we’re back with Rogers in a precarious position - the royal navy and army have been ordered back home, with only a small force loyal to him staying in violation of those orders. A growing threat from private creditors threatens to end his venture.
Our villains failed to attack the fortress of Nassau, lost all but one ship, half their men, and rest barely escaped with their lives onto the island. Billy Bones is asserting his authority against Flynt who would do anything to maintain his command. Madi still maintains indepdenent control of her faction of slave soldiers, and John Silver is MIA.
Cool battle scenes - I’m surprised they’re able to do as much as they do on what must be 1/10th the budget of something like Game of Thrones - but I guess they save a lot with it being a very dialogue/acting driven show.
In a way, the scale seems smaller now, with both sides significantly weakened, but it’s like Flynt said - two exhausted fighters at the end of a long fight.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen to Silver, but I’d imagine he’ll be gone for a while to explore the Bones/Flynt/Madi/(possibly)Teach conflict about how to proceed.
I’m glad the writers know in advance that this will be the last season, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes together.
Spoiler warning for last week’s episode…you have been warned.
For some reason I thought Blackbeard survived, but clearly not. As far as bummer ways to go, I think that’s in contention for #2 on the all-time worst list for the most punishing ways a major character has been executed on a tv show. (Nothing comes close to the blood eagle on Vikings.)
I also kind of half-remember from somewhere than Ann was hanged in real life, so this week I figured they’d get delivered to the English to be hanged right on schedule.
That’s two surprises in a row, which is always nice.
He barely survived the keelhauling, but the bad guy put him out of his misery by shooting him a few times in the head. He was definitely not going to survive all the cuts he suffered under the ship.
This show actually is fairly narratively careful without a ton of plotholes or wild implausibilities, so it sucks that so much of this season hinges on one: why would the pirate crew surrender because Blackbeard was captured? The governor can kill the boarding crew, but he has no way of taking their ship. And it’s not as if they surrender they’ll all live - the punishment for piracy was death, and they not only didn’t save Blackbeard by surrendering, but likely killed themselves and lost their ship too.
It’s implausible to me that the plan was to surrender everything if Blackbeard was captured. It wasn’t even touched on in the show - no debate or anything like that - the surrender flag just went right up.
That was all Jack, just to save Anne. And I agree, that was poor plotting.
Even the attack itself was weird. The Blackbeard boarding party wasn’t going to beat them regardless of the English’s “let’s all jump out and surprise them!” counterattack plan; they just didn’t have the numbers. So why would they go over with so few numbers (and so far!) in the first place?
Why not use the tried-and-true pirate techniques that served Blackbeard so well for so many years? You know, like actually boarding the ship, as we’ve seen in previous seasons, where you physically attach the two ships together with ropes. Wouldn’t that have been smarter than sending a small dinghy with a few people a long way to check things out?
After the beautiful setup for the betrayal of Billy, I found the rift between Flint and Silver to be rather sudden and unexpected. I think they might be going to a tonal change now that we’ve reached skeleton island - talking about how it was a place of mysteries and legends. Even the visual depiction and cinematography looked like it was from a different story.
I actually have never read or watched Treasure Island, so I don’t know where we’re heading, but I assume the pieces are moving to set that up.
Fantastic episode. The character moments, the acting, the cinematography, editing, pacing, all top notch. I really appreciate the depth of the Flint and Silver relationship and how much went into building it, and how much it takes to tear it down. The climactic speech about how Madi wouldn’t support Silver’s actions even if he rescues her was intense.
This gets me interested in reading Treasure Island after the series is concluded… but… I don’t think it would live up to this show. Treasure Island is the source of a lot of the Pirates of the Carribean sort of hokey pirate image, right? Is it a nuanced journey into characters and an examination of themes like loyalty, command, the nature of civilization, and all that, or is it an ARRRR peg leg pirate adventure? Would I be interested in it, do you think?
I wish we had gotten more on the samurai, he’s been on the show since the very first episode and I don’t think he’s ever gotten so much as a single line. I always had the feeling he would have been loyal to Flint. Also, yes… treasure island is not like Black Sails. Edit: it is a fun entertaining and popular book non the less.
Treasure Island? It’s a classic adventure story for young boys. It isn’t anything like Black Sails. Great fun for kids, but I don’t even think it is that amazing.
Treasure Island is certainly amazing as a book for children. Literature for kids doesn’t last this long and have such massive influence unless it is amazing. It needs to be read when you’re a child though to be truly appreciated. The book is up there in the league of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, etc. (I was about to add Gulliver’s Travels but of course that isn’t a children’s book at all, far from it, although truncation and bowdlerization have attempted to turn it into one.)