Tonight’s the second episode of Pirate Master, aka Survivor Goes to Sea.
According to last week’s previews, the crew this week complains about the bad food, the low pay, the boss flaunting his authority – hey! That sounds like my day job!
They feed you? Sounds like an upgrade to me.
I’ll probably give it another try tonight.
Sounds like my vacation. Not really.
There’s something I realized a couple days ago, and I’ll be watching for it tonight. This show is really two games in one. There’s “finding the treasure” and “getting voted off the ship”, but they have nothing to do with each other.
Allow me to explain. John was great at finding the treasure last week. He figured out how to open that three-key lock, he found the chest; without him, his team may have gotten nothing. But so what? Once they selected the ‘captain’, the teams were disolved, and it looks like that will be the plan every week. The pirate’s court thing is a popularity contest, and nothing more. There’s no reason to keep strong treasure hunters, or get rid of weak ones, if you don’t know who you’ll be teamed up with on the next hunt.
Oh, gotta give props to the producers for the Warren Zevon reference.
Robot Arm, I agree with you wholeheartedly. John contributed the most to recovering the first treasure chest. I didn’t quite follow why Cap’n Joe Don gave John the black spot, as John (from what I saw) wasn’t a threat until after he got the black spot.
So we’ll see if last week’s format continues this week. If I were designing the show, I’d want to make sure the Captain has some advantage, yet there’s a reasonable way to unseat the Captain short of mutiny.
John got the black spot because he was a dick. Attitude is everything early, and John went into a sulk when JD got elected Captain. So JD rightly shafted him at the earliest opportunity to get rid of a rival that could give him trouble down the line.
I forgot about John’s silent sulking. Thanks very much.
For those of you keeping score at home, here is a link to last week’s episode thread. (If you want me to stop linking, let me know, but I figure it’s better to have too much information than not nearly enough.)
Official info about tonight’s episode from CBS …
[spoiler]* Which of the island’s creatures will stand between the pirates and Captain Steel’s treasure?
- As Louie’s talk of mutiny sweeps across the deck, can J.D. possibly survive another term as Captain?
- The Captain begins throwing gold around in order to keep his crew happy.[/spoiler]
… and from Yahoo! TV …
Captain J.D. and officers Ben and Cheryl are drunk with power; the other pirates resent their grueling lifestyle of endless work and little pay; the pirates search for a $45,000 booty.
… and from TVGuide.com.
Captain Joe Don bribes Jay to be his inside man among the crew; an injury occurs to one pirate; another crew member is cut adrift. Cameron Daddo is the host.
Of all the above sources, I find TV Guide to be the most insightful, not because of what the spoiler info says, but rather because they list future episode titles when they’re available, and according to them, the 6/14 episode will be called “Death by Coconuts,” which is one of the awesomest things I’ve heard in a long time.
Oh, I have nothing particularly useful to say right now: there’s still so much ballast to be thrown overboard (JOY). But so far, so good … hooray!
The episode is halfway over here on the East Coast. So if you don’t want to know ANYTHING that happens, this is your last chance to stop reading.
The compass block–I think that was what it was called–was neat. Partly because of the coolness factor of “This is the way they used to do this” and partly because of all the attention given to the issue of finding direction without the compasses that John took last episode. Not that anyone still on the pirate ship seemed all that concerned about the missing compasses.
For those not yet done watching:
[spoiler]Wow, not a single vote for mutiny? Even with the whining about food and money? Louis (as played by Mel Brooks) was right, “It’s good to be the King.”
I don’t want to see this a a metaphor about how Americans defer to authority, no matter how poorly that authority is exercised, but that’s the way it’s looking now. I am saddened.[/spoiler]
Well, that was … stupid. I don’t entirely understand the strategy employed in picking the Black Mark people tonight. So I guess what I’m saying is: I like the show in concept, but this cast is pretty much entirely peopled with yutzes, I think.
That boat sure is gorgeous, though.
I need to think on this until tomorrow. The Dread Pirate Roberts Rankings are going to be highly controversial. Or else flatly wrong.
Well, better than the first episode, and saw more of the ship this time and what it takes to sail her.
But it still doesn’t work very well as a game. Kendra(?) was the slowest swimmer; the treasure hunt was decided as soon as she drew a red ball out of the pouch. Once the teams were out of the water, there didn’t seem to be any chance to make up ground. And the sabotage point made it worse, giving an advantage to the team already in the lead.
Which has nothing to do with the pirate’s court. J.D. said he chose those three for physical reasons, but who knows what skills you’re going to need on the next hunt. Maybe there won’t be any swimming. And even if Joy’s knee was screwed up, if she winds up on the other team (and it’s random), you’re home free.
And I liked Christian. I hope the next treasure hunt does have a boulder throwing contest.
Thanks.
I’ve been trading e-mails with one of my shipmates who was on board during the filming. Just mundane stuff about how they built that extra cabin and where they stored all the food, but she probably knows more than she’s allowed to say. I’m seeing the ship and some crew in Norfolk on Saturday, and others next week in Montreal.
The strategy for picking the black mark people was simple–pick the people we don’t want to be stuck with on our next treasure hunt expedition, because we want to keep winning. so they picked the giant teddybear, the one who hurt her knee, and the one who was the weakest swimmer. (That’s Christian, Joy, and Kendra)
I think I understood the strategy regarding the Black Marks, what I did not get was the pass that the Captain got.
I think people are not interested in mutiny because they all believe that they could end up as Captain if their team wins a treasure hunt, so they don’t want to establish the precedent of the mutiny. Also, no one calling for a mutiny has presented any good reason for mutinying. John and Teddy Bear both called for mutiny basically to save their own asses, and the crew apparently picked up on that since in neither vote did anyone go along with the call.
I think Captain Joe Don has good instincts about being Captain but he’s not quite following through in the execution. Spreading the wealth is a good idea and he should’ve done that more last week. $200 per person when you’re sitting on $43K is a bad idea. There were, what, five people on the losing crew? Give 'em $500 each instead of $200; that’s enough to get past the perception of insult and you still have $40K left.
sigh
I hate Joe Don and he is getting away with piling money while his crew just whines and does nothing about it.
This show would be greatly improved if they wouldn’t pixel out the nipples. 
I don’t know what you mean. I can see the nipples of Joe Don, Jay, Rupert Junior and the rest.
What is a nipple, anyway, but the crowning pixel on the wide-screen monitor of our hearts.
But what obviously will happen is that the treasure will increase a bunch and if you pick your time right, you can probably end with more than him in one night. Right now you just don’t want to get voted off. There will come a time to get rid of Captain Bligh, but not right now.
In the first episode, I thought psuedo-Probst said that to vote the captain off you had to have a unanimous vote and the two officers had to be persuaded, too. Is that right? If so, how does that work-- do they have to decide after the unanimous vote is cast?