Pirate Master: The rest of season one

Cafe Society
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That’s more of the made-up stuff that I don’t like. We know the year is 2007. There’s a market of some kind on the island. But that doesn’t mean you can just have some pizzas delivered. The galley has a cast-iron stove, and hand-operated pump over the sink; even with fresh meat and vegetables, cooking for the whole crew is a challenge.

Except I’m not sure exactly where I’d draw the line. You could certainly install a more modern stove. Electric motors have been around for a while; there’s no solid reason the anchor has to be raised by hand. I guess my perceptions are just colored by what I know about the ship, and I want the contestants to have the same “real” adventure I did.

Interesting recap, Sapo. In much sadder news:

Reality TV contestant takes own life (Cheryl Kosewicz)

Does this show just seem cursed?

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Holy crap! it is not that she took her life, she is blaming the show for it. phew.

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You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but that’s the most bathetic thing I’ve seen in years. ‘plus its not getting good reviews’??? You mean, you wouldn’t commit suicide over the loss of your partner and what all, if only the show had been a hit? :rolleyes:

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True, but she was in the process of taking her own life and obviously not thinking rationally. I doubt many suicide notes are as profound as those in arts and entertainment; this one just happens to be public.

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Bad me – I entirely forgot to thank you for watching the episode for those of us who can’t, and writing such an excellent recap. Kudos!

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Written while I watch…

[spoiler]Scenes from last week, mostly of Jay being an asshole.

Jay and Ben talking. Jay swears that he’s Ben’s buddy and will keep him around. (“May God curse my family for generations.”) I don’t think even Ben believes it.

Everyone likes Christa as Captain. More eating and swimming and sleeping in, less with the deck-swabbing.

Jay tells Christa that if he’s on the other team, he’ll make sure it loses.

The clue for the next hunt is a corkscrew. The teams are Louie, Ben, Christa (black) and Laurel, Kendra, Jay (red) There’s a rhyming clue on the corkscrew. They set off in the boats. Jay fucks up the rowing for the red crew. The black crew takes a wrong turn. Jay is willing to do whatever it takes to keep Christa in power, which keeps him in power. “The means justify the end.” The clue leads them to a smugglers cabin with bottles. One has a key and a piece of cloth with writing. They have to wrap the cloth around the bottle to read the hint.

That sends them to the beach, and crates in the water. Inside is a skull broken in three pieces. Put together, it’s a map to the treasure. It’s a cave, with two bats and and everything. (The bats may have been stock footage from “Wild Kingdom”.)

But there’s no treasure! Just a note that the smuggler who hid it has screwed over Captain Steele. Jay threw the hunt to keep Christa in power, and it turned out not to cost him a thing.

Jay consoles Laurel and Kendra with how well they did, and rationalizes his treachery.

Jay and Ben gamble on cutting the cards, $500 a shot. Jay cheats. He skews the deck and cuts the same queen three times. Ben does not notice. It’s official, Ben is too stupid to live.

Louie volunteers (to Jay) to take a black spot, and give the other to Kendra to make sure she gets voted off.

Christa asks advice from everyone, in turn, and does a shot with each.

Black spots to Kendra and Louie.

Pirate’s court. Louie offers the crew his loyalty, something money can not buy. Kendra defends her place on the ship by doing an interpretive dance. Not really. She rambles on about how she can navigate. In the end, no one has any idea why they’re doing anything.

Jay says Kendra is sneaky.

Cameron asks Louie how he feels.

3-0. Kendra is gone.

Scenes from next week. Christa is crying.[/spoiler]

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Thanks for the update, Robot Arm. You by far are the best part of the show.

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Oh, so excellent! You made me LOL twice – the interpretive dance and too dumb to live – and I bet the show itself wouldn’t have even once.

Many thanks!
So…Five left, yes? Next week we go to 4, and then the finale? Because there’s only two more episodes, unless I lost track…

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So next week is the finale or are there two more?

Oh, and here is the gist of this weeks.

[spoiler]

Christa panics, betrays Ben, puts him and Laurel on the Black Spot. Louie votes Ben. Jay votes Laurel.

Christa, who betrayed Ben, votes Laurel off, defying all logic. [/spoiler]

Again, is next week it or the following week?

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I don’t usually bump, figuring if no one replied it didn’t matter to anyone, but I’m going to proceed just this once.

Anyone know if tomorrow’s(August 21) is the finale or is it next week?

[bump]

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I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, and already know that next week will be the finale.

For those who may on the off chance still care enough to know, here’s the spoiler for yesterday’s episode:

[spoiler]Down to the final four, the same rules for the challenge applied, and it was Jay and Christa vs. Ben and Louie. As Jay had done before, Ben threw the challenge so that Christa would stay in power, and Louie never caught on. The treasure was $50,000, Christa, Jay and Ben took $15,000 each, and gave Louie $5,000 because they all felt sorry for him.

The same rules also continued to apply for Pirate’s Court, so Christa needed to give a black spot to two of the three remaining crew, which meant that the one pirate not to get a black spot had the ultimate power of choosing who would be set adrift.

Christa chose Jay for that crucial role, even though he made no promise that he wouldn’t choose to vote for mutiny. Jay said in a confessional that of all the choices Christa had, he was the one most likely to vote that way.

At Pirate’s Court, Ben came clean to Louie about throwing the challenge. Louie, ever the trusting soul, appeared to be genuinely shocked and saddened by this revelation.

In the end, Jay chose Louie to be cut adrift, though he managed to put the fear of God into Christa beforehand by suggesting that he may very well have voted for mutiny.

Next week’s preview tells us of an every-man-for-himself challenge, and the ghosts return again for the final Pirate’s Court.
If you ask me, I think Jay is the obvious choice to win. Granted, nearly every one of the presumed voters has one of his knives lodged in their back, but that only shows that he played the best. Ben and Christa were little more than Jay’s pawns that he used to his own advantage, and are only in the final three as a result of fitting into Jay’s plan.[/spoiler]

Quite frankly, I’m looking forward to next week’s finale just so that I can see how it ends and get the whole thing over with.
D

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Thank you so much for writing this out for us – I, at least, greatly appreciate it.
I totally agree with your choice of who SHOULD win – he was playing the game every day, every week while almost everyone else simply drifted along. Clearly he dominated the show as completely as Rich did the first Survivor series.

I’m sure I’d feel the same, if I had been spending an hour each week instead of just a few minutes reading the excellent recaps. :slight_smile:

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Thanks, Dahnlor, for suffering through that and sharing it with us. I completely forgot about this, but as soon as I saw this thread I remembered I’m invested in this dreck whether I like it or not. I agree with your thoughts on the winner, too.

So is Burnett running out of steam? This was an abysmal attempt to cash in on PotC, I have no idea how On The Lot wasn’t cancelled as well, Tommy Lee killed off Rock Star and The Apprentice is going to be a parody of itself with the celebrity version. He used to be the Golden Boy of reality TV, but his latest attempts have been pretty lame.

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I had lost track of this thread after the week of what’s-her-face death and getting no replies to that weeks episode recap. I have continued to watch every week, though. I just didn’t realize there were other still interested.

Christa is either Machiavelli’s lost daughter and she will surprise us all with her victory, or she is incredibly stupid. Jay plays her like a fiddle. I hope she gets the $50K she wanted and lives happily with them. I hope she doesn’t get much more, though.

Jay is a POS, but the type of POS that deserves to win this type of shows. He can lie circles around every body in that ship. He is also pretty good at the challenges, so it is not like he is just scheming his way to victory.

Louie, the poor thing. He is a good soul. His innocence meant he is going home with very little money. Not quite pirate material.

Ben, better luck next time. Whatever money he is taking home, is out of the generosity of Jay.
I just hope we get the full tally of what every player is taking home.

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You had some doubt that the Wiki-nerds wouldn’t track that?

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Goodness, I didn’t know of that page. Some people have too much time.

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No talk of the finale yet?

I won’t do a full recap, but here’s the gist:

3-way individual expedition. Ben wins. Then all the “ghosts” come back as a jury to vote off Christa or Jay, they nearly unanimously vote out Jay.
Ben and Christa get to recruit 3 ghosts each to help them in the final expedition.
Ben takes Azmyth, Cheryl, and Nessa.
Christa takes Jay, John, and Nessa.
A bidding war ensues and Nessa chooses to help Christa. Ben replaces her with Jupiter.
The ghosts help for part of the expedition, but the finalists are alone for a part in the middle, and the last part.
It’s very close, but Ben wins. ($500,000).

so, there it is… yay.

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Thank you! Now I can sleep at night.
I don’t know how long we need to use spoiler-avoidance, so I’ll just say I’m not pleased with the end result.

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Two hours of innertube with my crappy connection was a bit too much to ask of me, so about a quarter of the way into it I read the recaps and lost all interest in watching the rest of it. I am not so bothered with the result. It is the lesser evil.

How would you make season 2 less sucky?

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Cancel it? :stuck_out_tongue:

Plan B: The concept of a pirate-themed reality show has some appeal. The big weaknesses in the execution, with my suggestions, are:

The early tasks were all essentially races. Make the tasks more piratey. Yarr!

There’s no incentive for the officers to approve a mutiny. Give them a big reason (by which I mean greedy self-interest) to overthrow the captain.

Although anybody other than the captain and officers can be given the black spot and be put up for being voted off, almost half the crew doesn’t take part in the vote on the very first round. And the voting (and conversations surrounding it, which tended to spill over into the next week) took up about half of each episode beyond the first. Scrap the entire mechanism of elimination by vote, and fold the eliminations into the competition.

The royal pardon was a good idea, in that immunity had to be sold and resold. Provide more opportunities for people to buy & sell important game elements, and otherwise encourage people to do something with their winnings beyond sitting on them. I don’t recall seeing transactions beyond redistribution of the cruel-shelf booty policy, a few small bribes, and negotiations surrounding the pardon.