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ladybusinessJenny: Look, I know in our last recap I said that Season 1 of Black Sails is more than a treasure hunt, but this second episode is very treasure hunty indeed. John Silver takes off with the crucial page the Walrus crew needs in order to find the Urca gold. He does some manoeuvring, with Max as a go-between, to sell this information to Charles Vane's crew. In the end, though, Charles Vane's people are out 5000 pesos of black pearls, and John Silver destroys the page but promises to tell Flint what's on it in exchange for Flint not killing him. Meanwhile, Flint convinces Eleanor to support his plan of using the Urca gold to create a free, self-sustaining Nassau.
(I am gr9 at summaries, I deserve a summaries prize.)
Watching this show back, I have all kinds of emotions about these folks, but the treasure hunt isn't tremendously engaging. Jodie, as a brand-new person to this show who doesn't know what's going to ultimately happen with the Urca gold, how did you feel about this episode plotwise? Did it grab you? Have your initial feelings about any of the characters changed?
Jodie: So, I am split on the treasure hunt because the bits where it allows the characters and relationships to develop are great, but it's not a terribly exciting chase narrative. There's a lot of pace missing until right at the end, and that's probably because they try to follow just one too many characters around. That's understandable as the show still needs to let a lot of different people know a lot of different things but it does slow everything down and take away some of the drama of the treasure hunt.
However, I did like how the treasure hunt plot puts Silver at the heart of the story. I enjoy Silver very much indeed, even though he's quite an overused stock character type. Scrappy, charming, thieves and murderers, who are always looking for an advantage, will always kind of be my thing. When he burns the page, I was so proud of him and his drive to survive. Such a smart boy.
One best parts of this episode is easily when we see Max caught up in her excitement about getting free, and Eleanor's betrayal of Max (for 'best' here read 'hopelessly tragic'). You asked me whether my feelings about anyone have changed, and I can't help but be disappointed in Eleanor. Which is kind of ridiculous considering the context of all the men around her. BUT MAX! I was really interested to see that Eleanor pays for Max, which I think tells us a lot about her. The Guthries run the island, and are by all accounts wealthy, yet Eleanor won't free Max from a life she's clearly keen to escape. I get the sense that this is about Eleanor's unwillingness to interfere in the trade she allows on her island, which is an interesting motivation but still sucks for Max. And when Max gives that speech about how she wants to hear Eleanor say she'll let them beat the answer out of her it is devastating, Jenny. So, to put it mildly, I'd say my feelings about Eleanor are more complicated than they were after the first episode.
I also enjoyed Billy's conversation with Gates on the balcony, and the "negotiations" between Vane and Rackham over what to do with the pearls. I'm interested to see, in the long run, who really runs Vane's ship. I feel like Black Sails is going to try and change my mind about Charles Vane at some point but so far I am resisting mightily. Zach McGowan does do a great hurt face when he talks to Eleanor though.
Jenny: We’ll come back to the question of who runs Vane’s ship later, because the roles aboard a pirate ship are historically pretty interesting! But the short version is that the crew runs the ship by electing both the captain and the quartermaster, and pirate crews weren’t shy about voting those guys out if they weren’t netting enough treasure for their men.
On the question of Charles Vane, the showrunners have said that Eleanor Guthrie and Charles Vane are in love. I would like you please, as we move forward with this show, to keep an eye on those performances and tell me if you think that's what the actors are endeavoring to convey. Because in my opinion, Hannah New does a terrific job of depicting a woman whose truest love will always be commerce -- and I say that without judgment. If there's a third in Eleanor's enduring love affair with free trade, I would argue that it is neither Charles Vane nor Max but rather dudes-listening-to-her-when-she-speaks-for-goddamn-once-in-her-goddamn-life.
But, I mean, see what you think. The scene where Charles is trying to talk to Eleanor about whether she has feelings for him, and she keeps slapping him down, is deeply satisfying to me as a fair-haired foul-mouthed money-loving lady, and maybe I'm letting my emotions about that cloud my vision.
As for Eleanor and Max, I was crushed that the show broke them up so quickly, and in such a devastating and final way. The scene that opens the episode, and how pleased they each seem to be about banging each other, was really quite sweet -- I feel like it’s rare on prestige television to see two characters actually having fun sex. I was hoping they'd make it work a little longer -- but it makes sense that they couldn't. Maybe the most consistent thing about this show is that characters have to choose between their relationships and their Grand Visions, and the fact is that Eleanor's always going to choose the vision.
(Because she’s in love with commerce.)
This is a bad episode for Eleanor and Max, and a bad episode for Eleanor and Charles (unless, like me, you get an enormous kick out of Charles Vane being way more into Eleanor than she is into him), but it's ten thousand a-pluses for Eleanor and Flint. I adore their relationship, in part because neither of them gets their feelings hurt about the other one turning on them when it's expedient to do so. Unlike a ,em>lot of other folks in this show, Flint and Eleanor are two characters who absolutely know what sort of a world they occupy. Do you ship their friendship? SAY YES.
Jodie: I think I have to wait on this relationship a little bit because right now, after two episodes, I'm still getting a very “maybe this is unrequited love” vibe. I think that's just because I don't know enough about the history between these two. Also, many, many people on the show keep giving Eleanor the side-eye about her continued support for a failing asset, which does seem suspicious considering, as you say, Eleanor loves commerce. I can see there must be something deep between them but, because I'm so used to shows going down the romantic route whenever a man and a woman have any kind of feelings about each other, the emotions that enter the room whenever they're together are currently reading romantic. I am very excited to see this not be the case though, and I'll let you know how I feel about their friendship as we go.
By the way, it is ridiculous to me that after that scene anyone could say Eleanor is in love with Charles. She's clearly in love with Max at least some of the time but Charles... It's pretty clear she is done with him even if maybe she had feelings for him at some point. I agree that it is delicious to see Charles be way more into her, although I worry about where any obsession on his part might lead. As we've seen, Charles in a very violent man.
Can we talk a little bit more about how Eleanor feels about commerce? The show makes it clear that Eleanor finds more to enjoy in running Nassau than the security that having money and a business brings a woman. She relishes being in charge, and having an enterprise of her own in its own right. And when she considers the prospect of her father coming back, taking that from her, and getting all her well-deserved credit she just can't stand it. It's quite common to see women in period dramas enjoy being financially independent, but I think less common to see them love their occupation for its own sake (the only other examples I can come up with are Denise from The Paradise and Agnes and Kitty from Mr Selfridges). Does Eleanor have a real life historical counterpart, who was involved with pirates, as far as you know?
Jenny: I'm going to have to get back to you on Eleanor having a real-life counterpart. The Guthries were a real merchant family from this period, but there was nobody like Eleanor running Nassau in true history. But I agree with you that the writers made her such a fascinating character, exactly because she believes so strongly in what she's doing, and she loves doing it. In a world with very few options for women, Eleanor has found her niche: She has this job that's rewarding and challenging, and she has made herself into a person who can do that job (the only person who can). You see her misery at the idea of having it taken away from her, because losing Nassau would leave her with no other choices.
The hinge of the Eleanor/Flint friendship, I think, is that they are each capable of accepting the possibility of change. Charles Vane and Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny are each wedded to the current system for piracy. Charles wants better leads from Eleanor, and Jack wants the Urca gold, but in both cases, they want to retain the existing framework while bettering their position within that framework. Eleanor and Flint can see the cracks in the foundation.
Which leads us to the best thing about this episode. Oh, Jodie. Flint's speech to Eleanor tears my heart into a thousand pieces. Because just when Eleanor can see her world begin to collapse, Flint walks into her office and offers her something new. He has measurable action items (fifty guns added to the fort, new ships built, new crops planted), but more importantly, he has a vision of prosperity and peace. Here's what he says:
I have written evidence that this was my favorite bit of the Odyssey long before I saw this show, so I mean, this speech was a direct line straight into my heart.
(YES the actual line says winnowing fan, not shovel, but NO, I do not care about that distinction, because the point he's making stands but if he's saying shovel then it ties in better with the ending of the show. And yes, I went and checked the translation of Homer that Flint would be familiar with (Chapman), to make sure this wasn't a translation issue. He wouldn't have had Pope, but I checked Pope too. They all say winnowing fan, not shovel.)
Jack Rackham loses all his pearls, a scene that has a similar effect on me as Lucas losing all his money in Atlantic City at the start of Empire Records. John Silver burns the missing page so that Flint won't kill him. And Flint takes his sexy pirate turban and goes to a house where a woman is playing a surprisingly in-tune ?harpsichord? As soon as he walks in the door, he just drops to the ground. You, a newbie, feel nothing, but I am flayed to the depths of my very soul.
Jodie: As a newbie I am unmoved (and still thinking about Max) but I am intrigued. Who is this woman in the house, I wonder. I look forward to finding out in the next episode!
Before we wind up this recap, can we find a moment to talk about the boss credits for this show? I thought I was over well-done credits but these are wonderful, and really set the whole murderous, pirate tone for the show. I was not expecting such pretty murder credits to appear so I was taken by surprise.
Jenny: Let's do talk about the opening credits. I resent the trend away from proper opening credits music -- this thing of just tossing the show logo up for five seconds is boring and lazy -- so I'm particularly appreciative of Black Sails doing it up right.
The credits for this show are among my favorite show credits of all time, and I particularly love the statue that ends the sequence: A sailor crafted in white stone and a skeleton crafted in black are fighting for who will climb the mast. It's the perfect visual to start every show, not to mention the gorgeous, creepy, piratey music that accompanies the whole sequence. That's a hurdy-gurdy you hear playing, by the way, which is another stroke of brilliance by the terrific Bear McCreary (of Battlestar Galactica). His music work across the board in this show is tremendous, espesh his percussion choices, and I'm sure we'll discuss it many more times as the show goes on.
Jodie: I agree about opening credits, although I'm also kind of over every show trying to do arty credits because some of them just don't get it right (looking at you, Cormorant and Strike) but when they work they're amazing.
I love all the little crafted details that these credits focus on, and agree this sequence is the perfect way to start the show. The credits are both forbidding and intriguing, and they complement the substance of the show. And that is a fascinating music fact by the way. I will try to listen out for more of the musical workings on the show because you told me about the hurdy-gurdy!
Jenny: That’s all for now, folks, but join us again soon for episode three! Fair warning: while episode three contains one of my all-time favorite Black Sails scenes and you will be blessed to experience it, this is also the episode voted most likely to bounce feminist viewers off the show for good. I have no defense for the end of episode three, except that nothing like it will ever happen again.
(I am gr9 at summaries, I deserve a summaries prize.)
Watching this show back, I have all kinds of emotions about these folks, but the treasure hunt isn't tremendously engaging. Jodie, as a brand-new person to this show who doesn't know what's going to ultimately happen with the Urca gold, how did you feel about this episode plotwise? Did it grab you? Have your initial feelings about any of the characters changed?
Jodie: So, I am split on the treasure hunt because the bits where it allows the characters and relationships to develop are great, but it's not a terribly exciting chase narrative. There's a lot of pace missing until right at the end, and that's probably because they try to follow just one too many characters around. That's understandable as the show still needs to let a lot of different people know a lot of different things but it does slow everything down and take away some of the drama of the treasure hunt.
However, I did like how the treasure hunt plot puts Silver at the heart of the story. I enjoy Silver very much indeed, even though he's quite an overused stock character type. Scrappy, charming, thieves and murderers, who are always looking for an advantage, will always kind of be my thing. When he burns the page, I was so proud of him and his drive to survive. Such a smart boy.
One best parts of this episode is easily when we see Max caught up in her excitement about getting free, and Eleanor's betrayal of Max (for 'best' here read 'hopelessly tragic'). You asked me whether my feelings about anyone have changed, and I can't help but be disappointed in Eleanor. Which is kind of ridiculous considering the context of all the men around her. BUT MAX! I was really interested to see that Eleanor pays for Max, which I think tells us a lot about her. The Guthries run the island, and are by all accounts wealthy, yet Eleanor won't free Max from a life she's clearly keen to escape. I get the sense that this is about Eleanor's unwillingness to interfere in the trade she allows on her island, which is an interesting motivation but still sucks for Max. And when Max gives that speech about how she wants to hear Eleanor say she'll let them beat the answer out of her it is devastating, Jenny. So, to put it mildly, I'd say my feelings about Eleanor are more complicated than they were after the first episode.
I also enjoyed Billy's conversation with Gates on the balcony, and the "negotiations" between Vane and Rackham over what to do with the pearls. I'm interested to see, in the long run, who really runs Vane's ship. I feel like Black Sails is going to try and change my mind about Charles Vane at some point but so far I am resisting mightily. Zach McGowan does do a great hurt face when he talks to Eleanor though.
Jenny: We’ll come back to the question of who runs Vane’s ship later, because the roles aboard a pirate ship are historically pretty interesting! But the short version is that the crew runs the ship by electing both the captain and the quartermaster, and pirate crews weren’t shy about voting those guys out if they weren’t netting enough treasure for their men.
On the question of Charles Vane, the showrunners have said that Eleanor Guthrie and Charles Vane are in love. I would like you please, as we move forward with this show, to keep an eye on those performances and tell me if you think that's what the actors are endeavoring to convey. Because in my opinion, Hannah New does a terrific job of depicting a woman whose truest love will always be commerce -- and I say that without judgment. If there's a third in Eleanor's enduring love affair with free trade, I would argue that it is neither Charles Vane nor Max but rather dudes-listening-to-her-when-she-speaks-for-goddamn-once-in-her-goddamn-life.
But, I mean, see what you think. The scene where Charles is trying to talk to Eleanor about whether she has feelings for him, and she keeps slapping him down, is deeply satisfying to me as a fair-haired foul-mouthed money-loving lady, and maybe I'm letting my emotions about that cloud my vision.
As for Eleanor and Max, I was crushed that the show broke them up so quickly, and in such a devastating and final way. The scene that opens the episode, and how pleased they each seem to be about banging each other, was really quite sweet -- I feel like it’s rare on prestige television to see two characters actually having fun sex. I was hoping they'd make it work a little longer -- but it makes sense that they couldn't. Maybe the most consistent thing about this show is that characters have to choose between their relationships and their Grand Visions, and the fact is that Eleanor's always going to choose the vision.
(Because she’s in love with commerce.)
This is a bad episode for Eleanor and Max, and a bad episode for Eleanor and Charles (unless, like me, you get an enormous kick out of Charles Vane being way more into Eleanor than she is into him), but it's ten thousand a-pluses for Eleanor and Flint. I adore their relationship, in part because neither of them gets their feelings hurt about the other one turning on them when it's expedient to do so. Unlike a ,em>lot of other folks in this show, Flint and Eleanor are two characters who absolutely know what sort of a world they occupy. Do you ship their friendship? SAY YES.
Jodie: I think I have to wait on this relationship a little bit because right now, after two episodes, I'm still getting a very “maybe this is unrequited love” vibe. I think that's just because I don't know enough about the history between these two. Also, many, many people on the show keep giving Eleanor the side-eye about her continued support for a failing asset, which does seem suspicious considering, as you say, Eleanor loves commerce. I can see there must be something deep between them but, because I'm so used to shows going down the romantic route whenever a man and a woman have any kind of feelings about each other, the emotions that enter the room whenever they're together are currently reading romantic. I am very excited to see this not be the case though, and I'll let you know how I feel about their friendship as we go.
By the way, it is ridiculous to me that after that scene anyone could say Eleanor is in love with Charles. She's clearly in love with Max at least some of the time but Charles... It's pretty clear she is done with him even if maybe she had feelings for him at some point. I agree that it is delicious to see Charles be way more into her, although I worry about where any obsession on his part might lead. As we've seen, Charles in a very violent man.
Can we talk a little bit more about how Eleanor feels about commerce? The show makes it clear that Eleanor finds more to enjoy in running Nassau than the security that having money and a business brings a woman. She relishes being in charge, and having an enterprise of her own in its own right. And when she considers the prospect of her father coming back, taking that from her, and getting all her well-deserved credit she just can't stand it. It's quite common to see women in period dramas enjoy being financially independent, but I think less common to see them love their occupation for its own sake (the only other examples I can come up with are Denise from The Paradise and Agnes and Kitty from Mr Selfridges). Does Eleanor have a real life historical counterpart, who was involved with pirates, as far as you know?
Jenny: I'm going to have to get back to you on Eleanor having a real-life counterpart. The Guthries were a real merchant family from this period, but there was nobody like Eleanor running Nassau in true history. But I agree with you that the writers made her such a fascinating character, exactly because she believes so strongly in what she's doing, and she loves doing it. In a world with very few options for women, Eleanor has found her niche: She has this job that's rewarding and challenging, and she has made herself into a person who can do that job (the only person who can). You see her misery at the idea of having it taken away from her, because losing Nassau would leave her with no other choices.
The hinge of the Eleanor/Flint friendship, I think, is that they are each capable of accepting the possibility of change. Charles Vane and Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny are each wedded to the current system for piracy. Charles wants better leads from Eleanor, and Jack wants the Urca gold, but in both cases, they want to retain the existing framework while bettering their position within that framework. Eleanor and Flint can see the cracks in the foundation.
Which leads us to the best thing about this episode. Oh, Jodie. Flint's speech to Eleanor tears my heart into a thousand pieces. Because just when Eleanor can see her world begin to collapse, Flint walks into her office and offers her something new. He has measurable action items (fifty guns added to the fort, new ships built, new crops planted), but more importantly, he has a vision of prosperity and peace. Here's what he says:
Odysseus, on his journey home to Ithaca, is visited by a ghost. The ghost tells him that once he reaches his home, once he slays all his enemies and sets his house in order, he must do one last thing before he can rest. The ghost tells him to pick up an oar and walk inland and keep walking until somebody mistakes that oar for a shovel. For that would be the place that no man had ever been troubled by the sea. And that’s where he’d find peace. In the end that’s all I want. To walk away from the sea and find some peace.
I have written evidence that this was my favorite bit of the Odyssey long before I saw this show, so I mean, this speech was a direct line straight into my heart.
(YES the actual line says winnowing fan, not shovel, but NO, I do not care about that distinction, because the point he's making stands but if he's saying shovel then it ties in better with the ending of the show. And yes, I went and checked the translation of Homer that Flint would be familiar with (Chapman), to make sure this wasn't a translation issue. He wouldn't have had Pope, but I checked Pope too. They all say winnowing fan, not shovel.)
Jack Rackham loses all his pearls, a scene that has a similar effect on me as Lucas losing all his money in Atlantic City at the start of Empire Records. John Silver burns the missing page so that Flint won't kill him. And Flint takes his sexy pirate turban and goes to a house where a woman is playing a surprisingly in-tune ?harpsichord? As soon as he walks in the door, he just drops to the ground. You, a newbie, feel nothing, but I am flayed to the depths of my very soul.
Jodie: As a newbie I am unmoved (and still thinking about Max) but I am intrigued. Who is this woman in the house, I wonder. I look forward to finding out in the next episode!
Before we wind up this recap, can we find a moment to talk about the boss credits for this show? I thought I was over well-done credits but these are wonderful, and really set the whole murderous, pirate tone for the show. I was not expecting such pretty murder credits to appear so I was taken by surprise.
Jenny: Let's do talk about the opening credits. I resent the trend away from proper opening credits music -- this thing of just tossing the show logo up for five seconds is boring and lazy -- so I'm particularly appreciative of Black Sails doing it up right.
The credits for this show are among my favorite show credits of all time, and I particularly love the statue that ends the sequence: A sailor crafted in white stone and a skeleton crafted in black are fighting for who will climb the mast. It's the perfect visual to start every show, not to mention the gorgeous, creepy, piratey music that accompanies the whole sequence. That's a hurdy-gurdy you hear playing, by the way, which is another stroke of brilliance by the terrific Bear McCreary (of Battlestar Galactica). His music work across the board in this show is tremendous, espesh his percussion choices, and I'm sure we'll discuss it many more times as the show goes on.
Jodie: I agree about opening credits, although I'm also kind of over every show trying to do arty credits because some of them just don't get it right (looking at you, Cormorant and Strike) but when they work they're amazing.
I love all the little crafted details that these credits focus on, and agree this sequence is the perfect way to start the show. The credits are both forbidding and intriguing, and they complement the substance of the show. And that is a fascinating music fact by the way. I will try to listen out for more of the musical workings on the show because you told me about the hurdy-gurdy!
Jenny: That’s all for now, folks, but join us again soon for episode three! Fair warning: while episode three contains one of my all-time favorite Black Sails scenes and you will be blessed to experience it, this is also the episode voted most likely to bounce feminist viewers off the show for good. I have no defense for the end of episode three, except that nothing like it will ever happen again.
