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ladybusinessJodie: So, so, so - I watched Episode 5, and we need to talk about everyone's speeches as soon as you're ready.
Jenny: A quick summary: Flint and the Walrus give chase to get back the guns on board the Andromache, while Billy struggles with what he knows of Flint and what he doesn't yet understand. Jack, Charles, and Anne take possession of Mr. Noonan's brothel, because everybody's gotta have a side hustle. Max is still in that fucking tent. And Eleanor's father tells all of Nassau that he's no longer able to maintain the trading operation, leaving Eleanor scrambling to pick up the pieces of the life she's built.
Once again, let's start with Max and get that out of the way, because this is the plotline that absolutely will not die. She's still in the goddamn tent, and we still have to endure a very great deal of Anne and Eleanor having feelings about her being in the goddamn tent. It's frustrating because I actually am interested in Anne being a rape survivor -- which she obviously is -- and in Eleanor's struggle to find workable choices as a woman in a man's world. However, hinging those things on the ongoing brutalization of a woman of color remains terrible. It's a cliched, uninteresting writing choice that serves all of these characters badly.
It's particularly maddening in an episode that does a lot of beautiful character work with Eleanor and Billy and, of all people, the accountant for the Walrus, Mr. Dufresne. The never-ending male splaininess that Eleanor has to wade through to get anything accomplished has never been quite as boglike as it in this episode. It reminds me extremely of this one scene in Buffy:
Because, damn, the men of Nassau are out in full force to tell Eleanor how insignificant she is and how much she must change her behavior to get what they think she wants. Only Charles Vane can see clearly what's going on: "She's strong and we're weak," he says to one of the prostitutes at the brothel he now owns apparently. "That's the reality of things here."
Richard Guthrie kicks things off by telling Eleanor that she's never been in charge in Nassau at all, but she's definitely not in charge now because Nassau is through and they're going to depend on planters for legitimate business once the pirates are gone.
(Unfun fact: One reason piracy thrived in the Caribbean is that very few of the islands were actually well-suited to farming. Bad terrain, bad weather. Not a money-maker, unless you had a massive enslaved labor force and you didn't care if they died or not. I hope Richard Guthrie gets eaten by a shark.)
Then John Silver splains that Eleanor needs to Take the Mob Seriously. Then Captain Hornigold splains a complicated plan for winding down Nassau's business in a way that won't cause violence, and at that point Eleanor has had enough. Like Flint, she's at her most brilliant when her back's against the wall. She comes up with a way to save her future, and save Nassau.
Hornigold: Miss Guthrie, I'm not sure you recognize the gravity of the situation.
Eleanor, so patronizingly: Have a drink. Relax. Everything's under control.
Jodie, I know you haven't been the biggest fan of Eleanor. Did this episode do anything to change your mind?
Jodie: The show's treatment of Eleanor means I want to be very careful in how I describe my feelings about her. It's not that I find the idea of her making tough bargains, and hurting those around her, in order to survive, or gain power, difficult to accommodate. I think Eleanor provides us with a strong example of how female characters can look when they're given the same narrative treatment as male characters. Male characters are allowed to be terrible, terrible people who hurt others repeatedly in the name of "survival", and yet are also framed as sympathetic, or at least empathetic, characters who the viewer is allowed to connect with. And I feel like Eleanor is getting that treatment too.
Like you say, Eleanor's struggles in a world dominated by men who want to explain things to her are interesting. And, seen in isolation from her part in Max's downfall, she's a fascinating example of a woman making her own way in the world of commerce. She's very easy to empathise with as she's repeatedly forced to re-establish her own power, and competence, to keep herself safe, alive, and in charge.
In this episode, Eleanor is very focused on her own urgent plans to keep Nassau going, and on how she's going to avoid joining her father's awful scheme (which would absolutely fail because you can just tell Richard Guthrie is a useless business man - also hope he gets eaten by a shark). It feels like this, and the level of male "advice" she has to contend with, is a very deliberate choice to rehabilitate Eleanor in the eyes of the viewer. It helps to focus the viewer on her struggle, rather than on her betrayal of Max, and to encourage viewers to see her as the sympathetic, surrounded on all sides, female character fighting to retain her grip on stability and power. It's a very clever narrative choice to make; as is the decision to largely split her off from all the other characters we've become invested in. That makes her feel even more like a cornered woman, and the viewer's instinct is to support her. I honestly cannot wait to see how/whether she's going to swing the whole situation around in her favour.
If only she weren't being given that same treatment after having totally fucked over her chromatic, female lover. Eleanor's drive for survival has (for the moment) destroyed Max, and that's the big sticking point for me. Eleanor can take down as many of my white male favs as she likes and I'll probably be here for it. OK, if it's Billy I'll have to take a deep breath. Still, if it's in the name of her own survival I'll work through my Billy Bones feelings. Female characters doing terrible things to survive, or to gain power, is kind of my jam. It's specifically the white feminism component of Eleanor's drive and survival that has gotten under my skin.
In a way, the fact that Eleanor is still framed as a sympathetic character is interesting in itself. It demonstrates what Black Sails thinks the viewer will "tolerate" in a character; perhaps specifically what they will "tolerate" in a white female character. However, at the end of all this "interesting" subtext Max is still in that fucking tent, so...
One more thing before we move on - while I totally get what you're saying about the problem of white women having feelings about Max's fate, I actually kind of like that the show does force Eleanor to have feelings about Max in this episode. It complicates this picture of Eleanor as the "woman surrounded", and I think Eleanor needs to remain a character linked to her terrible past actions. Otherwise the show lets her off the hook, which would make her a less interesting character. Personally, I always kind of struggle with the way some series just gloss over the 'but he killed your sister' history of a character's story (I'm thinking of The Vampire Diaries right now but I find this really common in long running shows). If the show could go back in time and not write this terrible plot point I would obviously put all my money into their time travel Kickstarter, but as it can't I'm glad they aren't letting Eleanor go about her life without daily Max related heart stabbings.
Jenny: There's a lot I can't say about the show's future treatment of Eleanor and Max, except that I am excited for you to get to certain plot points in Season 3. For now, I'll confine myself to observing that Black Sails is in large part a show about how people behave inside of systems designed to exclude the possibility of their humanity. Many characters will be forced to the type of choice Eleanor makes, as we watch through this show, and there's not a ton of correlation between the moral rectitude of their decisions and the acceptability of the outcomes they achieve. Hashtag empire.
Eleanor's plotline concludes in this episode with an ultimatum: She can have the support she needs to create a consortium that will allow Nassau to continue its merchant trade, if she lifts the ban on Charles Vane. It remains to be seen what she's going to do about that.
Charles Vane is in an opium haze, having lost the only things he cares about (Eleanor and pirating). This leaves his quartermaster, Jack Rackham, to pick up the pieces after Vane killed the brothel-owner in the last episode. He bribes the madam to keep quiet about the attempted murder, sends her to the beach to do some terrifying contraceptive thing to Max, and urges the assholes on his crew not to discount Eleanor Guthrie's influence quite yet. My favorite thing about Jack is that he never, ever underestimates women because they're women. Evidently years of sailing with a female partner have influenced him.
(My second favorite thing about Jack is that the actor playing him is incapable of giving a bad line read. Even his mundane lines are funny: I cracked up when he said "Charles, do I understand correctly that you've requested a skiff?")
Meanwhile, back on the Walrus, Flint and his crew are chasing the Andromache to try and get the guns Eleanor promised them. We start with a flawless piece of Captain Flint rhetoric in which he forces Billy to talk about his mistrust of Flint, then slips a knife into the exact weak points in Billy's arguments. Billy tries to regain the upper hand by asking about Mrs. Barlow, which, number one, if there is one absolutely consistent thing about Flint throughout this show it's that he doesn't like it when you talk about his people; and b of all, doesn't come as nearly the surprise to Flint that Billy probably intends. "It's not as fun to tell stories about how your captain makes a home with a nice Puritan woman who shares his love of books," he says, smoothly dismissing the more lurid stories about Miranda while ignoring the more plausible ones.
I, of course, locked myself into a bathroom to weep when he said makes a home, and I am there still. How are you feeling about Billy's growth as a leader of men?
Jodie: Billy Bones - leader of men. OMG I LOVE IT! First of all I am a big fan of Tom Hopper from his Merlin days; a fact I have possibly mentioned this once or twice. And, it is great to see him in a role where he gets to do much, much more with his amazing, expressive face. He just has such a great combination of soft and strong going on in this role, and I like that he's constantly on the horns of a moral dilemma which means his face is always doing such interesting, conflicted things.
Character-wise, I like that we join Billy as he begins to realise his potential as a leader, and that we're presumably going to get to see his confidence, and personal mantra about leadership, develop. Right now, he's fair and kind, but he's also pragmatic, and quick to pick up the most useful leadership tips handed out by those around him. Even though Billy's generally sceptical about some of Flint's behaviour, he's fine with re-purposing that behaviour if it helps him to control or motivate the crew. In particular, I loved the way he dealt with Mr Dufresne, even though as a world weary consumer of media I could see exactly what he was doing. And the way Billy brushes off the fact that he's lied made me swoon.
However, taking leadership tips from a leader you're conflicted about is a difficult path to walk. To me, Billy looks like an idealist caught in a pragmatist's world. In his ideal world, the crew would be fully aware of, and consulted on, everything Flint has planned, and the pirate ship would be a true democracy. However, he backs the boss because he's aware of the potential for chaos that a leaderless crew, or a change in leadership, poses. And he's unwilling to condemn Flint to his fate at the hands of a potentially murderous crew because there is just something about Flint that draws Billy to him. I fully expect this to be a source of much internal conflict for Billy. I think, at the heart of his own journey is a decision about what kind of leader he wants to be, which again probably means lots of delicious Tom Hopper face work, so I am pretty alright with that.
I feel like we should probably talk about the horrible twist that involves for Mr Scott soon (ugh).
Jenny: Let's chat about the show's first real acknowledgement that European colonies in the Caribbean were founded on and supported by the slave trade. On a scale of one to ten, how mad are you at the show for doing this to Mr. Scott? BECAUSE I AM MAD.
Jodie: This episode ends with us finding out that Mr Scott has been betrayed and imprisoned on a slave ship :O :O :O WTF?! I would say that this is a very bad look for Black Sails because this plot twist looks a lot like narrative punishment. Mr Scott skips out on Eleanor (for pretty valid reasons in context tbh even if it's not the greatest decision a character in this show has made so far). He is then betrayed in turn and made into a slave.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of narrative punishment that aims to humble a character by dealing them the same kind of pain they've previously dolled out. Narrative revenge is just not my thing, and I'd prefer they learn their lesson in another way. Even if viewers don't mind that trope in general, I think we can all agree that it is REALLY CREEPY to make the oppression of a marginalised person into an "I told you so" style punishment for any kind of behaviour; particularly when they're a black man being "punished" for the way they've treated a white woman who has way more social power than that man (no one is going to be selling Eleanor off into slavery any time soon).
To be honest, the whole moment reads as a kind of "gotcha" twist which reeks of the desire to provide the viewer with cheap thrills. I think painful TV surprise moments are often engineered to both horrify and thrill now. Creators want fans to be almost deliciously outraged by the terrible things that happen to characters. The whole fake outrage 'why does X love tears so much' side of internet fan comments show that strong emotions draw a crowd, and TV (as well as other media but I think TV buys into it the most) has learnt the power of creating this kind of strong emotion. A big TV death is going to get fans screaming about your show all over the internet #cynical. So, twists like this often feel like they're less about the characters, and more about the reaction creators want to inspire. Again, this is not a good look when you're making one of your few chromatic characters the site of these kind of cheap thrills.
So, yes, it's a ten on the anger scale from me! How did you feel about this development?
Jenny: I hate this development. It makes me so angry for all the reasons you've mentioned, and it's especially enraging because the first two seasons of this show barely address the primary driver of economic prosperity in the Caribbean at this time: the slave trade. So to have the first acknowledgement of that arrive in the form of Mr. Scott being betrayed and enslaved feels extra gross.
Overall, I would say one of the serious failures of this show is the instrumentalization of its black characters. (I can offer no insights into its treatment of indigenous people, as it never shows any.) There are so many emotional conflicts for Max and Scott as black people in a white-dominated world that never get explored. Instead we get plotlines like this, where Scott is temporarily sacrificed as a means of showing how truly wicked and faithless Eleanor's wicked, faithless father is. It's also immensely patronizing to Scott, who has been around Richard Guthrie plenty long enough to know that this person can't be trusted. As you say, it feels like it's less about the character and more about eliciting a reaction.
I am so goddamn ready for Max to start clawing her way into power, Jodie. These first few episodes are rough.
Jodie: I'm also very ready for this development! Let's head on to the next episode which will hopefully get us closer to Max in power!
Jenny: Next time on Black Sails, some people we like kill some people we don’t like. Despite heavily judging Jack’s choices, Anne shows that she still has faith in him; despite having faith in Flint, Miranda shows that she still heavily judges his choices. And in answer to my prayers, Max gets out of the rape tent.
Jenny: A quick summary: Flint and the Walrus give chase to get back the guns on board the Andromache, while Billy struggles with what he knows of Flint and what he doesn't yet understand. Jack, Charles, and Anne take possession of Mr. Noonan's brothel, because everybody's gotta have a side hustle. Max is still in that fucking tent. And Eleanor's father tells all of Nassau that he's no longer able to maintain the trading operation, leaving Eleanor scrambling to pick up the pieces of the life she's built.
Once again, let's start with Max and get that out of the way, because this is the plotline that absolutely will not die. She's still in the goddamn tent, and we still have to endure a very great deal of Anne and Eleanor having feelings about her being in the goddamn tent. It's frustrating because I actually am interested in Anne being a rape survivor -- which she obviously is -- and in Eleanor's struggle to find workable choices as a woman in a man's world. However, hinging those things on the ongoing brutalization of a woman of color remains terrible. It's a cliched, uninteresting writing choice that serves all of these characters badly.
It's particularly maddening in an episode that does a lot of beautiful character work with Eleanor and Billy and, of all people, the accountant for the Walrus, Mr. Dufresne. The never-ending male splaininess that Eleanor has to wade through to get anything accomplished has never been quite as boglike as it in this episode. It reminds me extremely of this one scene in Buffy:
Because, damn, the men of Nassau are out in full force to tell Eleanor how insignificant she is and how much she must change her behavior to get what they think she wants. Only Charles Vane can see clearly what's going on: "She's strong and we're weak," he says to one of the prostitutes at the brothel he now owns apparently. "That's the reality of things here."
Richard Guthrie kicks things off by telling Eleanor that she's never been in charge in Nassau at all, but she's definitely not in charge now because Nassau is through and they're going to depend on planters for legitimate business once the pirates are gone.
(Unfun fact: One reason piracy thrived in the Caribbean is that very few of the islands were actually well-suited to farming. Bad terrain, bad weather. Not a money-maker, unless you had a massive enslaved labor force and you didn't care if they died or not. I hope Richard Guthrie gets eaten by a shark.)
Then John Silver splains that Eleanor needs to Take the Mob Seriously. Then Captain Hornigold splains a complicated plan for winding down Nassau's business in a way that won't cause violence, and at that point Eleanor has had enough. Like Flint, she's at her most brilliant when her back's against the wall. She comes up with a way to save her future, and save Nassau.
Hornigold: Miss Guthrie, I'm not sure you recognize the gravity of the situation.
Eleanor, so patronizingly: Have a drink. Relax. Everything's under control.
Jodie, I know you haven't been the biggest fan of Eleanor. Did this episode do anything to change your mind?
Jodie: The show's treatment of Eleanor means I want to be very careful in how I describe my feelings about her. It's not that I find the idea of her making tough bargains, and hurting those around her, in order to survive, or gain power, difficult to accommodate. I think Eleanor provides us with a strong example of how female characters can look when they're given the same narrative treatment as male characters. Male characters are allowed to be terrible, terrible people who hurt others repeatedly in the name of "survival", and yet are also framed as sympathetic, or at least empathetic, characters who the viewer is allowed to connect with. And I feel like Eleanor is getting that treatment too.
Like you say, Eleanor's struggles in a world dominated by men who want to explain things to her are interesting. And, seen in isolation from her part in Max's downfall, she's a fascinating example of a woman making her own way in the world of commerce. She's very easy to empathise with as she's repeatedly forced to re-establish her own power, and competence, to keep herself safe, alive, and in charge.
In this episode, Eleanor is very focused on her own urgent plans to keep Nassau going, and on how she's going to avoid joining her father's awful scheme (which would absolutely fail because you can just tell Richard Guthrie is a useless business man - also hope he gets eaten by a shark). It feels like this, and the level of male "advice" she has to contend with, is a very deliberate choice to rehabilitate Eleanor in the eyes of the viewer. It helps to focus the viewer on her struggle, rather than on her betrayal of Max, and to encourage viewers to see her as the sympathetic, surrounded on all sides, female character fighting to retain her grip on stability and power. It's a very clever narrative choice to make; as is the decision to largely split her off from all the other characters we've become invested in. That makes her feel even more like a cornered woman, and the viewer's instinct is to support her. I honestly cannot wait to see how/whether she's going to swing the whole situation around in her favour.
If only she weren't being given that same treatment after having totally fucked over her chromatic, female lover. Eleanor's drive for survival has (for the moment) destroyed Max, and that's the big sticking point for me. Eleanor can take down as many of my white male favs as she likes and I'll probably be here for it. OK, if it's Billy I'll have to take a deep breath. Still, if it's in the name of her own survival I'll work through my Billy Bones feelings. Female characters doing terrible things to survive, or to gain power, is kind of my jam. It's specifically the white feminism component of Eleanor's drive and survival that has gotten under my skin.
In a way, the fact that Eleanor is still framed as a sympathetic character is interesting in itself. It demonstrates what Black Sails thinks the viewer will "tolerate" in a character; perhaps specifically what they will "tolerate" in a white female character. However, at the end of all this "interesting" subtext Max is still in that fucking tent, so...
One more thing before we move on - while I totally get what you're saying about the problem of white women having feelings about Max's fate, I actually kind of like that the show does force Eleanor to have feelings about Max in this episode. It complicates this picture of Eleanor as the "woman surrounded", and I think Eleanor needs to remain a character linked to her terrible past actions. Otherwise the show lets her off the hook, which would make her a less interesting character. Personally, I always kind of struggle with the way some series just gloss over the 'but he killed your sister' history of a character's story (I'm thinking of The Vampire Diaries right now but I find this really common in long running shows). If the show could go back in time and not write this terrible plot point I would obviously put all my money into their time travel Kickstarter, but as it can't I'm glad they aren't letting Eleanor go about her life without daily Max related heart stabbings.
Jenny: There's a lot I can't say about the show's future treatment of Eleanor and Max, except that I am excited for you to get to certain plot points in Season 3. For now, I'll confine myself to observing that Black Sails is in large part a show about how people behave inside of systems designed to exclude the possibility of their humanity. Many characters will be forced to the type of choice Eleanor makes, as we watch through this show, and there's not a ton of correlation between the moral rectitude of their decisions and the acceptability of the outcomes they achieve. Hashtag empire.
Eleanor's plotline concludes in this episode with an ultimatum: She can have the support she needs to create a consortium that will allow Nassau to continue its merchant trade, if she lifts the ban on Charles Vane. It remains to be seen what she's going to do about that.
Charles Vane is in an opium haze, having lost the only things he cares about (Eleanor and pirating). This leaves his quartermaster, Jack Rackham, to pick up the pieces after Vane killed the brothel-owner in the last episode. He bribes the madam to keep quiet about the attempted murder, sends her to the beach to do some terrifying contraceptive thing to Max, and urges the assholes on his crew not to discount Eleanor Guthrie's influence quite yet. My favorite thing about Jack is that he never, ever underestimates women because they're women. Evidently years of sailing with a female partner have influenced him.
(My second favorite thing about Jack is that the actor playing him is incapable of giving a bad line read. Even his mundane lines are funny: I cracked up when he said "Charles, do I understand correctly that you've requested a skiff?")
Meanwhile, back on the Walrus, Flint and his crew are chasing the Andromache to try and get the guns Eleanor promised them. We start with a flawless piece of Captain Flint rhetoric in which he forces Billy to talk about his mistrust of Flint, then slips a knife into the exact weak points in Billy's arguments. Billy tries to regain the upper hand by asking about Mrs. Barlow, which, number one, if there is one absolutely consistent thing about Flint throughout this show it's that he doesn't like it when you talk about his people; and b of all, doesn't come as nearly the surprise to Flint that Billy probably intends. "It's not as fun to tell stories about how your captain makes a home with a nice Puritan woman who shares his love of books," he says, smoothly dismissing the more lurid stories about Miranda while ignoring the more plausible ones.
I, of course, locked myself into a bathroom to weep when he said makes a home, and I am there still. How are you feeling about Billy's growth as a leader of men?
Jodie: Billy Bones - leader of men. OMG I LOVE IT! First of all I am a big fan of Tom Hopper from his Merlin days; a fact I have possibly mentioned this once or twice. And, it is great to see him in a role where he gets to do much, much more with his amazing, expressive face. He just has such a great combination of soft and strong going on in this role, and I like that he's constantly on the horns of a moral dilemma which means his face is always doing such interesting, conflicted things.
Character-wise, I like that we join Billy as he begins to realise his potential as a leader, and that we're presumably going to get to see his confidence, and personal mantra about leadership, develop. Right now, he's fair and kind, but he's also pragmatic, and quick to pick up the most useful leadership tips handed out by those around him. Even though Billy's generally sceptical about some of Flint's behaviour, he's fine with re-purposing that behaviour if it helps him to control or motivate the crew. In particular, I loved the way he dealt with Mr Dufresne, even though as a world weary consumer of media I could see exactly what he was doing. And the way Billy brushes off the fact that he's lied made me swoon.
However, taking leadership tips from a leader you're conflicted about is a difficult path to walk. To me, Billy looks like an idealist caught in a pragmatist's world. In his ideal world, the crew would be fully aware of, and consulted on, everything Flint has planned, and the pirate ship would be a true democracy. However, he backs the boss because he's aware of the potential for chaos that a leaderless crew, or a change in leadership, poses. And he's unwilling to condemn Flint to his fate at the hands of a potentially murderous crew because there is just something about Flint that draws Billy to him. I fully expect this to be a source of much internal conflict for Billy. I think, at the heart of his own journey is a decision about what kind of leader he wants to be, which again probably means lots of delicious Tom Hopper face work, so I am pretty alright with that.
I feel like we should probably talk about the horrible twist that involves for Mr Scott soon (ugh).
Jenny: Let's chat about the show's first real acknowledgement that European colonies in the Caribbean were founded on and supported by the slave trade. On a scale of one to ten, how mad are you at the show for doing this to Mr. Scott? BECAUSE I AM MAD.
Jodie: This episode ends with us finding out that Mr Scott has been betrayed and imprisoned on a slave ship :O :O :O WTF?! I would say that this is a very bad look for Black Sails because this plot twist looks a lot like narrative punishment. Mr Scott skips out on Eleanor (for pretty valid reasons in context tbh even if it's not the greatest decision a character in this show has made so far). He is then betrayed in turn and made into a slave.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of narrative punishment that aims to humble a character by dealing them the same kind of pain they've previously dolled out. Narrative revenge is just not my thing, and I'd prefer they learn their lesson in another way. Even if viewers don't mind that trope in general, I think we can all agree that it is REALLY CREEPY to make the oppression of a marginalised person into an "I told you so" style punishment for any kind of behaviour; particularly when they're a black man being "punished" for the way they've treated a white woman who has way more social power than that man (no one is going to be selling Eleanor off into slavery any time soon).
To be honest, the whole moment reads as a kind of "gotcha" twist which reeks of the desire to provide the viewer with cheap thrills. I think painful TV surprise moments are often engineered to both horrify and thrill now. Creators want fans to be almost deliciously outraged by the terrible things that happen to characters. The whole fake outrage 'why does X love tears so much' side of internet fan comments show that strong emotions draw a crowd, and TV (as well as other media but I think TV buys into it the most) has learnt the power of creating this kind of strong emotion. A big TV death is going to get fans screaming about your show all over the internet #cynical. So, twists like this often feel like they're less about the characters, and more about the reaction creators want to inspire. Again, this is not a good look when you're making one of your few chromatic characters the site of these kind of cheap thrills.
So, yes, it's a ten on the anger scale from me! How did you feel about this development?
Jenny: I hate this development. It makes me so angry for all the reasons you've mentioned, and it's especially enraging because the first two seasons of this show barely address the primary driver of economic prosperity in the Caribbean at this time: the slave trade. So to have the first acknowledgement of that arrive in the form of Mr. Scott being betrayed and enslaved feels extra gross.
Overall, I would say one of the serious failures of this show is the instrumentalization of its black characters. (I can offer no insights into its treatment of indigenous people, as it never shows any.) There are so many emotional conflicts for Max and Scott as black people in a white-dominated world that never get explored. Instead we get plotlines like this, where Scott is temporarily sacrificed as a means of showing how truly wicked and faithless Eleanor's wicked, faithless father is. It's also immensely patronizing to Scott, who has been around Richard Guthrie plenty long enough to know that this person can't be trusted. As you say, it feels like it's less about the character and more about eliciting a reaction.
I am so goddamn ready for Max to start clawing her way into power, Jodie. These first few episodes are rough.
Jodie: I'm also very ready for this development! Let's head on to the next episode which will hopefully get us closer to Max in power!
Jenny: Next time on Black Sails, some people we like kill some people we don’t like. Despite heavily judging Jack’s choices, Anne shows that she still has faith in him; despite having faith in Flint, Miranda shows that she still heavily judges his choices. And in answer to my prayers, Max gets out of the rape tent.
