that went well

[kindkit]

I managed to get through about half of Black Sails 1x03 before I was so bored I couldn't stand it any more. I don't care about any of these people, I don't care about their overcomplicated scheming, and the dull expository dialogue is making every minute drag.

Would someone please spoil me for everything I need to know about the rest of S1 so I can go on to S2, which supposedly is better? If I like S2 I might eventually go back to S1. But I cannot, cannot face 5 more episodes of S1 at the moment.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

Just start watching it? It has a little recap at the start of every episode. If you can't stand the whole show, you want to watch for Rupert Penry Jones' scenes from 2.01 onwards.

I didn't care much for the characters at this point either, but I needed a show to watch while I crocheted, and by the time I got to the end of S1 I was galloping ahead. But you can always go back.

[kindkit]

For right now, at least, I think it's not going to be the show for me. It's frustrating, because I hear such good things about it, but even after I spoiled myself for future developments I just can't muster up the will to watch any more.

[rydra_wong]

Oh dear. Sorry to hear it.

I happen to have a summary of S1 which I wrote because of reasons -- will leave in a comment.

I'd also say if you're feeling this unmotivated by it, maybe worth spoiling yourself for the backstory bit of S2 and maybe some things about S3? Then either that'll leave you a bit more psyched, or you'll know it's really just not your show.

Season 1 summary

[rydra_wong]

Important (and historically-correct) things established early on: pirate captains have absolute authority in battle, but can be deposed and replaced by a vote of their crews at other times. The quartermaster on a pirate ship is elected by the crew to represent their interests, including pushing back against the captain when needed.

At the start of the show, Flint is the captain of the Walrus and his quartermaster is his close friend Mr Gates. Charles Vane is captain of the Ranger and his quartermaster is Jack Rackham. Jack is inseparable from Anne Bonny, who is at this point a scary and largely non-verbal shadow in a hat who’s very good at stabbing people.

The MacGuffin for Season 1 is the secret itinerary of a Spanish treasure galleon, the Urca de Lima. Flint is chasing the MacGuffin (while lying to most of his crew about this and many many other things).

In ep 1, he captures a British ship that has the itinerary, but the key page has been torn out of the log, then subsequently stolen by John Silver (who he? where he come from? we don’t know).

Eleanor Guthrie runs Nassau, as the person in charge of fencing property stolen by the pirates, having mostly taken over the business from her father, who is useless and terrible.

Eleanor and Charles Vane (second-scariest pirate captain) keep breaking up and getting back together ad nauseam. Since their last break-up, Eleanor has become involved in a relationship with Max, a prostitute at the local brothel.

Silver plots with Max to sell the page; she sets up a deal to sell it to Vane and Jack.

Eleanor and Flint plot to use the treasure of the Urca de Lima to enable Nassau to maintain its independence from England.

Max begs Eleanor to run away from Nassau with her, to go somewhere where they can live together using the proceeds from the deal. Eleanor, faced with abandoning everything she’s tried to build, refuses (this will resonate through all four seasons, especially the fourth).

Flint and co. force Max to reveal where the handover’s supposed to take place. They capture Silver, who has memorized and then burnt the page so they can’t kill him.

There’s a subplot with Flint and Miranda Barlow, the mysterious woman he visits when he’s on land, which makes infinitely more sense when you know what their actual backstory is rather than their supposed backstory.

Max, betrayed and devastated, leaves the brothel and is captured by some of Vane’s men, who (as retribution for having — in their eyes — screwed them over re: the deal) gang-rape her.

Eleanor puts an embargo on Charles Vane: she won’t do business with him or anyone who sails with him any more. Many of Vane’s crew abandon him, but some of the remainder keep hold of Max.

Gates and the bosun, Billy Bones, grow increasingly concerned through the season that Flint willing to lie, betray, murder and generally treat the lives of his crew as expendable in pursuit of his secret goals. They are correct about all of this, though wrong about some details.

(Years back, they hunted down a ship, the Maria Aleyne, and Flint killed two of the passengers. Gates suspects the murder was the real goal but doesn’t know why.)

Vane, Jack and Anne end up owning the brothel because of reasons. Vane goes off to have a boring angsty confrontation with his past. Eleanor’s father is terrible.

Anne confronts Eleanor and plots with her to rescue Max. They conspire to murder all the rapists. It’s great.

Billy goes overboard (Flint may or may not be responsible).

Because Jack and Anne have no organizational abilities, Max takes charge of the brothel, because Max is very very smart and ambitious and by this point has zero tolerance for anyone’s bullshit.

The Urca de Lima isn’t where the itinerary says it should be. Gates threatens to forcibly bring down Flint’s captaincy. Flint murders him (and is agonized by this) (cool motive still murder). Silver tries to help him cover it up.

Vane returns with a lot of new men. They take over the fort in Nassau, and force Eleanor to accept Vane as a business partner.

Vane tells everyone that Jack and Anne are crew-killers, so no other crew will take them on.

At the end of season 1, the Walrus crew know that Flint murdered Gates and that Silver’s a thief, and want to execute both of them. In an injudicious confrontation with a Spanish warship which should be escorting the Urca de Lima, the Walrus is wrecked and the survivors end up on the Florida shore.

In the last scene of the last ep, they realize the Urca de Lima wasn’t where it should have been because it was wrecked in the storm the previous night; they’re looking through a telescope at an adjacent beach covered with treasure and Spanish soldiers.

Re: Season 1 summary

[kindkit]

Thank you for posting this. I went ahead and spoiled myself further from some of your other posts, but somehow it's just not clicking for me. Sorry; I know how frustrating it is to love a show that someone else won't take a chance on!

Maybe another time, in another mood, when the world doesn't seem as bleak as it does now. But at the moment I seem to need a strong dose of escapism.

Re: Season 1 summary

[rydra_wong]

Thank you for posting this. I went ahead and spoiled myself further from some of your other posts, but somehow it's just not clicking for me. Sorry; I know how frustrating it is to love a show that someone else won't take a chance on!

But you did take a chance on it, and as you say it's just not clicking. So, more than fair enough! Obviously I love it but I know it's not going to be everyone's thing.

ETA: also, far better to ditch it now, and maybe try another time in another mood, as you say, then plough ahead when you're really not feeling it and end up completely loathing the bloody thing.

[halotolerant]

Argh yes see this is what I remember of trying to watch that show. I think I might watch it whilst doing tapestry work or something else with my hands so I only have 50% attention on the TV, but right now I'm generally so tired when I get to TV time that I have to be able to just watch the thing in front of me.

I have been watching the original Transformers since astolat posted that fic, and it is weirdly compelling although also, you know, a show from the 1980s to sell fairly sexist robot toys... (I think I just get an extra surge of joy from fanworks that make gay stories out of canons that never, ever, ever would have wanted to be gay stories)

[kindkit]

I've decided that for now, at least, I'm not going to try again with Black Sails. I spoiled myself a lot, and (not to be too specific) it seems to me that the things I would like are not things I would like enough, or that would be prominent enough onscreen, to make the things I wouldn't like worth watching. Your mileage might definitely vary on this, though, if there comes a time when you have the energy to spare.

make gay stories out of canons that never, ever, ever would have wanted to be gay stories

You know, I read somewhere that there's a Transformers comic that has canonical gay relationships. A bit of googling just now tells me it's the ongoing series Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye. I was astonished to hear it, which is why I remembered. But the relationship of extended canon like that to its original is often really fanficcy.

I know what you mean about an extra surge of joy, anyway. It feels like something really, well, transformative. Plus, for me at least, growing up in a world where there were hardly any gay texts, it comes close to the foundational impulse to write (or even just imagine) slash in the first place.