Black Sails, season 2
Sep. 11th, 2016 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorindaI finished season 2 of Black Sails last week, and loooooooved it. It just got better and better, and more emotionally involving. And almost all of the characters grew and expanded and opened like flowers! Flowers to whom I am attached to one degree or another.
SPOILERS BELOW, LOOK OUT
Excepting Eleanor, alas. I felt like everyone else grew and changed at least a little bit--or at least showed me layers I hadn't seen before, whether those were new layers or not. But not her. Her beats seemed pretty much the same every time. Especially in re: Charles Vane, except that their kiss-kiss/slap-slap escalated until it was fuck-fuck/kill-kill. Although then he capped that off with preeeeetty much the ultimate breakup note, so I assume things with them will at least be different now. (I am sadly not very interested in that particular thread, though.)
Vane is still not ranked super-high in my emotions I guess, but he did surprise me, which I appreciate! (I think he surprised Flint, too. :D ) I liked seeing Jack Rackham step out as captain, bringing his smart/dandyish masculinity into the shipboard world where we've usually just seen more typical rule-by-brutality, and showing them he knows how to do it. The Jack, Anne, and Max dynamic continues to get more complicated, which I like.
Flint remains my biggest draw, and of course season 2, with those linked flashbacks, is so much about him and what turned McGraw into Flint. His entire arc is SO PAINFUL though. It's a rule with me that I can no longer watch episodes on work days before bed, because I end up having trouble sleeping! He's just faced so much agonizing, intimate, unfair loss, both in his past and right now. And yeah, he (or the "Flint" he created) can inflict brutality and loss on others right and left too, so it isn't, you know, oh poor blameless woobie. But I can see how all that tragedy has helped create the Flint he enacts every day, and it's actually totally understandable. And then the way he makes himself potentially vulnerable with Ashe--actually considering going back to London and revealing his most tender secrets to the public!--and suddenly has that fragile trust pulled out from under him. And to hammer it home, forced to sit there and watch Miranda's body be defiled. Well. I mean. I'm surprised he can still form sentences after that.
Season 2 has also brought out and underscored something thatmovies_michelle has talked about, which is how much the show is about storytelling. The power of story, shaping story to your own ends, even the ways story can be terrible as well as necessary. It was fascinating to watch the theme emerge--at first it seemed to be more simply about reputation, what others think of you. But then the concept of reputation started to unfold and get layered, and bring in elements like narrative and persona and so forth. And then finally, Flint is talking about himself, and explicitly talks about how he created "Flint" (from a story he heard!), with a sense of self (I assume McGraw, unless there's a self even underneath that) who isn't Flint, who wears and enacts Flint every day, and who admits he has come to hate Flint.
Well, lemme tell you, it makes fascinating food for thought. And it also opens up all kinds of flexibility in fannish interpretations, too--asmovies_michelle and I have chatted about it, you can even re-interpret the supposed end of Flint's life/story as told by Silver in the book Treasure Island, to which the show is a prequel. Silver's potential as the ultimate unreliable storyteller, for one thing, but also the idea of Flint's death--which could instead be "Flint's" death, or even "Flint's" "death". Seems to me that it's a canon that really welcomes and enables re-interpretation and levels of truth, "truth", and story.
SPOILERS BELOW, LOOK OUT
Excepting Eleanor, alas. I felt like everyone else grew and changed at least a little bit--or at least showed me layers I hadn't seen before, whether those were new layers or not. But not her. Her beats seemed pretty much the same every time. Especially in re: Charles Vane, except that their kiss-kiss/slap-slap escalated until it was fuck-fuck/kill-kill. Although then he capped that off with preeeeetty much the ultimate breakup note, so I assume things with them will at least be different now. (I am sadly not very interested in that particular thread, though.)
Vane is still not ranked super-high in my emotions I guess, but he did surprise me, which I appreciate! (I think he surprised Flint, too. :D ) I liked seeing Jack Rackham step out as captain, bringing his smart/dandyish masculinity into the shipboard world where we've usually just seen more typical rule-by-brutality, and showing them he knows how to do it. The Jack, Anne, and Max dynamic continues to get more complicated, which I like.
Flint remains my biggest draw, and of course season 2, with those linked flashbacks, is so much about him and what turned McGraw into Flint. His entire arc is SO PAINFUL though. It's a rule with me that I can no longer watch episodes on work days before bed, because I end up having trouble sleeping! He's just faced so much agonizing, intimate, unfair loss, both in his past and right now. And yeah, he (or the "Flint" he created) can inflict brutality and loss on others right and left too, so it isn't, you know, oh poor blameless woobie. But I can see how all that tragedy has helped create the Flint he enacts every day, and it's actually totally understandable. And then the way he makes himself potentially vulnerable with Ashe--actually considering going back to London and revealing his most tender secrets to the public!--and suddenly has that fragile trust pulled out from under him. And to hammer it home, forced to sit there and watch Miranda's body be defiled. Well. I mean. I'm surprised he can still form sentences after that.
Season 2 has also brought out and underscored something that
movies_michelle has talked about, which is how much the show is about storytelling. The power of story, shaping story to your own ends, even the ways story can be terrible as well as necessary. It was fascinating to watch the theme emerge--at first it seemed to be more simply about reputation, what others think of you. But then the concept of reputation started to unfold and get layered, and bring in elements like narrative and persona and so forth. And then finally, Flint is talking about himself, and explicitly talks about how he created "Flint" (from a story he heard!), with a sense of self (I assume McGraw, unless there's a self even underneath that) who isn't Flint, who wears and enacts Flint every day, and who admits he has come to hate Flint. Well, lemme tell you, it makes fascinating food for thought. And it also opens up all kinds of flexibility in fannish interpretations, too--as
movies_michelle and I have chatted about it, you can even re-interpret the supposed end of Flint's life/story as told by Silver in the book Treasure Island, to which the show is a prequel. Silver's potential as the ultimate unreliable storyteller, for one thing, but also the idea of Flint's death--which could instead be "Flint's" death, or even "Flint's" "death". Seems to me that it's a canon that really welcomes and enables re-interpretation and levels of truth, "truth", and story.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-12 01:36 pm (UTC)I also am not really a fan of Eleanor, or of Max. I didn't really like Jack, Anne, or Silver until probably near the end of S2. Silver in particular I hated from the beginning but, you know, so much of this show is about his growth, and by the end of S3 he has solidly earned his place in my heart. He's as layered as Flint, which makes sense considering their literary origins, but also - Flint comes to the story with his layers already built, but Silver develops them during this show.
Vane fascinates me partly because I love his weird face and he's got a great body, and also he is a historical character who has a very interesting arc in S3, though unfortunately he also mumbles the hell out of all his lines, an affectation I dislike.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-13 10:11 pm (UTC)Vane does have quite the body. One of the two fleeting shots of frontal nudity so far, too, so good for him. :D You're so right about the mumbling! He forcefully gravels everything through his nose, like the Christian Bale Batman with a cleft palate.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-12 07:19 pm (UTC)Yay for you finishing Season 2! And not just because I'm hoping you can help beta the sequel to my last story when I'm finished with it! :-)
(Note: There were no more revelations about Flint's past in Season 3 to us, the viewer, so none of this is spoilery/based on anything you haven't seen.)James McGraw is, as far as any of us know at this point, Flint's birth name/identity. I'd argue, though, that he's also reinvented himself to get where he was in the flashbacks with Thomas and Miranda. Since we know, from what Thomas said and what he talked about with Miranda in Season 2, that he was the son of a ship's carpenter and grandson of a merchant seaman, while he certainly had a naval tradition in his family, he was not a gentleman in any way, yet managed to get himself to being an officer. Even with Hennessey mentoring him, that wouldn't have been easy at that time, and I have the feeling he made his way through sheer bullheadedness as much as anything, as well as just being smarter than most everyone around him. I'd argue that even before he became Flint, James falls into my theory of nearly everyone in the series reinventing themselves, he's just done it more than once.
(I have this heartbreaking thought of nerdy, angry--presumably--kid!James just daring anyone to stop him from doing and being what he wanted. I'm going to assume he's got at least some serious cane marks from then, because I can't imagine he'd suffered fools lightly at any age, schoolmaster or schoolmates.)
Eleanor is not my favorite character. I think she's emotionally immature, but she's got a hell of a lot of power and innate intelligence. I don't ever like her, but I understand her here and there, and even respect her at points. And I think that Flint does, too, seeing someone else who's basically had to bulldoze their way to the head of the table on sheer stubbornness and intellect. That they have, for much of the series, the same goal helps, too.
Re: Miranda's death: I sometimes wonder if, ultimately, Miranda would have let her suspicions go IF Peter hadn't laid out the plan for James to go back and "confess" everything about the affair with Thomas. If he'd been willing to help them with their initial plan and let them go retire somewhere quiet, she would have kept her suspicions to herself--at least for a time--and said nothing about the clock or anything else. But Peter did suggest that (which, other than discrediting Flint FURTHER, I'm not sure how it would have helped their "cause" at all; but I guess they could only hang James once), and James looked ready to accept those terms to get what he'd been fighting for, to finally fulfill Thomas's dreams, and she just couldn't hold it in any more.
They do an EXCELLENT job, IMHO, of Flint-in-mourning for Miranda come Season 3. I shall say no more, however. :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-09-13 10:26 pm (UTC)Yes, that's a good point! I can totally see it. He obviously didn't fit in entirely smoothly (as the scene with the other officer hassling him about it shows), but by god he made it there, and had what it took to hold on to it. It makes it doubly amazing then that he was willing to risk all that hard work for Thomas and his ideals.
I sometimes wonder if, ultimately, Miranda would have let her suspicions go IF Peter hadn't laid out the plan for James to go back and "confess" everything about the affair with Thomas.
I wouldn't be surprised. She has her own imperative toward revenge, but in the end I could see her suppressing it purely to get James and herself pardoned and out of harm's way at last, which has been her goal for so long. Peter's plan instead required such terrible sacrifice from James, a pyre James looked willing to throw himself on, and that was not a fair trade.
I did find myself wondering why Peter wasn't a better liar, though. I mean, I would've tried saying something like, "Oh, the clock...yes, eventually Lord Hamilton was getting rid of poor Thomas's household belongings at auction like they were a stranger's things and I couldn't bear it, so I bid for the clock so I could always remember Thomas with it, so sad. :( :( :( ". But then, he couldn't have expected her to notice so quickly and press him with it so sharply. She must have suspected him even back then.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-14 07:13 pm (UTC)I think Peter's arrogant, which is part of why he didn't come up with a better lie. I also think Peter had a lot of time and inclination to justify what he did in his own head. He didn't expect to ever see either of them again, and didn't expect Miranda to recognize the clock in the dining room when they did show up. I got the very real feeling he'd managed to make himself out to be yet another victim in his head in the whole endeavor.
I love that Flint is so fucking angry, he almost comes out the other side of it. There's such a grand numbness to him, even when he's wanting the whole of Charleston destroyed, because how else should he feel? He went from actually feeling real hope he could make Thomas' dream finally come true and escape his own self-made hell while he was at it to not only learning that the only other person he'd probably call friend from that time betrayed him, but then Miranda's murder and the trial and--holy fuck.
But I love that confrontation scene with him and Peter, though, where Flint essentially not only tells Peter to fuck off, but tries to get him to say WHY he betrayed him. He just wanted him to admit it, just between the two of them. And he wouldn't.
On a related note, I often feel real sympathy for Miranda and her life. I don't always like her choices--she's obviously not above manipulating Flint or trying to work around him--but I can also understand them. She also, unlike Flint, had nowhere to vent her rage all those years. Flint goes out and becomes this blood-soaked pirate, terror of the high seas, and the tragic, love-lost hero of his own story, while she...does housekeeping. In a place she really had no intention of ever going to and not given much of a choice when she did. So that when she chooses to vent that rage, including both at Peter and then by apparently making the deliberate choice to tell Flint about Lord Hamilton being onboard that ship and goading him to kill him, it makes all the sense in the world.