Black Sails - Hoist the Colours!!

Who doesn’t like pirates?  Until Pirates of the Carribean, there was not much in the way of a seminal pirates movie, and then we got four which grossed eleventy billion dollars.  Contemporary television has made its way through historical and fictional lore seeing what will stick (zombies? Vikings? Westerosi?).  The success of one type of show begets copycats on another network.  There’s a sliding scale of historical dramas which starts with Rome at one end, followed by lesser versions of such as The Tudors, The Borgias, DaVinci’s Demons, Reign, Spartacus and Camelot.  While there’s occasionally good television mixed in, these are mostly the function of a formula combining period drama, violence and nudity and really really ridiculously good looking people.  As the writing or acting quality goes down, expect these other elements to increase. 

In the midst of reading Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crighton, I decided to give Black Sails a try.  Expecetedly, the elements above are dialed up in the pilot to grab the viewers attention.  Look at any pilot really and see how as a result of the characters not yet being formed and the show trying to make an impression that every aspect of the show is typed in ALL CAPS. 

A show about pirates produced by Michael Bay you say?  And it’s only eight episodes?  Sign me up. 

My dad used to love wrestling.  WWF type wrestling.  And he’s explain why it was more fun to do that than a baseball game sometimes.  You go to a game, you might get a crappy game, you might lose, you might have crappy weather, whatever.  You go to wrestling and you know 100 percent going into it that you’re going to be entertained.  So if I adjust my expectations and don’t expect this show to be The West Wing and instead eat my popcorn and watch Transformers, I know I’m going to be thoroughly entertained.  

The pilot drops us in to mayham on a ship and there’s lots of scary pirates and limbs being chopped off, just as you would expect in a pilot.  Every character is at eleven because all they’ve seen is one script and a few lines within that script that relate to their character.  We’re being introduced to the command structure of the main, pirate vessel (The Walrus), as well as the fence in the Bahamas that centers the pirate commerce, as well as a rival pirate ship’s command, The Ranger.  There are other wild cards, like the prostitute in port or the new defector to the Walrus who, especially in the early episodes, drive the plot with their Ryan O’Reilly type scheming.

We know some of these characters before we meet them, whether it’s from actual history, from fictional works, or from their archetypal make up found in contemporary television.  However, as the series progresses they take the opportunity to develop more and drive the show with their personalities rather than relying on boobs and decapitations to make things interesting.

Captain Flint, the main protagonist, is known to us from Robert Louis Stevenson.  In fact, while I didn’t know this when I started watching, the whole series serves as a prequel to Treasure island, set twenty years beforehand.  It didn’t become evident until Mr. Silver’s name was revealed as John (the aforementioned pirate defector).  While he’s a conflicted, possibly morally compromised white male lead who carries a secret, the character has something that I’ve only seen done successfully on the first season of Homeland.  Like Brody, we are not entirely sure where he truly stands.  We see him in private moments, we see him interacting with different characters telling them different things.  We see him explain away suspicions but we also are privy to other third person accounts that condemn him.  We see him in action, leading men, making wise decisions and scheming crafty plans.  It’s most important for a character to be interesting.  Then we ideally would like to see competency.  He meets both these requirements but still we aren’t sure if we should trust him or root for him, and that’s one of the draws of the show.

Another element relatively unique to the show is how background characters will be brought into the fold over the course of the season as a result of their own development.  A complaint I have with some shows is how new characters are constantly introduced during and between seasons when already they have a stable of good candidates already in the cast to develop.  It sometimes results in an overcrowded cast and too complicated story.  Black Sails works in house to create drama rather than contracting outsiders as a source of conflict.

The show starts strong, begins to establish the characters, then stalls a bit as the crew is in port just a mite too long.  When they sail again, the action picks back up, peaking in episode six, which not coincidentally is the most character driven episode, and coming to a satisfying and intriguing, but not entirely earthshaking, conclusion.  Over eight episodes, it strikes a good balance of Michael Bay pirate fun and interesting characters and storylines.

Cool Pirate Things I Like

• I was a pirate at least once for Halloween.  My brother and I had hats we got at the ride in Disney World.
• In  my dorm room hung a version of Calico Jack’s jolly roger
• There are two great scoreboard sequences at PNC Park for Pittsburgh Pirate games.  One is at the games start when ships sailing opponents colors sail up the Mon, Allegheny and Ohio to attack the stadium, but the Pirates fight back in their own ships, sinking their rivals with cannons.  The other is when the home team needs some runs late in the game and Keira Knightley’s “Hoist the Colors” speech is played.  And it. Is. Awesome.