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* Trump called off the ACA Repeal.
* Someone wrote some lovely how to get started suggestions at the bottom of my post about people being intimidated by certain kinds of art. http://geekwithsandwich.tumblr.com/post/158751136306/i-feel-like-people-get-intimidated-by-elite
* Today was a total fail. I did manage fourish hours of sleep before getting up for the Doctor, but it was a molasses day. Uncooperative body. Cat clinging to my arm or trying to climb onto my chest or shoulder. everything taking subtley crucially longer than it needed too. traffic congestion. Slow pedestrians. The ticket machine freezing for two key minutes. It all added up to me missing my window by a literal two minutes. I am not convinced this is the right antibiotic, and my reschedule to find out if the lab results match my antibiotic isn't until April 3rd, so if the antibiotics don't kick in tomorrow, I will just have to learn to live with the pneumonia until sometime next month. Let's hope they kick in tomorrow, shall we.
All I actually managed today was hanging the sheets a task always made more adventurous by Tavy, who button who gets as excited as a sugar high second grader on parachute day and expresses this by trying to maul one whenever one tries to do anything at all with the fitted sheet.
* Black Sails XXXVI:
* I think this was an episode is about the women: their power, their relationships with each other, their development moving alliances closer. Whereas most of the men's scenes were about the fragility of the men's alliances and widening fault lines.
* Woodes Rogers goes back to the ruins of Miranda's house to search her cellar. Woodes Roger's has violated Miranda's most secret place. Inside that secret place is a book. So perfect and horrible and metaphorically correct. Flint carries the book Thomas gave him when he was McGraw, even after everything. Dead Miranda kept Dead Mr. Gates' book from Dead Avery locked away for... I'm suspecting we'll find out the doom it really brings next episode. Thus we start with Miranda's ghost and buy extension Eleanor's, she having died here, and both will be present by absence, spoken or unspoken in nearly every scene.
* Woodes pretends he is going to shoot Billy in the head because, "Seemed only fair that I remind you that our fates are now linked." And sadism. Woodes forgot to mention the sadism. It turns out it was on Billy's information he went. All that time basing the resistance out of her deteriorating house. It implies Billy wandering around in Miranda's metaphorical shell, reading the books Miranda and James shared, sharp eyes spotting secrets, rather as Richard Guthrie one did.
The lighting and composition in this scene is another stunner and I swear the composition of the the shot when it pulls out with Billy mostly in shadow holding the book, Woodes in silhouette in the far left and the whole right of frame just wall reminds me of something else, as do a bunc of the other shots of Billy from other angles. I need to go did up season shots of Silver chained to Eleanor's settee back in season one, and the scene where Flint breaks down alone in his his cabin after killing the man over food food theft when they are becalmed, the Gates murder, and Woodes captivity of Jack Rackham to see if it's one, some, or all. Because if it is subtly referencing that, it makes all sorts of interesting connections. For instance if it references Silver in Season one, than Woodes is Eleanor to Billy's unreliable Silver as ally/prisoner, which honestly works. If it also echoes Flint's cabin after that killing or say the murder of Mr. Gates, that says all sorts of things about Billy. Is he Flint or Gates if it references the Gates scene? Can he be both? If the fake execution references Mr. Gates' real one imagine the implications. Billy himself mentions the murder, though he makes it about "a little money" and not the much bigger political situation of which the rather large amount of Urca gold was only a part. If he's Flint in either scenario that suggests all sorts of internal turmoil (which we can't see because Woodes is there and he'd no more show that to Woodes than Flint would to his men) around his treatment of his brothers in pursuit of his goals and the eventual personal cost. If so it could explain how we get from this Billy to book Billy, because this season he's been wracking up Flint style daemons that could easily break him if he ever lets himself stop hating enough to really think about what he's done and doing. I kept saying all season he's tuning into Flint without noticing. The lighting and the short haired mostly shadowed head bending over a book in captivity also brought to mind Flint in Eleanor's captivity in the fort earlier this season. Reflective Flint, monkish Flint, reading Thomas's book to Billy's planning and reading Flint's book. Will there be a lot of time to reflect during the goings on this mission? I suspect so. A celibate all series Billy, I might add. They do a lot of complicated references and call backs both verbally and visually in this show and wouldn't put it past them to be doing any or all of these things. If it is referencing Woodes Roger's captivity of Rackham, and add that to my theory about prison lighting and Chrales replacing Jack in his martyr cell with the lighting that remind me of Renaissance paintings of saints, matrys, and monks... then it ties back beautifully to the mock execution at the beginning of the scene doesn't it?
Then add in Billy saying, "There are no two people close enough that something cannot separate them. Some point at which they were never fully connected to begin with. It happened with Gates and Flint. It will happen with Flint and Silver. This plan will work." The words and the visuals match up subliminally. Gates and Flint, Flint and Silver, sure; but Jack and Anne, Anne and Max; Eleanor and Charles, Eleanor and Flint, Eleanor and Woodes Rogers (her ghost all over every conversation); the incredibly damaging split between Billy and Flint, Billy and Silver. All of these things get touched one way or another in this episode, except Eleanor and Charles, and there is always that transitive martyr imagery referenced above, and haven't we all been quietly measuring Woodes Rogers against Charles Vane since he first emerged from the shadows in classic villain style to offer Eleanor the bargain that brought us here? I do not think Billy has allowed himself to see that this is prophetic for his revenge alliance with woodes, but I believe it is.
A lot of those Woodes Roger's shots look so much like 18th Century portraits you could hang them in the National portrait gallery and most visitors wouldn't notice. Surface respectability stretched over sadism, arrogance, and brutality.
* Anyway, we cut to the Walrus camp. Poor Kofi is off for his doomed mission. These are all so beautifully shot they make me ache too. The blocking and lighting is similar to the scene we just saw, if Silver is Billy and in a chair instead of the floor, and with Flint in Woodes Roger's place. Which tells be how incredibly temporary the Bones/Rogers anti-pirate alliance is about to be. It feels like it will all crumble completely on both sides next episode, to give us our final alliances heading into the space between Black sails and treasure Island. There is just space for it and wrap up, I think.
Apropos of nothing symbolic, there is a shot of Flint in there that looked so much like a severely shadowed version of a certain Van Gogh self portrait that I had to freeze frame and just stare for a while. I think I've been subliminally reacting emotionally a resemblance to Van Gogh for two seasons without ever making the connection, but that particular camera angle and lighting really brought out the bone structure.
Silver asks what happens next. Flint takes it literally and helpfully exposits the plan for the audience, but silver is thinking the much bigger question. The boy who trusted clever to get him out of the jams his clever got him into in season one, without thinking any further (that man chained to Eleanor's couch, for example) is now a man who thinks like a king in terms of the long term and the big picture instead of the small. The conversation that follows is like to break my heart.
Silver: What happens after all of it? Assume your plan succeeds, and we retrieve her alive. Assume your war begins, spreads throughout the New World. I saw what came of Nassau when it was touched by it. In the first instant, it was deprived of Eleanor Guthrie's commerce or Jack Rackham's prosperity or Woodes Rogers' oppression. There's nothing in Nassau but horror. You said it was just a transition. That something better lay beyond it, something meaningful. But what if that isn't so? What if the result of this war isn't beyond the horror? What if it is the horror itself? Have you given this any thought at all?
Flint: If we are to truly reach a moment where we might be finished with England. Cleared away to make room for something else. There most certainly lies a dark moment between here and there. A moment of terror where everything appears to be without hope. I know this. But I cannot believe that that is all there is. I cannot believe we are so poorly made as that. Incapable of surviving in the state to which we are born. Grown so used to the yoke that there can be no progress without it.
Silver: It's a lot to ask to wager so much suffering on blind faith.
Flint: Well, it isn't entirely faith. We'll have the right people in place to lead us through it and hold the world together while it finds its balance.
Silver: You think so much of what you and I can accomplish together.
Flint: You and her. You and Madi. She's as wise as her father. She's as strong as her mother. There isn't a man or woman in Nassau who'd argue that she isn't the best of them all. The cache is critical to our war, but so is she. Critical to holding our alliance together. We absolutely must get her back alive.
Silver: And you think I'm the one best suited to lead our people through this?
Flint: I think that you are the best of us. The two of you together are the world in balance. For all the damage Billy's done, at least he got that right.
Silver's haunting image of the future countered by Flint's belief in Silver and Madi, affirming her fundamental importance in Flint's grand visions for all Silver's doubt last episode. Long ago when Flint referenced Odysseus and his oar, when he told Peter Ashe and Miranda that there would be no place for him in future Nassau I said tat whatever he tells people I do not think Flint ever intended to survive his War. He was willing to be disgraced and hanged in London when Peter Ashe offered him the terrible trap plan, if it won him Thomas' vision for Nassau. There was his obvious season three death wish that had Silver and bones legitimately terrified in private. This conversation feels like acceptance of James' death and thus the handing of the baton to someone who's not hollowed out and who's depression and self loathing aren't masked in public but always present. Flint intends to die. Flint has always intended to die since he and Miranda were cast out of Eden. He wants to die in battle or seeing his victory won, he wants to fade away, obliterate the man he's become. Treasure Island suggests that he tries to do just that, but he can't get rid of Flint like taking off a mask and so he'll end as we were told he'd end before this story ever started. Ouch. Seriously Flint breaks my heart. The whole scene is beautifully acted, the two of them underplaying and using nuance and subtlety of expression instead of playing up which gives the performances so much power.
* Take a moment to think about the physical space between the men in the last two scenes. Billy and Woodes are of one accord on their plan, but the closest they get physically is when Woodes holds a gun to billy's forehead and pulls the trigger. The second closest is when they pass the book back and forth because obviously it would be weird if they were tossing it like a ball, but a good portion of the conversation Woodes Rogers stands ir sits as far as it is possible to be in that space from Billy. The metaphorical gap Billy was talking about is physicalized as much as possible within the dialog and logical constraints of the scene.
Now look at Silver and Flint. Silver, like Billy is a fixed point. Flint starts way on the other side of the room, as far away as he can physically be and gradually moves closer as they talk, both physically and emotionally. Like Billy and Woodes, they end up on the same page with a unified plan, but even at the moment of maximum closeness there is an approximately Madi length space between the two men.
* Then we cut to Anne and Max. Max is tending Anne's hands, sitting on her bed. They are beautifully frmed there in this intimate moment despite the emotional space and the history that lies between them. Max moves away as she exposits her business with things to do with the plan, but is back right away. This scene is physically lighter than the men's scenes, with less severe shadows, but the tone of the lighting feels...related. Warm candle light and two characters starting with plans but also starting to deal with the personal. Max is trying to bridge the gap with practicalities. Anne cuts to the emotional center of the scene. "Why are you doing this? Talking about us like it's a thing? A future? I don't know who broke it first. But it broke. And there ain't no putting it back together again." Billy is trying to create space between partners; Flint can't see there is space between partners; Anne sees the space between her and Max as insurmountable. The blocking in the scenes tells a different story.
It's a small thing by I love that Max and Idelle's Philadelphia wardrobes are more respectable and location appropriate each episode.
* The Woodes and Mr. Soames are having a conversation that reminded me very much of one Eleanor had when she had made a consortium of captains to try to stabilize things after her father's fall and withdraw. It was the point where things were crumbling and the details aren't important, I think, because the shape is the same. Eleanor and Woodes had/have their mind on Flint and the Urca gold while the coalition holding the street together was/is crumbling. The defense of civilization is not your responsibility, sir! Your duty is to restore stable profits to Nassau. And the men charged to follow you to that end are already questioning their trust in you.If they see pirates return here, if they see skirmishes begin again on this island and they know that it was because you invited it then you are going to have a mutiny on your hands, sir." The circles keep getting smaller and smaller as things echo each other towards ending.
* Mrs. Hudson is laying out Eleanor's things to pack away. All her familiar outfits laid out without her to wear them. Ouch. Her absence is so loud it makes one's ears ring and then Mrs. Hudson finds Eleanor's voice in a drawer in the form of her Diary and it is Eleanor's voice and spirit pervading everything from this point forward. "The limits of my influence are ever-present." Will those be her last words spoken aloud? What an interesting thing for a ghost to say.
* Woodes Rogers has Kofi and his people. he starts personally killing hostages at Flint and Silver who can see the murders via spy glass. Flint responds by planning to use the cannon. Silver has them bring up the Urca gold exposing the gap between them as Billy planned. Flint backs Silver but reeeeaaaally doesn't like it, I think because they must hold the united front to maintain powe and also because Madi. They expose the contents just in time to save Madi. Then Woodes leads them off.
* Mrs Mapleton has always been a survivor. I wonder how she managed it specifically? Did she talk her way into the fort? Hide somewhere really clever? She's another I expected had a stash of coin somewhere. Her wardrobe survived too.... We'll likely never know, but it is cheering to see her well dressed and landing on her feet.
Mrs. Hudson turns up at the brothel wanting a private word with Mrs. Mapleton and not on the Governor's orders. Mrs. M points out privacy comes at a price. I love how unimpressed and tough Mrs. M is here and I kept thinking she and Grandmother Guthrie have rather a lot in common which adds a whole other layer to her business relationship with Eleanor, particularly in season two. Mrs. H is trying to get pat the wall of jaded indifference. "The governor moves in a dark and destructive direction. His grief and his anger I believe, have unmoored him from sound judgment and have left us all in grave danger if he is not reined in." This is not getting her much of anywhere so she obverses Mrs. M was locked out of Rogers' council and thus power. She offers her a way back in, telling her about Eleanor's journal and drawing that same parallel I was mentioning above. She neatly combines flattery and realpolitik talking up Mrs. M's role back then and offering to leak Mrs. M information she can use to maneuver back into Council in exchange for Mrs. H finally getting he ticket home. Fair enough. Berringer not following orders and Eleanor getting killed did fuck Mrs. H over that nearly as badly as it did Eleanor and the execrable Berringer himself. Woodes Rogers has threatened Mrs. h before. He's increasingly erratic and dangerous and she never wanted to come in the first place. Mr. M did point out it was treason but kept listening, being one to spot a useful thing when presented. Mrs. M goes right to Jack and Featherstone. Which is hilarious if we remember Jack firing her and her getting girls to spy on jack, Anne, and Max and then Max having her back in after regime change, so it's all gone full circle in a way, and the rift healed. I know Jack and Feathestone are men, but they are fundamentally inside the Women's alliance which just now became Mrs. M and Mrs. H's side as well as Anne, Max's and theoretically Grandmother Guthrie's. (Given Max's arc this episode, I'm not sure what the Philadelphia end will do next week). Everything is moving together on the women's side even as the men all shift apart this episode.
* DeGroot explains the whole landmarks to get a heading to uncharted Skeleton Island thing to poor Ben Gunn. Wicked, clever writers to do it this way, to show us this bit of exposition essentially trough Ben Gunn's eyes when we know how it all work out for him.
* Flint and Silver are having a good yell at each other in the Captain's cabin over the whole Urca gold theft, and their baggage. The alliance is cracking for real under Billy's expertly applied pressure.
Silver: I let you try it your way! I did trust you.
But I'm through wagering with her life now. If what it takes to secure her release is to turn over the cache, I'm very glad I brought it with us.
Flint: We had it. We had it in our hands. This war was breathing air, it was alive. Now Julius is back in that camp, pointing to a hole in the ground, telling anyone who will listen, "This is what it looks like when you trust a pirate." Yesterday, he had nothing. He was shouting at the rain. Now you've given him all he needs to kill this war dead.
Silver: My God. The number of times I have followed you blindly, backed you with the men blindly, put men in the fucking ground good men, friends because you said, "I know the way. Don't ask me how. Just do as I say." I may not have understood it, I may not have supported it, but I did it! And God damn it, right now you're going to return the favor! We will find a way to put it all back together with whatever we have left at our disposal. But do not ask me to choose between a war and a wife. I do not think you're going to like the answer. Whatever must be done to secure Madi's release, I'm going to do it. I do not expect your understanding, but I demand your support. As my partner, as my friend. Do I have it? Do I have it?
Flint: Yes.
What I love here is they both have valid points of view. Flint's political objection is a rational one. Silver's side, both about the sacrifice Flint is trying to push and the support Silver has provided in the face of some completely out of control looking behavior is also completely valid. I think Flint gives in because he has known that loss himself and he knows exactly the weight of the water Silver has carried for him with the crew and holding it all together. If Flint breaks it here it's gone. If Flint breaks it here he is out of friends. They are all dead or hate him except Silver and Madi. This is the last thread and he knows it, but still, something in Flint's face suggests that in the end he can't ask Silver to go through what he did with Thomas and Miranda, that he really can't ask him to choose between war and wife. Flint got the war and look what it's done to him. The face acting there ripped my heart out all over again.
I think Silver's pointing out to Flint all the times he's followed without understanding and just this once would he return the favor echoes back to Anne in season asking the very same of jack in regards to Max. Think this is underlined by us cutting to Anne in a scene references events from that period. Extra clever that Silver is referencing the friends who they lost to this war and Idelle brings up her friend who got killed but likely none of the men have even though of since the elopement rumor seasons ago. She is war dead too, the most innocent of the victims, but not forgotten by the women as it turns out.
* The light is so beautiful in the Anne Idelle and Idelle scene. Damaged as her face is, disreputable as her shirt is there is beauty in the way it illuminates Anne. She still moves with obvious pain, she can not hold the knife. She pretty clearly hates the whole being this kind of injured thing and worse yet being dependent, but she's not adrift. Not this time. Even though I strongly suspect she's terrified she'll never hold a sword again and what that means for her, she's got that hard nugget of determination that is essentially her. When Idelle comes though, she moves into comparative shadow.
* I was so pleased Idelle got her moment to confront Anne about Charlotte. It was important. I am glad Charlotte was mourned and not forgotten, and I I love how accurate Idelle's description of Max is. I'm glad Idelle clled Anne on her shit. "You killed a friend of mine. Her name was Charlotte and you did it for reasons that had nothing to do with her. There were men I knew that would've killed you for me. I wanted to ask them. Had the money. But Max refused. I couldn't tell then if it was because she was afraid of you. Wouldn't have blamed her. I was. Or if it was something else. But I respected her wishes. Obeyed when she said we'd protect you despite what you'd done. Do you know why? Because despite the world reminding her every day of her life that she's undeserving of being given anything by it, that she was unworthy of what little she'd managed to take from it despite all of that, she never believed a word of it. That woman has been fighting the whole goddamn world since the day she was born. She's a breath away from winning that fight. For whatever reason, she wants to share the spoils with you. And you'd walk away. You killed my friend. I wanted you to know that." It is absolutely deserved and absolutely beautiful. Idelle picks up the knife but uses her words instead. She cuts the bread for Anne, a small kindness to someone who did this terrible thing. Idelle's loyalty shines through even here where the loyalty to dead Charlotte and Max conflict, she sticks up for the friend who is still alive to someone who terrified her in the past and who killed her friend for no good reason. Idelle is a good person and a strong person in a way that can easily be overlooked and I am terribly, terribly glad we got to see it. The light is nearly Vermeer beautiful on Ielle here and that too seems right.
The other interesting thing is that from Anne's expression she had no idea how much Max ha protected her back when she was adrift in season two, and it is Idelle's standing up to Anne here that changes Anne's thinking to the point she is ready to hear what Max tell her in the snow later. Anne has always been one to turn things over.
* I was asked elsewhere, and I thought I'd share it here. For the record, my theory on Idelle and Featherstone is as follows:
Idelle has always been intelligent, though not as flashy with it as characters like Flint, Max, Silver, etc.. We get glimpses of it as far back as season one when her part is still small. What we see of her is likeable, practical, good in an emergency, and has a willingness to speak truth to power and call people on their bullshit, but like most good second in commands she carries out the orders she doesn't agree with after privately raising her objections. She is a bit like the female Gates with Max as her Flint, if that makes sense. Both can and do lead, but they are best under a strong Captain.
Featherstone is comfortable with women in power and knows his limitations, particularly in the leadership department. Remember when we first really got to know him, he picked Jack to be his captain, not knowing if Jack had any non-political skills at all. Featherstone can sail, or he wouldn't have offered to cover that discreetly if Jack couldn't; we know he can do accounts as Max suffers fools not at all. I think he very explicitly can't lead and has the sense to know it. He's bright enough for things like the maths involved in navigation and accountancy, but I don't think he's got much in the strategy and tactics departments. He's the sort of person you can trust to do complex tasks, but not to come up with the master plan. He needs someone to follow. Jack (who is coded feminine in a bunch of ways) at his absolute lowest point. Max, who is feminine coded, competent and commanding as anyone, and I'd argue the brightest person in Nassau. He takes orders from both Vane and Billy when they turn up to give them. He takes orders from Idelle when Max is arrested. He is a bit of a coward, but he's fairly loyal as these things go once he's signed on with someone, though he gets in a bit of bother when his loyalties conflict because he's not good at that kind of decision making.
Now let's pause for a second to think about how people tend to think about and treat sex workers. We saw what happened to Max despite her being so incredibly smart and endowed with excellent political skills. Even Anne treated Charlotte, with her artwork and aspirations, as a thing instead of another person, and Anne had reason to be sensitive to that sort of cruelty. Mrs. Mapleton is routinely underestimated by most people at one time or another. So here you have Idelle standing in Max's shadow and most men she meets only seeing her bosoms.
Now look at how Featherstone talks to her. I think he really SEES HER as a person and not just her cleavage. He talks to her like a person who's opinion he respects and who's judgement he trusts better than his own. Imagine how incredibly valuable that must be for Idelle to have a friend besides dead Charlotte who can see her true worth and not in terms of what she can give them. I've no idea what sexuality if any either of them have. Bi, straight, gay/lesbian, ACE? No fucking clue. (There are lesbian sex workers who service men RL, and I've always taken Max for lesbian). Have we ever seen Featherstone with anyone? I can't remember and will have to keep an eye open on rewatch. My bet is on friends and colleagues rather than anything sexual or romantic, as I've seen nothing suggesting sexual intimacy or romantic feeling in their scenes with each other.
* Onwards to Max and Grandmother Guthrie on the way to "meet someone." First they stop at the wharf so Grandmother Guthrie can show max that Philadelphia has a tolerated pirate colony in view. This is another one of her little tests for Max like the cat story. Max sees the way it works the under the table symbiosis that makes everyone richer and providing prosperity and stability, which means Max is likely clever enough to apply this to remade Nassau, thus passing the test. It also gives us a fairly clear image of civilization living in harmony with pirates, a different vision than Flint and Rogers opposing binary vision. Flint wants the colonial powers completely out of the islands. Rogers wants every last pirate dead. Grandmother Guthrie offers a third way. This is the first temptation.
Mrs. G turns the conversation to Eleanor. She asks if Eleanor was happy. Max says she doesn't know. For the record, I think Eleanor spent a lot of time trying to convince herself she was happy, but almost never was. I'd argue she was in that one scene with Charles before word came they had Max on the beach and she thought he'd betrayed her and it was all a lie was the closest she ever came. the rest of the time? no for sure and that hour or so was very fleeting. She never could relax or be vulnerable at a any other point in the series. She was always a little on her guard with Max, with flint, with Charles, with Woodes Rogers. Even that one brief scene where her waste of skin father seems to validate her that was like, a couple of minute of peace after a lifetime of struggle and cruelty and distrust.
I think Mrs. g doth protest too much. "Her grandfather disowned her some time ago, assumed she'd simply become one with the wild men. When the trial began and Guthrie became a contemptible name to utter in London, didn't help matters. But I held out hope from the beginning, a fantasy that despite what we'd heard of her, she was learning, growing, and that someday, she'd seek me out and a woman who reminded me of myself when I was younger would arrive in Boston and I'd walk the Charles with her and teach her the things a woman can do in this world. It's the wrong river and the wrong woman, but perhaps to get even this close to a fantasy is something." This is the second temptation, to have Eleanor's place in a family of means and influence.
I do not think for a minute that Grandma Guthrie hadn't the power to summon Eleanor from Nassau when her father died and I think there is no excuse at all for her never contacting Eleanor. I do not trust Grandma Guthrie and this is right up there of the list of reasons.
* Then Grandmother Guthrie takes her up onto a balcony so she can discreetly show her the puppet they will put in charge of the venture. "I suppose it needn't be him, but to have the kind of control you will need to have, there will need to be someone occupying the role, and that someone solves a number of problems all at once. Money, limited ambition and reform-minded parents would find your story most intriguing. In terms of your obligations to him, there are plenty of ways for a man like that to retain satisfaction in a place like Nassau with little or no participation from you. You'd likely retain as much freedom in that regard as you desired. To rise from where you began to where you now stand, I cannot imagine the road you've traveled. The humiliations and the sacrifices and the defeats and the illusions maintained at so great a cost to your sense of self. But that road has led you to me. I am the gate through which your journey becomes something else. I can make the dreams you have built real. The toll is small, but it must be paid. Tell me you're ready to pay it and you and I will walk downstairs, I will introduce you to him, and as I imagine, you'll have no difficulty taking things from there. Our partnership may move forward fully formed." She offers Max the real power, as the man will follow her lead and not expect her to share his bed. She could be married into a respectable family with an honorable name and status, all while holding the real power and free to pursue her own romantic interests discreetly. This is the third temptation, the safety stability she was so desperate for since second season and all she has to do is this one little thing to cover it all with a fig leaf for form's sake.
* Jack and Featherstone find the last surviving member of Avery's crew and are going to follow everyone to Skeleton Island. Featherstone raises sane objections, Jack counters that if Rogers wins the plan fails so they need to be where the cash and the players are when it all goes down.
* Israel Hands keeps drip drip dripping in Silver's ear trying to push him to order Flint's death.
Israel Hands: So many lies to deny a simple truth.
Silver: What?
Hands: The crown does not divide. It cannot be shared. You know it. You want it done. You just don't know how to ask yet.
Silver: Hear me very clearly. There is no hidden message and no equivocation. You will make no move against him. You will not speak of doing so to any man on this crew nor to me again. Do it and you'll answer for it.
Clearly Silver remembers that time a man arranged his best friend's "accidental" fall from the rigging based on a careless word of Silver's. Still do think it accumulates, all these stressers and these poisoned hints, and water can eventually carve out the Grand canyon.
* Anne finds Max sitting outside in the snow and they talk. Max tells Anne of the offer. Anne being observant wants to know "That's good news. So, why do you look like that?" Because Max turned her down. (This is the moment my heart leapt in my chest, because I want so badly for the two of them to end up together and happy, and I had a pretty accurate guess as to why Max said no as it turned out). "I remember when I first met Eleanor, how stunned I was. A woman who spoke the way she did, who had no fear of the world or the men who reigned over it. When I became her lover, I watched the decisions she made and resolved to learn from them. When I became her rival, I watched the mistakes she made and resolved never to repeat them. But at the end, when I felt I had surpassed her in every way, it seemed as though there was something she was still trying to say to me. Surrendering everything she had sacrificed so dearly for, because it would have come at the expense of the one she loved. She was trying to tell me, I just could not hear her, about what is truly important. I said no to Marion Guthrie's plan despite having no alternative and at the risk of losing the entire endeavor because I refuse to situate a man in a position where he might interfere one day with my ability to repair things with you. You are the bravest person I have ever known. The truest person I have ever known. And I betrayed you and it sickens me.
I am so sorry for working so hard to protect the wrong things. For failing to see that there is nothing important that does not include you." Here at last is the apology. Here at last is a sacrifice so big I have no words for it. When Anne finally reaches out to touch her hand... Finally the distance is closed.
* When Grandma Guthrie takes Max up on that balcony to offer her everything she ever wanted, I kept thinking of Satan taking Jesus to a high place and tempting him during the forty days in the desert. (I'm not a Christian, but this show does Christian references and imagery now and then). This is a port city and it's snowing there, but it IS a metaphorical desert in the metaphorical political wilderness from the perspective of Nassau, and there they are in a high place looking down at the trappings and wealth and power while that wicked old pirate Queen whispers temptations such as stability, safety, and social standing in her ear. Tell me there isn't a bit of the demonic about Grandma Guthrie, especially in that lighting with that expression on her face and tone in her voice.
Grandma Guthrie was pretty clear about Max being in Eleanor's place when they spoke by the ships. She is tempting Max onto the path she took and the path Eleanor chose for herself when she diminished herself for Woodes Rogers. I definitely think Max saw what it cost Eleanor and decided that her own path with Anne was worth losing the rest. If that isn't beautiful I don't know what is.
I think this is the first time we have seen Max cry. She is letting herself be vulnerable with Anne in a way she never does, even during the worst times. She is letting Anne see the person behind the mask, a thing Eleanor never really could do with any of the three lovers we have seen her with. Max really has learned from Eleanor.
* So now we cut back to the other half of what was going on in the hold while Israel was tempting Silver. As it turns out Flint was telling the tale of Skeleton Island, and also betraying Silver at the exact same time Silver was resisting Israel's temptation to have Flint killed.
Flint: The story, as it was recounted to me, is that Avery was the first Englishman to find the island. The Spanish had been using it to conduct illicit transactions for decades. Avery plans to lie in wait for them. He and his crew of 44 arrive and sail inland. But as they move up the inlet, they see something most unexpected. She was Spanish, but not one of the ships they'd been hunting. This ship had been there far longer than that. Captain's log identifies her having set sail from Havana in 1636. 31 souls aboard. Avery finds the remains of all 31. Slaughtered. Brutally so. Evidence that a number of them had been dismembered while still alive.
Dooley: There were natives on the island?
Flint: All 31 bodies were found still on the ship, locked inside the hold. Locked from within. They ate each other alive. Avery claimed to have seen the log. It said that the crew had refused to go inland to forage for food or for fresh water. That the first men in had returned, reporting sounds coming from the forest. The men said it sounded to them like the voice of God warning them to stay away. It's an open question how much of this story Avery invented, but what is undeniably true is how undeniably effective that story has been in achieving a result. It's no accident that Billy chose it. A place likely to put us all out of balance, where our imaginations might run wild and our darkest impulses somehow made far more difficult to resist. If we are to survive this experience if our cause is to survive, some of us must find a way to keep our wits about us on behalf of those who cannot. See the truth ahead of us, through the fear and the haze. Mr. Silver, I fear, is compromised in this regard. At this moment I find myself in need of a new partner."
Interlaced with the gruesome story which may or may not be true and which Flint is assuredly using to manipulate Dooley are images from the arrival there. Meaningful glances exchanged between Flint and Dooley, crew peering the creepy nearly hundred year old wreck. Flint watching the men look. I think he is laying the groundwork for keeping people away from the treasure with the spooky story, for justifying the bodies he is already leaving behind in the inter cut montage. Here he stabs the treasure guard the guard, who is not as dead as they thought. When he lifts his pistol, it is Israel who double taps. "I knew it would come to this. I tried to tell him. We fight, only two outcomes I can see I die or you die. Either way, he's gonna take me to blame for it. That's how far you've burrowed into his head. He won't put you out of it until he sees you for what you are. Go." It's really clever of Israel, I think. He gets what he wants, Flint discredited and this new replacement Blackbeard will see him as loyal and keep Hands as his right hand. The "burrowed into his head" echoes early season three Silver's alarm at Flint getting into his head. "He's not supposed to do that." So much has happened and changed that Silver has lost his fear. Israel Hands brings it back for him. They float the cash ashore and leg it inland. We see Silver's face close, possibly forever as he sees it.
* And so Silver goes to make a deal with Woodes Rogers to buy time to send a hunting party to take the cash and kill flint. Israel and Joji are amoung the six. It is billy who guesses the second order.
* Fiteen men on a dead man's chest. I am inclined to count the treasure guard.
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
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* Someone wrote some lovely how to get started suggestions at the bottom of my post about people being intimidated by certain kinds of art. http://geekwithsandwich.tumblr.com/post/158751136306/i-feel-like-people-get-intimidated-by-elite
* Today was a total fail. I did manage fourish hours of sleep before getting up for the Doctor, but it was a molasses day. Uncooperative body. Cat clinging to my arm or trying to climb onto my chest or shoulder. everything taking subtley crucially longer than it needed too. traffic congestion. Slow pedestrians. The ticket machine freezing for two key minutes. It all added up to me missing my window by a literal two minutes. I am not convinced this is the right antibiotic, and my reschedule to find out if the lab results match my antibiotic isn't until April 3rd, so if the antibiotics don't kick in tomorrow, I will just have to learn to live with the pneumonia until sometime next month. Let's hope they kick in tomorrow, shall we.
All I actually managed today was hanging the sheets a task always made more adventurous by Tavy, who button who gets as excited as a sugar high second grader on parachute day and expresses this by trying to maul one whenever one tries to do anything at all with the fitted sheet.
* Black Sails XXXVI:
* I think this was an episode is about the women: their power, their relationships with each other, their development moving alliances closer. Whereas most of the men's scenes were about the fragility of the men's alliances and widening fault lines.
* Woodes Rogers goes back to the ruins of Miranda's house to search her cellar. Woodes Roger's has violated Miranda's most secret place. Inside that secret place is a book. So perfect and horrible and metaphorically correct. Flint carries the book Thomas gave him when he was McGraw, even after everything. Dead Miranda kept Dead Mr. Gates' book from Dead Avery locked away for... I'm suspecting we'll find out the doom it really brings next episode. Thus we start with Miranda's ghost and buy extension Eleanor's, she having died here, and both will be present by absence, spoken or unspoken in nearly every scene.
* Woodes pretends he is going to shoot Billy in the head because, "Seemed only fair that I remind you that our fates are now linked." And sadism. Woodes forgot to mention the sadism. It turns out it was on Billy's information he went. All that time basing the resistance out of her deteriorating house. It implies Billy wandering around in Miranda's metaphorical shell, reading the books Miranda and James shared, sharp eyes spotting secrets, rather as Richard Guthrie one did.
The lighting and composition in this scene is another stunner and I swear the composition of the the shot when it pulls out with Billy mostly in shadow holding the book, Woodes in silhouette in the far left and the whole right of frame just wall reminds me of something else, as do a bunc of the other shots of Billy from other angles. I need to go did up season shots of Silver chained to Eleanor's settee back in season one, and the scene where Flint breaks down alone in his his cabin after killing the man over food food theft when they are becalmed, the Gates murder, and Woodes captivity of Jack Rackham to see if it's one, some, or all. Because if it is subtly referencing that, it makes all sorts of interesting connections. For instance if it references Silver in Season one, than Woodes is Eleanor to Billy's unreliable Silver as ally/prisoner, which honestly works. If it also echoes Flint's cabin after that killing or say the murder of Mr. Gates, that says all sorts of things about Billy. Is he Flint or Gates if it references the Gates scene? Can he be both? If the fake execution references Mr. Gates' real one imagine the implications. Billy himself mentions the murder, though he makes it about "a little money" and not the much bigger political situation of which the rather large amount of Urca gold was only a part. If he's Flint in either scenario that suggests all sorts of internal turmoil (which we can't see because Woodes is there and he'd no more show that to Woodes than Flint would to his men) around his treatment of his brothers in pursuit of his goals and the eventual personal cost. If so it could explain how we get from this Billy to book Billy, because this season he's been wracking up Flint style daemons that could easily break him if he ever lets himself stop hating enough to really think about what he's done and doing. I kept saying all season he's tuning into Flint without noticing. The lighting and the short haired mostly shadowed head bending over a book in captivity also brought to mind Flint in Eleanor's captivity in the fort earlier this season. Reflective Flint, monkish Flint, reading Thomas's book to Billy's planning and reading Flint's book. Will there be a lot of time to reflect during the goings on this mission? I suspect so. A celibate all series Billy, I might add. They do a lot of complicated references and call backs both verbally and visually in this show and wouldn't put it past them to be doing any or all of these things. If it is referencing Woodes Roger's captivity of Rackham, and add that to my theory about prison lighting and Chrales replacing Jack in his martyr cell with the lighting that remind me of Renaissance paintings of saints, matrys, and monks... then it ties back beautifully to the mock execution at the beginning of the scene doesn't it?
Then add in Billy saying, "There are no two people close enough that something cannot separate them. Some point at which they were never fully connected to begin with. It happened with Gates and Flint. It will happen with Flint and Silver. This plan will work." The words and the visuals match up subliminally. Gates and Flint, Flint and Silver, sure; but Jack and Anne, Anne and Max; Eleanor and Charles, Eleanor and Flint, Eleanor and Woodes Rogers (her ghost all over every conversation); the incredibly damaging split between Billy and Flint, Billy and Silver. All of these things get touched one way or another in this episode, except Eleanor and Charles, and there is always that transitive martyr imagery referenced above, and haven't we all been quietly measuring Woodes Rogers against Charles Vane since he first emerged from the shadows in classic villain style to offer Eleanor the bargain that brought us here? I do not think Billy has allowed himself to see that this is prophetic for his revenge alliance with woodes, but I believe it is.
A lot of those Woodes Roger's shots look so much like 18th Century portraits you could hang them in the National portrait gallery and most visitors wouldn't notice. Surface respectability stretched over sadism, arrogance, and brutality.
* Anyway, we cut to the Walrus camp. Poor Kofi is off for his doomed mission. These are all so beautifully shot they make me ache too. The blocking and lighting is similar to the scene we just saw, if Silver is Billy and in a chair instead of the floor, and with Flint in Woodes Roger's place. Which tells be how incredibly temporary the Bones/Rogers anti-pirate alliance is about to be. It feels like it will all crumble completely on both sides next episode, to give us our final alliances heading into the space between Black sails and treasure Island. There is just space for it and wrap up, I think.
Apropos of nothing symbolic, there is a shot of Flint in there that looked so much like a severely shadowed version of a certain Van Gogh self portrait that I had to freeze frame and just stare for a while. I think I've been subliminally reacting emotionally a resemblance to Van Gogh for two seasons without ever making the connection, but that particular camera angle and lighting really brought out the bone structure.
Silver asks what happens next. Flint takes it literally and helpfully exposits the plan for the audience, but silver is thinking the much bigger question. The boy who trusted clever to get him out of the jams his clever got him into in season one, without thinking any further (that man chained to Eleanor's couch, for example) is now a man who thinks like a king in terms of the long term and the big picture instead of the small. The conversation that follows is like to break my heart.
Silver: What happens after all of it? Assume your plan succeeds, and we retrieve her alive. Assume your war begins, spreads throughout the New World. I saw what came of Nassau when it was touched by it. In the first instant, it was deprived of Eleanor Guthrie's commerce or Jack Rackham's prosperity or Woodes Rogers' oppression. There's nothing in Nassau but horror. You said it was just a transition. That something better lay beyond it, something meaningful. But what if that isn't so? What if the result of this war isn't beyond the horror? What if it is the horror itself? Have you given this any thought at all?
Flint: If we are to truly reach a moment where we might be finished with England. Cleared away to make room for something else. There most certainly lies a dark moment between here and there. A moment of terror where everything appears to be without hope. I know this. But I cannot believe that that is all there is. I cannot believe we are so poorly made as that. Incapable of surviving in the state to which we are born. Grown so used to the yoke that there can be no progress without it.
Silver: It's a lot to ask to wager so much suffering on blind faith.
Flint: Well, it isn't entirely faith. We'll have the right people in place to lead us through it and hold the world together while it finds its balance.
Silver: You think so much of what you and I can accomplish together.
Flint: You and her. You and Madi. She's as wise as her father. She's as strong as her mother. There isn't a man or woman in Nassau who'd argue that she isn't the best of them all. The cache is critical to our war, but so is she. Critical to holding our alliance together. We absolutely must get her back alive.
Silver: And you think I'm the one best suited to lead our people through this?
Flint: I think that you are the best of us. The two of you together are the world in balance. For all the damage Billy's done, at least he got that right.
Silver's haunting image of the future countered by Flint's belief in Silver and Madi, affirming her fundamental importance in Flint's grand visions for all Silver's doubt last episode. Long ago when Flint referenced Odysseus and his oar, when he told Peter Ashe and Miranda that there would be no place for him in future Nassau I said tat whatever he tells people I do not think Flint ever intended to survive his War. He was willing to be disgraced and hanged in London when Peter Ashe offered him the terrible trap plan, if it won him Thomas' vision for Nassau. There was his obvious season three death wish that had Silver and bones legitimately terrified in private. This conversation feels like acceptance of James' death and thus the handing of the baton to someone who's not hollowed out and who's depression and self loathing aren't masked in public but always present. Flint intends to die. Flint has always intended to die since he and Miranda were cast out of Eden. He wants to die in battle or seeing his victory won, he wants to fade away, obliterate the man he's become. Treasure Island suggests that he tries to do just that, but he can't get rid of Flint like taking off a mask and so he'll end as we were told he'd end before this story ever started. Ouch. Seriously Flint breaks my heart. The whole scene is beautifully acted, the two of them underplaying and using nuance and subtlety of expression instead of playing up which gives the performances so much power.
* Take a moment to think about the physical space between the men in the last two scenes. Billy and Woodes are of one accord on their plan, but the closest they get physically is when Woodes holds a gun to billy's forehead and pulls the trigger. The second closest is when they pass the book back and forth because obviously it would be weird if they were tossing it like a ball, but a good portion of the conversation Woodes Rogers stands ir sits as far as it is possible to be in that space from Billy. The metaphorical gap Billy was talking about is physicalized as much as possible within the dialog and logical constraints of the scene.
Now look at Silver and Flint. Silver, like Billy is a fixed point. Flint starts way on the other side of the room, as far away as he can physically be and gradually moves closer as they talk, both physically and emotionally. Like Billy and Woodes, they end up on the same page with a unified plan, but even at the moment of maximum closeness there is an approximately Madi length space between the two men.
* Then we cut to Anne and Max. Max is tending Anne's hands, sitting on her bed. They are beautifully frmed there in this intimate moment despite the emotional space and the history that lies between them. Max moves away as she exposits her business with things to do with the plan, but is back right away. This scene is physically lighter than the men's scenes, with less severe shadows, but the tone of the lighting feels...related. Warm candle light and two characters starting with plans but also starting to deal with the personal. Max is trying to bridge the gap with practicalities. Anne cuts to the emotional center of the scene. "Why are you doing this? Talking about us like it's a thing? A future? I don't know who broke it first. But it broke. And there ain't no putting it back together again." Billy is trying to create space between partners; Flint can't see there is space between partners; Anne sees the space between her and Max as insurmountable. The blocking in the scenes tells a different story.
It's a small thing by I love that Max and Idelle's Philadelphia wardrobes are more respectable and location appropriate each episode.
* The Woodes and Mr. Soames are having a conversation that reminded me very much of one Eleanor had when she had made a consortium of captains to try to stabilize things after her father's fall and withdraw. It was the point where things were crumbling and the details aren't important, I think, because the shape is the same. Eleanor and Woodes had/have their mind on Flint and the Urca gold while the coalition holding the street together was/is crumbling. The defense of civilization is not your responsibility, sir! Your duty is to restore stable profits to Nassau. And the men charged to follow you to that end are already questioning their trust in you.If they see pirates return here, if they see skirmishes begin again on this island and they know that it was because you invited it then you are going to have a mutiny on your hands, sir." The circles keep getting smaller and smaller as things echo each other towards ending.
* Mrs. Hudson is laying out Eleanor's things to pack away. All her familiar outfits laid out without her to wear them. Ouch. Her absence is so loud it makes one's ears ring and then Mrs. Hudson finds Eleanor's voice in a drawer in the form of her Diary and it is Eleanor's voice and spirit pervading everything from this point forward. "The limits of my influence are ever-present." Will those be her last words spoken aloud? What an interesting thing for a ghost to say.
* Woodes Rogers has Kofi and his people. he starts personally killing hostages at Flint and Silver who can see the murders via spy glass. Flint responds by planning to use the cannon. Silver has them bring up the Urca gold exposing the gap between them as Billy planned. Flint backs Silver but reeeeaaaally doesn't like it, I think because they must hold the united front to maintain powe and also because Madi. They expose the contents just in time to save Madi. Then Woodes leads them off.
* Mrs Mapleton has always been a survivor. I wonder how she managed it specifically? Did she talk her way into the fort? Hide somewhere really clever? She's another I expected had a stash of coin somewhere. Her wardrobe survived too.... We'll likely never know, but it is cheering to see her well dressed and landing on her feet.
Mrs. Hudson turns up at the brothel wanting a private word with Mrs. Mapleton and not on the Governor's orders. Mrs. M points out privacy comes at a price. I love how unimpressed and tough Mrs. M is here and I kept thinking she and Grandmother Guthrie have rather a lot in common which adds a whole other layer to her business relationship with Eleanor, particularly in season two. Mrs. H is trying to get pat the wall of jaded indifference. "The governor moves in a dark and destructive direction. His grief and his anger I believe, have unmoored him from sound judgment and have left us all in grave danger if he is not reined in." This is not getting her much of anywhere so she obverses Mrs. M was locked out of Rogers' council and thus power. She offers her a way back in, telling her about Eleanor's journal and drawing that same parallel I was mentioning above. She neatly combines flattery and realpolitik talking up Mrs. M's role back then and offering to leak Mrs. M information she can use to maneuver back into Council in exchange for Mrs. H finally getting he ticket home. Fair enough. Berringer not following orders and Eleanor getting killed did fuck Mrs. H over that nearly as badly as it did Eleanor and the execrable Berringer himself. Woodes Rogers has threatened Mrs. h before. He's increasingly erratic and dangerous and she never wanted to come in the first place. Mr. M did point out it was treason but kept listening, being one to spot a useful thing when presented. Mrs. M goes right to Jack and Featherstone. Which is hilarious if we remember Jack firing her and her getting girls to spy on jack, Anne, and Max and then Max having her back in after regime change, so it's all gone full circle in a way, and the rift healed. I know Jack and Feathestone are men, but they are fundamentally inside the Women's alliance which just now became Mrs. M and Mrs. H's side as well as Anne, Max's and theoretically Grandmother Guthrie's. (Given Max's arc this episode, I'm not sure what the Philadelphia end will do next week). Everything is moving together on the women's side even as the men all shift apart this episode.
* DeGroot explains the whole landmarks to get a heading to uncharted Skeleton Island thing to poor Ben Gunn. Wicked, clever writers to do it this way, to show us this bit of exposition essentially trough Ben Gunn's eyes when we know how it all work out for him.
* Flint and Silver are having a good yell at each other in the Captain's cabin over the whole Urca gold theft, and their baggage. The alliance is cracking for real under Billy's expertly applied pressure.
Silver: I let you try it your way! I did trust you.
But I'm through wagering with her life now. If what it takes to secure her release is to turn over the cache, I'm very glad I brought it with us.
Flint: We had it. We had it in our hands. This war was breathing air, it was alive. Now Julius is back in that camp, pointing to a hole in the ground, telling anyone who will listen, "This is what it looks like when you trust a pirate." Yesterday, he had nothing. He was shouting at the rain. Now you've given him all he needs to kill this war dead.
Silver: My God. The number of times I have followed you blindly, backed you with the men blindly, put men in the fucking ground good men, friends because you said, "I know the way. Don't ask me how. Just do as I say." I may not have understood it, I may not have supported it, but I did it! And God damn it, right now you're going to return the favor! We will find a way to put it all back together with whatever we have left at our disposal. But do not ask me to choose between a war and a wife. I do not think you're going to like the answer. Whatever must be done to secure Madi's release, I'm going to do it. I do not expect your understanding, but I demand your support. As my partner, as my friend. Do I have it? Do I have it?
Flint: Yes.
What I love here is they both have valid points of view. Flint's political objection is a rational one. Silver's side, both about the sacrifice Flint is trying to push and the support Silver has provided in the face of some completely out of control looking behavior is also completely valid. I think Flint gives in because he has known that loss himself and he knows exactly the weight of the water Silver has carried for him with the crew and holding it all together. If Flint breaks it here it's gone. If Flint breaks it here he is out of friends. They are all dead or hate him except Silver and Madi. This is the last thread and he knows it, but still, something in Flint's face suggests that in the end he can't ask Silver to go through what he did with Thomas and Miranda, that he really can't ask him to choose between war and wife. Flint got the war and look what it's done to him. The face acting there ripped my heart out all over again.
I think Silver's pointing out to Flint all the times he's followed without understanding and just this once would he return the favor echoes back to Anne in season asking the very same of jack in regards to Max. Think this is underlined by us cutting to Anne in a scene references events from that period. Extra clever that Silver is referencing the friends who they lost to this war and Idelle brings up her friend who got killed but likely none of the men have even though of since the elopement rumor seasons ago. She is war dead too, the most innocent of the victims, but not forgotten by the women as it turns out.
* The light is so beautiful in the Anne Idelle and Idelle scene. Damaged as her face is, disreputable as her shirt is there is beauty in the way it illuminates Anne. She still moves with obvious pain, she can not hold the knife. She pretty clearly hates the whole being this kind of injured thing and worse yet being dependent, but she's not adrift. Not this time. Even though I strongly suspect she's terrified she'll never hold a sword again and what that means for her, she's got that hard nugget of determination that is essentially her. When Idelle comes though, she moves into comparative shadow.
* I was so pleased Idelle got her moment to confront Anne about Charlotte. It was important. I am glad Charlotte was mourned and not forgotten, and I I love how accurate Idelle's description of Max is. I'm glad Idelle clled Anne on her shit. "You killed a friend of mine. Her name was Charlotte and you did it for reasons that had nothing to do with her. There were men I knew that would've killed you for me. I wanted to ask them. Had the money. But Max refused. I couldn't tell then if it was because she was afraid of you. Wouldn't have blamed her. I was. Or if it was something else. But I respected her wishes. Obeyed when she said we'd protect you despite what you'd done. Do you know why? Because despite the world reminding her every day of her life that she's undeserving of being given anything by it, that she was unworthy of what little she'd managed to take from it despite all of that, she never believed a word of it. That woman has been fighting the whole goddamn world since the day she was born. She's a breath away from winning that fight. For whatever reason, she wants to share the spoils with you. And you'd walk away. You killed my friend. I wanted you to know that." It is absolutely deserved and absolutely beautiful. Idelle picks up the knife but uses her words instead. She cuts the bread for Anne, a small kindness to someone who did this terrible thing. Idelle's loyalty shines through even here where the loyalty to dead Charlotte and Max conflict, she sticks up for the friend who is still alive to someone who terrified her in the past and who killed her friend for no good reason. Idelle is a good person and a strong person in a way that can easily be overlooked and I am terribly, terribly glad we got to see it. The light is nearly Vermeer beautiful on Ielle here and that too seems right.
The other interesting thing is that from Anne's expression she had no idea how much Max ha protected her back when she was adrift in season two, and it is Idelle's standing up to Anne here that changes Anne's thinking to the point she is ready to hear what Max tell her in the snow later. Anne has always been one to turn things over.
* I was asked elsewhere, and I thought I'd share it here. For the record, my theory on Idelle and Featherstone is as follows:
Idelle has always been intelligent, though not as flashy with it as characters like Flint, Max, Silver, etc.. We get glimpses of it as far back as season one when her part is still small. What we see of her is likeable, practical, good in an emergency, and has a willingness to speak truth to power and call people on their bullshit, but like most good second in commands she carries out the orders she doesn't agree with after privately raising her objections. She is a bit like the female Gates with Max as her Flint, if that makes sense. Both can and do lead, but they are best under a strong Captain.
Featherstone is comfortable with women in power and knows his limitations, particularly in the leadership department. Remember when we first really got to know him, he picked Jack to be his captain, not knowing if Jack had any non-political skills at all. Featherstone can sail, or he wouldn't have offered to cover that discreetly if Jack couldn't; we know he can do accounts as Max suffers fools not at all. I think he very explicitly can't lead and has the sense to know it. He's bright enough for things like the maths involved in navigation and accountancy, but I don't think he's got much in the strategy and tactics departments. He's the sort of person you can trust to do complex tasks, but not to come up with the master plan. He needs someone to follow. Jack (who is coded feminine in a bunch of ways) at his absolute lowest point. Max, who is feminine coded, competent and commanding as anyone, and I'd argue the brightest person in Nassau. He takes orders from both Vane and Billy when they turn up to give them. He takes orders from Idelle when Max is arrested. He is a bit of a coward, but he's fairly loyal as these things go once he's signed on with someone, though he gets in a bit of bother when his loyalties conflict because he's not good at that kind of decision making.
Now let's pause for a second to think about how people tend to think about and treat sex workers. We saw what happened to Max despite her being so incredibly smart and endowed with excellent political skills. Even Anne treated Charlotte, with her artwork and aspirations, as a thing instead of another person, and Anne had reason to be sensitive to that sort of cruelty. Mrs. Mapleton is routinely underestimated by most people at one time or another. So here you have Idelle standing in Max's shadow and most men she meets only seeing her bosoms.
Now look at how Featherstone talks to her. I think he really SEES HER as a person and not just her cleavage. He talks to her like a person who's opinion he respects and who's judgement he trusts better than his own. Imagine how incredibly valuable that must be for Idelle to have a friend besides dead Charlotte who can see her true worth and not in terms of what she can give them. I've no idea what sexuality if any either of them have. Bi, straight, gay/lesbian, ACE? No fucking clue. (There are lesbian sex workers who service men RL, and I've always taken Max for lesbian). Have we ever seen Featherstone with anyone? I can't remember and will have to keep an eye open on rewatch. My bet is on friends and colleagues rather than anything sexual or romantic, as I've seen nothing suggesting sexual intimacy or romantic feeling in their scenes with each other.
* Onwards to Max and Grandmother Guthrie on the way to "meet someone." First they stop at the wharf so Grandmother Guthrie can show max that Philadelphia has a tolerated pirate colony in view. This is another one of her little tests for Max like the cat story. Max sees the way it works the under the table symbiosis that makes everyone richer and providing prosperity and stability, which means Max is likely clever enough to apply this to remade Nassau, thus passing the test. It also gives us a fairly clear image of civilization living in harmony with pirates, a different vision than Flint and Rogers opposing binary vision. Flint wants the colonial powers completely out of the islands. Rogers wants every last pirate dead. Grandmother Guthrie offers a third way. This is the first temptation.
Mrs. G turns the conversation to Eleanor. She asks if Eleanor was happy. Max says she doesn't know. For the record, I think Eleanor spent a lot of time trying to convince herself she was happy, but almost never was. I'd argue she was in that one scene with Charles before word came they had Max on the beach and she thought he'd betrayed her and it was all a lie was the closest she ever came. the rest of the time? no for sure and that hour or so was very fleeting. She never could relax or be vulnerable at a any other point in the series. She was always a little on her guard with Max, with flint, with Charles, with Woodes Rogers. Even that one brief scene where her waste of skin father seems to validate her that was like, a couple of minute of peace after a lifetime of struggle and cruelty and distrust.
I think Mrs. g doth protest too much. "Her grandfather disowned her some time ago, assumed she'd simply become one with the wild men. When the trial began and Guthrie became a contemptible name to utter in London, didn't help matters. But I held out hope from the beginning, a fantasy that despite what we'd heard of her, she was learning, growing, and that someday, she'd seek me out and a woman who reminded me of myself when I was younger would arrive in Boston and I'd walk the Charles with her and teach her the things a woman can do in this world. It's the wrong river and the wrong woman, but perhaps to get even this close to a fantasy is something." This is the second temptation, to have Eleanor's place in a family of means and influence.
I do not think for a minute that Grandma Guthrie hadn't the power to summon Eleanor from Nassau when her father died and I think there is no excuse at all for her never contacting Eleanor. I do not trust Grandma Guthrie and this is right up there of the list of reasons.
* Then Grandmother Guthrie takes her up onto a balcony so she can discreetly show her the puppet they will put in charge of the venture. "I suppose it needn't be him, but to have the kind of control you will need to have, there will need to be someone occupying the role, and that someone solves a number of problems all at once. Money, limited ambition and reform-minded parents would find your story most intriguing. In terms of your obligations to him, there are plenty of ways for a man like that to retain satisfaction in a place like Nassau with little or no participation from you. You'd likely retain as much freedom in that regard as you desired. To rise from where you began to where you now stand, I cannot imagine the road you've traveled. The humiliations and the sacrifices and the defeats and the illusions maintained at so great a cost to your sense of self. But that road has led you to me. I am the gate through which your journey becomes something else. I can make the dreams you have built real. The toll is small, but it must be paid. Tell me you're ready to pay it and you and I will walk downstairs, I will introduce you to him, and as I imagine, you'll have no difficulty taking things from there. Our partnership may move forward fully formed." She offers Max the real power, as the man will follow her lead and not expect her to share his bed. She could be married into a respectable family with an honorable name and status, all while holding the real power and free to pursue her own romantic interests discreetly. This is the third temptation, the safety stability she was so desperate for since second season and all she has to do is this one little thing to cover it all with a fig leaf for form's sake.
* Jack and Featherstone find the last surviving member of Avery's crew and are going to follow everyone to Skeleton Island. Featherstone raises sane objections, Jack counters that if Rogers wins the plan fails so they need to be where the cash and the players are when it all goes down.
* Israel Hands keeps drip drip dripping in Silver's ear trying to push him to order Flint's death.
Israel Hands: So many lies to deny a simple truth.
Silver: What?
Hands: The crown does not divide. It cannot be shared. You know it. You want it done. You just don't know how to ask yet.
Silver: Hear me very clearly. There is no hidden message and no equivocation. You will make no move against him. You will not speak of doing so to any man on this crew nor to me again. Do it and you'll answer for it.
Clearly Silver remembers that time a man arranged his best friend's "accidental" fall from the rigging based on a careless word of Silver's. Still do think it accumulates, all these stressers and these poisoned hints, and water can eventually carve out the Grand canyon.
* Anne finds Max sitting outside in the snow and they talk. Max tells Anne of the offer. Anne being observant wants to know "That's good news. So, why do you look like that?" Because Max turned her down. (This is the moment my heart leapt in my chest, because I want so badly for the two of them to end up together and happy, and I had a pretty accurate guess as to why Max said no as it turned out). "I remember when I first met Eleanor, how stunned I was. A woman who spoke the way she did, who had no fear of the world or the men who reigned over it. When I became her lover, I watched the decisions she made and resolved to learn from them. When I became her rival, I watched the mistakes she made and resolved never to repeat them. But at the end, when I felt I had surpassed her in every way, it seemed as though there was something she was still trying to say to me. Surrendering everything she had sacrificed so dearly for, because it would have come at the expense of the one she loved. She was trying to tell me, I just could not hear her, about what is truly important. I said no to Marion Guthrie's plan despite having no alternative and at the risk of losing the entire endeavor because I refuse to situate a man in a position where he might interfere one day with my ability to repair things with you. You are the bravest person I have ever known. The truest person I have ever known. And I betrayed you and it sickens me.
I am so sorry for working so hard to protect the wrong things. For failing to see that there is nothing important that does not include you." Here at last is the apology. Here at last is a sacrifice so big I have no words for it. When Anne finally reaches out to touch her hand... Finally the distance is closed.
* When Grandma Guthrie takes Max up on that balcony to offer her everything she ever wanted, I kept thinking of Satan taking Jesus to a high place and tempting him during the forty days in the desert. (I'm not a Christian, but this show does Christian references and imagery now and then). This is a port city and it's snowing there, but it IS a metaphorical desert in the metaphorical political wilderness from the perspective of Nassau, and there they are in a high place looking down at the trappings and wealth and power while that wicked old pirate Queen whispers temptations such as stability, safety, and social standing in her ear. Tell me there isn't a bit of the demonic about Grandma Guthrie, especially in that lighting with that expression on her face and tone in her voice.
Grandma Guthrie was pretty clear about Max being in Eleanor's place when they spoke by the ships. She is tempting Max onto the path she took and the path Eleanor chose for herself when she diminished herself for Woodes Rogers. I definitely think Max saw what it cost Eleanor and decided that her own path with Anne was worth losing the rest. If that isn't beautiful I don't know what is.
I think this is the first time we have seen Max cry. She is letting herself be vulnerable with Anne in a way she never does, even during the worst times. She is letting Anne see the person behind the mask, a thing Eleanor never really could do with any of the three lovers we have seen her with. Max really has learned from Eleanor.
* So now we cut back to the other half of what was going on in the hold while Israel was tempting Silver. As it turns out Flint was telling the tale of Skeleton Island, and also betraying Silver at the exact same time Silver was resisting Israel's temptation to have Flint killed.
Flint: The story, as it was recounted to me, is that Avery was the first Englishman to find the island. The Spanish had been using it to conduct illicit transactions for decades. Avery plans to lie in wait for them. He and his crew of 44 arrive and sail inland. But as they move up the inlet, they see something most unexpected. She was Spanish, but not one of the ships they'd been hunting. This ship had been there far longer than that. Captain's log identifies her having set sail from Havana in 1636. 31 souls aboard. Avery finds the remains of all 31. Slaughtered. Brutally so. Evidence that a number of them had been dismembered while still alive.
Dooley: There were natives on the island?
Flint: All 31 bodies were found still on the ship, locked inside the hold. Locked from within. They ate each other alive. Avery claimed to have seen the log. It said that the crew had refused to go inland to forage for food or for fresh water. That the first men in had returned, reporting sounds coming from the forest. The men said it sounded to them like the voice of God warning them to stay away. It's an open question how much of this story Avery invented, but what is undeniably true is how undeniably effective that story has been in achieving a result. It's no accident that Billy chose it. A place likely to put us all out of balance, where our imaginations might run wild and our darkest impulses somehow made far more difficult to resist. If we are to survive this experience if our cause is to survive, some of us must find a way to keep our wits about us on behalf of those who cannot. See the truth ahead of us, through the fear and the haze. Mr. Silver, I fear, is compromised in this regard. At this moment I find myself in need of a new partner."
Interlaced with the gruesome story which may or may not be true and which Flint is assuredly using to manipulate Dooley are images from the arrival there. Meaningful glances exchanged between Flint and Dooley, crew peering the creepy nearly hundred year old wreck. Flint watching the men look. I think he is laying the groundwork for keeping people away from the treasure with the spooky story, for justifying the bodies he is already leaving behind in the inter cut montage. Here he stabs the treasure guard the guard, who is not as dead as they thought. When he lifts his pistol, it is Israel who double taps. "I knew it would come to this. I tried to tell him. We fight, only two outcomes I can see I die or you die. Either way, he's gonna take me to blame for it. That's how far you've burrowed into his head. He won't put you out of it until he sees you for what you are. Go." It's really clever of Israel, I think. He gets what he wants, Flint discredited and this new replacement Blackbeard will see him as loyal and keep Hands as his right hand. The "burrowed into his head" echoes early season three Silver's alarm at Flint getting into his head. "He's not supposed to do that." So much has happened and changed that Silver has lost his fear. Israel Hands brings it back for him. They float the cash ashore and leg it inland. We see Silver's face close, possibly forever as he sees it.
* And so Silver goes to make a deal with Woodes Rogers to buy time to send a hunting party to take the cash and kill flint. Israel and Joji are amoung the six. It is billy who guesses the second order.
* Fiteen men on a dead man's chest. I am inclined to count the treasure guard.
*****
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