Ed came back, but Stede leaves. It's the first time Ed has acted like that for anyone, and to not have it reciprocated just destroys him.

Definitely--but I also think he's so totally destroyed because he's pinned everything about his transformation on other people. His notion of who Ed might be without Stede is more a sort of third-gen-photocopy-of-Stede than an actual whole person, and when he's violently challenged by Izzy he just sort of horribly, heartbreakingly collapses.

eta: And, God, yes. I haven't seen such shattering crying since Claire Danes in MSCL. If he and she and Meryl Streep ever did a movie together I would be empathetically ugly-crying for a week afterward.

OK, there's suddenly a lot in this thread to catch up on, so I might have to split this up into a couple of posts. (Have I mentioned how happy it makes me to have a show to talk about with Buffistas again??)

I heard an interview with Rhys Darby in which he talked about *mothering* as one of his keys to playing the role, that every character is a little lost and needs, among all the other loves they're missing, parenting, and for whatever reason seeing it as mothering rather than fathering made the most sense to him as an active choice for Stede

Oh sure, just murder me, why don't you. (Do you have a link? I haven't found that one yet.) I do love that he's such a nurturing, loving presence for his crew (I have a lot of found family feels about the crew), and yet... he abandoned his actual children. That's a hard thing to reconcile, for me. I hope he does eventually manage to build a relationship with them. You can see them approaching reconciliation in episode 10, but then he leaves again, and it just makes me sad for his children that they don't get to enjoy that part of him.

I love how readily people take to Oluwande and wonder what his captaincy would have been like;

Yes! Captain Olu 4eva! That was such a lovely scene. He is absolutely giving off "only adult in the room" vibes so much of the time. I hope he gets the chance someday. I did love that he and Frenchie gave all their pyramid-scheme money to the awful aristocrats' long-suffering servants, but I couldn't help feeling a bit of regret that they didn't keep any for themselves. Olu has that line about how most of them are pirates because that's the only option available to them (I'm paraphrasing), and man, a big windfall like that could have meant that he didn't have to be a pirate anymore. OTOH, this way we get to keep him on the show, so...

Ed trying to get Izzy to look at the clouds ("if you'd just put some fucking imagination into it, man")

Hee! I love that bit too. Hey Ed, I know a certain Gentleman Pirate who has just bucketloads of imagination...

that Jim's grandma is fine with their being non-binary but absolutely furious about only one of the seven men on the vengeance list being dead

Yup, that was so wonderful. I hope we get to see Nana again.

Yes, they escalated very quickly to Meaningful Glances.

So, listen, I obviously love The Kiss and the confirmation that we really are going for a romance arc here, but I would have also loved to see even more of a slow-burn development of their relationship. God, the aching tenderness of those glances, the flirty banter, the little touches, the erotically charged stabbing... whew! I could gladly watch like five more seasons of just that. I respect that's not the story they're telling, but I just loved all those moments so much. I mean, the foot touch! "You came back!" Seeing GIFs of that scene on Tumblr is what convinced me to watch the show, and I was not prepared for the very next episodes to turn the tables so thoroughly.

Pondering the traumatic last episode--Hec was less shocked by Blackbeard's reappearance than I was, and he noted that if some of the themes of the show are identity and self-knowledge and masculinity, especially getting past the most toxic and self-sabotaging aspects of living up or down to other people's expectations, poor Ed was bound for trouble because he's seen and faced some new/old shit but he hasn't really integrated any of that self-knowledge.

Yeah, that's a really good point. At first, with the kiss scene, I thought that Ed was a step or two ahead of Stede in terms of knowing himself and knowing what he wants. And in some specific ways he is: the idea of being with a man isn't new to him, like it is to Stede, even though he's never actually *loved* a man before (or anyone, except his mother?), so he understands the nature of their relationship better than Stede does. But by the end of the scene, we can tell that he's actually missing some pieces of the puzzle, maybe the biggest one being that he doesn't clock Stede's discomfort, his hesitation and uncertainty about this plan to run off together. And another piece, I'm realizing now, is that Ed *thinks* he's left Blackbeard behind, but he really hasn't done the work yet to make that happen.

I've been thinking about this scene and their relationship a lot in terms of the tension between fantasy and reality. (Apologize to those who follow me on Tumblr, because I'm copying a big chunk of something I posted over there.) Stede has this fantasy of what pirate life is like, and it’s so real to him that he actually goes out and makes it happen. But he doesn’t just become a pirate like any other; he has the imagination to create something new, to see the things he doesn’t like and ask: “What if it weren’t that way?”

And Ed *loves* this about him. He’s been dying to talk to someone with a little fucking imagination, and here comes Stede Bonnet, who’s bursting at the seams with it. And Stede not only shows Ed his ridiculous dream of a pirate ship, but he invites Ed to join him there – he makes the fantasy of a new life, which Ed desperately wants, suddenly real. Meanwhile Stede gets to befriend the greatest pirate who ever lived (a fantasy, a fuckery) and see beneath the story of Blackbeard to the man beneath.

But once they’re captured, and Blackbeard begins to truly disappear, Stede starts to doubt himself. I think he genuinely does love Ed, but he’s also enchanted by the fantasy of Blackbeard (even if he’s sometimes repelled by the reality of Blackbeard), and it’s a shock to him that Ed just wants to leave all that behind. And now Ed is the one offering up a new fantasy: Run away with me, come to China, start a whole new life with me. But now Stede hesitates. He can’t see that Ed *wants* to give up being Blackbeard for him. All he sees is another fantasy, and he’s worried that it’s doomed to fail just like the last one. And Ed, for his part, isn't seeing Stede clearly in this moment either.

But by the end of season one, Stede knows himself, and he's choosing the reality. I think his journey in season 2 will be not just finding Ed, but truly seeing and accepting both sides of him: Blackbeard and Ed. Stede has to confront the reality of who Blackbeard is before he can truly love the real Ed. And this can't happen until Ed himself integrates both of those sides of himself into a whole person, or figures out which part of each is fantasy and which part is really him.

At first, with the kiss scene, I thought that Ed was a step or two ahead of Stede in terms of knowing himself and knowing what he wants. And in some specific ways he is: the idea of being with a man isn't new to him, like it is to Stede, even though he's never actually *loved* a man before (or anyone, except his mother?), so he understands the nature of their relationship better than Stede does.

Yes, and yes, and I also got the very strong sense that the loving part of the equation was totally new to him. Men at sea fucking around, yeah, totally, but loving and being loved? He knows the mechanics of the acts involved, but everything beyond the mechanics reads as completely, wondrously, terrifyingly new to him (and I am 100% convinced that his "dalliances" with Calico Jack in particular were totally just mutual getting-off, because Jack sucks and also would have to do some serious personal growth to even come close to the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone).

But by the end of the scene, we can tell that he's actually missing some pieces of the puzzle, maybe the biggest one being that he doesn't clock Stede's discomfort, his hesitation and uncertainty about this plan to run off together.

On reflection, going back over all the events of that episode, I almost think that, discomfort and hesitation and all, Stede might possibly have still gone to meet Ed (maybe talking him into a very quick side trip to make some amends to Mary and the children, because that unfinished business was weighing on him) if he hadn't been abducted and then totally retraumatized by Chauncey Badminton, who hit him with every fear and doubt he'd ever had about himself, then accused him not of saving Ed but of bringing Blackbeard to ruin, and then went and blew his own head off. Humph. Stede a ruiner! The goddamn Badminton twins were NOTHING but ruin.

But I still suspect, because Ed has conveniently avoided all the real work, that even if Chauncey had just drunk himself to sleep that night and Stede and Ed had made their escape together it would still have led to total emotional chaos at some point, because being alone together several oceans away from anything familiar, with absolutely no emotional resources and nothing in the world to hold onto and depend on but this one other person, would have led to catastrophe. This is still catastrophic, but it feels maybe-kinda-possibly reparable and redemptive.

And Ed *loves* this about him. He’s been dying to talk to someone with a little fucking imagination, and here comes Stede Bonnet, who’s bursting at the seams with it.

Oh my gosh yes! They remind me a little of characters like Petruchio and Katherina, or Charlie and Roxanne (and Cyrano, but not so much Roxanne in the original), or Johnny Case and Linda Seton in Holiday--all the characters and journeys and romances are very, very different, but what they do all have in common is having spent a lifetime being not only the smartest one in the room but the weirdest. At the point when they collide with each other, they've spent most of their lives essentially alone even in one crowded room after another; some of them have given up and suppressed it, others are seething with rage or lost in despair over it, others are burying themselves in academia where the smartest one in the room is always welcome.

And then they all collide, and whether they can't stand each other or they love each other but need some time to recognize it as love, they're all astounded and exhilarated to run into someone as smart and as weird as they are.

and yet... he abandoned his actual children. That's a hard thing to reconcile, for me. I hope he does eventually manage to build a relationship with them. You can see them approaching reconciliation in episode 10, but then he leaves again, and it just makes me sad for his children that they don't get to enjoy that part of him.

That is so hard and uncomfortable. But I did feel like his return and reconciliation was important, and it was also important to him to recognize that Mary had found a partner who could not only be the support to her that he never could but who was clearly already an active, positive force in the children's lives. I hope that the reconciliation between him and his children somehow continues, and that they somehow manage to see each other again, but I can also understand why he felt, at this moment, that it was best and healthiest to step all the way back and let them keep building their new lives and new family.

I almost think that, discomfort and hesitation and all, Stede might possibly have still gone to meet Ed (maybe talking him into a very quick side trip to make some amends to Mary and the children, because that unfinished business was weighing on him) if he hadn't been abducted and then totally retraumatized by Chauncey Badminton

I do think he was planning to escape with Ed. That "Yes" on the beach was real, and even in his discomfort, I don't think Stede would have lied to Ed. He wasn't crazy about the plan, but he was willing to give it a shot because Ed was so keen on it.

And yeah, it would absolutely have gone down in flames.

Here's something else I keep thinking about, re: these themes of identity and self-knowledge: In two of the most important moments of their relationship, Ed distances himself from his own name, his own identity. When he first meets Stede, and Stede asks him, "Do you work for Blackbeard?" Ed takes a moment to think, then says, "Yeah, I suppose I do work for Blackbeard." Which makes the viewer see Blackbeard as the persona and Ed as the real man underneath. But then on the beach, even in a very emotionally intimate moment, he's talking about himself in the third person: "I just wanna do what makes Ed happy." Not "what makes *me* happy." So who is Ed, then? Is Ed a persona too?

Also, here is a really lovely new interview with David Jenkins: [link]

(I swear, I think I might feel more normal about this show if we knew it was getting a season 2, but I just can't deal with the idea that the story might just end here!)

(I swear, I think I might feel more normal about this show if we knew it was getting a season 2, but I just can't deal with the idea that the story might just end here!)

I can't even let myself consider that--though, honestly, it's gaining such momentum that I can't imagine HBO won't want a season 2. I just wish they would order the damn thing already.

And, oh, that interview was beautiful.

Oh, that interview is great - so many shows at some point seem like the creators don’t even know what is actually good about them and here he can articulate so much if that, and does! So refreshing.

so many shows at some point seem like the creators don’t even know what is actually good about them and here he can articulate so much if that, and does!

YES.

I finally convinced Ethan to give the show another chance (he'd seen the first two or three eps ages ago via the press screeners) so we're rewatching from the beginning, and knowing where it ends up puts the awkwardness of those first few eps in such a better context. I love watching the crew gradually warm up to the idea that they're okay with being in a fun pirate romcom instead of the gritty grimdark pirate action movie they thought they'd signed on for. (They don't fully cross over into Stede's genre until the lighthouse scene when it's clear that Blackbeard is into it, which gives the rest of them permission to admit they're into it too, and from then on the comedy works SO MUCH BETTER because EVERYONE is finally on the same page about what genre they're in. Except poor Izzy, who will hang onto being a Gritty Grimdark Pirate with his dying breath because everyone else is Doing Piracy Wrong.)