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Roach feels like the only one who’s not gone some flavour of queer.
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Oct 23, 2023 20:22
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The_Doctor posted:Roach feels like the only one who’s not gone some flavour of queer. Pretty accurate to the navy.
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Oct 23, 2023 20:23
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discoukulele posted:I think the one thing that's starting to grate on me just a little bit is the back and forth of - Stede and Ed are going to get together! Now they're separated! Now they're back together! Now they're separating. Now they're back together and admitting they're in love. Now Ed's leaving because he doesn't want to be a pirate anymore. Yeah, in general the entire season feels like it prioritizes setting up the next episode more than it does exploring whatever the current plot beat is, so it starts to feel like nothing matters: whatever happens at the end of one episode is tossed aside as quickly as possible so they can set up the next episode. They do it to the extent that it actually becomes a little difficult to follow the simple plot beats. I'm still not really sure what the "mutiny" entailed, as the end of one episode made it seem like the crew literally crushed Ed's head with a cannonball, the next episode made it seem like only half of the crew was involved, and then Ed is totally fine one more episode later. And having Zheng casually return as Ulu's love interest made me actually stop and google what happened a few episodes earlier, when the show set her up as the season's primary antagonist. And then the nanosecond Zheng poaches Stede's crew, we end on another cliffhanger that will probably instantly invalidate that entire subplot... Polo-Rican fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 22:22
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Izzy has a beautiful singing voice.
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Oct 24, 2023 00:26
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The_Doctor posted:Roach feels like the only one who’s not gone some flavour of queer. I think David Jenkins has said they've just decided that nobody in the pirate world is 100% straight.
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Oct 24, 2023 00:28
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Polo-Rican posted:I'm still not really sure what the "mutiny" entailed, as the end of one episode made it seem like the crew literally crushed Ed's head with a cannonball, the next episode made it seem like only half of the crew was involved, and then Ed is totally fine one more episode later. Where did you get it seemed like only half the crew was involved. Was it that only half of them were in the cell? That was everyone who was on Revenge at the time of the mutiny. They beat him to death with what should have been life-ending injuries but he was in the gravy basket and the power of love™ brought him back. And then yeah he's fine pretty quick after that but that's par for the course for this show, if you're gonna recover from an injury it tends to happen pretty quickly. The show's explicitly fantastical like that. Remember Ed teaching Stede how to stab him? Polo-Rican posted:And having Zheng casually return as Ulu's love interest made me actually stop and google what happened a few episodes earlier, when the show set her up as the season's primary antagonist. And then the nanosecond Zheng poaches Stede's crew, we end on another cliffhanger that will probably instantly invalidate that entire subplot... She wasn't poaching the crew, Olu was just going with her because of affection, Stede accusing her of poaching was just his arrogance subplot this episode crescendoing. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 24, 2023 00:44
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MikeJF posted:Where did you get it seemed like only half the crew was involved. Was it that only half of them were in the cell? That was everyone who was on Revenge at the time of the mutiny. They beat him to death with what should have been life-ending injuries but he was in the gravy basket and the power of love™ brought him back. And then yeah he's fine pretty quick after that but that's par for the course for this show, if you're gonna recover from an injury it tends to happen pretty quickly. The show's explicitly fantastical like that. She was grabbing many more then Olu.
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Oct 24, 2023 00:51
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socialsecurity posted:She was grabbing many more then Olu. Well she was on a massive recruitment drive but it seemed like whatever was happening with Olu and Jim and Archie wasn't really part of that? But yeah, if I'm wrong and she was poaching, it seems like poaching was a single episode element that was present as a trigger for confrontation at the peak of the hubris plot, not as something intended to be its own ongoing subplot. I will admit that on the whole, though, there definitely has been a rush in certain things that makes me feel like they had a full blown plan for 10 episodes that had to be compressed to 8 when the order was cut. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 24, 2023 01:02
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MikeJF posted:Where did you get it seemed like only half the crew was involved From the subplot in the next episode where the crew briefly gets paranoid and turns on each other. The shots where you see half of them scrubbing the spot on the deck where Ed Polo-Rican fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 24, 2023 03:31
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Polo-Rican posted:From the subplot in the next episode where the crew briefly gets paranoid and turns on each other. The shots where you see half of them scrubbing the spot on the deck where Ed Yeah that was the stayed-on-Revenge crew who'd had to deal with Ed v the previously banished crew who'd had a relatively easier time of it (Lucius aside). Everyone who stayed on Revenge was involved in the mutiny against Ed. The scrubbing scene was divided along stayed vs banished lines. The show set it up so you could track them with the stayed all dirtier and wearing leather and the banished all cleaner and wearing cloth. But the dialogue in that episode was all illustrating how the ones who'd been on the Revenge had been so traumatised by it all that they were irrationally paranoid while the others were trying to help them through it but couldn't really understand how bad it had been, and their attempt to help triggered them instead. Then Izzy's very public breakdown snapped them all out of it and they banded together to try to help him instead, making him his new leg. It wasn't meant to be a real conflict setup, it was just meant to be a single episode about trauma management. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 24, 2023 03:53
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It's a shame this show doesn't have the time to really enjoy the stage they've built. We finally got Stede and BB together and they immediately go back into drama about the speed of the relationship and such. Just give me a couple episodes of external drama where they're exploring cool islands but having fun together. I suppose that's not the show they want to make, but the show is drifting into Bill Lawerence territory where every episode is a therapy session. That's fine, but it's hard to really enjoy a story where there's no load-bearing characters and none of the sets or events ultimately matter.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:47
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They apparently have plans to end on Season 3 (hasn't been renewed yet). I almost wonder if they're trying to cram as much in as they can in case it's not renewed.
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Oct 24, 2023 05:36
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Yeah David Jenkins said it’d end after 3 seasons (assuming we get that 3rd one). Personally, I think they should give us 12 episodes since they only gave us 8 this time 
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Oct 24, 2023 05:45
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HOLY gently caress posted:Yeah David Jenkins said it’d end after 3 seasons (assuming we get that 3rd one). Personally, I think they should give us 12 episodes since they only gave us 8 this time They should but they won't. Mid-length (10 to 13 episodes) seasons rule and are the TV sweet spot IMO. Particularly for half hour shows.
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Oct 24, 2023 05:48
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I know, just let me dream 
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Oct 24, 2023 06:01
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Yeah I think season 2 really suffered with the drop from 10 to 8 episodes seeming to force them to move too fast and maybe being the reason for the loss of the more relaxed times in between that S1 had, and I really hope that if they do get an S3 they'll at least manage to get back to to 10. (Hell, just do a few bottle episodes to save money) MikeJF fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 24, 2023 09:05
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There is official OFMD merch in the HBO store. They have a flag, but not the cat one that we all want. Also it is not the cursed red garment, but that is indeed cursed and a thousand cosplayers are working on one right now.
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Oct 25, 2023 05:50
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I saw pictures from NYCC and someone had already made Stede’s cursed suit (the episode had aired only a day or two earlier  )Also be careful if you order a mug, there have been a lot of reports of broken ones since they haven’t been packing them properly
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Oct 25, 2023 06:00
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Fandom mugs tend to be made from the shittiest, thinnest material, so that’s not surprising. I would like to go on Roach and
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Oct 25, 2023 06:57
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It’s even worse than usual, like literally no packing material whatsoever. just mug in box. 
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Oct 25, 2023 13:07
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finale: hey WHAT THE gently caress. WHAT THE gently caress WAS THAT
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Oct 26, 2023 13:50
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HOLY gently caress posted:finale: It's okay, Buttons is a seagull and he's been in the gravy.
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Oct 26, 2023 21:13
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Interesting that this finale could go either way. They definitely weren't taking any chances on a renewal.
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Oct 27, 2023 02:32
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The after-credits scene is great because it explains how they got out of the cell AND it's a good Frenchie moment. Auntie giving praise to Zheng was the best, neither of them knows what to do but they're trying.
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Oct 27, 2023 05:10
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This suffered even more than most of the season from being too compressed, I think. It needed more time. Especially since they were pretty clearly squeezing bits in at the end to make sure it was all nicely wrapped if they didn't get S3. As for events, honestly, it's going to be really, really hard to view this standalone without relating it back to certain tropes that historically plagued queer media and which we're still in the backlash phase from, and that's something that's already extremely evident in public reactions to this episode. The relationship between queer audiences and tragic death at the end of a character's journey is... fraught right now, even when it makes sense in an individual work's context. Unfortunately but inevitably, that's resulting in some pretty over the top backlash to this episode elsewhere online that I think the creators are having to ride out. I think worsened a lot by the way that this had slotted into role of a gay comfort show and so people are feeling the rug pulled with the death of a character that everyone became incredibly invested in over the course of season 2. Even if his eventual death was honestly super telegraphed over the past two seasons. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 06:46
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MikeJF posted:I think worsened a lot by the way that this had slotted into role of a gay comfort show and so people are feeling the rug pulled with the death of a character that everyone became incredibly invested in over the course of season 2. Even if his eventual death was honestly super telegraphed over the past two seasons. Yeah, and I have mixed sympathies for the showrunners over this. I think they did make a major tonal misstep by taking the cruel treatment of Izzy too far in the early episodes, which made the ending feel sour rather than sad - like it was specifically denying him and only him a last bit of peace, while bizarrely continuing to wave away Ed's evil character turn as somehow Izzy's fault. Again, a longer season would have helped to remedy this. But an inevitable consequence of the internet embracing OFMD as a cosy, wholesome found-family show was always going to be fans getting incredibly angry and upset over any narrative outcome that 'teaches the wrong lesson', and often that seems to ironically cross over into completely toxic online abuse. Queer character deaths do of course have a fraught history, like you say, but I don't think David Jenkins really deserves teenagers tagging him on Twitter yelling that he's a terrible person for "fridging a disabled abuse survivor", etc, and I hope he's doing OK. grobbo fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 08:07
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grobbo posted:Queer character deaths do of course have a fraught history, like you say, but I'm not sure David Jenkins really deserves teenagers tagging him on Twitter yelling that he's a terrible person for "fridging a disabled abuse survivor", etc, and I hope he's doing OK. It's 2023, so hopefully HBO will have a social media manager for the show who's swung into action and directly inserted themselves in between Jenkins and the social media accounts and is filtering things and strongly advising him on what not to do or look at for a while. This stuff happens enough nowadays that networks or studios should be extremely aware of it and one would hope would have things ready.
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Oct 27, 2023 09:59
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MikeJF posted:This suffered even more than most of the season from being too compressed, I think. It needed more time. Especially since they were pretty clearly squeezing bits in at the end to make sure it was all nicely wrapped if they didn't get S3. This is pretty much how I feel about it as well. I actually enjoyed most of Season 2 but there's something that feels really weird about Episode 8, like it's disconnected from the rest of the season and even more rushed than the rest of it. I really don't think that it was necessary for Izzy to die and I also think that the way it was handled felt kind of careless and rushed (admittedly a lot of things felt rushed in this episode and season). I 100% understand why people are sad and angry. He's been put through the ringer and just when he was starting to feel loved and accepted by the crew, he dies and everyone just kind of immediately gets over it? Having him apologize to Ed after what Ed did to him also felt kind of gross to me. And burying him on land and using his prosthetic leg as a grave marker and just putting his ring out there seemed kind of tasteless to me? They could've just sent him off with the Revenge or had him retire somewhere, I don't know. Also not to drag too much internet fandom poo poo in here but I really think that the backlash is being intensified by how fans of the character have been treated by some of the wider fandom since the beginning. I really wish I was making this poo poo up but I have seen people get death threats and doxxed just because they liked a character. I have seen some incredibly nasty things directed at people who were just expressing their sadness on their own accounts without tagging anyone or being lovely or anything. This is something that has been happening on multiple platforms for a long time. anyway i guess what i'm saying is that social media was a mistake
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Oct 27, 2023 20:13
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Also just an aside but it's hilarious to watch them run around having a Caribbean pirate battle on the most classical Kiwi beach ever and all backed onto a bunch of pines. I could've hung out on that beach so many times. Although even familiarity aside, I feel like the big beach scenes didn't really feel right in the show? There's almost always a certain fantastical unreal element to the lighting and colour on this show and then the beach just looked like a mediocre slightly dull day. Maybe they were trying to contrast the real reunion with the fantasy one they were flashing to but the result was that it just felt flat by this show's standards. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 20:28
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HOLY gently caress posted:This is pretty much how I feel about it as well. I actually enjoyed most of Season 2 but there's something that feels really weird about Episode 8, like it's disconnected from the rest of the season and even more rushed than the rest of it. Agree, imho the finale was absurdly rushed but also just very weird, with lots of storytelling turns and themes that don't really follow each other. assorted thoughts about the finale: - Rushing: they could have easily made a full episode of Ed trying to be a fisherman. Instead, he leaves to be a fisherman at the end of the previous episode and returns to the pirate life less than five minutes into this episode. How are any of these events supposed to have stakes when they're reversed this quickly?... - Ed makes a triumphant return to the pirate life. After being told "do what you're good at" he digs up his leathers and realizes that, for better or worse, he's a natural pirate. So, having the very same episode end with him giving up the pirate life to become an innkeeper?... I guess it's sweet seeing Ed and Stede together at the end, but Ed abandoning pirate stuff (for the, what, tenth time?...) feels like it contradicts everything else that happens in the episode. - More weirdness: If you're going to have Izzy tell Ed that he's "turned good" and therefore has ostensibly grown out of the pirate lifestyle, don't have Izzy deliver a speech earlier in the episode where he proclaims that "pirates are good" (which is also a weird speech in general... pirates are Real but they're definitely not Good, and Izzy has never been one to embrace "Good"). Also, if you're going to have Ed abandon his crew, don't have Izzy's final words be that the crew is Ed's family... - Zheng is much more interesting as a pirate queen antagonist than she is as just another nice member of the crew. - Stede's "suicide mission" unravels so quickly that it's absurd and actually kind of hard to follow. They walk out of the woods in uniform and their cover is blown instantaneously. I had to rewind to figure out if the british nose villain guy escaped or what - I'm not against killing off characters, and I'm not even a big Izzy stan, but his death was weird, unearned, and felt randomly inserted. It really didn't feel like Izzy's story had "finished" in any way. instead, you got the sense that they felt the need to kill off one main character this season because that's just a requirement of "prestige television" Polo-Rican fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Oct 28, 2023 |
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Oct 28, 2023 19:15
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Polo-Rican posted:
I think what they're going for is Ed has finally achieved a state where he can use his skills at being Blackbeard without having it overwhelm him and actually regressing into it, and he's comfortable with both of those sides of him without feeling the need to reject one or the other, so now he's a largely peaceful guy with a certain specific set of skills he can call on without it being too big a deal. but again, that's something that really needed more time to explore if they were going there. Maybe they'll be able to dig more into it and contextualise it in S3. quote:- Zheng is much more interesting as a pirate queen antagonist than she is as just another nice member of the crew. I very much doubt she's just going to be just another member of the crew under Captain Frenchie, I expect the plan is to go take another ship and Auntie and Olu and Jim and Archie go over and the two ships will be sailing as allies. There's plenty of story beats they can get out of two ships with different captains with different styles who may disagree a bit on goals MikeJF fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Oct 28, 2023 |
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Oct 28, 2023 19:25
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MikeJF posted:
Yeah, I don't remember if they addressed this earlier (probably not, LOL ) but Zheng's fleet is loving HUGE and I doubt all of them got destroyed in the clock thing. I would double-check this, but I really don't think I'm going to be able to watch the finale again for awhile.
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Oct 28, 2023 20:35
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Mess of a season. Fun enough, but not particularly clever or as fresh as the first season felt. Not that every death has to be something spectacular, but the mundane way in which Izzy is shot was bewildering. That's really what you're going to do with the guy after torturing him the first half of the season and faking out his death multiple times? And he's the only death? As someone mentioned, having Blackbeard decide to go back to being a pirate, have his first mate say they're the good guys (they're not, we spent the first two episodes seeing them do horrible, evil things), and then decide to retire at the end was... nonsensical. 8 episodes wasn't enough for the story they told. There needed to be some downtime, or couple episodes where we just got to enjoy what the first season setup. How many episodes did the main crew spend in jail cells?
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Oct 30, 2023 05:27
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They needed to adjust the story they were telling to the number of episodes they had, which sadly probably meant (further) cutting down on the number of crewmembers, particularly if they wanted to add so many new recurring cast members for this season, as well as simplifying their story. Probably sucks to say, but it might have been better if Lucius stayed dead. Probably would have made the same points the first episode or two did without having to double down on them, would have reduced cast, etc. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 05:45
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It feels like there are whole episodes missing between scenes sometimes. How is the crew back to accepting Ed after one episode of him wearing a bell? He traumatized the hell out of them. As much as I loved all of the new folks we met this season, so few of them stuck around longer than one episode that I wonder if they should have excised one of them. They crammed a lot of antagonists into this season, particularly for the reduced runtime. The first season let episodes breathe, this season did not except in post-credit afterthoughts.
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Oct 30, 2023 07:12
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CatstropheWaitress posted:M
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Oct 30, 2023 07:54
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CatstropheWaitress posted:Mess of a season. Fun enough, but not particularly clever or as fresh as the first season felt. This bothers me so much. It feels like such a loving waste to have one of the most interesting characters on the show go out like that. Thanks to some frankly bizarre interviews that creator/showrunner David Jenkins has been giving, we know that “funerals bring people together” (?!!) and i guess he had to die to advance Ed’s character arc or some poo poo? Also Jenkins has gone from “Izzy’s like a jilted spouse” to “[Ed/Stede/Izzy] are a love triangle” to “Izzy was Ed’s father figure”. Like dude, nobody thinks that. Also they didn’t tell Izzy’s actor Con O’Neill until halfway through the shoot and either “took it really well” or “took it hard” depending on the interview and at one point Jenkins said that they decided it together? I kind of don’t believe that! also as an aside, O’Neill turned down the role of Bill in the Last of us for this  anyway sorry that i keep going on about this, it just makes zero loving sense and feels weirdly disrespectful to the character somehow? I don’t know.
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Oct 30, 2023 13:35
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A lot of the season's issues are unavoidable when you have a 3 season show planned but get a budget cut and episode count cut for season 2 and no idea whether you are going to get a season 3. I feel like having a 3 season plan should be standard for shows and then studios need to either commit to renewing for 2 more seasons after season 1 airs, or cancel if they are not confident in investing in 2 more seasons. Maybe if the show really goes off the deep end in season 2 you reserve the right to cancel season 3. This current way of doing business is stupid. They are basically just throwing money at a project that they are setting up to fail anyway. If the ratings were decent, but not strong enough to warrant a proper commitment, cancel it after season 1 and green light something else.
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Oct 30, 2023 13:51
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Three seasons of 10-12 episodes seems like it'd be fine for a lot of shows. Maybe 14 if necessary. If we do get a third season then I bet Ed and Stede will start out already bored with the innkeeper thing and will be arguing like an old married couple until something happens to make them go back to pirating. Whims again! I did also consider that it might already be cancelled and Jenkins either can't tell anyone yet or has decided not to for whatever reason and is backpedaling in the interviews because of the reaction to the finale. This is probably insane though, and I should take my tinfoil hat off before it grows into my brain  Edit: hang on though, maybe some of these were done before it aired due to advanced screenings for press and junk? OH GOD I DON'T INOW ANYMORE HOLY FUCK fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 19:49
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Yikes, that finale. I think I'm done with the show after that cheap ending for my fav.
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Oct 30, 2023 20:03
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