selenak

In which Billy ships Flint/Silver, and the British fleet arrives at Nassau.

We also find out Rodgers has a time table problem. If he doesn't get New Providence under control in a measly eight weeks, the Spanish, still incensed about the stolen Urca gold, will show up and raze the place to the ground. Eleanor being more cynical than me, she gts this out of him after not buying that the reason why he offers pardons and the peaceful approach first instead of starting with an invasion is that fewer people die that way. This is a neat twist, because it provides Rodgers with more motivation than just wanting to get the job done and explains on a Watsonian level why he won't be able to, say, starve everyone out for months. Also it subtly changes the power balance a bit in Eleanor's favor, not just because she get an answer out of him he didn't want to reveal but also because her idea to send Hornigold with the pardon paid off (thus proving the value of her tactics and local knowledge).

Speaking of Watsonian explanations, Flint & Co. being currently stuck elsewhere and thought dead makes for a good in story reason for Blackbeard to take command. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop re: his professed reason for wanting Charles Vane back so badly. I'm less cynical than Eleanor but cynical enough to be doubtful at the whole "I want a son and successor, and you're the closest thing to it" spiel. Meanwhile, Teach's disdain for Jack Rackham not withstanding, it's actually Jack who came up with the saving (so far) plan, and between Vane's words about him to Blackbeard and Jack's conversation with Anne about being bothered about the idea of no more Charles Vane in his life (a far cry from "Charles Vane is someone you and I survived" last season), I'm actually getting interested in this relationship.

This was the episode where we finally get some Max backstory (not unexpected that she used to a slave, but the image of her staring into the room where her plantation owner white biological father played with her white half sister is still a powerful summation of it all) , and so far the deepest emotional scene between her and Anne. They were in quite different positions than they used to be vis a vis each other - last season Anne was the one first seduced and then needing comfort and reassurance as her sense of self was shattered, the season before that Max needed help to get out of her imprisonment/gang rape - but here they were in an emotionally equal state and very honest with each other.

Captivating as all this was, though, my favourite subplot happened on the Walrus, stuck without water, wind or much food on the sea. It was a great execution of this particular seafaring tale trope, complete with changing personal dynamics and emotional progress. Flint didn't need lack of water to have hallucinations, but by now he can hear what his inner Miranda has to say, and it's fascinating to me, as is the fact that he projects her on the seaman he executes. I think Silver is on to something when telling Billy later about the showdown with Vane last season and how Flint was tying himself into knots over the fact many saw him as the bad guy in that scenario. Flint's decision to become a full time monster still didn't away with his inner awareness that this is what he's doing, and it didn't help his grief one bit because until this episode, he didn't allow himself to have it as opposed to channelling it all into destructive (and self destructive) rage. His breakdown here in the privacy of his cabin - was that the first time we saw him cry on this show, ever, or am I misremembering something? As to what Flint's imaginary Miranda says (and what he tells her in return), let's see:

"Forgive me", when he's projecting her on the about to be shot seaman, kneeling in front of him. For dying and leaving him? For having tried to make a deal with the authorities for the both of them behind his back in late s1?

And then later, when he sees her not as Miranda Barlow but as Lady Hamilton, as she used to be, back in London, when he tells her that losing Thomas devastated him and made him rage, but losing her as well "has been my ruin": the loss of the last of James McGraw, on one level, but if he can say "my ruin" than he still has some of that sense of self she saw.

Lastly, MIranda - back in Mrs. Barlow clothes, on a boat with him - names three roles she embodied for him at different times - mistress, wife, "but always mother". Since this is actually Flint talking to himself about Miranda, i.e. we're getting his true pov of her, I'm intrigued about the last one, which I wouldn't have phrased this way, not because Miranda couldn't be maternal (we saw it with Abigail Ashe, for example), but I wouldn't have thought Flint saw and needed that quality in her in relation to himself. I suppose I would have phrased it "confidant" - more in a second because !!! -, but in a show where when they were parents influential by their presence or absence, these were always fathers, I find it refreshing and fascinating that Flint called that emotional need MIranda fulfilled for him the longing for a mother.

Also: when we got that image of MIranda and Flint on a rowing boat on a river, I thought "river of the dead", the Styx, and it fitted Miranda telling Flint she can guide him to what so far he's been unwilling to see as the solution of his current state (of bereftness and ruin, one assumes) , but that then she'll have to leave him. Obvious mythic associations about quests in the underworld, Orpheus etc. are obvious. However, the fact that MIranda and Flint are on a boat and that Flint is rowing gains another layer not a few minutes later.

Because in the meantime, Billy and John Silver, past coolness pushed aside when faced with the shared need to get the crew and themselves out alive by figuring out how to deal with their Captain, compare Flint insights, and Billy's conclusion is that Flint isn't incapable of listening to someone, but that the only people Flint (in Billy's knowledge) listened to in the past were Mr. Gates and Mrs. Barlow "whom he saw as an equal", and that therefore, Silver needs to make Flint ~~classify him as the next Miranda Barlow~~ see him as an equal.

In between question: by apparently not even considering making his own attempt to make Flint see him as an equal, is Billy a) just being realistic, or b) being shy, or c) expressing the idea that Flint and Silver deserve each other (not in a complimentary fashion) and he's got quite enough Flint in his life as it is? I'm not entirely kidding, because Flint's been quite respectful to Billy this season and argumentative with Silver.

Now if you're stuck on an unmoving boat with most people dying of thirst around you, the ways to impress Flint are limited, but leave it to John Silver to rise to the challenge Billy issued and figure out a way to make Flint see him as an equal (or the next best thing). On a small boat, with Flint rowing, en route to a dead whale. He does it by telling Flint about screwing him over re: the Urca gold. Guys, I've seen fictional speculation as to when and how Flint would find out Silver tricked him and lied to him, but nobody came up with that scenario. And lo, Flint is suitably impressed. And listens to Silver. (Love that Silver wasn't so sure this would work that he didn't have a hand ready in case Flint would react the more conventional way by wanting to kill him.) I think I'm starting to ship them in earnest, gentle readers. This is my kind of fucked up.