Black Sails 3.1: Restored

Black Sails was back tonight for its third season, picking up and putting in motion all the pieces from the end of the second season - broken, whole, and all parts in between - in fine, cunning, swashbuckling form.

Flint, for my money, was better than he's been since the first season, far better for sure than the second season, dishing out death to anyone remotely connected to the murder of Miranda.   There will no doubt be others on the list, but truly the best move of Flint tonight was what he exhorted his crew to do when faced with the choice of surrender and pardon, or fight against impossible overwhelming odds, by Hornigold: take the third option, and sail away into a storm that "kills ships," as someone in his crew put it.   Coming up with a third option, regardless of how bad it might be, is the only possibly winning alternative when the two other options are worse - this has a logic Sherlock Holmes would've have understood and approved.

Eleanor could use some of this logic, too, placed in the unwanted position of helping the British Navy against her beloved Nassau.   There's no way she'll do the Admiralty's bidding for too long - not to mention that Vane despite the complexity of their relationship will likely apply his considerable savvy sooner or later to free her.

Hey, Ray Stevenson - who was so strong in Rome - is on hand as Blackbeard, aka Edward Teach (I always liked that name, maybe because I'm a professor), and this promises some high excitement ahead, to say the last.  In real history, Blackbeard was part of Hornigold's crew for a while, but who knows what role he'll play for or against Flint's plans, given that Flint is fictional.  Probably both, and more.

It was great night to see a show about piracy on the high seas, given the blizzard of swirling snow in the New York area, and I'm looking forward to more (drama on the high seas, that is).

See also Black Sails 2.1: Good Combo, Back Story, New Blood ... Black Sails 2.2: A Fine Lesson in Captaining ... Black Sails 2.3: "I Angered Charles Vane" ... Black Sails 2.4: "Fire!" ... Black Sails 2.5: Twist! ... Black Sails 2.6: Weighty Alternatives, and the Medium is the Message on the High Seas ...Black Sails 2.7: The Governor's Daughter and the Gold ... Black Sails 2.9: The Unlikely Hero ... Black Sails Season 2 Finale: Satisfying Literate and Vulgar

And see also Black Sails: Literate and Raunchy Piracy ... Black Sails 1.3: John Milton and Marcus Aurelius ... Black Sails 1.4: The Masts of Wall Street ...Black Sails 1.6: Rising Up ... Black Sails 1.7: Fictions and History ... Black Sails 1.8: Money

#SFWApro

 

pirates of the mind in The Plot to Save Socrates