Crossbones 1.3: Deep Undercover

A good Crossbones 1.3 last Friday, which showed just how far Tom is willing to go to maintain his cover, and why.

The igniting event is the English capture of Kate.   This happens not long after she and Tom spend a great night in bed together, which strengthens the feeling - well, it's practically love - the two have for each other.    Tom thus has every motive to do what he can to rescue her.

So does Blackbeard.  Kate knows all kinds of things, and, as reliable as she is, Blackbeard knows that she won't be able to withstand the English torture forever.  Blackbeard thus has as his highest priority the rescue of Kate - but why does he embark on the mission with a scant crew, leaving his second in command behind, Charlie Rider, while taking Tom?

Blackbeard has already shown himself to be the smartest guy around, and he demonstrates this again with a cool fake-out of the Jagger and the Brits.  But in some ways even more interesting is what Tom does at a crucial moment:  he kills one of the redcoats, after he's down.   In other words, Tom kills one of Jagger's men, even though Tom is working for Jagger.

There are several possible motives for Tom's action.  He needed to maintain his cover for Blackbeard - but couldn't he have knocked his victim out, with Blackbeard none the wiser?   Maybe Tom is so deep undercover, he's actually now feeling more a part of Blackbeard's community than Jagger's? Definitely a factor.  But likely the most compelling reason for killing the Brit was Tom's fury over what they were doing to Kate.

Emerging love is a powerful force.   But, interestingly, Kate is a woman who loves two men - Tom and her husband.   And, while we're on the subject, Selina now has something going on with both Blackbeard and Charlie Rider - not love, but Blackbeard won't be happy about it.   Crossbones brews with all manner of appealing conflict.

See also Crossbones: Slow Start but Possibilities ... Crossbones 1.2: Wheels within Wheels

 
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Crossbones 1.2: Wheels within Wheels

Crossbones put up a good second episode on Friday - good enough that I've decided to regularly review it here.

Blackbeard - he doesn't like to be called that, but it's a better name than "Teach" - pulled off a good play.  Dissatisfied with his notable fellow-pirate's refusal to take part in Blackbeard's complex plan, he decides to kill him.  But how, in a way that doesn't point to Blackbeard?  He gets some guys to attack him, Blackbeard, so convincingly, that it easily fools the audience.  And he's able to pin this attack on his uncooperative colleague.

Actually, we might have seen this coming if we had paid really careful attention to how Blackbeard handled the attack and its aftermath.  After mortally wounding his last living attacker, he pleads with him to divulge who hired him, and he pressures Lowe to use his medical skills to keep him alive a few more minutes.  Lowe is unable to due this, due to the severity of the wound - which should have raised the question, why did Blackbeard wound the attacker so badly in the first place, if he wanted the wounded man to speak the name of the man who sent him?

It's fine tunings like this that may make Crossbones a really superior show, if the wheels within wheels continue on this level.  Meanwhile, it's good to see Lowe and Kate passionately kiss, even if she does profess and evince some kind of love of some sort for her husband, mostly unable to walk, and not 100% clear what else he may be able or unable to do.

Selima is also emerging as an interesting character - someone whose advice to Blackbeard indeed seems to be always be in his interest, a rarity in this world.   Not quite clear, though, is her relationship with Kate, and how one word from Kate saves Lowe from the execution, which we the audience know that Selima was right in thinking Lowe deserved.

All of this is making for an intriguing and even compelling series, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Crossbones: Slow Start but Possibilities

 
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Crossbones: Slow Start but Possibilities

Hey, I like erudite pirate stories.   So I took a look at Crossbones, which debuted on NBC last Friday.   It seems to have a lot in common with Black Sails on Starz, except no nudity, no frank language - casualties of being on a broadcast network, unconstitutionally regulated by the FCC - and not much sex, either, explicit or otherwise.   Still, those absences are not necessarily fatal to a TV series, and indeed network series still garner millions of viewers without those cable accoutrements.

But Crossbones directly stole a major part of the Black Sails plot - the ingenious idea to memorize vital information, after destroying its printed source, to make the memorizer's life safe from the dangerous crew seeking said information.   Now, I know there's been theft of ideas going in Hollywood since the days of D. W. Griffith, so, for all I know, the Crossbones writers had this idea first.  But in terms of the presentations of the two stories on television, Black Sails was definitely there first.

Crossbones does have a few things going for it, though.  The dialogue is indeed as intelligent as the talk on Black Sails, and both are still rarities on television.  John Malkovich is a great actor, and his performance as Blackbeard  on Crossbones is good to see.   Richard Coyle as Tom Lowe - apparently a doctor as well as an operative for the British crown with a license to kill - is also pretty good.   And Claire Foy's Kate Balfour has some potential, too - as a romantic interest of Lowe, even though she's married, and as an intriguing character with unclear and complex loyalties in her own right.

There's also a pretty good twist at the end, as Lowe seeks to complete his mission to kill Blackbeard, which we know cannot succeed, since eliminating Malkovich from the show at the beginning would be insane.   But the swift, surprising developments at the end show that Crossbones has the capacity to engage our interest, and mine is at least engaged enough to watch the next episode.

 
more ancient than Crossbones, and even more erudite