the relationships are realistic

fireofspring:

black sails is not a show with an abundance of happy couples. it is, in fact, a show that’s very good at writing/portraying people who love each other, yet who nevertheless have enormous conflicts between them – conflicts about priorities and means – which love cannot plaster over nor supersede. love is a vital emotion in black sails, inspiring the characters to do great things; but so too are pride, personal ambition, longing for security, selflessness for a great cause.

i can sympathise with those viewers who find this hard to watch, who see their ‘ships continually frustrated by events that set lovers against one another, who feel forced to pick a side when characters make choices that their partners would resist or even despise them for making, and who feel stung when lovers betray one another. but i also see it as being one of the strengths of the show.

eleanor putting nassau above max or charles. jack putting his own dignity above anne’s. miranda trying to save james from his own dark impulses, trying to save them both from a war that never ends. james putting revenge above loyalty to his crew. max trying to hold onto what she’s fought so hard to acquire for herself. eleanor trading nassau, the seat of her power, for the chance of a peaceful life with her husband and unborn child.

we see it as a pattern on the show: allegiances and loyalties being continuously in flux.

liz and daphne on the black sails podcast fathoms deep often say that the characters love one another “poorly”. that’s one way to look at it. the way i see it is that the show portrays characters with an inner and outer complexity that is incredibly rare on tv. that is partly what critics mean when they say that the show is “novelistic”; few shows are better at telescoping between the micro to the macro. these are characters who are perched realistically between bonds of community, innate and chosen, and individual(istic) desires, and who are comprised of their histories without being solely defined by them.