Our Flag Means Death

[Samwise]

New season of this started recently. 

I'd tried watching it in S1 because a lot of people raved about it, but couldn't get into it.  Tried again about a week ago, and this time I got it. First episode or so felt like a slog to me at the time, but it's setting stuff up.

Anyway, new season is fun so far, glad I didn't have to wait a year and a half in between seasons like most people.   

[Khaldun]

I liked but didn't love the first season; at some point I really wanted the captain to get a bit less clueless while remaining basically innocent because there's something slightly ugly about him playing with his men's lives and livelihood--it's almost within shouting distance of Marie Antoinette playing peasant in the cottage behind Versailles. But I'm good to try the 2nd season.

[Threash]

I liked but didn't love the first season; at some point I really wanted the captain to get a bit less clueless while remaining basically innocent because there's something slightly ugly about him playing with his men's lives and livelihood--it's almost within shouting distance of Marie Antoinette playing peasant in the cottage behind Versailles. But I'm good to try the 2nd season.

It's very clearly autism, and Ed has ADHD.

[Samwise]

Stede's cluelessness and the resulting misery of his crew was kinda what turned me off on my first attempt to watch the series -- it was like "oh no, is the joke that he's a well-meaning idiot who wants to be a pirate but doesn't know how, ha ha ha how awkward/random, and that's the show?" because I could actually see millennials watching a whole show like that.  But the introduction of Ed and the gradual emergence of competence on Stede's part is what hooked me.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, it just might be that I needed Stede to upskill a bit faster in a way that made him a more sympathetic person.

[Samwise]

I felt like by the end of S1 he'd made a nice arc in terms of taking responsibility for his irresponsibility.   

This week's episode has some fun guest stars, whom I won't spoil here, but I had to go look up the characters on Wikipedia to see if they were actually contemporaries of our main characters or if this was taking poetic license with people who'd actually lived many years apart, but no, all of these famous-ass people who've been immortalized in song for centuries were active at the same time.  Golden Age of Piracy indeed.