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‘Crossbones’ effectively canceled by NBC; final episodes to air August 2
Welp, everyone called that. I think most people thought it would fail not because of its actual flaws, though, but simply because nobody has yet figured out how to make a decent pirate-based TV series. (That's discounting Black Sails, because I haven't seen it yet, and One Piece, because I have.)
My take is that there are simply too many contradictory expectations of what a pirate show should be, and Crossbones never fully committed to embracing or bucking any of them. For instance, the reviewer in the linked article says, "It didn’t have the sort of fun that you would have expected a show all about pirates to have." Maybe they noted the vague whiff of Hercules/Xena camp, which suggested a possible return to the glorious cheese of the '90s. But I wouldn't expect a show about pirates to be fun - I would expect gritty realism, as a backlash against (and way to stand apart from) Disney's pirate movies. Meanwhile, the mere appearance of pirates (or Robin Hood) prompts my mother to sigh wistfully about the lack of good old-fashioned Fairbanks-style action these days.
Crossbones doesn't have gritty realism. It's hard to pin down what it does have, and what it actually is, which is a real problem. The design, from sets to characters to plot, has a touch of realism mixed with too heavy a dose of modernism and mercenary self-consciousness: setting and wardrobe that cross the line from eclectic to Pottery Barn, female pirates that might as well be wearing pins saying, "Let me tell you about how there really were female pirates," bits of plot that reek of modern screenwriters unable or unwilling to accept the limited playground of historic fiction because it inconveniences them, and an overall product that feels like a product crafted around the motto, "Yeah, this should sell well to the 'fangirls'." There's also a slight movie vibe which sounds good in theory, but in practice undermines the story and sabotages the pacing, because the tension can only build - and that leaves what should have been a few minutes of back-story drawn out into a tiresome season-long lead-up to plot.
And what is the plot? Good question.
At first appearance, it seems the plot will be a battle of wits and wills between two powerful men, from the point of view of the man caught between them, as the governor of Jamaica pursues his conviction that the notorious pirate Blackbeard isn't as dead as everyone thinks. Unfortunately, the story tipped its hand as to its allegiance too soon, and never really got around to the dramatic face-off that was dangled out. Keeping the governor in the picture without actually using him in the story turned him into a simple, straightforward villain, saved from being a buffoon ("D'oh! Zorro outsmarted us again!") only by being portrayed as viciously unhinged. He becomes a minor bit of back-story and all the while it feels as if he's supposed to be a major player.
Once the show gets its toes wet, the ostensible plot - what really should be a subplot, and would be if this were a movie, but that damn pacing - is that the spy/assassin slipped into the pirates' midst by the governor discovers bigger wheels in motion, and so not only has to put his plans to kill Blackbeard on hold, but also has to earn the man's confidence. Yes, but no: they're too quickly comfortable with each other, because the show wants us to believe that Blackbeard is almost supernaturally savvy when it comes to judging character, a development which feels sloppy and inconsistent (not unlike Malkovich's accent). The actual subplots all feel like plodding distractions to disguise how thin the plot is, and the fact that this would have been a much better 2-hour movie than it is a full-season series.
The actual plot? Pirate politics that are never adequately explained for the audience, despite near constant chatter about what Blackbeard hopes to accomplish with his pirate society. British/colonial politics that are never adequately explained for the audience, despite the focus on two Jacobites in exile. Information that's necessary to understanding the larger story withheld in a misguided attempt to build tension by keeping the audience confused and in the dark, all while back-story is dragged out so slowly that it seems to be going nowhere, and side plots meander along like directionless padding.
All that said, and despite the tone here, I enjoyed it more than expected. I might even miss it. It looks like the main goal down the line was to be the adventures of the notorious pirate Blackbeard and the sneaky spy Lowe, and that sounded very interesting.
Welp, everyone called that. I think most people thought it would fail not because of its actual flaws, though, but simply because nobody has yet figured out how to make a decent pirate-based TV series. (That's discounting Black Sails, because I haven't seen it yet, and One Piece, because I have.)
My take is that there are simply too many contradictory expectations of what a pirate show should be, and Crossbones never fully committed to embracing or bucking any of them. For instance, the reviewer in the linked article says, "It didn’t have the sort of fun that you would have expected a show all about pirates to have." Maybe they noted the vague whiff of Hercules/Xena camp, which suggested a possible return to the glorious cheese of the '90s. But I wouldn't expect a show about pirates to be fun - I would expect gritty realism, as a backlash against (and way to stand apart from) Disney's pirate movies. Meanwhile, the mere appearance of pirates (or Robin Hood) prompts my mother to sigh wistfully about the lack of good old-fashioned Fairbanks-style action these days.
Crossbones doesn't have gritty realism. It's hard to pin down what it does have, and what it actually is, which is a real problem. The design, from sets to characters to plot, has a touch of realism mixed with too heavy a dose of modernism and mercenary self-consciousness: setting and wardrobe that cross the line from eclectic to Pottery Barn, female pirates that might as well be wearing pins saying, "Let me tell you about how there really were female pirates," bits of plot that reek of modern screenwriters unable or unwilling to accept the limited playground of historic fiction because it inconveniences them, and an overall product that feels like a product crafted around the motto, "Yeah, this should sell well to the 'fangirls'." There's also a slight movie vibe which sounds good in theory, but in practice undermines the story and sabotages the pacing, because the tension can only build - and that leaves what should have been a few minutes of back-story drawn out into a tiresome season-long lead-up to plot.
And what is the plot? Good question.
At first appearance, it seems the plot will be a battle of wits and wills between two powerful men, from the point of view of the man caught between them, as the governor of Jamaica pursues his conviction that the notorious pirate Blackbeard isn't as dead as everyone thinks. Unfortunately, the story tipped its hand as to its allegiance too soon, and never really got around to the dramatic face-off that was dangled out. Keeping the governor in the picture without actually using him in the story turned him into a simple, straightforward villain, saved from being a buffoon ("D'oh! Zorro outsmarted us again!") only by being portrayed as viciously unhinged. He becomes a minor bit of back-story and all the while it feels as if he's supposed to be a major player.
Once the show gets its toes wet, the ostensible plot - what really should be a subplot, and would be if this were a movie, but that damn pacing - is that the spy/assassin slipped into the pirates' midst by the governor discovers bigger wheels in motion, and so not only has to put his plans to kill Blackbeard on hold, but also has to earn the man's confidence. Yes, but no: they're too quickly comfortable with each other, because the show wants us to believe that Blackbeard is almost supernaturally savvy when it comes to judging character, a development which feels sloppy and inconsistent (not unlike Malkovich's accent). The actual subplots all feel like plodding distractions to disguise how thin the plot is, and the fact that this would have been a much better 2-hour movie than it is a full-season series.
The actual plot? Pirate politics that are never adequately explained for the audience, despite near constant chatter about what Blackbeard hopes to accomplish with his pirate society. British/colonial politics that are never adequately explained for the audience, despite the focus on two Jacobites in exile. Information that's necessary to understanding the larger story withheld in a misguided attempt to build tension by keeping the audience confused and in the dark, all while back-story is dragged out so slowly that it seems to be going nowhere, and side plots meander along like directionless padding.
All that said, and despite the tone here, I enjoyed it more than expected. I might even miss it. It looks like the main goal down the line was to be the adventures of the notorious pirate Blackbeard and the sneaky spy Lowe, and that sounded very interesting.