review of Black Sails 2.1 

Black Sails 2.1: Good Combo, Back Story, and New Blood

Black Sails was back for its second season last night, in all its brutal beauty.   Among the best sequences -

Flint and Silver, working together to get a ship to set sail off the island on which they landed, wrecked, last season.   The two have always represented the best of Black Sails together, and I wouldn\'t mind too much if their story was given even more time in the series.   Flint is brilliant, but so is Silver, and the two of them made a formidable combination.   Will be fun to see where this leads us this season.

London in 1705, with Flint\'s back story, when he went under a different name, and was a leftenant - archaic and British for lieutenant.   This thread in the new season promises to give us some important insights into Flint\'s character - and we can use all we can get.

Meanwhile, back on Providence Island, we get another inconclusive, complex round with Eleanor and all the assorted pirates.   Eleanor has always been problematic - it\'s still not quite believable that a young woman could be in any kind of command in that day and age, as noted by the Captain of another ship who is killed in the first few minutes of the episode. But the Captain is right.  And Eleanor\'s dialogue is not quite believable.  In addition to saying "fuck" every few minutes, her grammar is off.  At one point, she says "between you and I" - but a woman of her upbringing would know the proper usage is "between you and me".  It\'s a mistake a lot of 21st century writers  make in television scripts, but it rings out especially clangingly in a show taking place in the 1700s.

But there\'s still a lot to like on the island, including tough Anne Bonney seduced by Max, and new blood with Ned Low, the pirate who killed the aforementioned Captain.   Low is not only scary, but carries a mystery that we know nothing of: the woman that he took from the Captain\'s ship.

Black Sails and its pirates back in business - the opening credits are still primo - and I\'ll be back with more next week.

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

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Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.  His 8 nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003),  Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009, 2nd edition 2012), have been the subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science Monitor, and have been translated into 12 languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (1999, ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), TheConsciousness Plague (2002, 2013), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To SaveSocrates (2006, ebook 2012), and Unburning Alexandria (2013).  His short stories have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards.  Paul Levinson appears on "The O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News,"  “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS),  “Nightline” (ABC), NPR, and numerous national and international TV and radio programs. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2009 (CD) and 2010 (remastered vinyl). He reviews the best of television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

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