BLACK SAILS

** (out of ****)

Sometimes you’re glad to find out that a TV show is terrible. Usually it’s a bummer, but every once in awhile, it’s actually a bonus. I mean, what if Black Sails, a Starz show, was actually good? Then you would start to DVR it, and get really into it, only to have it canceled when the accountants at Starz figure out that the powers that be made one of the worst, most expensive decisions in the history of television. From there, you find yourself on Black Sails forums, filled with six or seven other people who think that Black Sails’ abrupt cancellation is the worst thing to happen to any of you since Firefly. Then you and your forum mates go out and drop half a paycheck on parrot feathers, mailing them to the Starz execs on a daily basis, and creating one of the least important, most passive aggressive protests ever devised. When it becomes clear that that is never going to work, you then begin a Kickstarter, attempting to raise a million dollars so you can get one more episode, tying up all of the loose ends. I’m not sure if that’s how much this pilot cost, but if it’s less, it’s not by much. Thank the television gods that it’s pretty awful, and even its most ardent fans won’t mind when it gets canceled, and is replaced by some other flashy, Starz-like epic.

We start with the age old formula of a big action scene, which is great for the short-attention-spanners who rely on action like this to carry them through a show, but without context, it doesn’t mean much. From there, we essentially get the crawl from The Phantom Menace, but acted out and with pirates. If the first five minutes are filled with action we don’t understand, the rest of the 70 minute (fuck!) episode is filled with the sort of trade routes and politics that made 1999 the worst year of my life.There’s an earnestness here, like the show is stepping up and saying that they will NOT just be Spartacus, that they will have more to offer than pretty people sword-fighting. In this respect, the show went way too far the wrong way. There’s a character played by Hannah New, who is some sort of heiress/Godfather that runs the land while the pirates run the seas. This is the closest the show comes to an interesting character, but with everything the show needs to accomplish, she doesn’t get anywhere near the time she deserves.

If it’s not the show’s goal to become Game of (Cross) Bones, then all the talkie-talkie is a money thing. Once a costume is bought, and a set built, it doesn’t cost anymore money to shoot a conversation in front of it. Once a pirate ship is bought, and destroyed in an ocean battle, another one has to be built. A lot of shows can get away with all that boring conversation (Game of Thrones, for instance), but you need those characters and that dialogue. If you write an action show that can’t afford action, but doesn’t know how to do the other stuff, it’s probably not going to work out.

– Ryan Haley