"Our Flag Means Death," Year Two

Minor spoilers ahead.

This season of "Our Flag Means Death" is a little shorter than the last one, was filmed in New Zealand instead of Los Angeles, has fewer big name guest stars coming to play, and generally feels a little less polished and put together.  And honestly, for a comedic show about pirates that's far from a bad thing.  The first season took a while to reveal that it was actually a romance between Stede Bonnet and Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, but the second immediately makes it clear that the relationship is the point of the whole show.  For better and for worse, everything else is secondary.

When last we saw Stede and Ed, they'd broken up and were on very bad terms.  This season, while Ed continues a reign of terror over the oceans and his own crew, Stede and the Revenge regulars end up being recruited into the employ of Chinese pirate queen, Zheng Yi Sao (Ruibo Qian), and her strict first officer Auntie (Anapela Polataivao).  Pretty quickly all the crew members are reunited, Jim gets a new love interest in Archie (Madeleine Sami), while a few dead people turn out not to be dead.  There's not a whole lot of plot other than Stede and Ed continuing to navigate their messy, messy feelings for each other.  Stede's career in piracy is looking up, and there are some fun encounters with various guest stars - Rachel House and Minnie Driver show up to play Mary Read and Anne Bonny as a destructive lesbian couple - but not much else is going on.  Most of the Season One concerns with winning over the crew and Stede's complete uselessness as a pirate are over and done with.  We do get a new gentleman villain, Richard Barnes (Erroll Shand), but he's not very formidable.

If you're not interested in the love story, this season might come off as a disappointment.  However, if you've bought into the characters and you're invested in the relationships, you might like this season better than the first.  Like the similarly offbeat "Good Omens," it comes down to how much you enjoy watching this group of performers, who are increasingly moving away from the genre-based antics and more toward a general, LGBT-friendly hangout vibe.  Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi are so much fun as Stede and Ed that I didn't mind at all that there were less pirate hijinks and fewer comedic setpieces happening.  I also don't mind that Waititi has essentially become the co-lead of "Our Flag Means Death."  He hasn't had a great track record as an actor in recent years, but he's really compelling as Ed in a way that he hasn't had a chance to be with any other character in a long while.  

The production values are still strong despite a few shakeups behind the scenes.  There's less time spent on the ship, but more time on real locations, including some fun battle sequences.  I thought the Chinese design influences coming in with Zheng Yi Sao were a nice change, even though they make no sense historically, of course.  The sets and costuming remain incredible - my favorite example this year by far was an unrecognizable Bronson Pinchot showing up for an episode as musical pirate Ned Low.  Another highlight comes when Rhys Darby ends up on a monofin briefly to play a merman in a fantasy sequence.      

I'd love to see "Our Flag Means Death" continue, but I suspect that this will be the last season since the show has reached a natural stopping point, and most of the big conflicts have been resolved.  There are a couple of major cast exits that are very well done, and I don't think the show will ever be quite as good without them.  Frankly, I'd be perfectly content leaving Stede and Ed here, and watching the talented cast and crew move on to other projects. 

  

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