SummaryThe comedy series from David Jenkins and Taika Waititi is loosely based on the true story Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), an 18th-century wealthy landowner who gave it all up to become a pirate.
SummaryThe comedy series from David Jenkins and Taika Waititi is loosely based on the true story Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), an 18th-century wealthy landowner who gave it all up to become a pirate.
It’s hard not to feel like Season 2 is the Empire Strikes Back of Our Flag Means Death. It brings emotional, romantic, and comedic depth that never would have been possible without the foundation of Season 1, and it uses that advantage to reach heights both die-hard fans and skeptical viewers won’t see coming.
With this new installment, Jenkins and the rest of the writing team — Alyssa Lane, Alex Sherman, Adam Stein, Eliza Jiménez Cossio, John Mahone, Simone Nathan, Zayre Ferrer, Jes Tom, and Natalie Torres — still manage to strike the balance between lighter and darker elements, which all contribute to a perfect tenor that sings throughout every episode.
Though it takes a couple of episodes to find the equilibrium that made Season One a breakout hit, “Our Flag Means Death"'s second installment elevates the show's ensemble comedy to new heights by shifting its tender queer romance front and center. With its unorthodox approach to comedy and romance, “Our Flag Means Death” continues to be a delightful surprise.
A mostly successful, intermittently inert second season that complicates the liberated bliss of free love with the moral responsibility that comes with free will.
The prevailing emphasis on Stede and Ed also creates an irregular pace that does a disservice to the supporting characters by first meandering and then sprinting through story lines involving them; a cliffhanger ending for seventh episode “Man on Fire,” the last one provided for review, probably would have had more impact if the crew drama leading up to it felt less abrupt.
It’s not so much that a rom-com can’t or shouldn’t be built around these two men, but that it so clearly prefers to look away from their inconvenient truths. The show’s initial outing at least offered a few comedic jabs in the direction of colonialism, but it was only willing to go so far. The new season doesn’t even bother. Instead, “Our Flag Means Death” erases this moral atrocity [slave owning] altogether.