Our Flag Means Death: Thread 2. Still utterly brilliant and we are still obsessed!

[TriceratopsRocks]

Ahoy there mateys! Hop aboard our ‘safe space ship’ thread 2, where we can continue to wax lyrical about our favourite show.

If you haven’t yet seen Our Flag Means Death, what are you waiting for? Do go watch it (on BBC iPlayer) and then come back here and join us.

You may have heard that this is a comedy about pirates and think that's not for you. But it’s actually about self-discovery, healing and found-family with a love story at its heart. It does begin as a sort of pirate workplace comedy, but in episode 4 the tone changes and that’s where the main story really starts. The joint leads are both damaged by abusive backgrounds and think they want what the other has. The show is about their healing and their respective journeys. It’s tender, romantic, funny, emotionally intelligent and utterly refreshing. It subverts genre expectations. There is comedy, absurdity and a good amount of heartbreak and despair - sometimes in the same scene! The acting is outstanding (Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby especially). But the writing, music, costumes, sets, the sheer attention to detail – for a show with only 18 half-hour episodes it is still keeping us talking, a full thread and many re-watches later. Can you tell how much I love it?

If you think this might appeal, do watch it, then come back and talk to us. It would be lovely if more were to join our crew. But be aware it's a show that needs time. The 2nd lead doesn’t arrive until the end of episode 3 and that’s when the main story starts. You need to give it at least 4 episodes. It then took me several more to fully appreciate what I was watching but then I was hooked - and had to immediately watch it all over again. If you like Good Omens, What We Do in the Shadows, Ghosts or even Bridgerton, this might be the show for you.

(I’ve kept this spoiler free, but if you scroll down you will no doubt find many, so beware!)

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5008593-our-flag-means-death-its-utterly-brilliant-and-i-am-obsessed?reply=135294204

Izzy’s ‘A fuckin pox on all of you’ echoes Mercutio’s ‘A plague on both your houses’. Stede and Ed are certainly ‘star-cross’d lovers’ for a time.

@lizziesaurusx

I guess if it's good enough for Shakespeare... Absolutely. OFMD is high-art, and that is a hill I will die on. The intimacy between Lucius and Pete is deliberately obvious and physical. It’s meant to feed into our understanding of Stede and Ed. Between Stede and Ed, intimacy is mostly language-based and symbolic (YWFTW, stab me). The morning after scene is intimate. Stede looks like the smuggest lover on the planet, and Ed is quietly-spoken and calm (let’s face it, he’s knackered!) He feels able to share the mermaid vision. The bringing of food to Stede is Ed’s love language from the boy who grew up hungry. My frontal lobe is content…

But… my amygdala is screaming! Will you two touch-starved men please hold each other. Or touch! I’m dying here! And I do feel left unfulfilled.

I love your meta, @MrsJellybee . And 'skulking' is such a great word for Izzy. I keep coming back to him as Iago, but only in some respects. The envy, yes. The manipulation, yes.The right hand man scheming against the hero, yes. But he doesn't want to kill Blackbeard. He only wants to kill Ed. It's wonderful that he gives Stede the Kraken idea, when that's the thing that results in the increased trust and intimacy between Ed and Stede.

I hadn't linked the duel to Ed's parents - that's such a good observation and of course makes perfect sense as usual!

I can't quote you without losing what I've just written (on app atm) but as for them needing to touch, I find that staring at slow motion GIFs of the kisses helps a lot, MrsJ.

No reason, just 😍

Thank you very much for those, @AhBiscuits . From the 2nd pic, I think I can safely assume you have now finished S2? So, the biggest and most important question is...

Did you or did you not develop that crush on S2 Stede which some of us assured you would happen, but that you thought most unlikely? 😉

You should of course be honest, but I warn you that if your answer is no, my response may well be to post lots of sexy Stede screenshots 😁

Posting the only part of Rita Ora’s new video worth seeing

https://www.tumblr.com/eddie-redcliffe/751986815028936704?source=share

I have finished S2. I'm going to say that I have a strong fondness for Stede but he doesn't do it for me in the way that Ed does.

A catchy song- but a very weird video…. Those were definitely the best bits 😉

Does anyone else feel just a little bit baffled by the whole Taika/Rita Ora thing? (I am cringeing inside about how shallow I obviously am)

I need to keep reminding myself that it's Ed I have the crush on, not Taika 😁

Not as baffled as I am about the World of Leather sofa outfit, that's for sure 😂

I think Taika's in the middle of a mid-life crisis.

Yes! It’s odd. I wouldn’t have pictured them together. But I guess as he got more famous he could pick who he wanted. I think it’s a bit crap he left his wife and kids and the way he treated his ex-wife.

Very nearly EXACTLY what I thought, although it took me a while to process the bead curtain

I do always enjoy watching him being interviewed with Jemaine Clement or Rhys Darby (obvs). But he also appears to be a bit of a knob sometimes.

I agree, he does come across like that. Maybe you have to be a bit of a knob to succeed in that industry.

She does seem very bendy in that video. And is absolutely gorgeous. I’m sure they’re very happy together!

I don’t know much about Rita Ora. I’ve seen her on The Masked Singer. If that is really who she is, and that isn’t a persona, she doesn’t come across as Taika’s…equal.

I think he’s begun to believe his own hype. He was voted New Zealander of the year in 2017. Then came to Hollywood. He made a complete hash of Thor: Love and Thunder. He seems better with lower-budget Indie films. I hope he finds his way back to his roots. I really want to like him, but agree he is starting to come across as a bit of a knob.

Yes, I’m looking forward to his Klara and the Sun. I think he could do a really good job on that.

Ragnarok was awesome, though

I find him completely fascinating, though my crush is definitely on Ed not Taika. It does feel like he’s having a mid-life crisis – ditching his first wife, marrying a pop star 15 years younger, moving to Hollywood - all such a cliché. The jump he experienced from Wilderpeople to Thor, and then winning an Oscar – it’s like the scale of his success just exploded and he started to believe the hype. Boy, Wilderpeople, WWDITS are heartfelt, quirky, low key and it seems strange that the person behind them could be comfortable in what seems like quite a shallow world, but maybe that’s too judgemental.

I think he’s a really interesting, complicated, smart person – his performance as Ed is (obviously) so nuanced, earnest and emotionally complex, and he’s fantastic in Boy, and I really like him in WWDITS too. In interviews from years ago he often comes across as self-deprecating, thoughtful, serious; I also love the interviews where he and Rhys bounce off each other and there’s such warmth. But sometimes in more recent post-Thor/Oscar win interviews he tries far too hard to come over as wacky and cool and it‘s all a bit cringey. I wish he’d make a couple of low budget, NZ films to see if he can get that vibe back.

But he didn’t write the screenplay. Only directed (which he is awesome at). He did both for Love and Thunder. He’s like George Lucas -a genius who needs reining in.

I listened to a bit of an interview with Chelsea Winstanley about her work on Maori film and she comes across as very smart, grounded, focused and I think she was a producer on the films he wrote himself up to and including Jojo Rabbit, so perhaps she was able to rein him in.

I think time might be an issue too - he seems so over stretched now. He's talked about writing his early films over a period of several years, putting them away for a year, discarding the original script and starting again, and whittling them down in longer than average editing processes. Maybe he's taking on too much to do this, so the quality is suffering? I haven't seen Next Goal Wins or Love and Thunder though so I can't really comment.

Oh, I just watched his Oscar speech. I hadn’t seen it. He is so emotional and nervous! And genuine here. He really is such a complex individual. I feel bad for calling him a knob now.

I listened to a bit of an interview with Chelsea Winstanley about her work on Maori film and she comes across as very smart, grounded, focused and I think she was a producer on the films he wrote himself up to and including Jojo Rabbit, so perhaps she was able to rein him in. I have heard that theory before. He strikes me as a Peter Pan character who needs anchoring in some way. You have to wonder if she was in fact part of the success behind his earlier work at least in some capacity.