I’m going to try and join in the mass S2 rewatch, but I’m still tied up with family stuff so I’m not sure how much of it I’ll manage. In the meantime, I thought I’d better actually finish my own S2 rewatch, because it’s taken me ages! But yesterday I finally watched 2.8 again. 😀.
We’ve talked before about the pacing of the last two episodes and 2.8 is where some cuts felt particularly jarring. The first time I watched it I was a bit disappointed, despite all the truly wonderful scenes we do get, because of the overall disjointedness of the episode. Starting with 3.5 minutes of Fisherman Ed and Pop Pop didn’t help, despite us needing to see just how badly fisherman Ed worked out, especially with another side helping of father-figure trauma. Not to mention the fun of seeing Cohen Holloway beat up Taika again! But this is Ed running away, like Stede in 1.10, to find that he doesn’t belong.
Soon enough we are with Stede and Zheng under the bridge. Stede ‘my body takes over’ Bonnet has blocked 'who saved who' from his memory. His mildly paternalistic attempt to comfort Zheng isn’t appreciated but she forces herself into action when the English have him captured. I love the expression on her face before she resigns herself to helping him out.
We have Ed’s dissociative episode which we’ve discussed before. The sounds in his head, are they from his imagination or his past? In any case, this is where he decides to embrace Blackbeard - to use that aspect of himself to try and find/save Stede.
Back to Jackiez and Izzy’s speech, showing how much he’s changed. It was noticeable that the only flashback of the whole crew together had to be pulled from S1 - cost and time cuts strike again.
The lovely letter! It’s so beautiful. Their voices merge, Bach blends into Blackbeard’s theme and then into the Gnossienne. I adore this. Then the beach scene - oh wow!. Stede’s stuck sword, his spin, our boys reunite, kisses! “For love!”. It’s perfect. After the insecurity which caused him to panic and leave in 1.7, Ed finally has confidence in their love for each other and can declare this.
Afterwards, poor Stede feels left out of the Ed/Zheng mutual appreciation society (those two are so similar, after all, even down to their first mate forcing them into a ‘tough’ persona that isn’t really them) but Ed tries to be a supportive boyfriend (“Babe”). We still have distance between them though. They might be together for good now (DJ said he wouldn’t split them up again), but they still have work to do. They are both now confident in their love, but several times in this episode we see Stede’s personal insecurity as he looks for validation, and Ed still needs to work on reconciling his past and the different elements of himself. And they need to work out how to have an adult relationship.
Why oh why did they cut the boyfriends scene? Based on the BTS clips, is it because Taika couldn’t stop messing about? And the cut here feels jarring. I enjoyed the Roads to Moscow scene until I saw the full, finished version and realised what we’d missed. This section is why we badly need the Jenkins cut of S2. When If it’s picked up for S3, I really want a S2+ as well, to restore some of the cuts and sort out the pacing in this episode especially. I neeeeeed DJs 40 minute cut of 2.8.
Then we get Izzy’s deathbed confession. It’s so important to me that he fully admits his abuse of Ed. But when Izzy says that Ed’s surrounded by family and the crew love him, we haven’t really been shown this, this season. I mean, they do - it’s why it took so much for them to kill him - but all season what we’ve seen is the crew and Izzy becoming closer, not the crew and Ed, who has mainly been seen just with Stede. There was a bit of Ed/crew interaction in Calypso’s Birthday, but the main interaction before that was his managerial apology speech. Ed simply hasn’t had those positive crew relationships this season. So that line just doesn’t quite fit. Someone (not me) spotted another parallel. In 1.8, the original unicorn figurehead ‘dies’ (gets blasted by English cannon). In 2.8 the new unicorn dies. Clever foreshadowing there.
After the funeral we get the elbow touch. This is one of my favourite moments, because they’ve spent so much of this season apart and we’ve seen so little casual intimacy like this. I’ll be looking forward to a lot more of that when if we get S3.
Ed's side-eye at the wedding? Yay for the S3 Gentlebeard version!!
And finally they get to try innkeeping. In a broken shack, with ‘good bones’. Solid but needs work, like their relationship. Although I like to think that their relationship is quite a bit better than the state that shack appears to be in, complete with dead animal and a hole in the roof!
And that’s my rewatch done! For your viewing pleasure, here’s a fresh link to the full Roads to Moscow scene posted by Samba: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4JNdzkPZUB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
And an interview with DJ, where he talks about S3 and the future of the show, among other things. Just in case you need any more reasons to hope for more Stede, Ed and the crew. It feel apt in the current days of speculation :D
https://www.avclub.com/interview-david-jenkins-our-flag-means-death-season-3-1850953527