#seriously Anne is hilarious with her flirting at Stede

[sarucane]

OFMD Spiral Parallels 32: Manipulative Pirate Buddies 3

Intro: What I love most about how season 2 builds on season 1 of OFMD is the spiral narrative structure. Ground is repeatedly and explicitly re-trod from season 1 to season 2, but in season 2 everything goes deeper than season 1. Symbols appear and reappear, transformed. Meanings are shuffled, emotions are stronger and truer, and transformation is showcased above everything. The first season plucks certain notes, then the second season plucks the same ones--but louder, and then it weaves them together to create a symphony.

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In the middle of both episodes, private conversations about the nature of Ed’s and Stede’s relationship takes place between a manipulative pirate and one of our main characters. However, in the first episode, only Stede has a private conversation with Jack, but in the second both Stede and Ed have private conversations about with Anne and Mary. And while both the first episode and the second involve the new pirates manipulating our main characters, the outcomes of the scenes highlight how the meaning of the past has changed from one season to another, from destructiveness that must be avoided to chaos that invites transformation.

Anne and Jack both want to get information out of Stede, but they go about doing this in completely different ways.

Jack makes Stede defensive, provoking discomfort in Stede—and, crucially, denial about what’s happening between him and Ed. Stede obfuscates, pointing to an insecurity that Jack then exploits using repeated references to the past. Jack’s goal is to make Stede as uncomfortable as possible—use the shadows of Ed’s past and their connection to the present—to push Stede to isolate himself from Ed, and he entirely succeeds.

Anne, on the other hand, makes Stede comfortable. She is genuinely interested in what’s actually happened between Stede and Ed, because her goal is more open-ended than Jack’s. She wants to use the past to create drama, not destruction. And drama is actually what Ed and Stede need, because the only way to resolve the central conflict is for them to have a dramatic conversation.

Meanwhile, both Anne and Mary individually draw comparisons between themselves and the boys. Anne builds on what she learned about Stede’s personality—and its similarity to hers—in the antique shop, then tries to get Stede on board to make both their partners “so jealous,” to provoke drama in both their relationships.

Ed is actually the first one to draw a comparison between himself and Anne by bringing up how Stede stabbed him once. Anne then invokes the past, like Jack did, but not as a way to destroy the present—as a way to explain the present. Jack told Stede that he and Ed are “the same man,” but Mary tells Ed that both couples are involved in the same experience, are bound together by a chaotic “whirlpool.”

The scenes also illuminate important ways that Ed’s and Stede’s ideas of the past can shift.

Before, Stede was enjoying the “ideal past,” and to move forward with Ed he needs to accept that the past had negatives, too. He starts doing this with Anne, describing the problems of his past that arose when he went back to his wife.

Ed, on the other hand, was focusing on the negatives of the past, on the pain that resulted from Stede leaving. To move forward, he needs to think about the closeness that made the pain worth enduring. And he starts doing this with Mary, smiling and reminiscing about being stabbed by Stede. Before this, Ed rejected each attempt Stede made to suggest that their past relationship was a good place. But the bad ending didn’t define the whole relationship—the past influences the present but doesn’t determine it—and Ed starts to believe in that in this scene.

Other posts in this series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

Part 5