(An interesting question, though, is whether Mary and Doug intend to get married now that Stede is once again officially dead. I don't think it's at all clear that they do. Mary is pretty content as a widow. So the better version of heterosexual domesticity may be a much less conventional one.)
Everything about the show is so deliberately written that your take is almost certainly the correct one. The widow's group is the textual evidence that we need. These are women taking joy in their power and freedom. Doug isn't really part of Mary's social class—she can only have a relationship with him in the context of her being a widow. Marriage in this society is about property relations, and Mary has no desire to be property.
I would take an entire spinoff on Mary and the widows.
The episode title "This Is Happening" gestures towards all the shows that have teased and then said "of course it's not actually happening." Gestures towards them with a middle finger.
God I love this.
I was absolutely unspoiled for the show. The only things I knew were the real historical accounts of Stede and Blackbeard and that I'd probably like it because Taiki Waititi is good at everything. I started to see "he made the pirates gay!" posts on Tumblr, but Tumblr thinks that everything is gay, bless its heart.
And of course we don't really meet Blackbeard until the third episode (OFMD follows romance beats but not at the expense of the story it's telling), and we have Lucius as a bit of a red herring. Okay, this is a fun sitcom about pirates and we have an obviously gay side character who may get a romance with another side character. This isn't uncommon these days. It's the drawn out romance with the two leads that makes it completely unexpected.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2022-04-06 10:55 am (UTC)Everything about the show is so deliberately written that your take is almost certainly the correct one. The widow's group is the textual evidence that we need. These are women taking joy in their power and freedom. Doug isn't really part of Mary's social class—she can only have a relationship with him in the context of her being a widow. Marriage in this society is about property relations, and Mary has no desire to be property.
I would take an entire spinoff on Mary and the widows.
The episode title "This Is Happening" gestures towards all the shows that have teased and then said "of course it's not actually happening." Gestures towards them with a middle finger.
God I love this.
I was absolutely unspoiled for the show. The only things I knew were the real historical accounts of Stede and Blackbeard and that I'd probably like it because Taiki Waititi is good at everything. I started to see "he made the pirates gay!" posts on Tumblr, but Tumblr thinks that everything is gay, bless its heart.
And of course we don't really meet Blackbeard until the third episode (OFMD follows romance beats but not at the expense of the story it's telling), and we have Lucius as a bit of a red herring. Okay, this is a fun sitcom about pirates and we have an obviously gay side character who may get a romance with another side character. This isn't uncommon these days. It's the drawn out romance with the two leads that makes it completely unexpected.