no seriously you guys understand this is part of that plotline, right?
i mean yes the script had almost certainly been edited to remove the actual taking-it-slow plot from 2x06 by the time they filmed this, but, ok, you remember this, of course you do
now we all identified this as taika deciding to play his reaction to stede's captain voice as unbearably aroused at the time it happened. but then we found out about the cut plotline from 2x06. and we know at least some of the changes to 2x06 weren't finalized until during the filming of 2x05, vico confirmed that. so i have always suspected pretty strongly that at the time this scene was filmed, the taking-it-slow plot was still planned, and this is taika setting it up.
(btw there is also definitely a weird cut in the middle of this scene, right at "be the captain," and there's more than one thing it could be and more than one reason material could have been cut, but i have always believed in my heart what got removed was horny flirty improv.)
so what i'm saying is not only was there a cut plotline about ed and stede being desperately horny to consummate their relationship and being so bad at hiding it they're annoying everyone around them, but there's a stretch of time, a good two episodes, where rhys and taika are both playing all their scenes together that way in order to set that arc up. and even after most of the actual scripted material got cut, well, they've already been playing the relationship that way, so they're gonna keep doing it. and this is the kind of thing they were doing.
and in the end pretty much all of it got cut except this one quick shot of taika looking up and breathing heavily.
