OFMD: Budget Cuts, Ed's relationship to the Crew and the importance of context clues.

Right, let's get the nerd-outs on this blog started!

Kicking off with Our Flag Means Death (obvious spoilers for both series ahead) and a wee talk about budget cuts, Ed's relationship with the crew, and the importance of context clues:

We now know that OFMD had a massive 40% budget cut between series 1 and 2 – considering this, it's important to realise that budget cuts can have a hand in basically anything the fandom has complained about this series. It doesn’t mean that it is to blame for all the things (nor that all of the fandom's complaints are warranted for that matter), but it definitely can be an active factor.

One of the things I've seen a fair amount of people complain about is the fact that the audience didn't see Ed apologise to every single crewmember on the Revenge after his return, and this specifically is what I would like to talk about in this post, because I believe that the budget cuts (and having only 8 episodes instead of 10) are undeniably to 'blame' for the less than explicit 'Ed apology-tour'.

Having that much less money between series 1 and 2 means that you have to go out of your way to cut corners and make big decisions really fast – when that happens, you’re bound to have oversights (this includes pacing issues, cut scenes, choosing to give focus on one character’s arc over another (this especially is important here), etc.).

The writers clearly made the choice that finishing Izzy’s arc was their number one priority this series – most likely because after a 40% budget cut they feared that they wouldn’t get a third series – which means that all of the time that series 1 spent on Ed and Stede, was now suddenly shifted to Izzy, despite the fact that the Gentlebeard-love story is the heart of the show. So instead of giving us all the healing and growing scenes between Ed and everyone else, we got 'context clue' scenes. Just like we did with Izzy in series one – the big difference being that s1-Izzy’s context clues were meant to make us dislike him for plotting against Gentlebeard, and s2-Ed's context clues were meant to show us that Ed actually wanted to and tried to change for the better. Now, is it an oversight to think that a positive character-change can be picked up by the entire audience only by way of context clue-scenes? Yes. Clearly. We are (as people) generally much faster to see and believe the negatives, than we are to see and believe the positives. This is part of why so many people feel like Ed’s redemption should have been spelled out for us – that they should have actively shown us that he made amends to everyone.

But they gave us the scenes with Fang/Kevin, the ones with Lucius, and the one with Izzy as context clues for the crew coming to terms with the things that happened. The scene with Archie, Olu, and Jim where they’re drowning their brooms is another context clue – sure, Archie is saying “that’s just how it is”, but she’s in no way unhappy about it. She’s just ‘happy go lucky’ “move on, mate”. Jim even says “I think for that was pretty solid, for him”. Both Roach and Frenchie agree. Pete is just happy that Ed's wearing the cat collar.

They are pirates – their take on these things are different from how we would react in the real world. And Lucius in that scene is an example of how we (the real-world people/the audience) are reacting when watching that scene “the bar is on the floor” – BUT look at how everyone else in that episode reacts to Lucius ‘not just moving on’. Everyone else – even Izzy, who up until this point has been the only human in a crew of muppets – thinks he should just let it go and move on. It’s literally spelled out in the conversation they have in that scene in 205: Lucius: “And you? Are you happy with this?” Izzy: “With what? Pirating? Well, this is a pirate ship and I’m a pirate, so yeah. I’m good with it. You still mad he pushed you off the ship, Twatty?” – Izzy is telling us here that ‘stuff like this is just what happens on pirate ships’ and in the shark-scene his parting words to Lucius (who is representing the audience) is literally “Not moving on is worse”.

We are absolutely meant to take all of these as context clues for the crew moving on. And even more so during the party scene in 206, where Ed is not 'only being tolerated because of Stede' – he actively encourages Stede to let the crew have fun, which results in Archie's "This guy's devout as fuuuuck".

Now, would the series have benefitted from those extra scenes that would have helped further along the narrative of the crew moving on and coming to terms with Ed? Absolutely. But again – budget cuts. And there’s an important thing that seems to be forgotten in a lot of these discussions – which is that they crew did love Ed in series 1.

Ed became part of their family – which is obviously why it hurt that much more (especially for Lucius, who was the only Revenge-crew member to get really close with Ed) when he lashed out and hurt them. But that doesn’t mean that they stopped loving him. You can absolutely love someone you don’t like or even hate. The two are not mutually exclusive. That’s why dysfunctional families are so toxic and hard to get out of. Because if you didn’t love them, then you would have absolutely no problem in leaving their toxic arses behind. And THAT is what our favourite crew is – family. And Ed is the family member who went through a (TW!) depressive suicidal psychosis and hurt everything and everyone on his way. Is it going to take time to rebuild the trust in Ed that they had in series 1? I think so, yes. And I think there’s a possibility that that could come into play in series 3, though I think it's just as probable that we are meant to read it as a closed chapter. But the crew's love for Ed? Nah, that never went away. It got buried in a heap of sh~t and trauma – but that doesn’t mean that the crew doesn’t love Ed, when he is simply being Ed ❤️