*A few Frenchie-related spoilers.*
When I first started writing about Our Flag Means Death last year, I liked basically the whole crew—everyone had fun moments, and everyone made me laugh at different times. But I feel like I would’ve had a hard time doing a full write-up on most of them. In the run-up to season 2, though, I rewatched the first season twice in a month, and then I watched season 2 twice as it came out. This means all of them are now much more distinct to me, and I have Things to Say. Yes, there will be Our Flag Means Death posts every week for the foreseeable future: either until I run out or my brain decides to clamp onto something else.
And as I dip my toes more into crew-specific posts, who better to start with than Frenchie? He’s the ship’s bard. He sews like the wind, designing multiple flags for the Revenge (not to mention doing the alterations for Ed’s flag—at gunpoint!—at the end of season 1.) He’s not the strongest writer, and so when Lucius is briefly incapacitated by Jim and Frenchie steps in as Stede’s scribe, he fills Stede’s journal with doodles. What’s not to love?
Most of the crew have a decent amount of screentime but not much in the way of full storylines, so their characters are conveyed more through moments than through plots. The picture the show paints of Frenchie is both ridiculous and admirable. We know that he harbors plenty of superstitions, believing that cats are witches (“They’ve got knives in the feet,”) women on ships attract demons (from the “crystals in their bodies,”) and that fairies make bread dough rise. He’s not the best with spatial awareness, in one scene nailing his sleeve to the deck and in another pumping himself up for a daring bit of heroics and then immediately tripping over his own feet. And he gets so engrossed in his lute that he keeps playing even as a British naval ship overtakes the Revenge, only stopping when a soldier literally tackles him.
Those are the fun little bits, but when it comes to more solid characterization, Frenchie is primarily an ideas man. He can be silly, so it doesn’t always pan out for him, but his creativity extends beyond his sewing and his music. In season 1, his biggest spotlight comes when he and Oluwande accompany Stede and Ed to a fancy party on an aristocrat’s boat. As their vulgar hosts are about to sneer at the two Black men, Frenchie smoothly introduces Oluwande as an Egyptian prince and himself as Olu’s viceroy. This gets them in the door, but Frenchie takes it a step further by getting even with their snobby, racist hosts—on the fly, he invents the Nigerian (in this case, Egyptian) prince scam, conning a bunch of aristocrats out of their money.
When he and Wee John lay claim to Oluwande and Jim’s old room, Frenchie takes their new role as “room people” seriously, wanting to draw blueprints to “design [their] sanctum.” When he fumbles in trying to hide Stede’s journal from the British navy, he does his best to think on his feet, claiming that the journal is just fan fiction he wrote about the captain. He’s also the initial brainchild behind the Calypso’s birthday celebration, making up, not just the holiday, but a calendar and religion to go with it!
It's really interesting to see how Frenchie navigates the start of season 2, sailing with Ed’s crew during the Kraken era. He claims not to be bothered by all the violence perpetrated during their raids, thanks to the “box” in his head where he shuts away anything terrible, but it’s not long before the strain starts to show. He soon finds himself in a precarious position as Ed’s new first mate, having to deal with a volatile captain who expects him to dispatch with his predecessor. Frenchie tries to protect himself and the others, including Izzy, but even as Ed frightens him, you can see that a part of him genuinely feels for Ed too.
In an exciting development, he looks to be stepping into a leadership role at the end of the season 2 finale, captaining the Revenge when Stede and Ed are away. I can’t quite imagine what Frenchie as a captain is going to look like, but I can’t wait to see it! Reason #456 why we need a season 3 renewal announcement. Get on it, Max! The actors’ strike is over, nothing’s stopping you!
No comments:
Post a Comment