On The Air

The new pirate show has started, and it looks like it might be a fun summer. Read my review.

Episode links:
TV Guide review
TV Squad review
TWoP review
Zap2it review
Download the episode with BitTorrent

It seems like forever that we’ve been hearing about this new pirate show from the guru of reality TV, Mark Burnett. The news first came out last year, when it was just called the “CBS Pirate Project”. And then, a number of months ago, we got a real name for the show, the delightfully awesome name of “Pirate Master“. And we found out there would be buried treasure, and captains, and mutinies, and swabbing the deck. No walking the plank, but I guess you can’t have everything. Now all we had to do was sit back and wait for the premiere. Would it suck, or would it be awesome? Would it capture all the fun of Survivor, or would it die on the vine like Treasure Hunters?

Well, the first episode of Pirate Master was last night, and I’ve got to say that I don’t think we have anything to worry about. While it’s not the absolute best new reality show that’s ever been on, it’s a fun ride that should keep us entertained at least until Big Brother comes on. Pirate Master is part Survivor. 16 people made to live on a sailing ship and vote each other out. They eat gruel, they swab the deck, and they get seasick. At least they don’t have to worry about making fire. Pirate Master is also part Big Brother. The “captain” is basically a Head of Household, who gets his own room and nominates three people for eviction. Pirate Master is even part Treasure Hunters, with the first task being to row through the jungle, trying to find a buried treasure. Of course all the props and camera crews made it pretty obvious where the treasure was hidden, but I guess the mental leap they had to make was realizing they had to swim under a tree to find the chest.

It’s definitely a Mark Burnett show. His shows always have a certain flair to them that other shows lack: the lighting, the music, the camera angles. It’s all bumped up to absurdly overwrought levels in Pirate Master, with fog, sea shanties, and fake rain spraying everywhere during the “Pirate’s Court”. But the real hinge to any show like this is the casting. With a great cast, a show can take off to new heights. With a horrible cast, you’ve got something that’s either forgettable or laughably bad.

So how does Pirate Master’s cast stack up? Well, you’ve got John, who is labeled as a “Scientist/Exotic Dancer”, which is hilarious. He’s probably just being a scientist to pay his way through exotic dancing school. He’s also kind of an ass. The you have Joe Don (which may or may not need to be pronounced with a French accent), who was just a random nobody in the sea of faces until he became Captain, then the power immediately went to his head and he went batshit crazy. Completely. And then you have Louie, who is either the brother of Rupert from Survivor, or the result of some sort of failed attempt by CBS to clone Rupert from Survivor. And I’m not sure how to categorize Louie. I mean, I liked Rupert at first, but he quickly became a condescending prick. So maybe Louie’s going to follow the same path. At least he doesn’t talk in a baby voice.

And the rest of the pirate crew? God, it’s way too early to sort through them all. And half of them are anonymous faces, who don’t even get one line the whole show. The women made damn sure to show a lot of cleavage, though, but that’s the only way most of them get any camera time. And there’s some dude who, I swear to god, has shaved his sideburns into little swirls. That’s just about the worst thing I can think of. I don’t even know his name. Hold on a minute while I look it up….Holy fuck, it’s Azmyth. Azmyth? Are you joking? He has pet snails! Is this a real person? Too bad I don’t think he said one word on the show last night. There’s also a former football player who, according to this video game footage, was such a badass that nobody could even tackle him. So watch out, you don’t want to make Christian Okoye mad.

The whole conceit of the show is that this imaginary pirate hundreds of years ago buried his treasure in fourteen pieces across the island of Dominica. He then drew maps to the treasure and locked them inside a giant fake prop treasure chest. And now it’s up to our 16 modern-day pirates, and their cleavages, to follow the maps and find the treasure. The twist is that there’s not just one final winner who gets all the treasure, but that each week the crew who finds the treasure splits it up amongst themselves. So even if you go home the first week you can still go home with a little cash in your pocket.

And the first one going home this week is John, the exotic scientist, who started out trying to impersonate Jack Sparrow, zoomed ahead to demanding that he should be captain even though the vote was unanimous for Joe Don, and ended with some off-the-rails plan to hold the compasses hostage in exchange for his safety. I mean, that was his whole plan, which he revealed at the Pirate Court at the end: I stole the compasses, and if you vote me off I’m taking them with me. Everyone voted him off anyway, which was pretty funny. “Go screw with the compasses, you gasbag. We’re tired of you.”

Other notable parts:

Once the winning crew found the treasure, they had to count it. They started during the day, and suddenly it’s almost nighttime, like five hours later. And they’re still counting.

Cheryl is from Reno? Western Nevada represent!

Mark Burnett sure has a thing for skulls. We’ve got skulls skewered to trees, skulls that you crack open like an easter egg, skulls on sticks, and skulls climbing out of the water.

As soon as Joe Don put on the captain’s hat he went bonkers, all “I was in the military” and “Things are going to change a whole lot.” Dude, it’s Day 2. There’s not much to change. And he stayed crazy through the whole episode, taking things a little too seriously. And the whole speech he made at the end of the episode, about how he doesn’t need the compasses because you can put a stick in the ground and draw a line between it, that was pure comedy. Then when John called him out on it and asked him to point north right that second, and he couldn’t because it was cloudy? I almost fell out.

So I’m excited for a summer full of Pirate Master. It might go downhill quickly, or it might get more and more awesome as the weeks go by. Azmyth might even get some screen time. But I think wherever this show goes, I’m along for the ride.