'Jamestown' Recap: Season 3, Episode 7
Previously on Jamestown: Since Temperance is pregnant, Yeardley decides to write a will, in which he transfers ownership of Pedro and Maria to his unborn child. Everyone in town is suddenly real upset about this, which is somehow a step further than owning people generally, flogging them and forcing them to pick your crops for free, I don’t know. But whatever, suddenly James, Verity and a bunch of other townsfolks are real invested in finding the mariners who brought slaves to Jamestown in the first place, though the reasons for that are wildly unclear beyond the fact that Pedro would like to kill them for what they did. Which I suppose make sense. And despite the fact that Crabtree is a powerful man who could stop Yeardley from doing, well…basically anything, he decides to let himself be arrested instead. See our recap of Episode 6 for more.
Just when it seemed as though Jamestown had lost the particularly bonkers style of storytelling that made it such fun to watch, the series comes roaring back with an installment that features everything from unhygienic outdoor surgery, drug-fueled nightmare visions, an out of wedlock pregnancy, a murder cover-up and some super awkward match-making.
This was exactly the sort of episode that Season 3 needed, and it’s only annoying that we had to wait so long to get it. (Sorry, I’m still apparently salty about how boring and ham-fisted Episode 6 was.)
Jamestown is great precisely because it’s the sort of show where the pregnant governor’s wife will join forces with one of his slaves to drug her husband and try to drive him insane through his dreams. This is all even more amazing than you think, by the way. While Temperance is creeping around in the dark of night drugging Yeardley’s wine and whispering menacing words in his ear, while Maria is someone projecting herself into his dreams with dire pronouncements and threats.
“Is it the screech of the hoot owl [you hear], or the SINGING OF THE DEAD,” Maria intones ominously at one point, with absolutely no irony at all, and this is very seriously not a joke and I’m here for it. If this were a different show, I’d seriously wonder how she’s not being questioned for a witch, particularly given how devout Temperance is, but I guess the idea that she can get Yeardley to resign and head back to England to become Father of the Year is tempting enough for her.
Elsewhere, James Read and Verity Rutter catch up to Jocelyn and Pedro, but only because the latter group got attacked by some unknown assailants and their boat capsized. Joss, for her part, has been shot with an arrow, but it’s all okay because James Read, who let’s all remember is a blacksmith, performs some emergency surgery on her. The sequence is fairly gruesome, as poor Naomi Battrick is required to scream her lungs out on multiple occasions whilst James digs around in her side with an EXTREMELY UNSTERILIZED knife and seals the wound over with some random herbs he boiled in a pot he brought with them.
There is so much here that’s ridiculous (in the amazing sense), not the least of which is the fact that Joss somehow stays conscious through this entire procedure. Somehow, she doesn’t immediately get a deadly infection as a result of this grubby medical care, nor does her unstitched wound somehow reopen itself. She’s even up and walking around the next day, traversing miles of unsettled countryside with a limp. Does she even have a bandage on? I can’t tell.
This show, y’all.
Instead of focusing on what ought to be Jocelyn’s life-threatening injury, Verity decides that now is the time to give her friend the third degree about her feelings for James Read. Hashtag friendship, I guess. Why Verity cares so much about her friends’ love lives at the moment is sort of unclear, but she turns out to be an amazing wingwoman for James, telling Joss about how good he is, how much he obviously cares for her, and how their difference in status shouldn’t matter so much here in the New World.
Joss just insists she has to protect her heart because of reasons, as she has all along. She’s clearly softening toward James though, even if both of them are too stubborn to admit their feelings openly. But, since James does murder a man for her, I suppose there are other ways of showing you care. Get these kids a copy of The Five Love Languages, stat. I don’t think Jocelyn’s jam is acts of service, but try your best, kiddo.
The guy shooting at them is involved in this long and very pointless plot about the escaped mariners who somehow brought Pedro and Maria to Virginia and forced its governor to introduce slaves to the colony. I have no idea what we’re supposed to make of all this, as it’s not as though finding these dirtbags will suddenly make either Pedro or Maria free, though I guess it’s just more proof that Yeardley’s also a dirtbag. I can see why the ladies went with the Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors plan.
Oh, and just for fun, servant girl Mercy is apparently pregnant, having taken Verity’s sexual liberation advice from earlier this season, and she and Pepper plan to marry. So the season – and the series – should end on at least one happy note.
Just one episode to go! How are you feeling about this season of Jamestown? Let’s discuss.
