Image credit: Apple TV+

Thought this would be an uplifting story about friendship and sisterhood? Think again.

Promising a passionate and intriguing plot, crazy parties and frankness, The Buccaneers betrays its vows almost from the beginning: the swagger and girlish lightness are lost in the darkness of the Old World, the girls adapt to the attitudes imposed by a prim society, and the story falls into despondency and repetition.

The Buccaneers Has Already Aged Like Milk (Albeit Season 1 Is Not Even Over)

Despite all the possibilities, the dialogues do not reveal anything new about the heroines – they talk about the same things, reproduce the same conflicts. Annoying understatement, often stereotyped melodramatic techniques, lack of courage and sharpness turn the girls into static dolls dressed in silk and corsets.

Most fans are disappointed that the show seems to lie to our faces – instead of a promising a story about five American girls, closest friends who must stick to each other through thick and thin, we get not very motivated heroines who betray each other at the first opportunity.

The Buccaneers Fails at Representing Sisterhood

Where is the strong and admirable bond we saw in the first episode? Why did Nan tell her biggest secret not to one of her girlfriends, but to Guy, whom she was literally seeing for the second time in her life? Why didn’t Mabel warn either her own sister Lizzy or her friend Jinny that Honoria had told her that Seadown was a real monster?

Bathing in champagne and having fun to spite the wayward public, the girls quickly burn out and are eager to return home, back to the US – to the world of beautiful chaos. The plot gradually destroys the heroines’ sweet fantasies of marriage and great love, and gives each of them a difficult test.

One is subjected to psychological violence, another to a forbidden relationship, the third to a tyrannical husband. Even the last ray of hope, Nan, who was full of freedom and feminist ideas, quickly loses all her colors: after her engagement to Theo, the girl who has never cared about titles or bloodlines is suddenly obsessed with the story of her origins.

As a result, the girls betray their sisterhood for various reasons, and the rebels’ previously strong friendship is called into question.