'The Buccaneers' Series-Premiere Recap, Episodes 1-3 - Vulture

The Buccaneers

American Poison / Women or Wives / The Perfect Duchess

Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2

Editor’s Rating 4 stars

Photo: Apple TV+

This recap covers the first three episodes of The Buccaneers, streaming now on Apple TV+.

The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming to England and they are leaving an impression. Is it always a good one? Not exactly — especially for some of the most hoity-toity lords and ladies. But for most, when Nan St. George, her older sister Jinny, Lizzy and Mabel Elmsworth, and Conchita Closson arrive from New York, they are loud, yes, but they are free. Well, as free as a woman in the late 1800s can be, what with living under the crushing fist of the patriarchy and also all that boning sewn into their clothes. But they do, for the most part, speak their minds, know who they are, and enjoy lots of spinning. Man, do they love to spin. In fact, the most hilarious and also accurate description of our bold crew from one of those aforementioned ladies of the hoity and toity variety is that “they’re not still, not one of them; they toss about so.” Yes, next to the stiff Brits they mingle with as they seek husbands abroad, these young women are constantly propelling themselves forward, causing a scene — they are a little bit wild and that makes everything they do feel exciting and maybe a tad dangerous, too.

Welcome to the world of The Buccaneers, Katherine Jakeways’s Apple TV+ drama based on Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel. Our five main characters, who swear on Champagne that their friendship will always come before marriages and men, all hail from new money. They may be wildly wealthy, but in New York ahead of the turn of the 20th century, new money gets zero respect. Lucky for them and their parents, who would all love to marry off their daughters, there’s a whole host of English families with grand titles and very little cash left. A pairing between the two means the Americans get credibility and the English can pay for their lavish lifestyle. Maybe there might be some love mixed in, or, at the very least, some real lust, but that’s like a little extra treat — not necessary at all.

This type of union is exactly where our story starts: The big New York City wedding of Conchita Closson and Lord Richard Marable. Conchi and Dickie are clearly crazy about each other but also make each other crazy. That’ll happen when the groom doesn’t show up on time for his own wedding. You see, Dickie’s having second thoughts: He and Conchita fell hard while he was free to be whoever he wanted in New York City, but now that they are minutes away from tying the knot, the panic has set in — he’s terrified at the thought of bringing the brash Conchita home to his strict aristocratic, insanely judgmental parents. When Nan finds him down on the street outside the wedding, he tells her that he just doesn’t think Conchi will fit in England. But it’s Nan, sweet Nan, who has literally rappelled down a wall to rescue Conchita’s fallen earring, who reminds Richard that he loves Conchita and he can’t live without her. Dickie loves Conchita, to hell with the rest of it. The wedding is so, so on.

Sure, the day is supposed to be about (the secretly pregnant) Conchita and Dickie, but we’re really here for Nan. We’re also really here for Kristine Frøseth, who plays Nan St. George and is perfect in the role. The Buccaneers is a wild ride as it blends its period-piece story with modern sensibilities and a contemporary soundtrack, and it’s Frøseth who really holds the whole thing together. It spills over into the fictional dynamics too — it’s easy to see why Nan is the main protagonist of this story; she’s the best of them. She isn’t perfect by any means, but she’s not afraid to be herself even as she’s still discovering who she is. Perhaps most important for this crew, when Nan promises to prioritize their friendship, she actually does it. In these first three episodes, we get a few scenes of Mabel, too, being an actual friend to her friends, but the rest of them? They can take a hike! Okay, Lizzy gets a pass, sort of. Conchita though? She is one of the most self-involved humans on the planet. And babes, we’ll get to the menace that is Jinny St. George in a moment. But Nan? Nan’s our girl. We’re immediately rooting for Nan.

There are two things that go down during the wedding — aside from the bride and groom saying “I do” — that are integral to the story. First, Nan has a pretty adorable meet-cute with a handsome English stranger during the whole scaling-the-wall-to-save-an-earring debacle. Eventually, we’ll learn this handsome stranger’s name is Guy Thwarte. He is immediately taken by Nan’s openness. And probably also those wall-scaling abilities. Only in America, am I right? The two share an even more adorable second meet-cute on the stairs, as if they are the only two people in the world. It’s all lovely, and then Guy has to go ruin it all when he awkwardly informs Nan that he’s rushing home to London because his mom is dying. Like, he couldn’t ease into that piece of information? We’ll blame it on grief because otherwise, Guy rules.

The second thing that happens might actually help with the first: When Mrs. St. George (played by a quite compelling Christina Hendricks) gets some shade from Old Money Queen Bee Mrs. Paramore, Dickie comes to her rescue and invites her and all of Conchita’s friends to spend the season in London. Suck on that, Mrs. Paramore! While it’s exciting for all of the girls — especially Lizzy and Jinny, who are officially out and now can attend the big debutante ball for the queen — it also means that maybe, just maybe, Nan will run into that cute guy again. Hey, Mrs. Testvalley, the St. George girls’ governess who, in a twist, turns out to be Richard and his siblings’ former governess, does warn everyone that “England is a very small place.”

And so, the buccaneers, accompanied by Mrs. St. George and Mabel and Lizzy’s mother, Mrs. Elmsworth, are off to England. It becomes abundantly clear that while they were looked down upon in New York for being new money, they are looked down upon in England for their American temperament. They can’t win. Although, do they really want to when the people judging them are Richard’s awful family? His parents, Lord and Lady Brightlingsea, are objectively the worst, talking about “American poison” infecting families in England and speaking about the girls as if they aren’t actually human beings — human beings who are going to save their family, by the way! But Richard’s siblings, the stuck-up Honoria and creepy-crawly-inducing Lord James Seadown, aren’t great either. Still, Seadown is given a directive from his mother: He needs to marry either Jinny or Lizzy. They need the money.

Something else abundantly clear: Richard was exactly right about what would happen to Conchita in England. His family can’t stand her and aren’t afraid to make sure she knows it. She doesn’t hesitate to give it back when she can, but Nan immediately recognizes that her friend is broken and her marriage is already very much on the rocks.

But Nan discovers she has much bigger problems to deal with in her own life. Tensions are high at the queen’s debutante ball. Mrs. St. George and Mrs. Elmsworth may be friends (or frenemies — It’s unclear), but they have pitted their daughters against each other in the husband hunt. To Nan, the debutantes parading themselves around for men to remark upon and decide if they might like to marry, look like cattle — no, really, she envisions them all holding up numbered paddles (set to Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers’s “Nothing New,” and honestly, I cherish that choice). When she overhears a snobby aristocrat disparaging American women, she’s not afraid to let him have it. It’s pretty awful. But then! Then she runs into Guy, and that’s pretty great. They are so at ease with each other that they should just get married right then and there. They don’t get married, but a giggly Nan does accidentally drop her shoe into some cake. So there’s that.

The shoe in the cake and Nan wandering around the party with a man infuriates Jinny, who is under the notion that everything should be about her. Being in England is her moment to shine, and Nan is ruining it by being smart and funny and charming. Listen, I will continue to rail against Jinny, but it is pretty obvious that the girl has intense and deeply rooted self-esteem issues, only made worse by her mother impressing upon her how important it is to get married ASAP. Still, she is a monster, and I do wish someone had pushed her into the ocean on their trip across the Atlantic.

After taking to task not only her sister for being a distraction but her own mother for constantly siding with Nan, she takes Nan aside to yell at her in private. She can’t understand why Nan wants to ruin everything, and she definitely can’t understand why their mother always defends her since their mother IS NOT NAN’S REAL MOTHER. Now, Jinny does have some tears in her eyes when she realizes what she’s just said, but I don’t think she’s actually that sorry. In one fell swoop, she has revealed Nan’s entire life to be a lie. Nan hardly has any time to process that she was born from one of her father’s affairs and they paid off the woman to avoid scandal, when Mrs. St. George comes outside to let her know that she’s decided to send her away with Mrs. Testvalley to travel through Cornwall for a month and stay out of Jinny’s hair. I haven’t been to any debutante balls, but this does seem like a pretty bad one.

Joke’s on Jinny, though, because something kind of incredible happens to Nan while in Cornwall. She happens upon yet another very handsome man who is taken with her. This one she finds swimming in the ocean and painting on the shore, and he is so moved not just by Nan’s thoughtfulness but her lack of fear when it comes to expressing herself. She is intrigued too. But while Nan might think this rando is simply Theo, shirtless ocean artist, we know exactly who he is. This is Theo, Duke of Tintagel, man who hates being a duke and loves broodily staring into the ocean from the side of a cliff. His mother may want him to marry nice English girl Jean, but Theo caught Nan’s sharp-tongued takedown of that aristocrat during the ball and it thrilled him. Now, she’s standing here on his beach and she seems interested in him without having any clue that he’s a duke. The man is in love and there’s no stopping it.

With that, Nan’s off, and a month later, she returns to her pals who have all gathered for a weekend of debauchery at the Runnymede estate. You know things are about to get wild when Conchita — now a mother — is the chaperone. Who will chaperone the chaperone, you know?

The party weekend at Runnymede has major ramifications for all five of our women. For Conchita, she uses the weekend to remind Dickie of why he fell in love with her in the first place (the fun and freedom of it all), which initially works. Unfortunately, she overhears him having a conversation with Mrs. Testvalley — what in holy hell is happening between those two, by the way?? — in which he goes on and on about how Conchita will never fit in here. She runs off before she hears the part about how he is so in love with her anyway and always will be. She vows to be an obedient English wife, extinguishing whatever spark made him fall in love with her in the first place. Mabel gets closer to Honoria, and the two share a charged moment in the closet (we get it!) during a game of sardines. Kissing is imminent.

Meanwhile, Lizzy and Jinny become unwilling participants in Seadown’s sick manipulations. When the guy’s own sister describes him to someone who is practically a stranger as “a monster,” please believe her. Seadown has clearly zeroed in on Jinny to be his wife, but he wants to torture her a bit. When he doesn’t like how she’s acting at the party, he rebuffs her, makes her feel like an idiot, and then hits on Lizzy right in front of her. Now, Jinny is no saint. When Lizzy goes to make sure her friend is okay with this, she plays it off like a real asshole. Telling her that it will come down to whatever Seadown wants, “beauty and charm or … well, whatever it is you’re offering.” Who invited this chick, anyway?

Lizzy will surely wish she had backed off in the end. She winds up alone in a room with Seadown, excited that they might make out, that he is really into her, but instead, he demands she take off her clothes and then he sits there, blocking the door, as he stares at her. It is all about humiliation and control, and Lizzy is powerless against it.

His games aren’t over yet. The next morning, he takes Jinny’s hand in front of everyone, completely ignoring Lizzy, and proposes. Lizzy tries to figure out if she should warn her friend about the guy she’s marrying, but Jinny is such a dick about the whole thing, you can’t really blame Lizzy for staying quiet and then getting on the first boat back to New York.

But that isn’t the only dramatic thing to happen to a St. George woman that weekend. There is, of course, Nan. She is still reeling from the news of her life being a lie, and when she tries to talk about it, Jinny tells her she has to keep it a secret lest they’ll be ruined, and Conchita, well, Conchita is ticked off at Nan for missing her child’s birth, and even though Nan is clearly distraught, can’t take a moment out of her day to maybe ask her best friend what’s going on with her. It turns out the only person who really sees Nan is, did you guess it — Guy Thwarte. Yes! This man pops up again! The two share yet a third swoony interaction, this time much deeper. Guy talks about his late mother and, eventually, Nan reveals the truth about her parentage. She believes Guy is the one person in the world who won’t run away from her when he knows the truth.

And then Guy runs away. It is a little more complicated than him just being disgusted by Nan being illegitimate. What Nan doesn’t know is that Guy is being forced by his father to marry someone rich. It’s the whole reason he started pursuing Nan … until he actually fell for her. If he tells his father she’s illegitimate, he’ll be very displeased. You want to hate Guy for doing this to Nan, but you can see how tortured he is about the whole thing. It doesn’t take long, just a few hours, and Guy says screw it. He really loves Nan and he races back to Runnymede to tell her — but those few hours of hesitation turn out to be life-changing.

Because someone else is lurking around English hedges at every turn: Theo shows up at Runnymede! Theo! And he wants to talk to Nan before everyone else finds out because he wants to propose to her before she knows who he really is. He wants to know that she loves Theo and not the duke. Hurt by Guy and swept up in a very swoony speech, Nan says “yes.”

Now, it doesn’t take long for Nan to remember that a duke probably can’t marry someone of illegitimate birth, and if Theo were to find out, it would ruin everything. As Jinny — excuse me, she’s Lady Seadown now because those two ding-dongs eloped — reminds her sister, Theo never has to know because no one else knows. But Jinny actually knows nothing. Because you know who else knows? Guy. That’s who.

Now, you may be like, okay, sure, but when will Guy Thwarte ever be able to let a duke know the truth about who he’s marrying? Oh, guys. Guys! Guy is Theo’s childhood best friend! Because of course he is. Remember when Mrs. Testvalley said that thing about England being small? She did not lie, not one little bit.

So, while things are seemingly going great as Nan & Co. arrive at Tintagel Castle for the duke’s big end-of-the-season ball — Theo remains quite lovely, he and Nan rub paint all over each other’s faces but like, in a sensual way, and his mom is formidable but takes a liking to Nan as well — she has this added stress, wondering if Guy will out her. And he wants to. He really wants to. Whether out of loyalty to his friend — it would be a huge scandal and they both know it — or jealousy that he can’t have Nan or a little bit of both, he acts as if he’s going to tell Theo. But then Guy sees them dancing at the ball, and they’re both happy and he knows Nan would truly make a great duchess and, yes, there is that little thing of the fact that he loves her and would never want to hurt her. He assures her that he’ll never tell anyone her secret. He hopes this will allow them to be friends again, but Nan still can’t get over the fact that he ran away at Runnymede.

So, she fully and officially turns to Theo. Back on the beach, in the early morning after the ball, she tells him that, yes, unequivocally, knowing everything about him and what a life with him might entail, she will marry him. They kiss on the beach before she tells him that she needs to go back to New York and see her mother before there’s any kind of wedding, and this man, this sweet man, wants to go with her. He wants to be near her. He wants to know who she really is. Now, obviously that’s more stressful a phrasing than Theo intends it to be, but that is a drama for another day.

Nan’s going to have a lot of drama to contend with once she makes it back to New York, since most of her pals are wrapped up in something scandalous too. Mabel and Honoria do share that kiss — in the rain no less! Plus, after Jinny throws Conchita under the bus in order to please her maniac husband and become the perfect daughter-in-law, Conchi decides she is over trying to please these people. At the ball, she calls them out for being blatantly racist and then runs off into the rainy night. Richard follows her and tells her he loves her. Screw his family — he wants them to go back to New York and be able to breathe again. While Conchita and Richard will be returning to New York on good terms, Nan finally calls Conchi out for being selfish and making everything — even a ball that was basically thrown in Nan’s honor — about her without ever once asking about Nan.

And if that’s not enough built-in stress for this return to the motherland: Moments after Nan officially accepts Theo’s proposal, Mabel informs her that Guy may have run off at Runnymede, but he most definitely came back the next day. So maybe that door isn’t as closed as Nan thought.

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