Pirate Master: Episode 9

Pirate Master lives on online, and it's a shame that it went off the air just as soon as it got good.

Until this point, a mutiny had to be approved by the captain's two officers -- highly unlikely since the most of the captains gave their officers an extra cut of the gold.

Starting tonight, however, the role of officer was eliminated. That meant that the captain had to make all decisions regarding treasure and Black Spots on his or her own, without the protection of two officers if those decisions were unpopular.

As fate would have it, Captain Azmyth's team lost the challenge, and he lost his captaincy. The winning team of Christa, Jay, Ben, and Kendra elected Christa the new captain.

Christa decided to split the $50,000 evenly with her team, but she let Jay talk her into an evil plan. When handing out the gold, Christa only gave Kendra $2500, with the promise that she'd bid $10,000 for the Royal Pardon, which was in Kendra's possession.

If Christa stuck with Jay's plan to the letter, she wouldn't actually bid on the pardon but would keep the $10,000 for herself and hope that Kendra would be voted off.

Unfortunately, Christa put too tempting a target alongside Kendra at Pirates Court -- Azmyth. The vote for his elimination was unanimous, so Christa was lucky she ignored Jay and bought the pardon from Kendra for the full $10,000.

It's a shame that Mark Burnett and the other producers of Pirate Master didn't realize earlier that they had to make mutiny a realistic option for the crew. Instead, Joe Don and Azmyth held on to the captain's position for too long, making the experience boring for the cast and the audience.

Another change that might have helped the show would've been to change the format of the treasure hunts. Instead of a group of people loping along through the jungle, the hunts could've been a modified relay -- the group starts together but sheds people at each check point (4-3-2-1) and the individual to find the treasure becomes captain.

That kind of format would force the randomly selected teams to think strategically. For example, Azmyth may be the fastest person on his team, but his teammates might not want him to be captain. Do you risk the treasure just to avoid having a captain you don't like?

Next week, Jay and Ben cook up exactly that kind of strategy in order to keep Christa in power.