‘The Buccaneers’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: “Every Single Piece of My Heart”

The sixth episode of a propulsive second season of The Buccaneers is a point of no return for the series, as everything that Nan, Guy, and Jinny have worked and sacrificed for comes crashing down. Mirroring a scene from earlier in the season when Guy and Nan have a happy reunion in the Italian market, “Every Single Piece of My Heart” begins with Guy spotting a strolling James in town and immediately clocking the imminent danger of his presence. When Guy returns home, he’s not breaking news: Jinny gently tells him that they’ve been seeing each other and that she believes James has softened. Guy tries to talk sense into her, but it’s only when it clicks that James’s guaranteed anger if he doesn’t get his way means he hasn’t changed at all that she realizes the error of her ways. She rushes to get Freddie only to find her worst nightmare come true. James has kidnapped his son. 

Jinny turns to her only hope, the person who always knows what to do: Nan. The Duchess immediately has a master plan—publish a tell-all in the newspaper and control the narrative, a foolproof strategy that she has leaned on all season. Nan reminds her sister that in the eyes of the law, she is a criminal for stealing James’s baby, but invites the editor of The Times to Tintagel thinking that her story will sway public opinion. Jinny opens up about the abuse she’s endured, and thankfully, the journalist deems her story worth publishing. 

The headline “Lady Seadown: Victim not Villain” is enough to piss off James, who is hiding out at his Aunt Emily’s house with his mom and Freddie. He’s still living in a fantasy world and sincerely believes that Jinny’s friends turned her against him, and not his own actions, and it’s becoming clear how he turned out this way. His mother is an enabler, in cahoots with him about his plan to lure Jinny back to England, knowing she’ll do anything for Freddie—just like Lady Brightlingsea will do anything for her son. 

Nan’s other plan is fast-tracking the bill in parliament that would exonerate Jinny for running away with Freddie, so she saddles up to the Home Secretary at the opera to convince him to speed up the voting in exchange for her endorsement for his future Prime Minister run. While Nan, the girls, and James are at the opera, Lady Brightlingsea pays a visit to Jinny at home to tell her how much James is suffering without her. She tries telling Jinny that he’s a fragile boy and she should put this whole episode behind them, but Jinny hears only one thing: James is at the opera and he is the only one who knows where Freddie is. 

It’s easy to understand Jinny’s motivation, but her arrival at the opera is like watching a car crash in slow motion. She finds James in a box seat and repeatedly begs him to give her son back. And James, being the evil man he is, senses an opportunity to turn the tides back in his favor. He cries for help publicly and she slaps him, which guides the entire opera house into viewing Jinny as the agitator in the relationship. Downstairs, Jinny is arrested before Nan is able to intervene. 

Unfortunately, Jinny isn’t whisked off to jail; her fate is far more sinister than that. She finds herself in a mental hospital. When James arrives the following day, he tells her that she’s unwell, that he’s taking care of her treatment, and that her institutionalization is not about Freddie. But he is the only one measuring her “wellness,” pulling the strings behind the scenes both physically and emotionally. Nan and Guy both try to see her but are turned away; later, James laments that Jinny hasn’t had any visitors.

Jinny initially goes on a hunger strike and trashes her room in anger, but she soon realizes that her only way out of this hell is to comply. She strokes his ego and thanks him for getting her the help she needs, and eventually he deems her well enough to return home with him. Jinny even reluctantly takes his hand in the carriage ride, hoping that this will earn her some points towards seeing her son again. But when she’s reunited with Freddie, it’s brief—James has a maid take the baby from her hands almost immediately under the cruel guise of helping her recover.

That is another breaking point for Jinny, and she sets the record straight. Over dinner, she tells him that she’ll be his wife and let the world believe she’s unfit, but she doesn’t/can’t/won’t love him anymore. James retaliates in the only way he knows how: with violence. He forcibly removes her from the table and locks her in a room. 

Only now do the alarm bells begin going off for Lady Brightlingsea, who enlists her other son Richard to fix the problem because he’s the only one who has ever been able to influence James. Richard and his sister Honoria concoct a plan to visit with James, distracting him long enough to rescue both Jinny and Freddie. At first, the plan seems to be working. James gets chummy with Richard by complaining about their respective American wives, and Richard plays along to keep James on his side and talking. While the boys chat (and frankly, say rude things about Honoria’s single “spinster” status), their sister slips out to “make tea” a.k.a. steal away upstairs to begin the mission. 

Through a locked door, Jinny pleads with Honoria to save Freddie first. She does, and is somehow able to get the baby to the carriage out front undetected and she leaves clutching Freddie in her arms. But her long absence triggers James and he goes searching for Honoria. When he’s out of earshot, Richard kicks down the door to free Jinny, but James pulls out a gun. As Richard wrestles with him for it, he tells Jinny to run. Just the brothers left, James turns the gun on himself as though he’s about to commit suicide. Jinny hears the gunshot from across the lawn, and when she comes back to see the damage, it’s Richard’s body that is lying in a pool of blood. James is sitting on the stairs looking shocked, and Jinny doesn’t waste any time running away for good. She arrives in Tintagel barefoot, and in a wordless scene, tells Conchita about her husband’s fate. 

Phew! “Every Single Piece of My Heart” is a heavy, tragic, and triggering episode, so if you need to take a long walk after watching that, I don’t blame you. (I personally sat on my couch with my jaw open and no one to talk to about what I had just witnessed, so you’re probably doing better than me.) 

The Buccaneers’ other plots took a backseat to Jinny and James’s story, though there were a few meaningful moments: Theo and Guy see each other for the first time since the wedding, and their reunion is sweet; Hector is upset about Lizzy’s decision to walk away from their wedding, but comes to Tintagel to support Nan and their parliamentary bill; and Guy apologizes to Nan about guilting her about leaving Italy for Jinny’s sake, and she tells him she still loves him and that she’s grateful for his support. (He doesn’t mention the fact that he drunkenly married his neighbor…but then again, he probably doesn’t know he did that yet.) Next week, we’ll surely get Richard’s funeral and a better read on Conchita’s reaction. For better or worse, the five buccaneers will be reunited once again. 

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Paste Magazine, Teen Vogue, Vulture and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.