I need to first point out that I am NOT a regular viewer of this series. My wife loves it and I occasionally sit in as she watches. So why am I reviewing this part episode? Well, it was very sloppy in its geography and did an incredibly poor job trying to hide it--so bad that it irritated the life out of me.
The show begins with a fresh body being discovered holding a 300 year-old finger bone. It seems that it MIGHT be the bone belonging to a finger of a man killed to hide Blackbeard's treasure. As an aside, I am a history teacher and know quite a bit about pirates--and it's commonly assumed they buried their treasure--when in reality they usually spent it on whores, booze and a jolly good time. Actual proof that they buried it is difficult to substantiate. This didn't bother me too much. But what DID bother me tremendously was placing the episode on Assateague Island--a place I have visited many times. NONE of the details about the place are right. The National Park is located on the Virginia portion of the barrier island and it is a barren place with wild horses, a huge red lighthouse and absolutely NOT A SINGLE palm tree! There is no tiny square lighthouse or buildings on the place--it is a very naturalistic place with just a few roads, dunes marshland. Why didn't they just make up the name of a place and not even mention its exact location (heck, it looks more like the west coast of California or could be Georgia or Florida)? Sloppy...very, very sloppy...and yet MANY people who live around there or vacationed there will easily see it is NOT Assateague. This is even worse than the episode of "The FBI" where you see a mountain range where it is supposed to be 'just outside of Chicago'!
The show begins with a fresh body being discovered holding a 300 year-old finger bone. It seems that it MIGHT be the bone belonging to a finger of a man killed to hide Blackbeard's treasure. As an aside, I am a history teacher and know quite a bit about pirates--and it's commonly assumed they buried their treasure--when in reality they usually spent it on whores, booze and a jolly good time. Actual proof that they buried it is difficult to substantiate. This didn't bother me too much. But what DID bother me tremendously was placing the episode on Assateague Island--a place I have visited many times. NONE of the details about the place are right. The National Park is located on the Virginia portion of the barrier island and it is a barren place with wild horses, a huge red lighthouse and absolutely NOT A SINGLE palm tree! There is no tiny square lighthouse or buildings on the place--it is a very naturalistic place with just a few roads, dunes marshland. Why didn't they just make up the name of a place and not even mention its exact location (heck, it looks more like the west coast of California or could be Georgia or Florida)? Sloppy...very, very sloppy...and yet MANY people who live around there or vacationed there will easily see it is NOT Assateague. This is even worse than the episode of "The FBI" where you see a mountain range where it is supposed to be 'just outside of Chicago'!