Everybody hates Clem on a table-setting Andor
In "Aldhani," the show's momentum stalls a little under the weight of so many new characters
TV Reviews Clem
It’s now apparent that Andor’s first three episodes served together as something of a prologue to the main event, with the thrust of the narrative getting well underway this week. It’s slow going, but in a galaxy overstuffed with winking nods and increasingly gratuitous cameos, Andor’s intimate and deliberate structure may well be what you’ve been missing from Disney+’s Star Wars offerings so far.
We begin, somewhat ironically, in Hyperdrive. Luthen has smuggled Cassian off Ferrix and offers him a choice: get paid a hell of a lot of cash to complete a risky mission, or get dropped off on the nearest rock planet and take his chances. Cassian at first opts for the former, but we (and Luthen) know better. Cassian claims he wants nothing to do with the uprising against the Empire bubbling up across the galaxy. “[It’s] better to live. Better to eat, sleep, do what you want!” he tells Luthen. From what we know, Andor’s been pretty intent on keeping his head down ever since he left Kenari. Not the noblest of choices but remember: He’s got a sickly robot and adoptive mother (both sadly missed this week) to take care of. Luthen’s unmoved. “No matter what you tell me or tell yourself,” he growls, “you’ll ultimately die fighting these bastards. Wouldn’t you rather give it all at once for something real?” It may be the inspiring kick up the ass Cassian needs, or it may be the payday, but he ultimately relents and joins a rebel mission years in the making.
Andor does a lot of impressive work this week, and we’ll get to that, but there’s still a fundamental disconnect between what we see in the character of Cassian Andor, and what we’re told. We’ve seen no fire behind Diego Luna’s eyes yet (and we know he’s capable of that), and once again it’s up to a supporting character to tell him (and us) what he is and what he wants. He’s a long way from the cocksure rebel we meet in Rogue One, but you can still have an immature, searching character without them being quite so uninterestingly passive. I hope it’s a temporary problem, but throwing your leading man undercover when we still don’t really know who he is without a cover is a frustrating choice.
It’s a relief, then, that the main plot coming into focus is expansive and compelling. Dropped off on the charmingly rustic planet of Aldhani under the assumed name “Clem” (his adoptive father’s name), he’s embedded in a group of rebels lead by Vel (Faye Marsay) who, rather than risk her group’s ire by bringing on a mercenary at the eleventh hour, pretends Clem was in her plans all along. I’m not sure if anyone’s buying it, but we also get a hint of a spy within the tight-knit group’s ranks.
We get a slew of character introductions this week—none more important than Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), a powerful Senator and crucial part of the Rebel Alliance whose canonical appearances go all the way from the early Clone Wars to 1983's Episode VI. She meets Luthen, wearing a wig(!) at his antiques shop(!!) ostensibly to get a gift for her husband but in actual fact, as soon as Luthen’s assistant steers Mothma’s shady driver to peruse some old coins, collaborates with Luthen on their ongoing grand scheme to take down the Empire. O’Reilly has been excellent as the steely but passionate politician since her very first appearance, and it’s great to have her back in the mix not just as a totem of the rebellion, but a character in her own right. We get a snippet of her home life once she returns from her meeting with Luthen, finding her husband preparing for a dinner with a high-ranking governor. The relationship reveals itself as strained within seconds, Mothma feeling suffocated by her day job and the small talk she’ll have to make with her peers as the Empire runs rampant across the Galaxy. “Must everything be boring and sad?” her husband whines. Presumably he’s one of those guys who would rather not get political, but Mothma knows there’s nothing political about the urgent threat of the Empire.
Elsewhere on Coruscant, an Imperial task force convenes and go-getter Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) is told, in no uncertain terms, to end her obsession with Ferrix and that pesky Starpath unit. She sees a pattern in the recent robberies and civil unrest but her superior, Major Partagaz (Game Of Thrones’ Anton Lesser!) doesn’t want to hear it. It doesn’t help that her colleague, Lieutenant Blevin (Ben Smith, a.k.a. Doc Brown) refuses to lend a hand. I’m not sure how much sympathy we should be reserving for a hard-working Empire cop, but Meero’s righteous frustration will only build from here, I imagine.
Back on Aldhani, the plan is revealed. In three days the group will go undercover as Imperial officers and steal “the quarterly payroll of an entire Imperial sector.” Andor immediately questions the likelihood of getting away in a freight ship with TIE Fighters on their tail, but they’ve got it covered: Turns out a celestial event that happens once every three years is coming up, and they can use the “billions’’ of meteorites as cover. Whether or not the plan works remains to be seen but one thing’s for sure: They better show us this damn sky spectacle.
Stray observations
- Syril Karn’s still around! He’s been stripped of his authority and has to move back in with his mom, who slaps and then hugs him on sight, which is exactly what I also want to do to him. Is a collision course with fellow true believer Meero on the cards?
- An excellent TIE Fighter jump-scare reminds us all of the Empire’s threat, and just how cool the sound design is for those ships. That’s the sound of death, and there’s no Luke Skywalker around to shoot them out of the sky like a video game. One or two will be enough to wipe Vel’s crew out in seconds.
- Luthen gives Cassian a treasured heirloom as a down-payment. If I’m not mistaken, that there’s a Kyber Crystal: the power source of every Lightsaber.
- Aldhani makes for a great Star Wars planet, ably set in the Scottish Highlands. It all feels very earthy and real until we walk past a pen inhabited by four-horned sheep and it’s like, Oh right, this is an alien world.
- In addition to Maarva and Bee, Bix is also missed this episode. I hope the folks on Ferrix are holding up, and that we see them next week.
108 Comments
Andor and/or Clem.
One weird thing I’ve noticed is that the episodes tend to not be structured at all as individual episodes. The scenes play out until a full episode’s run time has been reached, and then it just ends regardless of how well the current scene works as an episode ending. Luckily, everything about the show is so great that I don’t mind at all.
Tony Gilroy called it a ‘ten hour movie’, which is shorthand for someone who does not know how to structure the show for TV, with suitable climaxes to episodes. If it was bingeable, this would not be so much as a problem, but we’re experiencing it as a weekly event.
I listened to an interview with the showrunner, Tony Gilroy, and he mentioned the show is kinda segmented in three-episode chunks. He also mentioned the transition from screenwriting (which is very tied to page counts and finite runtimes, unlike streaming tv) allowing him to loosen up some, but he still kept the movie mindset. Which makes sense; the first three episodes felt like a single story climaxing with them getting off-planet. It seems like the low score for this week’s episode might be due to misaligned expectations; this is just the beginning of another three-episode arc, hence the frontloaded introductions and lack of “momentum.”
I suspected all this, and it makes perfect sense why the first three episodes premiered at the same time. They feel very much like a movie in their own right. Which is one of it’s strengths honestly, if also a little odd for TV. It feels closer to Netflix style binge formatting, as opposed to say, Mandalorian’s weekly adventure affair.
He also mentioned the transition from screenwriting (which is very tied to page counts and finite runtimes, unlike streaming tv) allowing him to loosen up someThat’s interesting, I’d have thought the opposite. Even in the streaming era, it seems to me that shows still tend to fit into approximately half hour or hour long blocks.
Many shows not made by the streaming services themselves are still made with sale and/or resale to more traditional TV outlets in mind which is why the episodes are still somewhere around 20-25 or 45-50 minutes long.
Some of the BBC’s most internationally marketable shows have been 45-50 minutes long (for example, Doctor Who) for a long time even though they don’t need to leave space for ads in their broadcast hour.
When you consider broadcast tv held writers to a strict 21-minute or 42-minute block, and now streaming dramas will turn in a 66-minute episode followed by a 38-minute episode; or that we just saw Stranger Things turn in a season with 45-minute, 90-minute, and 120-minute episodes; it’s a wide gulf.
This might have worked better as a all-the-same-day release binge a la Netflix. I’m struggling to keep up with it this way.
I’m struggling with “I would’ve watched all twelve episodes if they’d been released together but four in two weeks is too much,” but I agree that dropping all three at once helped me cruise through the single storyline.Multiple podcasts I listen to have praised the recent movie Confess, Fletch; and they mainly cite the idea that they’d love four or five of them, released a la Colombo. Maybe they could’ve done something similar with Andor and released a chunk of episodes every month or so.
Clone wars the series also really leaned into narrative pods. If you look at the written/directed by for this season, there are definite pairs of writer/directors that recur, so you’re probably looking at chunks of 2-3 episodes with some interstitial episodes built in as either breaks or reflective moments.
Though even with the Clone Wars arcs, each episode still had its own clear structure, while here the first three episodes literally feel like a movie cut into three roughly equal sections, and apparently that’s going to continue. And I again have to stress, I’m NOT saying this is a bad thing.
On the contrary I’m saying it’s a bad thing. I can’t sit threw it. When I want TV I want TV when I was a film I want a film. I was just saying to my parents last night “fucking Sandman was walls of exposition, Rings of Power is dense, Andor is dense now too” like are people spending just waaaay larger chunks of the day watching TV now. I have a job and school…. I don’t have like 3 hours at a time to sit in these worlds and watch minutia of their everyday life.
I hated the Snyder Cuts run time so if this is gonna be like that experience, no.
I just need…. something to happen per episode if I’m gonna sit for 70 minutes out of my day.
I think it is a bad thing, or at least, it’s a disruptive thing. Episodic formats (whether serialized or not) give you a natural rise-fall-climax-conclusion structure to work with; having it just end like that is disturbing. I would personally be watching these eps 3 at a time if not for my lame-ass family.
Yeah but Clone Wars usually had a self-contained ‘B’ story within those pods that had a message or allegorical life lesson.Most new series today play out like one, long 8-10 hour movie with only a singular story arc and while the story itself may be compelling, generally the characters themselves don’t really hold my interest enough to make it worthwhile, i.e. House of the Dragon or Rings of Power.
My biggest pet peeve with the current TV landscape/peak TV/prestige TV/the rise of streamers is the loss of the episode as a work of art in and of itself.While some shows do manage to give individual episodes their own internal structure and character even while being part of a serialized whole (BB/BCS did it well, as did Mad Men and the Sopranos), so often heavily serialized shows just randomly end episodes at any point in the narrative.So far, this is the show’s only flaw, but it’s one that could have been easily avoided with just a little editing.Why not end episode 1 with Timm reading the “wanted” message about Cassian? Ends the episode on a nice cliffhanger. Or have episode 2 end with a shot of the Corporate forces landing on Ferrix and fanning out. Again, to give the episode a sense of finality, while still setting up the next one and ending on a moment of tension and anticipation.Gilroy should have done better in this regard.That said, the rest of the show is friggin’ aces, so it’s ultimately a minor complaint.
They like to move scenes between episodes too. An episode directed by, say, Michelle MacLaren (just picking a “Prestige Show” director name out of a hat) might actually have a scene in it shot by Tony Gilroy because it moved off his episode and into hers – for whatever editing reason. But you’re right, it kind of homogenizes everything. You could further argue that since Peak TV plateaued – over the last decade or so – and since the top 50 TV directors work on everyone else’s shows, there is a sameness to it all.But you’re also right that this show has got me hooked. It’s like Star Wars on the BBC – in a good way. It’s got that high frame-rate digital feel that bothered people with The Hobbit, but that mellowed with time and some tweaking in subsequent use.
That and, while the DGA would have you strung up for saying so, TV directors, even high profile ones like Maclaren, aren’t really that important in the grand scheme. Certainly she’s one of the greats, but most TV shows have a “house style” that, once established, is never truly deviated from.TV is, of course, a writers’ medium and the directors aren’t there to put their individual stamp on the show, but rather service someone else’s vision and be consistent with what’s come before.
My family is good friends with [semi-famous film/TV director]; maybe 20 years ago I asked him about working in the industry (back when I was still young and had hopes and dreams) and he confirmed what you said: as a TV director, you’re just there to keep things moving, not be the creative force. Shows expect you to show up prepared, be professional, and not fuck around too much with what the writers intended.Obviously there are going to be exceptions, especially limited series that are conceived as a singular creative work (that is split into episodes) and all have the same director; in cases like that the writer is definitely going to be closely working with the director well before shooting ever starts. But those are still the exception, and weren’t even a thing when I was having the aforementioned conversation.
Yup. Thanks for sharing. As you point out, many current limited series do have a single director and, in those cases, those directors have much more creative involvement. But it’s still infrequent.
This was my big issue with the show. I guess I’m just really conditioned to act breaks and stuff. That episode one was just solid exposition made me shut it off.
Really enjoying Andor, it’s worlds better than any of the other Disney+ Star Wars shows because it actually feels like a real series instead of a cartoon with real life actors.
Yes! Let’s applaud quality when we get it.
I enjoyed The Mandalorian, especially the first season, but that’s a great description: a live-action cartoon. A Star Wars show that feels like prestige TV is a whole other thing and I can’t get enough of it.
The Mandalorian isn’t terrible, per se, but I always thought it was pretty mediocre and was deeply unambitious with its storytelling, crafting exceedingly simplistic stories with barely-there characterizations.This show is already so staggeringly superior on every level that Favreau should honestly feel embarrassed.
In defense of Mandalorian, I think it’s mean to highlight the “fun stuff” side of the Star Wars universe. The focus of Andor is to tell a more grown-up style of storytelling, with far less emphasis on the “toy” aspects of Star Wars. I’m glad for this, because these Star Wars series shouldn’t all feel the same.
You can have better “fun” stuff. “The Mandalorian” is like eating a plate full of frosting, utterly without substance. But it’s like Costco brand frosting, not even very good.
“The Mandalorian isn’t terrible” Oh man, I’m getting whiplash from your back-pedaling!“ Favreau should honestly feel embarrassed.” There you are! Even when you’re trying to pretend that you didn’t say every episode of Mando S1 was terrible, you can’t help but trash the show.
I’ve been rapt with every episode, kind of surprised how refreshingly non-fan servicy it is.
It’s got shitloads of fan service, it’s just for a weird subset of fans. References to Ryloth, the Kuat Drive Yards, and the Rakatan Infinite Empire in just this episode.
Also, the Ghorman shipping lane issue that Mon Mothma references will later lead to a massacre that causes her to leave the Senate, as revealed in Rebels.
Rebels screwed up Mon Mothma’s timeline. It’s heavily implied in Rogue One that she’s still a sitting senator, but Rebels has her quitting much sooner.
I hope this means KOTOR is canon again
Yeah but I think it’s a good kind of fan service where if you know you know, but otherwise it’s unimportant and spoken without any gravitas. There’s no musical cues or pausing for the audience to understand that this is a thing they should recognize. It comes off much more like just world building rather than fan service.
I liked how Luthen mentions fighting on Mimban, which is the same muddy hellhole that Han ended up in Solo after joining the Imperial Army. So apparently Cassian was there too (as a cook!).
But it’s been nice that they’re just fun background things and not crucial to the plot. I honestly had no idea how much of that stuff in the store was established lore or entirely new made-up artifacts.
There were so many fleeting references in episode 4 (whereas the first 3 barely had any) that I was frankly a little surprised and I know most of them went over even my geeky head.But, unlike so much of the fan service from Abrams or Favreau, they didn’t draw attention to themselves and deliberately poke you in the ribs with an annoying smirk. Heck, they needed to mention a few planets in the course of their conversations, so making a few of them quick shout-outs hurts nothing.
I loved the tiny mention of increasing security due to the ramp-up of construction on Scariff.
lol, when Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard) referenced the Rakatan, I was like… how on earth does that character know about them? Then it turns out his cover is an ancient antiquities dealer! Argh, show, let me pick some nits! 😉
I mean you can still say that necklace looks pretty damn good for being at least 40,000 years old, and that only if it was built in like the last century of the Infinite Empire.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see the people on Ferrix for a good long while. The life of a spy/saboteur/assassin/thief isn’t going to leave a lot of downtime for you to go back to the home where you’re already wanted for what is now multiple murders, and none of those characters really seem like they have much in the way of plot heft by themselves. As for the reviewer’s complaint about him not being particularly well defined yet…. that’s sort of the point? So far the only thing we know about him has been that he’s been looking for his sister, and he seems to have an aimless and sort of shitty life outside of that goal. I imagine over the course of the 5 years the show will cover we’ll see a man who believes in nothing and no one outside of himself become the man willing to die for an idea, and willing to do unspeakable things in order to bring it closer to fruition.
Ferrix was such an interesting, fleshed-out place with great characters like Bix, Marva, B2 etc. that I’m sure going to miss them. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw them again.Unless the show has Cassian loop back to rescue his friends/family once the Imperial boot comes down on all their necks. Which would be at least party his fault anyway.
Considering some of them are on the poster for the series, I have to imagine they’ll return.
Saw Gerrera is on the poster too, and I wouldn’t expect Forrest Whittaker on the show for more than a couple episodes
Well, maybe. But they were already in a significant chunk of the show at this point already, so it’s not like the posters would be lying.
Yeah, and we also saw Bix and those other two guys saying they were going to “get out of here”.
Ferrix can be seen under Imperial occupation during the climax, so I’m sure we’ll return to the planet after this 3-block arc ends.
The thing is tho…. didn’t we see that transition in Rogue One? Like he starts out that film as a shitty low life. If they try to pull that here it’ll be a manufactured retcon.
I wouldn’t say he’s a shitty low life in Rogue One. He’s already an officer in the Alliance, and his dedication to their cause is so absolute he’ll kill an informer and be ready to assassinate Galen Erso in service of the rebellion. So he very clearly believes in something, it’s just not really aspirational
I really like the idea that in contrast to our Hearts of Gold™ heroes from the OT, the Rebellion also had a significant coterie of dirty-work types who are absolutely necessary but somewhat less morally pure. It’s one thing to kill stormtroopers (literal faceless terror minions) or even Imperial officers (who know damn well what the Empire is doing). It’s quite another to kill some low-level functionary with a wife and kids who’s just doing his job, but has access to something you need to get in order to steal/blow up whatever your real target is. Han or Luke would never kill someone like that, but Cassian would.
When Marvel was doing the Star Wars comics after the first film came out, there was a story called “The Day After The Death Star” (or something like that) where Luke is on some minor mission and gets attacked by a Stormtrooper. He manages to defeat him in physical combat, and just as he’s about to kill him by crushing him with a rock, he sees that his helmet has fallen off and that there’s an actual person inside. He doesn’t say that he always thought Stormtroopers were robots, but he realizes that Stormtroopers, his enemy, are actual people too, so he doesn’t kill him.
I hope after this they let tony gilroy out of disney jail so he can make a real movie again!!
They’re just normal, plain, old Hebridean sheep!
I’m a born and raised Scot and didn’t know this so thank you! I hope every episode discussion of Andor includes at least one Scottish Fact™
I wonder if this Space Scotland with its Space Highlands and Space Sheep is where those Space Scotsmen from eps 1-3 come from?
An they’re being kept by rebels with normal, plain old AK-47 assault rifles. As great as production on this series has been, that was an odd place to cut corners.
I don’t think that was cut corner; either the series is specifically making a statement about the technology level this current band of rebels can muster (old slugthrowers, not blasters or other more exotic weaponry) or the blasters the rebels are wielding are being used by the show to intentionally connect the viewer to real-life symbolism of insurgency.
The AK-47’s seemed out of place because they’re a really recognizable real-life weapon. Have there ever been bullets in Star Wars? Or do you think if we ever see them firing they will shoot lasers?
What’s weird is that Star Wars has been adapting recognizable weapons since the beginning, but they’ve always been modified to make them feel like they belong to that universe. Han Solo’s blaster was famously made from a Mauser C96 pistol, much of which is quite apparent, but it’s still changed enough to make it seem like something unique to Star Wars. I don’t know why they wouldn’t have done that here – the props could still have obvious real-world DNA without looking like actual Kalashnikovs.
Star Wars EU stories had examples of typical firearms with bullets, but I can’t think of any examples of those showing up in any live-action media.
Beat me to it!
It’s funny that I am really, really enjoying the mundane day-to-day of the Star Wars universe as depicted in Andor. Like, the boarding announcements at the Coruscant port, the Imperial mid-level staff meetings (“Can’t we do these by holo??”), the delegation of Imperial authority to the Corporate Security forces and then the infuriated cleanup of CorpSec’s blundering with it, the drab elevator leading to the drab walkway up to the door of a drab condo in what, in the prequels, was supposedly a gleaming, techy Galactic Capitol, etc.Not a word about The Force or Jedi or Skywalkers or even Darth Vader. It’s almost Lower Decks-y in a way and I am full-on digging it.
It’s goes so far to demonstrate this is a real world and with real stakes, not just a playground for the Skywalkers et al. to knock around in, everyone else’s lives be damned
Along similar lines; I know some people felt like it was a pointless scene but, I really enjoyed the propulsion salesman on the bus in episode 2. I feel like we rarely get to meet this sort of “middle class” of citizen in Star Wars, people who presumably exist and are even doing kind of okay, even in a tumultuous time. Spending even a little time with them kind of just makes the world feel a bit more lived in and convincing.
I’d always wondered for example, what kind of person is living in a decently nice place like Cloud City? That sort of guy fits the bill.
[yes I know I’m a month behind, we’re just now catching up and just watched this episode tonight]
I’m absolutely down with fleshing out the galaxy of Star Wars in this way. People have been crowing for literally decades about how the production design of the OT gave those movies a real lived-in feel, not just shiny fancy space stuff but some place people actually live. But then the stories in those movies (and every other live-action Star Wars product to date) has always been about Big Damn Heroes (half of whom are space wizards) doing Amazing Heroic Stuff, and it’s made clear that there was a missing half to the “lived-in” feel: the notion that the galaxy is populated by normal people too, who are the ones who do things like drive space buses and work in factories and bland offices and have to deal with quarterly reports and annoying co-workers.I’m confident at this point that we’ll make it to the end of this season, if not the entire series, without ever seeing a Jedi, a lightsaber, or the Force. And I’ll be damn glad.
One of the (many) bits I really liked in my favourite Star Wars story (Knights of the Old Republic 2), was when you get kind of chewed out for being a Jedi by just some random everyday guy.To him, Jedi and Sith were all the same, it doesn’t matter to him who rules the Galaxy, what does matter to him is when people like him or his family are drafted into wars or affected by wars when all they’re trying to do is get on with their lives.This show has a similar kind of vibe to that and I dig that kind of thing a lot.
Ahsoka had the same revelation in Clone Wars.
Maybe I’m just projecting nostalgia, but I got a real kick out of the Ugly 70’s Futurism look of the Imperial settings.
Reminded me a little of the Disney Contemporary Hotel.
We all joked about TPM with “who wants to watch trade bureaucracy disputes and senate debates?”. Now we’re all hooked on a show featuring mundane Imperial bureaucracy
Perhaps because space office politics plays out more acceptably in a TV series format than as a storyline for a movie. Also, the writing and especially the acting is much, much better in Andor than the Prequels. And, it’s the Empire — not the boring Republic.
The difference to me is that everyman mundanity is far more interesting than priggish and word-salading politician mundanity.
It’s like that extended flight attendant scene in 2001. Kubrick showing that in the 21st Century, space travel wasn’t extraordinary.Now where is my flying car?
I love that scene.
I like how they are referencing the Alliance’s financial difficulties. I mean, $$ is basically the backbone of any insurgency.
Right?? I’ve always wondered how on earth they were able to afford all of those X-Wings.
Now I want a tshirt in an Imperial font that says, “This meeting could have been a holo.”
This episode had the first 1/2 of a heist film feel to it. Not liking the tone shift.
I’m not sure how much sympathy we should be reserving for a hard-working Empire cop, but Meero’s righteous frustration will only build from here, I imagine.The thing is, I didn’t really see her as all that sort of “hard-working and honest cop” archetype. Even when you set aside the whole “intelligence agent for a fascist dictatorship” aspect.She struck me more as trying to gain political points and get attention and notice. That while Blevin was being a smarmy asshole, he had correctly pegged her as seeking out more attention and promotion.It doesn’t help that we know she’s wrong about her suspicions, that it was an opportunistic theft, as the Major theorizes, and not a rebel operation. She’s seen playing games with trying to get the files by sending the subordinate. And she’s chasing around this specific lead instead of doing the paperwork that, while probably pretty uninteresting, is still going to be a core part of her job?I think its safe to, at the very least, consider that she’s pursuing this lead because she sees it as her ticket to a more prominent spot in the organization, not out of any actual desire to protect the Empire…
Until her last scene, I just assumed she was a rebel agent trying to get access to the files without drawing attention to herself (hence sending her subordinate first). But then it seemed like she was genuinely upset by her dressing down so I guess she’s just really ambitious?
hearing the plan being laid out was sooooo refreshing, and even more so hearing it will revolve around an epic, only-in-a-galaxy-far-far-away planetary event with a short time frame! Book of Boba Fett was full of plans that were completely asinine or completely withheld from us so we just sort of watched as things happened without any stakes of knowing what could go wrong, and Obi-Wan had 3 or so rescue and escape plans that were basically the same (Kenobi goes in quietly to a dangerous place, hopes to find Leia (and does), then hopes to find a way out of the dangerous place (and does)). In both cases, the plans/rescues/escapes were all incredibly predictable and did not really use the setting or environment (there had to be a more creative way to get Leia out of that Imperial base than just… hiding her in Kenobi’s coat!) or any fantasy-sci-fi-star-wars element! It is just nice to know there’s a plan, and an added bonus that it sounds awesome (hopefully it delivers)
We’ve seen no fire behind Diego Luna’s eyes yet (and we know he’s capable of that), and once again it’s up to a supporting character to tell him (and us) what he is and what he wants.I think they are just checking off the “refuse the call” box on the Monomyth clipboard.
I’m just blown away by how much better Andor is (so far) than anything else that’s come out under the Star Wars universe in the past…. 40 years! Forget the Mandalorian. In terms of quality of acting, production, and writing, Andor is first rate. Every cast member, even the most disposable seat-filling extra, seems spot on in tone and delivery. The story is rich and complex, actually requiring some attention. What I don’t understand is the A/V reviewer’s low grade. Let’s applaud quality when we get.
“Aldhani makes for a great Star Wars planet, ably set in the Scottish Highlands. It all feels very earthy and real until we walk past a pen inhabited by four-horned sheep and it’s like, Oh right, this is an alien world.”*sigh*You mean this?That’s a Hebridean sheep, wee man.Now that the bloggers been ignored, allow me to tell you a wee bit about that odd wee sheep. The Hebridean is a pretty ancient breed of sheep – they’re believed to have been around since at least the Iron Age and were once so rare that the only Hebridean sheep once could only be found on Uist (a part of the archipelago that forms the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles, Uist being a cluster of six islands that are commonly referred to as North Uist and South Uist. Also home to some of the most spectacular beaches to be found anywhere in Europe) and, I can assure you, very, very real. The breed has thrived since the last Hebridean sheep were relocated from Uist to Cumbria, where they were bred and marketed as ornamental sheep. And they are very nosy and surprisingly bitey for sheep.Another wee Scotland-link in this episode which I loved (and no doubt got a few paper-Scots hearts a-beating like they were frothing along to Outlander) was the inference to Clearances on Aldhani. Putting history to one side – in case you’re wondering – the shots of the glens (or valleys if you’re basic) and the generally mountainous landscape? That’s almost untouched by CGI (the last time I looked, Scotland only has the one moon). That is Highland Perthshire, one of the places in Scotland that’s often overlooked by tourist scum but was genuinely and deeply impacted by the Clearances. And the CGI dam shown in the schematic? Oh boy you’re in for a treat if they go inside the very-real hydroelectric dam that’s the target. That is Cruachan (you could see a glimpse of Ben Cruachan at one point during the hissy-fit/meeting in the woods and yes, those woods are also very real. That was a remnant of the Caledonian Forest). Cruachan is, well, it’s a power-station hidden inside a mountain that generates power from a pumped-storage reservoir hidden almost from sight behind one of Scotland’s most impressive – and least sung-about – industrial landmarks. It was built between 1959 and 1965 and is one of only four pumped-storage hydro-electric power stations in the UK. It was built at around the same time as the massive Breadalbane hydro-electric scheme (which it’s not part of but a sister project to) over in central and northern Perthshire and which more interlopers, I mean tourists, should go and visit rather than wank around with stone circles hoping to find a Scotsman to frot themselves against. And it looks impressively alien – more so than the sheep.Why do I think they’ll be going inside? Because the way into the dam is literally at, erm, sea-level and below sea-level, via the access tunnel next to the rather unassuming visitor’s centre that sits on the shores of Loch Awe (yes, there’s a loch in Scotland called Loch Awe and yes, it is awesome. Especially when you get to see the ospreys terrorising the trout) The only other way up and out of the dam that I know is by access tunnels that are too wee to fly even a fat budgie through. PS – that’s not even the most impressive dam in our hydroelectric schemes. Look up Ben Lawers. It’s a shame they didn’t film there – the landscape around Lawers is even more alien than Cruachan (but it lacks the convenient underground power station, heh).
I’m a month late, but this is an awesomely informative comment. I’ve only watched up through this episode so far, but I too hope they use that dam as a shooting location.
“Luthen has smuggled Cassian off Ferrix and offers him a choice: get paid a hell of a lot of cash to complete a risky mission, or get dropped off on the nearest rock planet and take his chances. Cassian at first opts for the former”Er, no. He actually opts for the latter at first and needs to be convinced to choose the former. Though I get why you made such an error, typically when listing out conflicting choices in this manner the go-to method is to list the less-desirable (at least for the person presenting the options) choice first.
In response to the article title, I leave this…
I went with “Yes, I can hear you Clem Cass-Andor!”
I think this was my favourite episode so far, different strokes for different folks I s’pose.But the Mon Mothma stuff on Coruscant was great, the Imperial Officers running Sectors stuff was great, admittedly Clem’s awkward intro to a new group was less great, but I don’t mind a bit of narrative setup work every now and then, and the other two story areas this episode were top notch for me (unlike the “Andor’s mysterious past” stuff of the first 3 episodes, that story area never quite engaged me much).
I agree that Cassian has been pretty passive so far, but it’s clear that’s going to be his major character arc for the season. He literally screams at a character, “Tell me what to do!” in the first episode’s opening minutes. It’s basically his defining characteristic at this point: aimless, selfish grifter and the point of the show will be watching him grow into something more.
Favourite episode so far. Love all the ISB scenes and the general focus on administration and relationships. It doesn’t feel like “star wars” at all; kind of like a cross btw blade runner and a revolutionary war docu-series …
Am I hearing random things, or is Luthen’s bun-haired antique shop hand named Leia? Nobody’s talking about it.Edit: Claire, not Leia. I’m hearing things.
“… offers him a choice: get paid a hell of a lot of cash to complete a risky mission, or get dropped off on the nearest rock planet and take his chances. Cassian at first opts for the former…”Cassian at first opts for the *latter*.
4 horned sheep? We’ve plenty of those just roaming around the highlands.
kind of disappointing that the heist crew is all humans – they couldn’t have stuck one cool looking alien in there? even rogue one had the 6-armed guyjust a minor gripe, overall a good episode altho its unclear to me how the young naive corporate security guy is going to re-enter the storyline.Also i think this show has the most “leftenants” since Sleepy Hollow
Is the Empire of this era supposed to be human first? If so an all human heist crew makes more sense.
The Empire is famously anti-alien. If you’re trying to infiltrate an Empire facility, when the Empire was at its height, bringing aliens along isn’t the best idea.
Really? I never knew that. I actually really like how that mirrors the Nazis etc.
Originally the Empire was white British dudes but that won’t play with today’s audiences so we’ve been seeing Black and female Imperial officers & stormtroopers. “Andor” did obliquely reference the anti-female bias in the scene between the major and Dedra about her being held to a higher standard than her peers. Kind of takes away from the Nazi allegory to have non-white Imperial officers but I’m not going to get my knickers all in a big twist over it. The best part of “Obi-Wan” was Moses Ingram as Inquisitor Reva
Anyone else crave some Italian Beef sandwiches this episode?
If I’m not mistaken, that there’s a Kyber Crystal
Luthen literally says it’s a Kyber crystal when he hands it over.
That kyber crystal is a massive Easter Egg related to the Knights of the Old Republic game lore. Super deep cut. The best kind of Easter Egg, IMO.
… get paid a hell of a lot of cash to complete a risky mission, or get dropped off on the nearest rock planet and take his chances. Cassian at first opts for the former…You mean “latter”.
You just know some kinda shit is gonna go down when The Waif is running the show
That crystal is a Kyber crystal. Luthen says so when he gives it to Cassian. And it’s also gotta be a Chekov crystal considering the show took special care to show Cassian taking it off and putting it in his pocket.
I hate it when people complain about not having enough episodes in a season, then complain that the story is moving along too slow.
I like the fact that they are taking their time to flesh out everything. More intriguing that way.
No mention of Cassian shaving off his beard?Suddenly he looks like Cassian’s much younger brother.