There’s a show on Netflix called Kulipari. It’s not particularly amazing–it’s a frog vs. scorpions tale but in the scope of a Game of Thrones/The Secret of N.I.M.H.-type epic–but one thing each season has is a two-three episode arc that involves an escape plan that goes horribly, hilariously wrong. They’re the best part of the cartoon, showing how insanely hard and crazy escaping from militaristic captivity really is, along side the typical melodrama of surprises and ironic twists, revelations, and betrayals. I bring all that up because “Dangerous Debt” also functions around a failed escape, but brings little of the narrative surprises in story or character that would make this failure really interesting or revelatory. Some characters open up, and there are some *way* outside-the-plot intrigue that occurs, but ultimately this episode runs in a complete circle, with little forward progression in terms of story or characters.
It’s a bit frustrating because “Dangerous Debt” feels like it’s about to go to some meaningful places. The beginning of the episode has Trace and Rafa finally recount how they ended up struggling in the deeper, poorer parts of Corsucant and why they trust no one–Jedi in particular–except for themselves. During some kind of chase that happened between Jedi and an escaped criminal (more on this in the Stray Observations), an out of control ship the Jedi tried to stop ended up crashing into a wall, which was the Martez’s home. The event killed both their parents. And, perhaps most cruel and dismissive of all, a Jedi visited them, told them she made the right call, said “May the Force be with you,” then left. No physical, financial, mental, or emotional assistance–the sisters were left to fend for themselves. It’s a pretty direct indictment of the Jedi, and one that I honestly haven’t thought about. There’s been plenty of criticisms of the Jedi’s actions before–their high-class status, their lack of any regulation, their high-and-mighty ideas of knowledge and control of the Force–but I never quite thought of how their go-it-alone tendency to action not only leaves damage in its wake, but has no body or protocol to relieve the victims of that damage.
That I want to learn more about. Instead, we get a kind of run-of-the-mill escape sequence that’s fun enough, with ebbs and flows of action and entertainment. The initial escape is kind of clever–after a brutal torture sequence involving Rafa, Trace fakes a fainting spell only to then fight/blast her way out of captivity. It’s a bit silly–Trace yells weirdly when running–but it leads to a lot of good, if not great, action. All the while, Ahsoka helps along with her Force abilities: unlocking a prison door while Rafa is unconscious, helping Trace make a crazy jump, wrecking a bunch of Pike fools in a tower. Still, I can’t help but feel like Ahsoka is just… along for this ride. She, Trace, and Rafa are intriguing and amusing enough together as a group, and they have a weird frenemy accord among them that works for the purposes of the story. But I’m still struggling to grasp Ahsoka’s whole mindset on everything: not just on the situation at hand, but something deeper inside her–her perspective, her feelings, her thoughts. She’s just… here.
There’s some discussion over this, mostly how Ahsoka is going along because she sees these Martez sisters as needing help, and when she sees people needing help, she helps them. “It’s just who she is.” This is the essence of her response when Rafa asks her what she is getting out of all of this. But after everything Ahsoka has been through, her experiences, her trials, her struggles, her removal from that Jedi life, it’s hard to buy that “being helpful” is all there is to her (not that it isn’t valid in and of itself, but it would be nice to draw more out of her). Rafa and Trace took two different approaches from their late mother. Trace embraced her optimism as a ideal, an legacy to follow; Rafa sees it as a fool’s errand, a meaningless perspective in the face of a brutal, random universe. Maybe that’s why the entire escape leads nowhere. Maybe the two sisters need to strike a balance, and Ahsoka’s “purpose” is to try and make that balance happen. Yet without getting a better sense of Ahoska’s head throughout all this, and the episode generally running through generic, shrug-worthy action beats, “Dangerous Debt” ends up as confined as the characters.
Stray observations
- I know that these kinds of shows could never kill off its main characters, but still, the fact that this Pike Syndicate didn’t even kill one of the three women here was straining belief. They had the three in their custody many, many times (they even torture Rafa!), yet they don’t significantly harm or kill one of them, especially after hearing how vicious this gang is. The episode tries to lampshade this by having the crew claiming to know where the spice is, and their deaths would therefore never reveal that location, but that seems weak. All three of them claiming to know the location is a liability that this group could easily exploit.
- I tried to see if I could find the episode/event that corresponds to the story that the Martez sisters tell, regarding what happened to their parents, but… I couldn’t find it? The red-eyed alien is Cad Bane (who I hope we see again), Ziro is a Hutt and in some of the earlier episodes of the show (who was killed in the third season), and there is an episode that involves Bane breaking Ziro out of prison in the first season. Yet that specific incident the sisters regale, as far as I can tell, never occurred on screen? Not to say it didn’t happen, but it would have been cool to see that continuity/connection, and provided their tale even more dramatic weight. Unless, of course, I missed it.
- There’s a brief moment where Ahsoka and Rafa talk, and the former brings up how Trace looks up to Rafa too much to grasp how much danger she puts Trace into. Rafa sees the danger as just part of life, the deals one make to just survive, but Ahsoka pegs it as a viewpoint that Trace isn’t ready for. This is a life for Rafa, not Trace. Ahsoka hints that this is some raw, low-key, toxic manipulation, but she nor the episode really go further. (Rafa admits at the end that this was a bad mission to take, but it isn’t clear if it’s just the mission or the overall shady lifestyle that she regrets.)
- The mysterious hooded group seem to be Mandalorians. They reference meeting Ahsoka on a planet called Carlac, which was home to a group of more violent, terroristic Mandalorians called the Death Watch. A lot happened with this group; we’ll see what the next episode does with them before I expand upon it.
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Was that Bo-Katan? I figured she’d be in The Siege of Mandalore but I’m so excited to see her show up before, presumably to bridge the gap between this arc and the next.
it was, Katee Sackhoff was in the credits!
It was, voiced by Katee Sackhoff according to the credits.
And according to the credits, one of the others is Ursa Wren, Sabine’s mother.
My “Hey, wait a moment!” moment was when the pike dude got cut in half by the elevator. Blood and guts should have been cascading down on our heros.But of course kids show, so no – but it was still a “Wahuh?!?” for me.
maybe pikes don’t have blood? I dunno, just spitballing here
Ummm, I guess they could be like the worms in MIB: slice them in half and they just have to crawl over to the other half and they can stitch themselves up again. /s
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I thought Trace had a huge divot in the back of her head in the pic above, then I realized it was Rafa’s hair.Also, is this review early? Did they move it up from Friday nights?
They post the new episodes at zero dark thirty AM, at least eastern time. Sometime between “up late Thursday” and “awake too early Friday”. Its been like that all season, have to avoid the internet to avoid spoilers. Mandalorian was the same way, I opened Tumblr to a gif of Baby Yoda reaching out of his little hover crib at like 9am on launch day.
Weird, I just thought Friday meant Friday night, never looked during the day, and I guess I never caught the review so early.
As the other poster says, it comes out early on Friday, plus there’s the possibility it’s based a screener copy. Some reviewers get earlier access so they can write their reviews ahead of time. Dunno if AV Club is important enough to merit screeners for this series, but I think some of the writers here have mentioned having them before for other shows.
You didn’t miss it. Hostage Crisis, the season one closer, ends with an iris out on Cad Bane and his crew speeding across Coruscant with Ziro, but just after he detonates the bomb he planted to kill his hostages. Anakin saves them, but since he no longer has his hostages it makes sense that the Jedi would make one last try to stop him before he gets off the planet.It’s clear that the Jedi Rafa describes is Luminara Unduli. So Bane sets her up for a trolley problem as a distraction, and Luminara follows her instincts and goes for the lower body count, only to create two fresh orphans. It doesn’t shock me that she comes off as callous, if she was more loving and compassionate to the common folk I don’t think her padawan would have bombed the Jedi temple over basically that exact thing. Which must have been running through Ahsoka’s head hearing the story, she’d know who that was, and she’s probably not going to ever get the chance to discuss such things with Luminara OR Barris.
Came to say exactly this. I was pretty satisfied with that background.
Exactly, I knew from the story they were talking about Cad Bane’s escape for Ziro at the end of season one, and it’s an escape method we’ve seen used multiple times in the show: create a trolley problem for the pursuer, and make the getaway in the confusion. It also is something Ahsoka is familiar with as she was part of that story. That’s why she gave the heartfelt “sorry” to her after hearing it, she was directly involved in the incident…and the resultant deaths. Remember, this is immediately after Ahsoka left the Jedi Temple, so she’s still conflicted on where exactly the Jedi fall, as a group, and how she plays a part in it. I imagine her whole ‘helping is who she is’, is part of her training and experience kicking in, out of reflex. She’s kind of going through all this on auto-pilot, which makes sense what happened to her, and her perspective is being further altered by the reactions to the Jedi of the people she’s with. I don’t think Ahsoka is being that active, because she’s still trying to parse exactly what the Jedi mean to her and what she’s meant to do now.BTW, that tower fight scene was awesome, and by no means boilerplate action beats.
“The mysterious hooded group seem to be Mandalorians.”
Seem to be? It was Bo-Katan and Ursa Wren. They were even listed in the credits.
This episode is in D territory. The episodes ends where it started, which is actually where the previous episode ended. No forward momentum. Season 7 is turning into a true disappointment.
Season 6 – What we had ready!
Season 7 – What we had left!
“Season 7 is turning into a true disappointment.”This comment did not age well.
Speaking of Kulipari, did you know they’re planning around three spin-offs? I thought the show was neat, but unpopular, so I’m surprised it actually is getting more material. It’s supposed to premiere around 2020-2021.
The Star Wars crime syndicate members are the Pykes (with a y). Pikes (with an i) are PKE fraternity brothers, which is a different kind of crime syndicate. Pykes run spice; Pikes haze and rape.
Seriously, every episode of this season has sucked.
I was also surprised that one of the sisters wasn’t killed or critically injured.The Pikes are supposed to be ruthless yet they are basically stand-ins for Stormtroopers here, bumbling idiots who can’t shoot the broadside of a barn when it comes to stopping someone on foot, yet can hit the engine of a moving speeder to keep them from escaping.
I was also surprised that one of the sisters wasn’t killed or critically injured.The Pikes are supposed to be ruthless yet they are basically stand-ins for Stormtroopers here, bumbling idiots who can’t shoot the broadside of a barn, yet can hit the engine of a moving speeder to keep them from escaping.
Tbh the Jedi do come off as high class assholes lmao
Not gonna deny, my first thought when I hit the end of this episode was “Well, that was the most drawn-out conversation ever.” The action sequences were fun enough, but they could have had a tense conversation in that prison cell without leaving and very little would change but the runtime. This also feels like the sort of thing someone wrote as prose with a lot of asides into Ahsoka’s train of thought that wouldn’t translate to the screen that well.
Watching this, I was wondering “Who are these mysterious figures watching Ahsoka?”Then the end credits listed Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan – so much for that mystery.At least some episodes of Rebels had certain unknown voices listed as “X as themself” in the end credits so it didn’t give away the voice actor speaking (until the character’s identity was revealed in a later episode).