The Mandalorian takes most of the week off as we try to find some sympathy for the Empire
Our heroes get a little break as The Mandalorian checks in on one of its old villains
TV Reviews Mandalorian
It’s natural to categorize the main story arcs in The Mandalorian as role-playing game-style “quests,” since that’s the format they tend to follow—here’s a new goal, here’s what you need to do and where to go to complete that goal, now go do it—but if that’s what we’ve been doing for all this time, then what the heck was this episode? Was Din Djarin getting a taste of his own medicine after hijacking The Book Of Boba Fett, and next year we’re all going to be excited for The Book Of Doctor Pershing? That seems unlikely, given what happens to him here, but I guess part of my confusion with this episode is that we don’t really know what happens to him here…or why.
But before we’re reunited with the great Dr. Pershing, glasses-wearer, The Mandalorian opens right back up at the end of last week’s episode. Bo-Katan has pulled Din from the Living Waters beneath the mines of the Civic Center, and she’s still rattled from whatever she saw down in the depths. She even asks Din if he saw anything, but he says no, just the pit that he fell into. (Bo-Katan helpfully explains that Din isn’t comically clumsy, he actually fell into a pit that was cracked open when the Empire bombed the planet.)
As they fly back to Bo-Katan’s house, the trio is immediately attacked by a group of TIE Interceptors, which they note are cooler and stronger than regular TIEs (as any old Star Wars fan should know). Din does a Captain America air drop out of Bo-Katan’s ship so he can back to his fighter, and they all enjoy a cool-if-serviceable dogfight (Bo doing that crazy 180 spin and then dropping out of the sky for a second was rad and very Star Wars), but it was all a diversion so a bunch of mudscuffin’ TIE Bombers could blow up Bo-Katan’s castle. Hey, it’s a good thing she didn’t have any possessions or furniture to speak of, save for that one reception droid. She and Din fly off to some secret place, and that’s the end of their story for almost the entire rest of the episode.
Cut to Coruscant, former capital world of the Empire and capital world of the Republic before that. These days it seems to be the capital world of the New Republic, the Good and Righteous galactic government that took over after the fall of the Empire, and Moff Gideon’s old cloning expert Dr. Pershing is giving a TED Talk about how cloning is cool and can be used to treat illnesses.
You’d think people would be at least a little opposed to that argument, as it’s only been a few decades since an army of clones gave Palpatine the power to build his Empire, but I really like that the glitterati of Coruscant seem to have zero awareness of the distinction between the Republic, the Empire, and the New Republic. And why should they? Their lives seem unchanged from every other time we’ve seen the citizens of this planet; there’s just a different symbol on the skyscraper-length banners throughout the city. Subtlety in war stories is overrated.
I will say that it feels a little trite after Andor got so much great stuff out of the political machinations on Coruscant, but the two shows have completely different goals, so it’s not super fair to compare them like that. Either way, it’s a nice gradual reveal that—despite getting weirdly fawned over after his speech—Pershing then has to go live in a designated apartment block for ex-Imperials, and when he gets there he’s not even allowed to use his name. He and his neighbors are all just numbers, sitting around a space-picnic table with cool stackable jars of space-tequila, but Pershing is stunned to realize that he recognizes one of them as the Comms Officer from Moff Gideon’s ship.
It’s not especially subtle, but I did like how quietly odd this scene was, with this group of old Imperials who are all totally comfortable referring to themselves by number and being forced to wear badges that indicate they’re part of the Amnesty program. They all seem vaguely brainwashed, but surely that can’t be the case. This is the New Republic! The Good Guys! Leia Organa holds some position of authority, I assume!
The Comms Officer gives her name later as Elia Kane, and the two initially bond over fond memories of the “travel biscuits” that were included in Imperial rations. Pershing liked the yellow ones; she liked the red ones. (I’m realizing now that that could be some real silly Star Wars foreshadowing, because we all know what red means in this universe.) The two start hanging out together, and at a festival full of street magicians, glowing ice cream pops, and the one actual rock on the whole planet, Elia tries to convince Pershing that he should continue his cloning research. After all, it could do good for the New Republic, right? It doesn’t have to be about killing a 50-year-old baby and transplanting his tiny green organs into Giancarlo Esposito, right?
After a dispiriting day at his menial New Republic job, where Pershing realizes that all he’s doing is cataloging old Imperial equipment so it can be destroyed. (Not to bring up the other show, but this is the second time we’ve seen office life on Coruscant, and Andor’s was much bleaker.) Pershing asks his parole officer droid if he can continue his research, just for fun, and the droid tells him no, but he decides to team up with Elia and steal some lab equipment so he can do it anyway.
The two hop on a train, dodge ticket-taker droids, and get off at a dump where old Imperial equipment is being decommissioned. Elia leads Pershing to a derelict Star Destroyer (navigating it all very easily, hmmm), and they find an untouched lab full of equipment. Pershing stocks up just as they hear noises outside of the ship, and they run…right into a trap set by New Republic cops. They pointedly tell just Pershing that he’s under arrest, and Elia casually makes off with his box of loot (again: hmmm).
Pershing is hooked up to a machine that an unnervingly calm Mon Calamari guy insists is a rehabilitation machine, one that will make him feel better and heal his traumatic Empire memories. Pershing knows what it really is, though: a “Mind Flayer,” which is some kind of Imperial torture device that an unnamed old ally of Din Djarin’s first mentioned in a previous episode of this show. One of the New Republic officers takes Pershing’s glasses, a final vicious insult, and they turn on the device and leave Pershing to be brainwashed… except for Elia, who asks to stick around and keep an eye on her friend. Once she’s alone, she seems to jack up the power of the machine, causing Pershing to squirm around and wince in pain, and then she eats one of those yellow biscuits he was so fond of.
This was an interesting mini-story, if that’s what it was, but…is he dead? My assumption is that Elia is working for Gideon still, since one of the other Amnesty guys casually mentioned a rumor that he escaped, but why would she need the equipment to carry on Pershing’s research and not Pershing himself? Unless she used the machine to make him evil, which seems like a terrible thing for the New Republic to have built into it! I assume we’ll find out more later, but until then, it’s totally unclear what the point of any of this was.
Aaaand cut back to Din Djarin and Bo-Katan! This is The Mandalorian, not The Book of Doctor Pershing, and when we return to our actual heroes we see that Din is just taking Bo-Katan to that cave with the other Mandalorians that we saw in the season premiere. They try to give him a hard time, but he shows off his little vial of Living Water, and the Armorer welcomes him back into the fold. She even welcomes Bo-Katan into their fringe cult, seeing as how she also bathed in the waters and also hasn’t removed her helmet since. The rest of the Mandalorians congratulate Din and Bo, and she actually seems kind of touched by it…though it is hard to read expressions through that helmet.
Stray observations
- Shout out to Omid Abtahi, who puts in a nice nervy performance carrying basically the whole episode. I like that he’s especially jumpy around non-humans, which makes sense for a guy who was an Imperial. That’s a good touch, given the organization’s overt racism. Also, he’s one of the few people in the entire Star Wars universe to wear glasses!
- The taxi droid that takes Pershing to his apartment is great. The joke of him spinning his head around so he can chat instead of watching the “road” is funny, but I really like that the camera cuts away while he’s chatting for an establishing shot and then he’s still chatting when we go back to him.
- Permit me this tangent, but the New Republic’s behavior in here reminded me a lot of The Federation in Mobile Suit Gundam—specifically the post-First Gundam stories like 0083 and Zeta Gundam. A military force gets built up to defeat a terrible fascist enemy, and the very second it becomes convenient, they became just as evil as the villains they won a war against. See also: the victor of every war ever, in real life and in fiction. Gundam just explicitly articulates it, and (until now) Star Wars has generally maintained that there are Good Guys and Bad Guys. Even Luthen Rael from Andor is a Good Guy, but the dudes brainwashing Dr. Pershing? That seems a bit harder to argue.
- At a certain point in the episode, one of Pershing’s coworkers says “happy Benduday,” which is the Star Wars name for Friday (“Taungsday,” which Pershing mentions on the train, is Tuesday). The canonical Star Wars days of the week are Primeday (when you can get all the best deals), Centaxday, Taungsday, Zhellday, and Benduday, though Thursday and Saturday have also been referenced by name. That means The Mandalorian premieres on Disney+ every week on Zhellday, and the day after Zhellday is just called Thursday, which may be the best thing I have ever learned about Star Wars.
- Those yellow biscuits look awful.
140 Comments
A military force gets built up to defeat a terrible fascist enemy, and the very second it becomes convenient, they became just as evil as the villains they won a war against. See also: the victor of every war ever, in real life and in fiction. What is this nonsense? *reads byline*right. fuck off, barsanti
^^^ normally writes comments about mario games
“Every war ever” is practically reductio ad absurdum, but there is an old saying that winning the war is harder than winning the peace. I think that’s a more subtle reading of what they are trying to get at.
Not with barsanti
Oops. Winning the peace is harder than winning the war. My bad.
Well, sure. US foreign policy post-WWII was clearly just as bad as Nazi Germany, and US foreign policy post the fall of the Soviet Union was just as bad as Soviet Russia, and the US government after the Civil War was just as bad as the Confederacy. /s
No one in the crowd is booing you, sir. They’re saying “Boo-rsanti! Boo-rsanti!”
Considering the major unresolved thread of the show is why, exactly, the Imperial remnants wanted Grogu, this was 100% about putting that train back on track. And it frankly seems like groundwork to set up the whole Snoke / Palpatine stuff from the sequel trilogy, since it was infamously… uh, underexplained.
Possibly, though this is set about 23 years before TFA.
Had to think for a second to recall that not only were those two episodes of BOBF actually Mandalorian storyline, but that they represent a two year time skip that never gets textually mentioned.
Can’t it be unexplained? I’m still hoping that somehow Grogu is so powerful he changes the timeline and therefore, we just get a new splintered universe where it doesn’t have the baggage of catching up to the sequel series which involves basically resetting all progress made in the original movies, and basically in these shows since Jedis need to go away again and become myth, the Empire, I mean the First Order, has to come into power, and the Resistance needs to…start rebelling.
Of course Grogu can do that. The power of adorbs knows no bounds. He even got Werner Herzog to squee like the audience of a BTS concert. “I have seen it on the set. I’ve seen it on the set. And it’s heartbreaking! It’s heartbreakingly beautiful…It’s phenomenal technological achievement but, beyond the technological achievement, it’s heartbreaking.”
I would like to see the baby.
I used to believe in progress, but here we are fighting Nazis again. True, we took twice as long as did the transition from Empire to First Order, but I look around and think, “Huh, I guess it’s not that implausible that we have the same fight all over again.”
So to two sides of this first my Star Wars nerdom and then just plotting. A raiding party of that size of TIEs would require a Star Destroyer or old Imperial Carrier. While it not need to be an Imperial (the one everyone knows) it would still have to be a Victory or even less likely a Venator. On the carriers they are still just pretty large. Don’t see how those don’t stay off their scopes. But hey maybe the scopes on Mando’s and Katan’s ships aren’t that great. So may be a casual foreshadowing towards a future very powerful enemy. Which my guesses with the trajectory of this show and other live action ones, we will soon be dealing with a blue Grand Admiral returning for the Unknown Regions, or the show will try to explain the star of The First Order. I really hope it is the former. Second was I felt like the Doctor was never going to get away with what he was trying. Then Elia just being left alone with a machine that could destroy his mind. My other thought is the arc on Elia is going to be that she is just ISB (not a comms officer) like Gideon was which ISB are the worst of the worst. Or she actually does believe in the New Republic cause, and thought the Dr. needed his brain destroyed to save the Republic.
I’m way behind on this show, but I’m pretty sure Elia is a double agent.
I think its good and even necessary for the longevity of massive universes like Star Wars to have different flavors and approaches, but this one definitely felt like Favreau got a look at Andor and thought they were stealing his lunch a little
I was going to make a “Chef” joke/reference, but I do agree with you. Also, I think knowing they have at least one more season to work with, season 3 will feel stretched out.
And now we know what Andor would be like if it were made by the same people who did Book of Boba Fett
Mandalorian showrunners after watching Andor.
What a hard episode to rate. Sure 95% of the episode is probably a c+/b- at best, but man that mind flayer scene is easily an A for me. One of the very best scenes in nu-Star Wars, and just nailed how classic Sci-fi could use more surreal elements like they did here with the music and the guy with a fish head to underline just how messed up the situation was.
The music playing was actually a muzak version of Williams’ “Jabba’s Baroque Recital” that you can (kind of) hear when the droids first enter the main chamber of Jabba’s Palace in RotJ.
I hope Max Rebo is getting some kind of space royalties considering yet another one of his workplaces exploded.
and (until now) Star Wars has generally maintained that there are Good Guys and Bad GuysI hate being the “Read the books” guy, but the context is in the movies too. In The Force Awakens, Leia is leading a group called The Resistance, even though the New Republic still exists. What do you think they are resisting?
Yeah it wasn’t clear to me until this episode, that this season is probably Part 1 and next season is Part 2. We’re building to a Mandalore civil war on one side and the formation/introduction to the First Order.
Answer: J.J. Abrams is not a very good writer. In fact he’s a very bad one. That’s why there’s still the Resistance after they won the war and became the government.
From memory (and I can’t recall exactly where I read it) but the explanation was that the New Republic government was against officially going to war with the First Order but sanctioned and funded the Resistance.
Yes they are “resisting” the First Order, not a misguided New Republic government (about which very little was revealed in the sequel trilogy, but maybe there are comics or something). There’s a throwaway line in TFA indicating that the New Republic secretly funds the Resistance while officially being at peace, which Hux uses as justification for firing his big red laser gun.I’m pretty sure this Mando episode was the first time we learned the New Republic does questionable things, like brainwashing former Imperials and making them grovel on stage, or using honeypots to trap potential dissidents, or subjecting prisoners to a mild mind flaying.
I like how the original movie starts with the line, “It is a time of civil war,” and The Force Awakens spends quite a few words backing into the concept of a civil war.
Based on the entirty of the canon — not written by JJ — there’s absolutely a reason for the Resistance. But hey, just shit on JJ Abrams just because.
Man, the world-building in “The Force Awakens” was such total ass. Sigh.
I honestly still don’t understand the First Order as a concept other than “they’re the new bad guys, same as the old bad guys.”
That’s literally all the thought that Abrams & Co put into it. That’s it.
That’s because there was little to no thought put in. Abrams just wanted to change some wording in the script from A New Hope, so developing the reason for The First Order’s existence wasn’t covered since it was never explained where The Empire came from and how they rose to power.
But, the Resistance that Leia is leading is still years away at this point – we’re at about 5ABY, while The Force Awakens is 34ABY and the Bloodline novel (when Leia basically leaves the government to run the Resistance) is 28ABY. At that point, she was just a member of the senate, so I don’t think she had a position of any more power, other than as an advisor to Mon Mothma.
I don’t think anyone involved in the recent trilogy has any idea what The Resistance is resisting.
What do you think they are resisting?Competent storytelling…
“What do you think they are resisting?”The First Order, because the New Republic couldn’t gain control of all the Empire so they did a Northern Ireland while Leia went all Provo.
That seems unlikely, given what happens to him here, but I guess part of my confusion with this episode is that we don’t really know what happens to him here…or why.Oh damn, are you saying that a TV show known for mixing episodic and serialized narratives that is only 3 episodes into its current season didn’t answer all of your questions about the plot and character arcs of this season? That’s so weird, surely no other TV show has ever done that. I swear to god, no one on the internet knows how to do a fucking TV review or even recap anymore.
It really does feel like a lot of TV reviews these days are written as though the show is finished and we’re looking at the final product. Very weird.
Don’t acknowledge recappers. This asshat revealed the character’s final fate in like…. the first paragraph of this.
So just to be clear, your plan was to read the first paragraph or so of this review and then watch the episode? Then come back and finish the review?
It always makes me laugh uncontrollably when I read a comment from someone complaining that they read the recap/review before they watched the episode and are mad that it spoiled the episode for them.
Favreau has been notoriously awful about keeping characters’ motivations opaque in his SW series to date. That’s not “audience members being impatient!!”, that’s just shitty storytelling. Yes, stories unfold over time and not every thing is revealed in minute one. But you actually DO need to clue an audience in as to why characters are doing things and why they matter to them.Sounds like you’re the one who has no clue how TV works.
Exactly. Everything in this episode would have been fine (if a bit boring honestly) if there would have been some sort of stinger at the end. Even something as simple as Elia Kane getting a call and saying, “I have it in my possession and the Dr. has been taken care of” would have been enough to help clear up her intentions and show that she is working for someone.
What are the odds that I find your handle in a thread complaining about stingers in the MCU?
What’s the MCU?
Or….hear me out: you could just try using your brain to figure that out on your own without having it spelled out for you.
Nah, the same writer also wrote “I assume we’ll find out more later, but until then, it’s totally unclear what the point of any of this was.” like it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that the bulk of the episode would eventually be paid off with additional information… I’m fine with critiquing Favreau the storyteller, but this is textbook, contemporary AVClub, “sent someone unqualified for the assignment” shit. I’ve lost count of how many times a review of a show that was in-progress and not even mid-season was criticized because the answers had not all been revealed. I’ve even seen critiques of the common “in media res” technique as confusing or bad storytelling because it wasn’t paid off in hour 2 or 3 of eight or more.
Hey it works for David Lynch, maybe Favreau isn’t executing it well enough.
Just… no. Nobody is asking for the full overarching plot and character arcs to be explained in one episode. Other TV shows that have done that generally haven’t done it this badly. If you’re going to do a mostly standalone episode it still has convey enough information as to why the viewer is even watching it or, like this episode, there’s literally nothing to engage in. There’s no reason to care about these characters within the episode and it doesn’t achieve any connection to the broader narrative within the episode. It’s a bad episode of TV.
I just assumed that she didn’t want anyone who might remember her past around to spill the beans so she entrapped and brain fried someone who might.
“Bo doing that crazy 180 spin and then dropping out of the sky for a second was rad and very Star Wars”
it was very NOT star wars, it was almost her exact maneuver from Battlestar Galactica as Starbuck, it was like her signature move.
(Not to bring up the other show, but this is the second time we’ve seen office life on Coruscant, and Andor’s was much bleaker.)I mean, well, yeah, it’s almost like office work in service of a totalitarian, oppressive regime is going to be at least a little different from office work under a flawed-but-seemingly-earnest democracy. Sure, office work can be soulless and dehumanizing, but fascists see that as a Feature, not a Bug…I’m a bit surprised at the lukewarm response, honestly, because this episode was fantastic for me. It’s almost certainly building up towards something with the Mandalorian’s ongoing arc, but even without that, its nice to get a real sense of what the New Republic… actually is. Some of that worldbuilding that the Disney era’s been so weak at overall, particularly as it relates to the New Republic itself.Taking a bit of time away from Bo and Din’s Bogus Journey to get a real impression of the New Republic, that they’re trying to be good and moral and ethical and optimistic, but the bureaucracy is making things clumsy, and the idealistic outlook is getting abused by bad actors.It’s all well and good to turn swords into plowshares, after all, but they’re going way overboard with it, and it makes sense that a nation like this would eventually get destroyed again.
How did you feel about Andor? Because I think that people might dislike this episode in direct proportion to how much they liked that show. It’s a very different subject matter and look than Mandalorian episodes usually have, and it was definitely The Mandalorian trying to step on Tony Gilroy’s corner, with a lot less success. For me, it was very frustrating to watch a supposedly intelligent guy fall for an obvious ploy from someone who’s continually doing “I’m evil” smirks while she’s leading him into this trap he falls into. Even before Pershing is strapped into the mind flayer, he seems like a pretty simpleminded dude, a wide eyed innocent in a way he wasn’t in his appearances in previous seasons. The plot felt like someone decided to do Andor4Kidz, an 8-year-old’s idea of intrigue. It was fun to see post-RotJ Coruscant, and a bit of worldbuilding with the Amnesty program, but it still hurts to have the protagonist/victim be so stupid.
I loved Andor.And honestly, I find the comparison of this episode to Andor to be a pretty weak, surface-level one. They’re dealing with different subjects, a different situation, different types of characters entirely.Is it just because it’s Star Wars but not a space adventure? Andor is about the multitudes of ways that fascist dictatorships destroy people and ruin all that they touch. This episode was about a former fascist-supporting scientist getting tempted into returning to his old field of study, one that he desperately wanted to prove wasn’t an evil one, that could be used for good, only to get crushed by a well-meaning-but-badly-implemented bureaucracy and the rotten elements still working within it.There’s comparisons you can make between them, but honestly, everyone going “ugh, this is just Mandalorian trying to prove it can be as good as Andor” just comes off to me as people who aren’t willing to let Mandalorian do its own thing and demand it to be another Andor eventually.Andor is fantastic. Mandalorian doesn’t have to be it. Let it not be it.
Andor is fantastic. Mandalorian doesn’t have to be it. Let it not be it.That’s basically my line, and apologies in advance, because this is gonna be a little long. I got D+ to see Andor. I only started Mandalorian after I finished it. I genuinely love The Mandalorian for being a different show, an action-adventure that’s essentially an extension of the animated shows. There’s been a meme going around “Andor ruined Star Wars for me” and I think it’s silly. I love that Andor’s added something new to Star Wars, but I wouldn’t want all of Star Wars to be Andor.That said, the one note of Mandalorian that rang false when I binged S1 and 2 after Andor was some of the treatment of the Empire. There was one episode with Titus Welliver—an actor I usually like—and I hated his performance and that of all the Imperials in that episode. And it occurred to me that it was a lot harder to handle a cartoonishly evil Empire performance after Andor got us to take the Empire and its fascism more seriously than it had been before. Even Moff Gideon’s addition to the story didn’t hit me as hard as it should have (it still hit, because Giancarlo Esposito is an acting god) because the writing for the character was kind of basic.Wanting better than that isn’t wanting The Mandalorian to be Andor. It’s just wanting people to acknowledge when the bar on certain things has been raised. I love the Prowse/Guinness lightsaber duel from A New Hope; when I first saw it as a kid it blew my mind. But if you make a lightsaber fight now, and choreograph it like that fight, it isn’t going to play well, because after that fight the bar was raised over and over again. We now expect better.This episode deals with prisoners (for all the euphemistic talk about the “amnesty” program, Pershing hasn’t yet been granted amnesty—he’s clearly a prisoner on parole, living at a halfway house and not allowed to leave a designated area without permission) in the Star Wars universe, with a side of the bureaucracy/banality of evil in the New Republic. I don’t know if it’s intentional (this had to be in production before Andor aired), but it’s hard not to see those themes and think about Narkina 5 and Syrill’s story in Andor. And if this episode had landed right, that comparison would be intentional and synergistic—it would be good that people were thinking of how the Empire treated prisoners in that other show, and compare the approaches of the Empire and New Republic. Sadly, because Mandalorian is on the “family-friendly” end of the spectrum, Elia’s plot against Pershing plays like pedophilic grooming of a simpleton. She literally plies him with cookies and ice cream, and all but tells him not to tell his parents when he points out that her plan is illegal. This is a weird situation where if it was implied they’d had sex (no need for GoT-style explicitness, just a kiss and maybe Elia helping Pershing straighten his uniform collar the next day would’ve sufficed) it would’ve been more wholesome and logical than what we got. And it’s super-weird that this “family-friendly” approach ends with the implication that Elia lobotomizes Pershing at the end.
I like that the Mandalorian is trying new and different things. I just wish they’d done it better.
It feels very much like the writer’s room for the Mandalorian assigned someone to watch Andor and their take-away was “do some spy shit”. That’s the *writers* not letting the Mandalorian do it’s own thing, not the commenters.
For what a disjointed silly season it has been so far ,an episode of Andor is thrown into the mix?
Glad to see y’all are keeping things updated. (I mean, I didn’t watch the show but I assumed she was long gone…)
Praying that the Dr. Pershing plot isn’t being shoehorned in just to fill in all the ‘yearned-for’ backstory to “Somehow Palpatine Returned…”
Pershing is also going to explain the burning questions around “so what was Snoke’s deal exactly?!”, so there’s that.
If they are going that route, which I think they are, I don’t think it’s fair to judge them for it until the story is complete and we see what they came up with.Clone Wars gets a lot of credit for “making the Prequels better”, so there’s a chance for a similar improvement here.
Doing a CTRL F for mythosaur and getting 0 hits is probably a sign somebody else should be doing the star wars content.
yeah man I gotta hear more about the mythosaur lmfao
As many hits as you’d get by doing CTRL F for mythosaur on the script for this episode.
I would welcome a reworking of Sympathy for the Devil’s lyrics to include Star Wars references, but I don’t have time or energy to do it myself. Woo woo. Woo woo.
I’m humanoid
Fought a battle droid
When the Clone Wars raged
And the tauntauns stank
the very second it becomes convenient, they became just as evil as the villains they won a war against. See also: the victor of every war ever, in real life and in fiction.*rolls eyes*Go figure SnarkHacky doesn’t know his history.Overall, I wasn’t a huge fan of this episode. I still have a few minutes left in it, but I doubt that’s going to change my opinion. I spent the last week watching Last Batch and Jedi Stories, and I’m starting to see a pattern with David Filoni productions that I’m not overly enthused by. Is it him? Favreau? I’m not sure, but if this season continues on the same course, I think I might be done with the show.
I’ve long felt like I’ve been marooned on an island in the Star Wars fandom for not liking the Filoni method of storytelling. For those playing along at home, that’s (1) find something you like that someone else already did, (2) have your own characters repeat it (often while lifting entire lines of dialog verbatim), (3) pull out some universe-breaking contrivance when you write yourself into a corner and (4) drizzle on some deep lore nostalgia to placate the super fans.Filoni gets a lot of leeway for the Clone Wars TV series being comparatively better against the rest of Star Wars for many years (plus his reputation for being George’s chosen one), but I really don’t think his efforts hold up to scrutiny when judged on their own merits.
Fuck off. A story can be redone for a new generation/audience. Not every media is made for you.
We’re not talking about adapting a story to accommodate different cultural sensibilities, bringing different themes/techniques to new eyes or saving something from disappearing on a dying medium.We’re talking Star Wars, boss. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for a smidge (not even as much as a skosh!) more creativity, instead of settling for a property retelling stories that were already told by that same property.
And not every piece of media is good just because you like it, either compared to other media or even previous iterations of the same work.
You don’t have to fuck off. I ain’t that defensive. You do you. But I have a feeling that that sort of nuance is gonna get me told to fuck off too. Oh well.
Filoni is definitely super overrated. Yes, the Clone Wars was generally good, but it’s far from the untouchable masterpiece that most people think it is and had plenty of wonky or dumb elements.And his work on the live-action series has been seriously unimpressive. As has Favreau’s. And their dual insistence on leaning SO hard into Filoni’s lore and characters is continually tiresome and unimaginative.
For years, people have been clamoring for Filoni to be the Star Wars Kevin Feige, but the more we see, the more control he’s given, the less I like Star Wars.I also recently realized that as a Star Wars product, I prefer The Rise of Skywalker to The Mandalorian, simply because the former actually meets the titular expectations of being about a war.
I really hope you know that nobody is forcing you to watch any of these shows.
If only that were true…..
he was good at making very solid B content for actual children (especially at a time where everyone’s expectations were basement-level), but now that push has come to shove it just ain’t it.
A military force gets built up to defeat a terrible fascist enemy, and the very second it becomes convenient, they became just as evil as the villains they won a war against. See also: the victor of every war ever, in real life and in fiction. This is a deeply stupid take.
Is every one of these reviews gonna be about Andor? Gotta decide if I wanna keep going here. I liked the show too, but this is a different show set around 12 years later, so we shouldn’t expect everything to be identical, yeah?
I loved this episode. But then I’m one of those weirdos who always wanted more Dr. Pershing. Plus, I liked getting some insight into the Empire-to-New-Republic transition. The amnesty program sounds interesting. The Reintegration Institute sounds ominous.
It feels like Kane should be part of something bigger involving Moff Gideon, but so far it looks like she’s a masochist who suckered Pershing into a trap so she can secretly torture him. (And give her some biblical naming, while we’re at it.) Which I guess would be an okay little side story, but I have a hard time believing it’s not going to lead up to something later…
She was tasked with handling Pershing by Gideon. They included the clip in the previous scenes at the top of the episode.
That’s what they get for hitting the “skip recap” option
So, nobody comment how Paz Vizla (helmeted) expression when Bo Katan inducted to the Children of the Watch? Remember that Bo Katan was a Death Watch and I don’t think she will be calmly accept that The Armorer has influence on the cult.
I do think that the Clone Wars series made the prequels retroactively better by filling in some plots holes and fleshing out Anakin as a character, so I am ok with The Mandalorian and other series trying to rehabilitate the sequels a bit. It’d be better if they would make Star Wars movies that made sense on their own, but here we are. It could make sense that Snoke was a product of some illicit cloning project to create force sensitive beings. He ended up being strong with the force but physically deformed. It could also make sense that the New Republic is kinda like the old Republic—talks a good game about democracy and human rights but is ineffectual and laced with corruption. That could lead to both the formation of the First Order as an attempt to take back power from a weak democratic regime and the Resistance as an attempt to fight back harder against the First Order than the New Republic is willing or able to do. I just don’t know what this has to do with Din Djarin. He seems wrapped in Mandalorian politics/lore at this point and not at all interested in galactic-level issues. I also still don’t see how to make the Emperor’s return make any damn sense, but you do what you can.
So anyway Kane was told to go eliminate Pershing after he defected, and she carefully set him up to get his brain wiped while making sure any intel he turned over to the New Republic. This was not subtle.
The mandelorian has people fooled in believing the show is any good, nothing happens, week after week, he swims in a pond, visits a castle, this week he jets off to a sand dune while 2 imbeciles are running around a fake city eating wafers, nothing happens, it is the ultimate show about nothing
Bo wearing that mask through the whole episode felt like a preview for the Girl Mando costume for halloween.
I do like that there are interesting female characters on the show, but it all sort of doesn’t matter when you don’t know their inner lives and their existence is to service the story of the male characters.
The Twilek who talks to Elia has stubble. Now that’s just lazy work from makeup.
Or maybe the Twilek was too lazy to shave….?
He had stubble implants. They’re the latest thing in the mid-rim territories.
Well. I kind of liked the episode and thought Barsanti’s take was fine.Then I read the comments and they mind-flayed me to a far more contrarian position.This is the way.
Yeah, this is another instance where post-Lucas Star Wars is (not so subtly) saying that the New Republic basically sucks.Which really irks me. It’s not bad enough that Force Awakens completely obliterates and undoes the victory of all the heroes of the original trilogy out of sheer laziness.But now all of Star Wars seems to be saying, “Well, the New Republic wasn’t even that good, anyway.” Like there was never any point to fighting the war at all. The New Republic is/was either weak and ineffectual or was just as bad as the Empire.Seriously, fuck that bullshit.
The New Republic is also ineffectual and terrible in the original EU. To the point where it is completely defeated and has to team up with the Imperial Remnant and rebrand as a new thing to survive.
Lucas’s prequels said that the Republic immediately before the Empire was ineffectual and the Jedi were moribund. So where’s the inconsistency?
Where did I say it was “inconsistent?”The Republic in the prequels had a thousand (or thousands?) of years to slowly deteriorate, become corrupt, have the Jedi lose their way, etc. But saying that the New Republic sucks basically right out of the gate and isn’t better than the Empire (and especially in the context of the Old Republic also sucking in its final years) is basically saying, “Yeah, nothing matters. Fighting for a better world is useless. Everything will always be awful, why bother? Cyclical fascism is inevitable and democracy can never work, even briefly.”Which, again, fuck that.
“Yeah, nothing matters. Fighting for a better world is useless.
Everything will always be awful, why bother? Cyclical fascism is
inevitable and democracy can never work, even briefly.”
I never got the idea that the New Republic was supposed to be trending fascist, just that they were kind of weak and ineffective (as a lot of post-revolution governments tend to be). If you think “weak and ineffective” isn’t a drastic improvement over “blow up planets just to prove a point”, then I don’t know what to say.
So…every medical personnel and staffer is just gonna up and leave the room while Dr. Pershing undergoes his mind procedure? New Republic sloppy as hell. Maybe things were better under the Empire. At least the trains ran on time
Not sure if this story will go anywhere. I thought the episode was a clear reference to 1984. • Getting lured into a resistance just to be betrayed to the government • Reprogamming to get his mind right
Holy cow, that episode was long as hell. About time.- I’m kind of shocked they just moved on from the Mythosaur. I mean, it’s obviously going to come back and be a thing, but I expected at least like, a mention. I’m not really sure what Bo-Katan’s angle is. Does she not believe she saw it? Is she keeping it a secret so she can tame it and rally Mandalorians with it instead of with the Darksaber? The one thing we lack with all the helmets is facial expressions to clue us on in stuff like this.- That Interceptor battle was cool AF. It’s been too long since we got a good old-fashioned dogfight and canyon flying. Why did Mando waste a torpedo on that first fighter? Efficiency dude, c’mon.- We FINALLY got to see TIE Bombers in not-a-flashback! And they bombed stuff! Spectacular. Sad for Bo though. Speaking of Bo, Mando calls her Bo! That means it’s ok! I’m calling her Bo forever now.- Man, there was just something about seeing Coruscant like that that brought a huge grin to my face. I know we saw it in Andor, but they seemed to go larger and more vibrant in this. One of the coolest places in Star Wars. And we finally got to see Umate in canon! I nerded out a bit. The disassembly yard in The Works was extremely cool.- Was I nuts or did Pershing look quite a bit older than the last time we saw him? He seemed a lot more wrinkled and grey. I wonder if that was intentional because of the “reeducation”. Did I miss his little ear fiddling from his previous appearances? I wasn’t sure what they were supposed to convey.- That bougie old Coruscanti who was like, “Imperial, New Republic, what’s the difference” was annoying as hell.- That taxi was like Checkov’s droid. He was so talkative and we spent so long listening to him spout nonsense that I was sure he would be a spy or deliver a message or something.- The amnesty concept is VERY cool. It’s funny that nothing like it was really covered in the EU besides old Imperial officers defecting or just living somewhere quiet afterward. It struck me that they were subtly trying to say how the Republic is bad for doing it, but I’m not really sure what alternative there would be. Prison? Exile? Anyway, it was nice seeing the New Republic portrayed as actively trying to do good instead of “they’re just a different flavor of bad!”- Speaking of the New Republic, ever since The Force Awakens I cannot get over how dumb the whole “fleet decommission” that Mon Mothma voted for is. I get you don’t want this huge fleet of old Star Destroyers and a bunch of Alliance cruisers hanging about and looking…well, Imperial, but did history teach you nothing?? Spread them around the galaxy as peacekeepers or something! We already know how this ended, though. Interesting to hear about the Coruscant Accords and what they decided to ban, too.- Was Pershing’s new work the same thing Syril was doing in Andor? Looked like the same office.- The little date night between Pershing and Kane was sweet (in the moment). Whatever iridescent popsicles they were eating looked delicious. I thought it was maybe a little on the nose to play the Resistance theme as carnival music in the background while she’s proposing her plan, but it was a nice touch. Very cool rendition also.- That was the slowest ticket-taker droid ever created.- The “it’s a trap” directly in the face of a Mon Calamari and his little head-tilt at the line made me laugh out loud.- I’m so confused about Kane. I thought for the first half of the episode that both Kane and Pershing were faking it and still total Imperials. Then it seemed like Pershing really did have a change of heart since he was talking to himself about wanting to do good. But then Kane set him up, seemingly for the Republic, but actually just to get to turn his mind-wipe up to 11? Is she getting rid of him for Gideon since Pershing actually went good? Who was she sitting with during the lecture? I have so many questions about her.- Once again, I ask, why does The Armorer have a pensieve!? What is it?? Why does the Living Waters light it up?- I loved seeing Bo accepted by the cult. Again, without faces, I couldn’t tell, but it seemed that more than bemused she was actually moved a little bit? I’m curious to see where her character is going with regard to old tradition vs. new.This had BIG Book of Boba Fett energy in terms of slipping in a random episode about other people into Mando’s show. I can’t tell if this was like a backdoor pilot to a New Republic show, getting a ton of exposition about Pershing out of the way, or what. I liked it a lot though either way!
I think that Bo leaving her helmet on when she was back on her ship seemed out of character and was kind of a lazy way to get her back into the cult.
It was dumb and lazy but she was never in this cult, which makes it even dumber and lazier. This Children of the Watch cult, and their ridiculous “never take your helmet off” BS was made up for the show. That was never a tradition of the Mandalorians. She was in Death Watch for a time, which the cult takes their name from, but they didn’t have these absurd rules.
He fortress of solitude just got bombed out so she needs a place to crash. She’s grudgingly putting up with Din’s stoner friends but that doesn’t mean she’s gonna inhale.
“That taxi was like Checkov’s droid. He was so talkative and we spent so long listening to him spout nonsense that I was sure he would be a spy or deliver a message or something.”I thought the purpose of that scene was to show that we weren’t supposed to trust Pershing because he was ignoring that droid and not being polite to it.
I was getting some Operation Paperclip vibes from the New Republic’s amnesty program, but then they didn’t want the scientist to do any of his weird sciencing. Instead they just stuck him in a cube farm doing data entry. But they’re referring to everyone in the program by a number, and seem to have the others so brainwashed that they cheerfully introduce each other by their number. That’s pretty de-humanizing there, New Republic. FN-2187, anyone?(Unless this was the writers’ giving a wink to THX-1138)
Who was the actor who played the first ex-Imperial guy who invites Pershing over for a drink? He looked EXTREMELY familiar but I can’t place him.Anyways, yeah, I find the “New Republic not so different’ angle a little trite, especially because they’re trying to set up a “the call is coming from inside the building” thing with regards to the continued persistence of space fascism. It’s entertaining enough because the cast sell it, but it feels clunky compared to Andor—which is maybe not a totally fair comparison.That said, I do feel we’re going to get a thing of Bo-Katan rallying the Watch to take back Mandalore, but not before they help Din’s buddy Greef on Nevarro deal with those pirates… which is peak D&D quest-giving but maybe not the most compelling serial narrative for TV. Fun stuff but not thrilling.
I got serious Christopher Reeve vibes from him, but I don’t know who he is.
IMDB says he’s Matthew Bellows and he’s had a ton of bit parts and supporting roles.
A military force gets built up to defeat a terrible fascist enemy, and the very second it becomes convenient, they became just as evil as the villains they won a war against.Seriously, what the actual fuck are you talking about? When the New Republic starts building Planet Killers and using it just to interrogate one prisoner, then you can say that they are as bad as the Empire.
Brain-washing? Using machines to change someone’s personality and make them more subservient and agreeable?
Bad? Yes. Should they be doing it? No. Still not the level of building a planet killer and committing genocide with it.
My issue with this, and maybe this is because I was big on the EU books back in the day, is…where is Leia in all this? Luke? Leia, especially, was a big part in the formation of the new government in the EU and I can’t just see her being like “we won the war, I’m done now.”…I also can’t see her being okay with any of the shady things this episode is shows the New Republic is doing….So yeah…I guess I was kinda confused by this whole thing.
IIRC Mon Mothma outsted Leia because she was overly militant.
Interesting. Man, I just wish they would’ve followed closer to the EU. I loved those books as a kid, and though they went off the rails towards the end, for a good long while, they were top tier.
I wondered about Leia but figured it’s a massive galaxy with a massive government so even if she could, she’s not managing every little thing. It might be cool to have a double pop up in the far background of some scene (or even a reference while on Coruscant especially) but half fans would probably lose their minds expecting her to do more and the other half would bitch about daring to mention her at all.
Apparently she’s getting Jedi training from Luke, although that may have already happened since there was no sign of her at Luke’s nascent Jedi school in BoBF.
I thought this episode was ok. I found my attention wandering during the meat of the episode with the imperial rehabilitation efforts (and the intrigue therein), but that is a story that can go some interesting places. We also did not get much about Bo Katan teaming up with Din and friends, but that thread also has possibilities. This felt like a table setting episode, but there are possibilities in what is being teased.The Tie Interceptor battle was fantastic. One of my big disappointments with live action Star Wars TV has been a lack of space fighter dogfighting. But between this and the excellent space battle in Andor, we are getting some good ones now.
Could that subplot have been stuffed into the show more clumsily?
My conundrum – I loved the Mandalorian as a show when it was a sort of 80’s styled adventure of the week format, with a kind of Kung Fu through-story connecting them. But I am wincing at the possibility of the adoption of a super-serialized format. Andor was amazing and utterly unexpected, but Mando shouldn’t – and honestly can’t go that path, can it? Not without ruining what was fun and special about it? I dunno. This season has been OK, only 3 episodes in. I hope they don’t break it by reaching beyond their grasp.
this episode bored and confused children and suburban moms across the country. “where’s baby yoda? this is weird. i want baby yoda back.”
felt like a baby version of andor. i would like to explore that storyline, but it doesnt feel like the atmosphere of the mandalorian fits with what that show could be..
Those Mandalorians really cleaned up that dead monster quickly. They even scrubbed the beach and rocks because there weren’t any blood stains or scorch marks.
They were really hungry.
This is the way.
What else do they have to do?
Episode felt like a giant waste of time.
Important note about Gundam, you have misread that situation. The Federation didn’t start out good and then become evil. It was literally always evil, Zeon became a popular uprising BECAUSE of the economic and social oppression the Federation was doing to all the Space Colonies. It’s just the case that Zeon was also a fascist dictatorship, so neither side was the “good” one. This is what we call “very realistic” political writing.For anyone who wants to argue against this, go watch 08th MS Team again. Or pay attention to literally every Federation soldier who isn’t a friend of White Base.
A military force gets built up to defeat a terrible fascist enemy, and the very second it becomes convenient, they became just as evil as the villains they won a war against. See also: the victor of every war ever, in real life and in fiction. So your grasp of history is as bad as your grasp of… basically everything else.
Did anyone else see this as Star Wars-does-1984? The monocromatic uniforms and buildings and offices, references to “the department”, and the literal plot of 1984 where the protagonist is lured into breaking the rules of a totalitarian government only to end up in a re-education / torture chamber.
Tedious, boring garbage. They’re killing this show for some reason. Their lessons from Book of Boba Fett apparently being “Everyone hated now boring and slow and pointless it all was – Well let’s do it again.” No wonder the ratings are in the shitter.
Yes, I know it’s a Disney-produced serialized, sci-fi that is essentially backfilling and rewriting tangents in the Star Wars universe. But, do the plot holes always have to be so huge?
Is it really that easy for an Amnesty dorm resident to sneak in and out of Coruscant? Especially since they’re former members of an Empire that was hell bent on destroying the New Republic? Seriously, no electronic monitoring? They don’t have a better security system at the train station? (Yes, I know we’re talking about a world in which 5,000 Stroomtroopers together can’t hit a target 10 feet away from them, but come on….)
How was Elia allowed to carry the case and just casually walk away? You’d think something that crucial would be immediately confiscated by the NR guards.
How was Elia (or anyone, really) allowed to remain alone in a room with access to mind flayer controls? (“Can I stay here and watch? He’s a friend.” Sure, the friend you just framed and got hooked up to a brain-frying machine.
Yeah, you stay here alone in front of the voltage knob. K. Thanks. Bye.)
If you are going to complain about plot holes, it would help if you identified some plot holes. “Not explicitly spelling out every obivous detail” is not a plot hole.“Is it really that easy for an Amnesty dorm resident to sneak in and out of Coruscant?”The Amnesty Dorm kids are just the stooges that don’t even rate a minimum security prison. It’s just a half-way house and some probation officers.Fare evasion is a modern-day problem that any viewer is familiar with.Also note that the “easy” snaking out involved jumping from a moving *levitating* train.“How was Elia allowed to carry the case and just casually walk away?”Because the NR guards think she is working for them undercover in the Amnesty Dorm.“How was Elia (or anyone, really) allowed to remain alone in a room with access to mind flayer controls?”Because they think they know exactly what’s going on because they are the smartest guys in the room.
Did you miss the part where Elia was a spy for the New Republic? She was the one that got Pershing out of the dorms, snuck him onto the train, and into the Star Destroyer? If she hadn’t been there not only would have have never have chose to do any of that, but he wouldn’t have been able to because he would have been immediately caught. It was a setup – the two of them were never in any danger of being caught.That is why she was allowed to be left alone in that control room at the end. She is a trusted agent that is willing to go undercover to root out other former-Imperials who may “turn back to the dark side” when prompted.
That was the absolute best dogfight in all of Star Wars! Serviceable my ass.
I liked the Pershing story. Taken on its own, it was well done. It would make a great episode … of a Tales of the New Republic type show. I still have no idea what it is doing in The Mandalorian though.I kept waiting for something to tie this story into the Mando storyline. Even just a final line saying “Everything is going according to plan, Moff Gideon”. But nothing. I am worried that this is never going to referenced/followed up on for the rest of the season.At least when Mando showed up in BOBF you knew it was related to that season’s plot because Fett had already said that he was going to get Mando’s help. So even though Mando’s story in that episode was about him and not Fett, you knew it was going to lead back to Fett’s plot, which it did. I have *no* idea what this Pershing story has to do with Mando, or if it does at all, which is not a good thing.I got big Syril Karn energy from Pershing here. Andor had not been released when this episode was made, but it really feels like Favreau/Feloni were seeing what Andor was doing and thought “Man, that is good stuff. We should do an episode like that.”Still hoping that this will be revealed to matter to this season. I wonder if this would have worked better if, like Syril Karn’s story in Andor, we had gotten 5-10 minutes of Pershing in the first 3 episodes as a B-plot, instead of getting all of it in this episode and bringing the Mando plot to a temporary halt.
C+?!?!?! What?I mean, sure, the Tarantion-esqe jump into a side-story was abrupt but I really liked it once it locked into the groove.No mention of the “It’s A Trap!” reference? Cracked me up nicely in the midst of an intense scene.