So, I’ve been trying to square the idea that The Bad Batch is from Omega’s perspective with the fact that there are a lot of things we, the audience, see happening, but are never addressed, because they’re things with which Omega never interacts. And of course it’s not literally from Omega’s perspective. There are sequences and two entire episodes she isn’t there there to see. Something that could be interesting, though, is if this show is from Omega’s perspective in the sense that things can happen without Omega, but they’re never pulled together or unpacked until it’s time for her to do so.
So, for example: We get a scene in “Faster” between Millegi and Cid in which Millegi calls Cid on her old habits of throwing people under the bus (“Hustlers like us never change.”) Cid is actually offended by this and replies with, “I might surprise you.”
There are two important things about this moment. One, we’re given a little bit of insight into Cid and the fact that she seems to want to have changed—she doesn’t want to be the person who stabs people in the back. Two, this moment is here entirely for the benefit of the audience. None of our main characters are here to witness this, so it’s not something that leads them to accept the idea that she’s changed only to be shocked when she betrays them later on. The thing they hear from Millegi is, “Watch your backs.” None of them was ever given a reason to doubt that—not even Omega, who seems to like Cid well enough and will go to bat for her, but still knows she’s not that trustworthy.
But we, the audience, are given a reason to doubt that Cid will betray them. A small reason, in that scene between her and Millegi, but a reason still. What plays out, however, is what everyone expected; Cid betrays the batch at the worst possible moment, surprising absolutely no one. Millegi’s, “Watch your backs,” plays, even though it’s not something we needed to hint that Cid would sell them out; Cid’s, “I might surprise you,” the hint that’s there just for the audience, never comes full circle.
Except…it’s not just empty, either. We do get a few hints that Cid doesn’t really want to betray the batch, that she may have been trying to get them to stay away, and several fairly big indications that she hates herself for what she’s done while the betrayal is playing out. (She looks less than proud, let’s say, when she takes the money from Hemlock, and blurting out a half-confession, half-justification to Wrecker in the first place.) So it is actually consistent in that, as suggested in her scene with Millegi, she’s unhappy being the person who stabs people in the back; but because we follow up on the other foreshadowing, and because Omega doesn’t see Cid again by the end of the non-epilogue portion of the show (she could have seen Cid in the gap; anything could happen in the gap), we never get a moment where Cid surprises us by explicitly showing that she’s changed. It’s not something that gets dropped or changed as much as it’s something that stays consistent, but doesn’t come full circle.
And there’s a lot in The Bad Batch that’s like this. We do, for example, see moments showing that Hunter, despite being a good man trying his best, is flawed and practically kneecaps himself with indecision and crippling self-doubt. Because of what Omega’s relationship with Hunter is, however, we never quite get around to unpacking that. She sees Hunter the way a lot of younger kids see their parents, so his flaws remain present rather than explored. that and instead unpack his relationship with her. Crosshair, despite his incredible redemption arc, ends the series with a lingering sense of guilt and a feeling that he deserves to die; but because of how Omega sees Crosshair—as someone who has made mistakes but who is, at the end of the day, her beloved little brother—we never quite unpack the source of his guilt or his turn from being implicitly to explicitly suicidal. We see clues and signs that Tech might have survived the fall—including one metatextually from Omega herself—but because all these clues are directed at the audience and go unseen by most of the cast, especially Omega (who doesn’t know she’s in a story where literary devices exist), we don’t ever deal with them. We see the build up with Rex, the senate, and something that looks like it’s leading to a clone rebellion, but we only really deal with the implications in moments that directly impact Omega’s story, like Echo leaving. And so on and so on—we could pick this apart for ages.
Whether or not this is a criticism, though, depends entirely on the framework. For example: If The Bad Batch as is really is the whole story and there’s nothing else, and never was anything else, then, yeah, it’s a disaster. It’s not just tripping on the finish line, it’s losing the race because you kept turning down dead end streets and having to climb over buildings to get back on the racetrack.
If, however, there does end up being more and we’re really at the end of part one of however many parts there are, what we’re looking at was never thought of as an ending, and what we’re getting is going to come with a bit of a POV shift away from Omega (not that she won’t appear at all, but that she won’t be the POV character), then it could all end up being a phenomenal piece of storytelling in the long run. I mean—I’m actually annoyed at how well it could work if they actually pulled something like that off. There’s still criticism to be had, but my criticism would be more focused on terrible audience management driven by an obsession with spoilers, the social media/marketing around the show being what it was, and a failure to really nail the transition with an episode that really seems to have been written more as a season finale (we didn’t get a long finale, I’m convinced we just got episodes 15 and 16 smushed together, and “The Cavalry Has Arrived” was just the title of the episode 16 that got applied to both), but had to also function as a series finale without being allowed to resolve anything but the Hunter-Omega arc. Basically, fumbling the transition between chapters somewhat rather than fumbling everything.
And the second one is what I lean towards, partly because it is weirdly consistent, and partly because despite the many (many) characters, plots, and subplots being left unresolved, none of it really has the hallmarks of something that ran out of either time or budget (at least, I don’t think so, now that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about it for two months). Things that run out of time usually cram all the resolution that they can into as little time as possible, and there were ways to resolve everything in the “terrible but at least still resolved” fashion by adding a couple of lines or even a voice over from Omega in the silent parts of the epilogue (cheapest, fastest solution and it could have done late, after everything else was locked down, any time before the episode was uploaded). Things that run out of budget usually cut anything that’s expensive—like, for example, a ten minute multi-character fight scene with particle effects that doesn’t have a plot reason to even be there unless we’re not actually done with the CX plot yet. Or rain. Or an outdoor set that only appears in one episode for three minutes.
TL; DR: I actually think there’s something interesting going on with the storytelling here if we’re not actually done with the story yet, but also it would be really nice to know for sure if there’s anything more coming because it’s either amazing or terrible and there’s nothing in between.
26 notes
·
View notes