#yes i did rewatch the rookie immediately after finishing it

[idk-i-just-really-like-tsc]

i forgot how insane the virus episode of the rookie is what is happening

[elenathehun]

Watching the Clone Wars, Part 5

Hey, I’m actually being prompt this time, and not letting this sit on my desk for the rest of the week.  Good for me!  In this viewing session, we watch one “good” arc, and one terrible one.  Guess which is which ;)

“Storm Over Ryloth” (1x19)

Aw, the fourteen year old is going to engage in very dangerous dogfighting?  For those of you old enough to remember X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, remember how leery Starfighter Command was of letting sixteen year old Gavin Darklighter join Rogue Squadron?  More innocent times, for sure.

Anyway, Ahsoka just got eleven men summarily killed, all to set up a tedious episode on the nature of command.  It’s so wild how Rex and the bridge officer clone actually defer to her.  Maybe, just maybe, GAR would win if they gave a bit more power to the highly-trained war machines the Jedi purchased, eh?  Instead of the barely-trained teenagers with no business in a war zone.

I’m not even going to talk about the actual tactics because they’re superfluous.  It’s a shame the jedi don’t understand the purpose of consolidating their force and utilizing a joint attack.  Maybe Anakin could have saved a ship or two if he, Mace, and Obi-Wan had attacked as a group.

No, you’re right.  That’s too smart.

“Innocents of Ryloth” (1x20)

Obi-Wan’s low-impact strategy is a bit stupid.  Like, the CIS is explicitly engaging in terrorist tactics on Ryloth, the Twi’leks most likely have no homes to return to.  But, whatever, that’s not the point of the episode.  The point of this episode is Waxer and Boil.  I love them, but I also love the casual specie-ism/racism on Boil’s part.  Dude grew up on Kamino, which is basically an isolated military boarding school, where would have learned a word like “tailhead”?

Oh, that’s right, the scum of the earth working as trainers.  Never mind!  I like to think that the clones, while generally very nice and polite young men, also have a very strange idea of appropriate language and conduct outside of their very isolated, insular upbringing.  I do love ye olde culture clash plotline!

The CIS continues to devolve with internment camps, animal cruelty, and yes, weaponizing animals to kill clones in a suitably horrific way.  Good job, guys, way to lower the bar!  With that said, Numa is adorable, and it’s amazing that she managed to survive on her own in this ghost-town while her family and community have been rounded up into camps.  

Obi-Wan may be a subpar general, but he is definitely a very capable psychic super-soldier.  The fight scenes were incredibly enjoyable to watch, and although it’s a bit silly, I did really like the Twi’leks pulling the tactical droid who was their warden out of his tank with their bare hands - they definitely deserved that.

“Liberty on Ryloth” (1x21)

This is a Mace Windu episode, and I am here for it.  What an icon, what a legend.  I do think that he is portrayed as having exceptional control of the Force, and it’s always really interesting to see him use it in a fight.  The episode is a fairly basic one: He’s trying to link up with Cham Syndulla to get rid of the rest of the CIS army; the senator for Ryloth, Orn Free Taa, is more concerned about the disposition of political power on Ryloth after the invasion is complete.  I have...so many questions about how political power on Ryloth is distributed: is Orn Free Taa the ruler of the planet and the Senator, or is there a different kind of power-sharing agreement?  Is Cham Syndulla just the sort or ordinary person thrust into extraordinary times, especially by the abandonment of their people by their leadership and the Republic?  It strikes me as a setting rich with potential plots.

Of course, that’s only a small part of the episode, which is mostly Mace being a badass and basically being a one-man army.  Again, the direction is remarkably good in this episode.  As usual, air supremacy is not a factor in this war.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  Even though AT-RTs really make no sense, I want one very badly.  Lastly, based on the clone trying to pet the blurrg and Boil and Waxer’s treatment of Numa last episode, I believe the clones are going through that stage where they just want a pet of their very own.  It is actually a little adorable.  

Shout-out to the tactical droid obtaining full sentience and ditching his boss and lying to Dooku.  Still wish that a subplot of Dooku’s droids turning against him had been a thing.

Season 1 Restrospective:  It only took five weeks, but we are finally finished with this season, save for 1x22, which is actually set sometime in the third season.  There were some high points, but man, this was an absolute slog mostly.  There were way too many Jar Jar episodes, and the clones were not given nearly enough screen time.  “Rookies” and “Lair of Grievous” were the outstanding stand-alone episodes imho, and the “Ryloth” and “Malevolence” arcs were generally ok, with two of their three episodes being rewatchable.  

But in a series about the clone wars, there is very little character development of the actual clones - like, poor Rex is barely a presence in this season.  And the CIS is just so cartoonishly awful that I can’t take it seriously at all.  It actually does strain my belief that Palpatine could keep these plates spinning for more than a week.  Anakin is just...blah.  And although I know I’m supposed to like Ahsoka, I just can’t help but find her annoying, mostly because she’s a kid.

Well, we’re about one-sixth of the way through.  She’s got another six seasons to grow on me - and hopefully she will, because otherwise this will be very tedious.

“Holocron Heist” (2x01)

No sooner do I say that than Ahsoka reverts to being a dumb fucking kid.  However, is a full Council meeting to investigate the fact that she’s a dumb fucking kid actually a good use of the High Council’s time?  Just curious.  This arc is honestly really stupid, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this, only to say that Cad Bane’s aesthetic is very choice for an outlaw, and the Jedi have laughable security.

“Cargo of Doom” (2x02)

Another Anakin & Ahsoka episode where they and Yularen share one braincell, and Rex is the one who holds it most of the time.  Also really love how the Jedi with the list of all the potential Jedi recruits apparently took his sole record with him to a warzone.  That makes perfect sense.  I’m not really going to get into this episode, except to point out that we saw a Jedi tortured to death on-screen, which leads me to my most pressing question: how much money, per episode, did Lucasfilm have to use to bribe the MPA?  

As for the choice Cade Bane gave Anakin at the end?  As @spiraling pointed out, people don’t die of decompression and vacuum exposure immediately.  Anakin could easily take Bane out and rescue Asohka in that time.  She’d need a dip in bacta, but she’d live.  

“Children of the Force” (2x03)

This episode is actually the worst of all, because the Jedi (who, by the by, are an actual government entity with access to priority comms and lots and lots of computer space) don’t have backup lists of their recruits, nor do they, say, call ahead with the address and have the local government set a trap before they arrive.  Poorly done, Obi-Wan, poorly done.  

Anyway, the kids are rescued from the unspeakable horrors that later children will be exposed to, children like Mara Jade and Lumiya.  Good for Anakin and Ahsoka!  However, I’d like to present a more awful possibility:  If it weren’t for the need for a holocron, Cad Bane (and by extension, Palpatine) would have gotten away with it.  Like, Palpatine is a Sith Lord, trained by a Sith Lord, and his putative apprentice is a former Jedi who had access to the temple and the various Jedi stores until about a year ago.  Do you really think he doesn’t already have a holocron ready to go?

So instead of stealing a holocron to start off with, Cad Bane just... targets and captures Bolla Ropal under the guise of a CIS attack.  He steals the kyber crystal.  The Jedi are very, very worried, of course, but it takes time for them to realize it’s gone missing.  in the meantime, however, Cad Bane just takes it to Dooku, they pull and copy the list, and the harvesting of Force-sensitive children can continue.

This is, I think, one of the great disappointments of TCW.  For a show that likes to use the model the Justice League cartoon of the early 2000s pioneered, they haven’t quite figured it out yet.  This is the sort of plot that could fuel an entire season of investigation, but instead they have these little three-episode arcs that never connect to the rest.  It’s a real shame.

Next week: We continue Season 2 with “Bounty Hunters”, “The Zillo Beast”, “The Zillo Beast Strikes Back”, “Senate Spy”, “Landing at Point Rain”, “Weapons Factory”, and (time permitting) “Legacy of Terror”.