Rails, rather. This show is going off the rails.
Jack Black, Lizzo, Doc Brown... aren't cameos supposed to make the show better?
I don't really understand Christopher Lloyd's character's plan. I get that the separatists saw Dooku as a visionary and (despite being a Sith Lord, which they didn't know) other canon shows (and this one!) have demonstrated that the Republic/Jedi and Empire and the Restored Republic or whatever are corrupt and maybe the big problem is 'Galactic-wide government' isn't such a good idea. But was Lloyd not happy enough to live outside that government? That's what the Separatists wanted! Mission Accomplished for your planet, dude.
For your comments below, I just have a couple of comments.
Slavery of sapient species vs Droids has been a problem since they introduced the idea that slaves are common in The Phantom Menace, I think. Droids can do pretty much anything, in much worse conditions than living creatures can survive in, and (depending on the writer) don't resent doing those jobs. So why enslave people/aliens? They try to explain this away as if slave labor is cheap and droids are not, but I don't buy it.
As for Mando's rejection of droids, early this season he tried really hard to resurrect a particular droid to go with him to Mandalore because it was the only droid he trusted. When he failed, he settled for a less reliable droid. And look where that got him! Only sort of giving credit here, since the show has established that the helmet he wears can be sealed so he could almost certainly have explored the planet without a guide droid.
You say he should have been able to scan the planet from space but Bo Katan was living on a planet in literally the same system and she never tried that so apparently that's impossible. Of course, the Empire had probe droids that could check planets for rebel bases throughout the galaxy so it's established that a droid can scan and report without needing to be escorted to the surface.
Just bad writing.
00:00 I am too cheap to get Disney+ without ads (actually, Hulu, Disney+ is just a $2 add-on so I can watch Star Wars and other old movies), so I had to watch a couple of commercials. One is a vitamin commercial voiced by Amy Sedaris who plays that horrible mechanic Din Djarin keeps dealing with, and the other is a travel website, with Ewan McGregor doing the voiceover. The AI is strong with this one. Since I get my vitamins from Shaklee and never travel, the only way they could possibly have matched these ads up with me is the actors. That is creepy.
8:10 The previously on is showing how Din met Bo Katan and she helped save Grogu from the fish thing. And now we’re getting the stuff behind the Darksaber and Din & Bo Katan’s Mandalore adventure.
So this is going to be another episode about the Mandalorian unification thing.
3:44 The squid-face aliens are Quarren.
4:57 I think the Mandalorian captain was with Bo-Katan when they rescued Grogu & Din from the Quarren seafarers, and I know the woman with the crooked headband to his right was. In fact, she was also helping Bo-Katan and Din raid Moff Gideon’s ship, which I am now wondering if that’s what this ship is.
5:02 A woman with a squid face is talking about having peace with the Calamari. Since they are usually referred to as MON Calamari, I am pretty sure that was not an accident.
5:54 Aaaand just when I was thinking maybe this subplot will be interesting and new, we get this cartoon nonsense. I am also, during downtime at work, currently watching the “Rebels” cartoon, and the juvenile antics of several of the main characters aside, it seems more mature than this stuff.
I don’t like interspecies romances. I just don’t. Especially as a ham-fisted analogy for real life lovers from opposite sides or interracial romance. The point of interracial ANYTHING is that we are all human. We are the same species, and race is largely an arbitrary distinction. But species are not races. I don’t have the slightest problem with what these Mandalorians are doing, especially given the child-molesty vibe this relationship has. At the very least, there appears to be a gap in maturity levels, if not age or physical development.
7:06 So Din and Grogu are going with Bo-Katan. I thought that was a way to get her off the show so they can go back to doing whatever else is on the agenda.
7:35 So Bo-Katan’s old faction, now led by “Axe Woves” is possibly working as the defenders of a planet that is not under the New Republic’s aegis. I wonder if he’s going to have a force that is adequately sized for defending a planet, or are we still operating on the unspoken assumption that each planet has about the same population as a city? It could also be interesting to see some recognition of what happens to their clients when all these Mandalorian mercenaries suddenly drop their missions and run off to reclaim their homeland. For the most part, Din’s missions have involved protecting decent enough people or getting justice by capturing bad guys. What if he abandoned one of those missions for a Mandalorian thing? Also, rebuilding Mandalore is probably going to require quite a capital outlay, and I don’t think they’re open to selling lots of beskar on the open market and losing their advantage in armor. Suddenly ditching their clients could hurt the reputation of Mandalorian mercenaries and curtail their major source of income.
I am also very curious about Mandalorian civilians. Are there any?
8:31 I don’t understand why the whole wings, the longest part of the ship, have to rotate up 90 degrees in order to land, instead of just the engines.
11:15Jack Black?
11:45 This conversation is helpful for the audience, not least because it seems to be hinting at a through-line for the season’s plot, drawing together the Madalorian exodus (what is it called if they are going back? endodus? ) and the stuff going on with Dr. Pershing back on Coruscant. However, it is not a thing that makes sense for them to be telling the Mandalorians. It’s like in “Eye of the World” where Elayne & Gawyn start discussing their family’s business in front of a stranger, except that book made a point of acknowledging the oddity of their verbiage, and had already established the concept of “ta’veren.” This show has done no such work. This is just infodumping, however important in the meta sense.
12:49 That small bit of hope that refuses to die in my breast is thinking how this could be leading to some interestingly sinister shenanigans. But the other part, which sat through 13 episodes of Disney Star Wars unworthy of their eponymous protagonists whom George Lucas made up and made interesting, and Disney utterly let down, is laughing at it.
13:23 The subtitles call this woman “The Dutchess”. I assume she is supposed to be a female Duke, not a woman from the Netherlands.
14:08 This is not the least clever twist.
Of course, it’s just a way to re-package the show’s usual charade of a plot, whereby the main character wants to get X but the people who can give it to him, or who can allow him access to X, need Y, and they will give him X, if he can just fetch them Y from Z.
14:47 That’s a pretty big leap Jack Black made here. First of all, the Smith-Priestess just decided that they are going to retake Mandalore and that Bo-Katan is going to be the ambassador for the project. So how are the leaders of this planet so aware of what she and the other Mandalorians are aiming for?
Also, people can often be pretty dumb on this show about politics and logistics and stuff like that, or maybe the writers think the audience is too dumb to grasp it (a not unreasonable conclusion, given how much of this fandom rose up in outrage over the very minimal employment of politics in The Phantom Menace and equally minimal mention of trade in that film), and it feels like Black’s character is trying to do the work of two different parties, creating a political/diplomatic storyline by doing the negotiations for both sides.
15:30 And now Christopher Lloyd. The funny thing is, when we were getting a look at the bridge of that Quarren ship, the captain was reminding me of Lloyd’s character, the Klingon captain in Star Trek III. And the last thing I saw Lloyd in, was Piranha 3D about monstrous fish. Where he had a similar role to this character.
16:46 So they can’t shut down the malfunctioning “former” battle droids, because the people of this planet have grown dependent on them, no longer need to work, and can spend all their time on luxury pursuits. How has this not happened all over the galaxy? Droids are pretty damn ubiquitous in the setting, and the issue of cost of maintenance, power and whatnot never comes up. What are the limitations of droid labor? What are the costs? Why is it not more universal? Think about that diner Obi Wan visits in Attack of the Clones. Why are people okay with being served by inhuman machines, when personal service is supposed to be the reason we pay a mandatory tax on our food, for the privilege of a rather superfluous person separating us from the preparation? Why is a giant lizard thing with too many limbs personally handling the food prep, while a machine delivers it to the patrons? I would rather have my food prepared by a machine if there is one that is sufficiently advanced to do so competently, than by a person, let alone a sapient animal.
In any event, I suspect this is going back to the worst thing in Solo: the droid liberation idea.
17:06 They were a pretty polyglot group in the dining hall, but they have species specialization in the “lower levels”? The ugnaughts, are the secondary layer of society that interfaces with the droid labor? Are they responsible for the malfunctions, because they are disgruntled about their position?
17:15 Oh, we’re back to Din hating droids again? I seriously thought they had forgotten that aspect of his character from the first few episodes of the show. You certainly would not have known it from his eagerness to take a droid, any droid, on his mission to Mandalore, for something you would think any half-way decent spaceship would be able to do, scan to see if it is safe to leave the ship.
17:53 Yeah, the vibe I’m getting here is that they are not remotely interested in solving the droid problem, that it is not their droid problem, it’s the aristocracy’s droid problem. Want to bet that the direct democracy does not include ugnaughts, or at least the rest of the population has voted against their getting a raise or whatever else they want?
18:12 Of course, every ugnaught knows Kuill, who lived out in the boonies, alone on a sort-of ranch. I like Kuill, mostly because I usually choose to play him when I play “Mandalorian Monopoly” with my nephew. Kuill gets a discount on his purchases, which amounts to greater economic power. My nephew often goes for a character with combat bonuses. I use my financial resources to crush him without getting in too many fights. Little dumbass shouldn’t have given me a 36-year head start in life experience and cunning before challenging me to a strategy game.
19:34 It’s good to see Din being competent in diplomacy. They have shown him doing this before, but at a distance, with him making gestures at Sand People and then we get the results.
20:03 If nothing else, this show has given some dimension to Ugnaughts. Not that anyone was clamoring for it, but it’s not nothing…
23:14 The constable droids and the police tape hologram are a nice touch. Like, that’s a thing that serves a purpose, rather than a silly reference to real world practices.
23:35 Now I am suddenly fascinated by an idea that has only appeared in the very first Star Wars drama and this, the most recent – droids patronizing a bar. As one may recall, C3-PO was forbidden from entering the Mos Eisley Cantina, not because you aren’t allowed to have them in there, but specifically because the cantina does not “serve their kind.” Which is a very weird way to put it. But it makes sense as a kind of segregation, rather than banned property, since the patrons are permitted to carry and wield deadly weapons. So why WOULD droids patronize a bar, to the extent that at least one establishment feels the need to have an explicit policy and security hardware to prevent it?
28:02 Literally every human on this planet where droids do all the work is overweight. A nice touch (granted, there are only 3 so far).
30:18 Actually, I forgot about Hellgate. He’s old enough to predate the droid labor.
32:36 They’ve done this before, where they say “If that isn’t the BLANK calling the BLANK, MadeUpWord” and I don’t think I like it. I mean, I get the gist, but it really should be terms we’ve heard before.
33:29 I feel like there is going to be a desperately unfunny punchline about what makes Paraquat such a horrible fate.
34:23 This is what I mean by dumb stuff that is just there for no reason to reference real life stuff. I can’t tell how seriously we are supposed to take this subplot. Is it commentary or just dumb humor that Grogu gets a plausible-sounding knightly title for helping the DuTchess cheat at a lawn game?
35:32 They are here on a semi-permanent basis, but are still just sitting on makeshift crate furniture in a field, surrounded by all their varied ships. Why? Why is there no headquarters? Why hang out on this lawn, instead of on a ship or some other place where business can be conducted, except for the needs of the show?
39:51 I’m just going to headcanon the Mandalorians’ potential acceptance of Din Djarin’s suggestion as a face-saving way to back down from a really ridiculous set of rules. Also, they seem to see Din’s sect as zealots and fanatics, but that group has no problem taking in non-humans or non-Mandalorians who follow the Creed, while this more lax faction is all uptight about ethnicity.
40:49 This feels like we are supposed to be gratified by seeing Bo-Katan finally wielding the Darksaber again, but it’s not something that this show has earned. We should not be required to watch half a dozen cartoons to know all the necessary background information to get the significance of events and characters in this one.
There were definite issues with this episode, but as with a couple others this season, it actually feels like they are trying to tell new stories and explore the Star Wars universe, rather than simply playing it safe. Now a lot of the stuff they explore is dumb, but I think the handling of this episodes’ new material was kind of interesting. I hope we don’t see the current-crossed fish-people lovers again, but the implications of the society that has created a fully droid working class were sort of neat. And they also managed to reconcile the obvious allegory with the status quo for the Star Wars setting, because obviously we are not suddenly going to start addressing the notion of droid rights, and the radical changes that would have to come from it.
This could have been worse.
