A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 04: Ambush and the Malevolence Arc (Clone Wars 01-04)

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

“My lady, are you sure the information from Chancellor Palpatine is… reliable?” - C-3P0 After weeks of build up, we've finally made it to the Clone Wars series proper. Join us as we take our first dive into questions of Clone individuality, meet the polarizing Separatist commander General Grievous, and return to the eternal question: How does no one find out about Padme and Anakin when they're barely hiding their relationship. Next Time: Episodes 05 - 07 Show Notes Fallen Clones: Matchstick and Tag  How Tall is General Grievous? Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Austin Walker Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zuckney, joined by Ali Ackinpora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. And we're in it. We have arrived at last at the Clone Wars TV series, and we get right into the swing of things with ambush, in which we see Yoda conducting some armed diplomacy near the front lines of the war with separatists. Then we have the three-partileance arc where the Republic must hunt down

and destroy a dangerous separatist battleship. As you might expect, these episodes are rough in places and very much have the feel of a series still finding its identity, which frankly characterizes a lot of this first season. However, some people have asked, so what's your skip list?

We don't have a skip list. We're watching it all because even the mediocre episodes frequently illuminates something about what's going on with the show or what it's trying to do or what it's failing to do. And some of its weakest episodes, I think, are also kind of turning points in the series. Like, for instance, I don't think there's an episode coming up called Bomb Bad Jedi. I don't think it's a very good episode in most ways. But one, it has some key things. And two, it feels like the show might also feel like that episode is not very good. And it's worth looking at why that version of the show kind of disappears as we go along.

So we're going to be watching all of it. Next time, we are going to be watching the very good... Sorry, I don't mean to bias you. I should be letting you have your own journey with Clone Wars. And yet, we're going to watch rookies, which some people say is very good. then we're going to watch a two-parter centering on another R2 unit, a different R2 unit. Not famous R2D2, but R2D2's less competent cousin. This ain't no Nabu R2 unit.

But the question is, is it just incompetent? And how many chances do we give this thing? So that's what we're going to be checking out next time. But for now, we're going to check out this first, not quite a pilot episode. I guess the movie was kind of the pilot. And then we're going to see this three-part episode. And I think these first four episodes do set up some of the show's major through lines right out of the gate. In particular, this opening quartet raises a lot of questions about how the clones see themselves and their relationship to the Republic.

And immediately, it's a bit disquieting when this comes up. but let's kick it off here with the first episode ambush uh Austin what is this episode story and then what is it really about sure so I mean I think it's a it's a useful first episode because it sets a template that becomes incredibly clear especially if you hadn't seen the film but you get the sense here that many of these stories are going to go something like this there is a king on a planet somewhere in this case it is the king of toidaria toidaria is the planet where the toidarians which is wadoes species are from and he is here waiting to meet with yoda because yoda is here to or is supposed to be coming to negotiate a treaty

so that so that toidaria can become a new place where there are republic supply factories or bases or something right um and before yoda can arrive it turns out that ventrous count ducu's uh uh Sith assassin shows up to uh put some pressure on this king and to deliver the message that uh Yoda will not be making it um Yoda comes under attack in space um manages to weather that attack uh get down to the to the planet um and and uh uh uh What emerges is a kind of a game that Duku and Yoda and the king all agree to, which is, if Yoda can make it from the kind of splashdown point where his escape pod is, where he and three clone troopers have survived to the king before nightfall, then the Toydarians will side with the republic. If instead the battalion of droids commanded by Ventress is able to stop them, then the king will side with the separatists and strike a blow against the Republic

because the Republic really needs Toydaria for some reason. Basie rights, baby. Right, yeah, exactly. And so what we get is, that's the plot, right? The plot is, and then Yoda has to get through the jungle. and outsmart the droids and lead the troopers in that effort until he gets to the king of Toydaria. But there's a second thing that's happening here, which is really it's about quote unquote leadership, then the relationship between the Jedi and their troops, especially in contrast to the way the separatist leadership is related to their troops,

which I think is something we'll see across all four of these episodes in a recurring way and kind of going forward, right? About halfway through this episode, after they've been kind of battered a little bit, Yoda delivers this big speech about their relationship to each other themselves and the Republic and to the world writ large and encourages each of them to kind of be concerned with things other than the war. in some way, whether that is to get past their concern with the enemy or with the weapons that they have or their kind of like high degree of desire to want to go into fighting. And so I think for me, a big part of this episode is that kind of, that conversation and the relationship between Yoda and these clones as like, you know,

as sort of stand in for the relationship between Jedi's and clones writ large. At least this is like, this is how it's supposed to go. You have your Jedi leader who encourages, I want to say it's supposed to go. I mean, this is how the Republic, this is the Republic's plan and why the Jedi trooper relationship is the thing that it is, is that you get these troopers who have certain instincts, and then you have Jedi to temper and shape those instincts into an effect.

active weapon. And, you know, the end of this episode is they get there. And, you know, Ventris tries to pull some shit. And Yoda is like, nah, I'm Yoda, actually. And the Toydarians end up siding with the Republic. And that's 22 minutes, you know? Then you're done. Your cartoon comes to an end.

Yep. We get Yoda. We get action Yoda a lot in this episode, fighting a bunch of droids. And thank God, though, in an animated series, it looks way less unnatural than in in the movie when he just turns into a little C.G. ball with a lightsaber sticking out of it. Here, it's like, oh, Yoda's cool. But is he, though? But anyway. It's fucked up because I watched The Empire Strikes Back yesterday.

Yeah, okay. Different Yoda. Who is that? I do not know that little fucking frog man. He's such a little creature. It's so, like, not my Yoda. I don't know. It's weird. It was so... That Yoda's never created a perimeter in his life. Never! That Yoda...

Yoda in this first episode was really like, we are going to galaxy brain our way out of, like, thousands and thousands of droids. And the Yoda from Empire Historic's Back is just like this curmudgony little swamp creature that... Like, it's just... I don't get the character arc. there, but that's fine. That's fine. It was just very disorienting to watch. Agent Warwell fuck you up and make you a little goblin. Yeah. Apparently so. Apparently. Think about how long he had to live on that planet by himself. Yeah. How long?

Decades. You know, to me, though, one of the notes I had was, to me, this feels very much, like, in some ways he's more in Empire Strikes Back mode than he was in the movies we've just seen. Because, like, in movies, we've just seen, Yoda's kind of mean. And not the curmudgeonly, like, I'm the wise sensei, like, living in the retreat and you come to visit me. But in the, like, kind of cruel, hey, child, stop missing your mom so much. It's weirding me out. And here we very much have a bit of a puckish Yoda being like, here I am in my little jungle, I'm going to fuck up an entire battalion of droids in this doctor-who-ass-looking jungle.

we're in, which one reason it's very Dr. Seuss-esque, I might have said Dr. Who, one reason that it's very Dr. Seuss-esque is that it certainly befits their animation style right now and what they've got to work with. Yeah. Real highlights of the episode for me was when the king guy would sometimes, they would just have to move him in a scene, but we would be completely still, so he looked like a little action figure moving in the cartoon. I was like, this is great. of watching this. To Rob's point, I think the,

that, like, Empire, if you boil down Empire Strikes Back Yoda, it's like wise and, like, a wise prankster, right? There is a sort of trickster goblin element to that Yoda. And this Yoda is a bit of a trickster, too. Like, this guy loves to prank these droids and be where he's not expected to be

and cut holes in their tanks, and, like, jump in there and cause havoc and make them shoot themselves. And I think it's fun to see some of that in his combat style after seeing the much more just, like, again, the, the, like, oh, aim the cannons at this thing. Like, that's not Yoda. Yoda is, let me convince my friends to do a trick where they shoot the cliff outcropping to fall on these people. That's a little more Yoda. Yeah. And then, yeah, the Yoda in the cave being, like, talking to these three clones who are, I think, called Jack, Reese, and...

Tier? Is it tier? It's something like that. It's a T thing for sure. I figure what the third one is. Bad on me for not writing it down. But, you know, counseling them and trying to talk to them about what you need to do to, you know, get across a dangerous place where you're out. gunned so heavily and to think about your cleverness and the traits that you have that are

not just about sheer force is more in line with the sort of Yoda who who is teaching Luke that like hey the force is not just about swinging a lightsaber around it's actually about connecting to stuff and blah blah blah blah blah right right I mean he's talking to them about their individuality which I thought totally the like from the outset the Clone Wars is trying to establish that these clones are actually that they have individuality and they have like different skills and and uh different um you know expertise is that make them who they are so i found that really interesting having yoda like give this pep talk to each of them about like here's here's what you're good at and um you know this is how you differ from each other

was just Yeah, I mean, so that speech is so interesting to me And also the thing that follows it immediately There's something MK picked up on Which is actually kind of a creepy undercurrent That I'd missed But one is he does give this pep talk Where he's like he says clones you may be

But the force resides in all life forms Because they're having this insecurity Like what good are we to you Like one of them is wounded They can't help anymore like this mission seems to be a bust. And so they're having this, like, crisis of faith, and he gives them this pep talk

about how he sees all their individuality, and he sees them in the force, and they are living beings who live in the force. At the same time, again, this speech serves a really instrumental purpose. And, you know, the Empire strikes back. I think the thing that becomes clear in retrospect is that nothing about his interactions with Luke

is on the level either, like in, like both Obi-1. and Yoda look at this kid and are like, here's the weapon we're going to forge to be a dagger in Palpatine's side. So none of that is on the level. And here we kind of see Yoda doing it again, right? Where like now that he really needs them to get back on their A game, Yoda's going to give them the speech about how they're all beautiful snowflakes and he sees their individuality. And they all have a valuable role to play in helping him complete this mission

and kill these battle droids. But then, and this is the thing that MK noticed, so the next thing that happens is they got to go out and get this done. Like Yoda's like, I'm going to go take care of this first wave of battle droids and you guys will know when your moment arrives

to do some stuff of your own. And he sort of surveys the situation and again, like it's what's left of this battalion, but still a lot of battle droids. And he smiles at them and says we outnumber them and goes jumping off into battle. And M.K. sort of took it in a direction that I didn't expect, but it kind of makes sense. This is a religious order fighting a war to the death.

And when he says we outnumber them, does he mean literally, well, we are creatures with souls. Right. And none of these count. Like, we can just mow these fuckers down. And it's like, oh, no. This is also a religious war for the guys leading it. Yeah. I mean, I would like to bring another moment to this specific table,

which is when there's a moment where one battle droid misses a shot and shrugs it off and says, oh, well, it's my programming. It wasn't me. It was just my programming. Well, I think recurring through these things is going to be this like, are people right when they say one, one trooper is worth a hundred battle droids or whatever? And what does that mean when you have battle droids who are sapient enough to make jokes basically all the time? You know, all the time, they're killing it with comedy. They're comedy programming through the roof.

They should have put some of that into shooting instead. I guess it's why, like, the droiddeca, the little roly ones, are so good. It's because they're not cracking jokes at all. I think there is probably something, there is probably something worth saying, not worth saying, but like, worth noticing that is, which are the least effective ones? It's the ones who can talk. It's the ones who can, you know, joke about their relationship to the war. Then there are the big, like, bulky round shoulder ones, the kind of. Mark 2 battle droid units, and they don't talk much at all.

They have, like, slightly deeper voices and say, like, a few things now and then, but they're not out here joking. There's also that one sequence where there, it seems like they can't keep track of how many are supposed to be on screen. I want to say at one point, they're like, there's too many of them, and it cuts to a shot of like five of them. And then it cuts again, there's like eight of them. Like, okay, well, I guess if they're multiplying out there, that would be too many of them.

Um, but then there's the droidica or like the, um, the ones we saw last week that fought, uh, Asoka who, who, the commander ones, the terminators. The terminators. Yeah. And it's like, at that point, their affect list, the droid decas, the roly ones are all the way, like, not humanoid anymore. And, you know, I feel like, I feel like it's purposeful that the less these things feel like communicative, uh, humanoid stand-ins, the more effective. they are. I think that that's like a very specific intentional choice, if not from Lucas and from someone else, you know, on the production side. And I think that that's an interesting thing to hold in your head across from the kind of explicit claim that souls are what

make the Jedi and the clone troopers better at this. That's an interesting point because I hadn't thought of it this way, but the clones are tormented in some ways by their identity or lack thereof like their purpose their sense of like hey we've been creative for this purpose and like are we good at it is this even we want to do these are questions that come up the battle droids also have the sort of existential question and their response is to joke around about it because they don't give a shit like asked and answer the clones don't miss and say my programming even though literally it is also your programming right where the battle droids are just like I just work here man like this is a nine to five I'm clocking

and I'm clocking out. They get into the ambush, despite the fact that their sergeant droid or whatever, is like, hey, guys, stop. Like, you're heading into a tree line. And they're like, yeah, and? And, like, so, fundamentally, like, the battle droids just do not care. Like, they know their place in this war. And it is as cannon fodder.

And so they approach it with this, like, I don't give a shit type approach. And the clones also kind of know their maybe. cannon fodder. They're also the critical tool to win this war for the Jedi. And yeah, it's just different sides of approaching the same sort of fate that these characters have. The droids don't exist in the calculus of the outcome of the war. The clones do. In other words, two sides are fighting this war and they both have an end goal in mind, which is if I win the war, people in the galaxy will blank whatever that is it is and clones are people in the galaxy and so they are invested in some way in that outcome hey if the republic wins it's good for us too because we are people

in the galaxy the droids are not the droids just aren't they're not even considered they can't even fall into one of the columns no matter how the end of the war goes for either side they're not going to become anything they're not going to get to live in a different way They're battle droids. What's going to happen is they're going to keep fighting or be put into a closet or a warehouse somewhere. That's it. So they can't even buy in enough to be anxious about the outcome of a war. You know, droids remain fucked up as a thing.

I love droids and also it's just rough. Yeah. Another thing, small, go ahead. Well, I was just going to shout out a little bit of cleanup that the Clone Wars is doing, as it so often is. you may have gotten the impression that the toidarians are a certain way in that there's certain traits

that don't seem positive and maybe seem to equate to some real world racism well King Katunko is here to let you know that not all Toydarians are like Watnow some of them are very honorable

and empathetic and have a sense of obligation and are not just motivated by pure greed and self-interest and so the Toydarians here are given a pretty straight shooter who's like I don't want to have some sort of death duel most dangerous game situation

to determine where I come down and all this and Yota's like no we're doing the death duel most dangerous game I love it it's incredible it's incredible just like the I like when people get caught up in between the Jedi and just be like what the

fuck are you guys talking about like there's a real war happening because we talk about this like adults. And the other thing that stood out was that that guy kept talking shit to Ventris every time Yoda did a good job. I was like, this dude is going to die immediately. Yeah, that was very brave of him. I could not have done that in a position.

He was this close to opening side action on the entire battle, where he's just like a bused out the whiteboard with the odds. Yeah, exactly. If Yoda destroys more than four tanks, then you would double your bag. Oh, no. He's doing life and bats on Yoda. Yeah. Oh, God.

The, the, uh, another bit from, from that, like, kind of recurring thing that I just love so much is the sort of playful back and forth that you get, um, both from, from Yoda and Ventress, but especially the Yoda and Dukoo conversation. at the end But even there's a bit where I think Yodis says something like I didn't realize the count was invited to our meeting or something like that I was like love it

I love it I love this sort of like bullshit back and forth everyone is in on the fact that everyone else is playing the game stuff is just fun and so anytime that comes up is going to be good There's an element of like this is Jedi business

right like we're all gentlemen here And, like, Duku is. Ventris, the Tudarians, the people who are, like, in this for real, like, you're marks, basically, right? Yeah, the King Ketunko says to Ventris and Duku, he's like, I will not deal with those who break their words. And it's like, homie, you are somewhere else. I don't know where you are, but that is not the kind of world you live in right now.

And also, I didn't think you. We're like that because of fucking gluppshito. What's his name? What's what's Globchito? Blupto shito just being like owning slave. Like with is is, are we just rehabilitating

the Torridarian image? All Wano says is we're not susceptible to Jedi mind tricks. He doesn't say and we love the slavery. So I think we made a lot of assumptions about Wado. He could simply not own slaves, I know. We have no idea what Wado could have been on Tatooine for like six generations. We don't know how tight Wado is with the Toydareans at home.

Probably not very. Not based on this dude, but who knows what this dude does behind closed doors? I don't know what's up with the Toydarean royal family. But I feel like if Wado was King Katoonko, Wado would be like placing vets. Oh, yeah. Wado would be thrown in his own. But that's also, we know that's Tatooine shit because we know that that's also Tatooine loves a race. They love to bet on shit.

They love a race. This is a race. This is a race. But he hates it. That's the thing. Now we're learning to Darians don't like that. He's a little bit into it. Yeah, it's fun.

It's cool. He's entertained. It is cool. It's cool to win. This is the thing. This is the thing. If he was losing, I think he feel a little different. But every time he gets to look out in those binoculars and see Yodo like wreck some shit, it's like, yeah, I'm feeling pretty good.

But is he losing? He's supposed to be making a choice. He's supposed to be neutral. But he already doesn't like how this whole thing, like it starts with an ambush. And he's like, no, I was going to hear Yoda out. And it's everyone else who makes the decision, no, a game. And he has no choice in this. Which, again, a subtext here I do like is that there's this interesting political thing that is happening,

which is that in the first movie, the old republic is huge, but appears to wield no actual power or authority in most place. It's kind of like people pay lip service to being members of the Republic, and the Republic shades in its borders. Like, yeah, these are all parts of the Republic. But effectively, they don't rule anything. And the minute the shooting starts, and people start saying, like, hey, we're not in the Republic anymore, now the Jedi aren't just negotiators that basically pro-consuls going out

there, like generals and statesmen alike in one person. And they're doing things like setting up. bases in people's backyards right and left. And so it's this instantaneous like, well, we could have just let the Republic crumble and let people go their own way, which wouldn't have been that big a change

from what we saw at the start of the trilogy. Or the Republic makes the choice, we're going to keep these, we like, you know, we're going to keep these borders. We are going to retain that authority that prior to this was theoretical only. We're going to make it real

at the point of a gun. And so, extent it's like one of those things where the choice to become an empire was already made it was made the minute the republic didn't wind down its involvement in these separatist spaces and so that's that's what leads us to Yoda one swamp creature talking to another being like all right you're going to get on our side and let us station troops here right so we can fight in your backyard and so we're like in some ways episode one we're already off the We're off the rails in terms of what the Republic might, maybe should have been. Also, this is another one of those situations where it's like Ventures doesn't show up.

Who knows how this negotiation goes? Maybe, maybe Yoda doesn't win this negotiation, right? Because it's supposed to just be, he shows up, he meets with King Kato and tries to convince him to build a base. Maybe they have to, maybe in that situation, at the very least, the Republic has to agree to, you know, pay for the station or the base and some space, you know, or has to. to, you know, take some agree to put sanctions on someone else or build some schools or provide access to blank, blank, blank. But because Duku Inventures got involved by the end of this episode, Katoonko's like, nah, fuck it, homie, go have building bases.

And also, the speed with which the Republic shows up at the end of that sequence, I know it's like you want to wrap up your episode and have, have it be clear that the situation is under control. and so you had the Republic, like, you know, freighters come in and all of that. But boy, they show up in force and are on that planet in seconds. You sign an agreement with the Republic, they will be there and we'll be there to build a base on your land instantly. They're already parked outside. Yeah, it's like you get your friends around the corner being like, look, if it's cool, like I'll text you.

If it's not, I'll text you. Once they say you, you can bring a plus one, let us know we'll come through. So the other thing is it all wraps where Katsunko makes his choice, the minute he makes a choice that Duku doesn't like, Duku does the thing that he always does, which is, oh, those rules I laid out earlier, they went against me, I don't like it, here's my inevitable betrayal, Ventris gets away, and yeah, the Republic's there immediately, and so now the Toydarians are on side. And we can assume that scenes like this are probably playing out everywhere in this war. We will see. another mission to the periphery before too long. And then we are off into, it's kind of remarkable that it went this way. The next thing that happens in the series is a three-episode arc.

Actually, before we leave this one last thing because there's some big absences here. And those absences are Obi-Wan and Anakin and Asoka just aren't in this episode. And it's so interesting that like, okay, hey, this is what the show can be. This show can be action away from our heroes. Our principal protagonists don't need to show up in an episode of Clone Wars.

Just as an important thing to remember that that is like one of the spaces the show wants to go into. And so debuting an episode, debuting on an episode like that, I think is really interesting. It's pretty confident that like, okay, hey, yeah, we can do a Yoda standalone episode and that's going to be fine. And people are going to like that is a choice to have made, you know? And I think it's a really cool thing that you can do both in a show that's animated and a show where one of your conceits is that one voice actor and a small set of models will be most of your characters. Because I think in a lot of live action series, right? You end up in the trap of if your main characters don't see something in the world, it doesn't exist. And so they always have to be at, to tell these sweeping stories, your main characters still have to show up every thing.

time you're trying to do like capture some aspect of this whereas the clone wars yeah straight out of the gate it's like we're just going to spin this one off uh that gives you a sense of what's happening how is this war being waged what's the diplomacy of of the clone wars um but yeah there's also a great example of not doing chronological release order because this is not this is not the beginning of this show chronologically this is like a little bit further in it would be after like four or five other episodes, if we were doing chronological order. And it's also not early on in production order. They produced this show late in the kind of run of the first season or midway through

the first season's run. But Flonie came out basically and said, like, I'll just read this quote. So we do things far better in late episode season one than we do in the movie for the theatrical release of Clone Wars. I think there was some kind of juxtapositional episodes based. on that. You know, we all liked the Yoda episode, Ambush in the Outer Rim. I thought that we all felt like, you know, fans had never really seen something that was that Yoda specific before. We all felt it would be a really strong way to start the series with a really fun episode about Yoda. And so I think this is one of those things when I defend the choice of doing release order and not chronological order. Like, the people who make the shows you watch, maybe they don't always have perfect control over it. There are certainly examples of shows where someone from a studio or someone from, a network has come in and reordered something in a way that's, like, not particularly good. But there are also situations like this where someone on the production team has sat down and said,

hey, this should be our first episode, even if it doesn't happen chronologically first, because we want to show people this part of the world. And that's kind of why I'm a big release order fan when you know the release order is not, like, completely, you know, busted by a studio exec somewhere, you know? So, anyway. Yeah. I do think it's worth noting that like especially starting out with Yoda here and then moving into the the Plokoon arc we're about to get it felt a little bit like they were like listen we know in the movies the Jedi didn't come across very interesting or cool or human so we're just going to spend some time making these dudes look fun and like people you would want to talk to and I appreciate that yeah I think this this A story arc we get is an interesting marker the show is already kind of putting down because

it's also this break from the Adventure of the Week format. And so even though these are three totally separate episodes and broadly focusing on different Jedi in each one, they're all acts in a larger plot. And so this is the story of the malevolence in part one. learned that there is a secret weapon that is destroying republic fleets leaves no survivors and we find out that it is a separatist super battleship in part two we see anakin leading a really sort of desperate bomber strike against the malevolence as it makes an attack on a uh republic medical base where a bunch of the injured clones are being treated and then in the final

part of this, the malevolence is trying to limp away from the scene of this battle while being pursued by Obi-Wan and a group of Republic ships, and it stumbles across Senator Amadala and immediately gains a valuable prisoner and the action moves inside the malevolence for a fun, you know, comedic escape caper in some ways. But I, I, I, I, I did kind of want to ask, did anyone else feel like they were kind of dumped in the middle of things with this particular episode, with this, with this arc? Because after, they do the thing at the start of every episode where you get the narrator and a lot of cuts, a lot of little video clips of what's going on. But here, I definitely felt like, was there something to be something like before this that I'm supposed to know about? I'm always saying this

I say this about everything we watch is like I feel like there should have been something before this I feel like that's it's become like it's become the Star Wars experience to me is being like thrown into the middle of a situation where things are actively happening and there's already like action A action B

and we're on action C of, and we're starting there. I mean, this is always the, I think to some degree, we know this is intentional because Lucas now, when talking about a new hope, which was not always marked as episode four, that comes later, but like, you know, very early on in that process still, you know, when the first trilogy is coming out, it gets marked as episode four, not episode one. he always was trying to evoke the pulp republic serials, Republic being one of the studios of the kind of early Hollywood era, you know, the kind of like 30s, 40s period where you got these kind of big pulp adventure serials where film culture was so different then. I don't know how many of our listeners know about like what early 20th century film culture was, but you were not like going to a specific movie at a specific time.

time in that period. You were not like, oh, let's go catch the 7 p.m., whatever. You went to the movies and sat down in the middle of whatever a movie was playing, and the reel would run through, and you would finish a movie that was already halfway started and catch the beginning of the next one, or maybe it would loop, but in between it looping and or starting back over. You would watch like two or three shorts and then a newsreel. And so the experience of going to the movies for years, and this is the stuff that Lucas is trying to draw on both here with Star Wars and also with Indiana Jones, is the feeling of being thrown into the middle of something immediately. It's why episode four starts by the camera panning down, revealing a battle already in place,

and then you're watching characters you've never met before be chased through the hallways. That sort of disorienting feeling of like, all right, I have to put together what's going on here through context clues, is like a touchstone for what Star Wars is, because I think Lucas smartly understood at the time, if I do a big lore dump And you know, there's still a text crawl in New Hope But if I do a big lore dump and say Okay, well, who is Princess Leia? Okay, what was her life like?

Well, you're going to spend 40 minutes Setting up all these people When the thing that's going to get people more excited Is to not necessarily have all those answers And instead just be like, They're these two robots and they're funny as shit And they just got blasted down onto the desert planet. Okay, and they got a message

And it's some sort of weird They got to take it to a desert sorcerer Okay, sure. And so I think you get a lot of that here. And case and point, again, for the people who are curious about things like chronological release order versus, or chronological order versus a release order, chronologically, the last thing that happens here is ambush. So there is nothing in between ambush and this episode in the official chronological order of what was, you know, what happened one to two. So there is not like some secret episode that we had that we're going to see at some point that introduces the malevolence being built. or something like that.

Right. We just get, here it is. It's a big, it's a big super weapon, you know. It's one of those. And we also just get, for the first time, General Grievous, which is not a stunning debut for our man, Grievous. He's a great cartoon villain. What are you talking about?

Grievous is great here. No complaints. No complaints. Not from me. I understood that people might have complaints, but Grievous is having fun he's in a bad mood he's trying to prove himself

he doesn't like droids he does have a cool ship he's you know he's just going through it right now is this the first time he's ever appeared he so he shows up very briefly in the in the film rather

in the background on a ship like a bridge but he's not like named during the film he's just kind of of there in the background along with some of the other separatist leaders. But, yeah, this is the first time he shows up for us. He is named in the show. Huh?

He is named because he said, because they. No, in Revenge of Sith, you mean? Which show, wait, which film are we talking about? I was in Clone Wars the film. Oh, okay. He is named. He shows up, oh, but he doesn't, but he doesn't mean like speaking lines in that, right? No, no, no, no.

But they say that General Grievous is doing shit across the galaxy, basically. Yeah, but you don't, we don't, there's no introduction to who he is or like what his vibe is. No, not at all. what he does in that movie, right? Not a good vibe. No, people don't like this grievous. So, Allie pro-grievous, good cartoon villain.

Yeah. Is he a droid? No. Everyone, but the clones are all like, the clanker in chief. He's called a droid by, uh, Duku. How much, how much not droid is left on a, Grievous. This is the question. Like, it kind of seems like there might be a brain in a cybernetic, like, skull, and, like,

it's all droid. And, yes, there's, there is a discussion about, like, you know, personhood, droidhood, et cetera. But I think, like, in Star Warsland, this, this person has gone about as far as you can to, like, I want to be a droid. general grievous is an interesting and complex figure because of george lucas's favorite analogy for dehumanization which is prosthetics yeah and cybernetics um grievous Lucas has said that with grievous he wanted someone who would be reminiscent of what anakin would become which is part man part machine um um and so that already should give you a sense of what is to come to some degree. An interesting thing here is, and I link this to y'all, I don't know if anyone got a chance to watch it, but when Grievous

first showed up in the fandom, for the fandom's, you know, perspective, it was during the Tartikovsky series, and there's a short episode where Grievous shows up and Rex five Jedi, including two Jedi masters, including Kiyadi Mundi and Shaqti, just beats

the shit out of them. Just like absolutely one-sided, like, you know, Michael Jordan against your junior high basketball team type shit. And there's none of that grievous here. Like, that grievous doesn't, he doesn't exude that power at all in any way here. And instead, what we have is the kind of commander version of that, of that sort of villain, not the front-line fighter who could be a physical threat, but the person who is, like, built a cool ship and has a bunch of, you know, soldiers underneath him and can command loyalty through fear or whatever, and doesn't, you know, refuses to take his soldiers' feelings into account, as we see over the course of this series.

And I think that it's such an interesting change, but it's also just, it's more in line with what the grievous of Revenge of the Sith ends up being. the Revenge of the Sith grievous and the Tardikovsky grievous just feel very different in capability and I think that that has made a lot of people really dislike

the grievous that we ended up getting in Revenge of the Sith in Clone Wars I do my best to think that they're just like different grievous more than one is the good one and one is the bad one. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think I just figured out why I don't like this grievous.

And mostly in this first episode He reminds me of Saban villain Just in terms of So like going back to most things Like Power Rangers Or far less popular Like VR troopers But nevertheless

Like this was very much a type Right somebody who was just all very exaggerated But just a dumbass Just a dumbass bully Who's just like Oh ha ha ha ha Like all exaggerated laughter Evil laugh

bullying subordinates and then being like I'm going to kill them but then it's too incompetent and obtuse to actually pull anything off and so like this whole first episode I'm like this is not an effective in terms of

introducing a villain who's going to be scary doesn't pull it off I think maybe like they will start getting there to like where he becomes both a more realized character and a more imposing villain but here it feels very much like

maybe they took him out of the oven a little early or the comedic role he's being made to play is not serving him well here. But speaking of being made to play roles that maybe you're not good at, are the Jedi bad commanders? Because when we join this, they've just been getting worked by a super weapon.

and they're just losing every battle they aren't even really on the case of like we need to really hunt this thing down and aggressively figure out what's going on they're just kind of in a full reactive like well guess we'll go wait for somebody else to get ambushed and go clean up the bodies hopefully next time we learn something but by and large it seems like the Jedi are really doing an exquisite job just throwing away here. huge numbers of like ships and men. That seems to be the case. And then among them, in this one case, luckily, I guess, is Plow Coon. Object of affection of a diseased mind everywhere, including me. As he and his clone crew get wrecked, including there is a moment where he's like fire at them. And the clones have to be like, they're not in, they're not in range. Like, that's why they're winning this fight.

commander Jedi um and uh his ship gets wrecked um and then yeah that this whole first episode rising malevolence is just like he's out there in space in a an escape pod with his crew with like four people or something and then we get the other half of that which is which is asoka really wants to go rescue really wants to be the person who is a good Jedi and go rescue this person and be more aggressive um believes that plow coon is alive despite not hearing any any word. And Anakin is, is her master and is trying to, like, keep a leash on her a little bit, but teach her the right way of, but, you know, I almost said betraying.

I meant going behind the backs of the Jedi Council. He'll save betraying for another day. Let's, yeah, actually, you can sort of divide this episode into two things. There's the lifeboat and there's the search. Right. And let's talk about the whole. Anakin's guy, because there's actually, again, these are early episodes, but

they're surprisingly dense. So after Plokoon gets his entire three-ship task force destroyed, I'm not to blame him overly much, but at the same time, like, maybe spread out or something, but, like, I don't know. Maybe

send one of those ships immediately in retreat to report back and, like, explain what you're saying. Just any number of ideas. Just open your mind to various ways you could have gotten the word out. um but instead he disappears like everybody else has disappeared and anakin back at uh the abrogato system which is close enough to be sort of a quick reaction force he's like we should immediately go rescue

them and he's on a conference call with the jeddick council and chancellor palpatine and palpatine says well there's probably no one left to rescue um and may mayce windew decides you know what we should do is put every ship on escort duty instead of even trying to rescue this which seems like a really bad idea because the whole thing is that they're getting picked apart

and he's like what if we spread out even more and try to be everywhere at once nevertheless that's his plan and Asoka tries to argue for hey we should immediately get out there and rescue master Plokoon And the reaction, I was sort of struck by how condescending the reaction was of like, it was like if a child had wandered into a grown-up meeting or something.

You know what I mean? Like your kid wanders into the Zoom call. That was the vibe where they were like, oh, paduans say the darndest things. And like, just no reaction. They suck. And I guess I think it speaks to, I think it speaks to. I think it speaks to how willing they are to lose this war you know what I mean

this is not like at all stops we gotta fucking pull this shit out crew this is a yeah I guess we lost another one I mean it's they lost a Jedi like they just spent an episode talking about how a Jedi

is worth like 10,000 droids or whatever the fuck which is like if you were up against armies of fucking thousands and thousands of droids you might want some of those I don't understand

Especially master fucking plocoon Like it's not some fucking rando Padawan It's fucking He's a master on the high council He's the highest rank you can be I don't understand how they're just I don't understand how they're not

Damn he's dead That's a shame Maybe they never liked him I don't know Maybe I know Attachments. I think.

Attachments. But that's not even an attachment. That's like a fucking, that's like, I don't know, leaving your fucking phone in the Uber. Like, you're not going to try and get the phone back. New phone time. Maybe they always wanted, maybe they were like waiting to replace him on the Jedi Council already. Maybe they're on that fucking upgrade plan. Like every two years you just get the new Jedi.

You don't even need to worry about losing it. I don't know. I just, I don't understand the rationale. like where where do you put value like on forms and procedures yeah it just feels like they don't know how to do this right it's just they never thought about fighting war they never thought about numbers or armies or logistics

or anything like that and so many of the conflicts that are in the start of the show and in the movie are just logistical because they they never like there was never a PDF in the republic or uh Jedi council that was like if there's a war let's just start doing these things they're all just thinking about it right now and then just being like well

you know it's all good why aren't there any generals like why are the Jedi they don't have an army why because the Republic probably never had an army before

remember because all the all the members of the Republic that had armies are now throwing in with the separatists this is this is a subtext right we already met one of them Mr. Rhino guy, but, like, that guy was clearly an officer. Like, Kenobi, like, Canobi comments in the movie about, like, you're an officer of

impeccable reputation or something like that. The guy has a military reputation, something you apparently do not earn via, like, working with the Republic. So, this is why you end up with things like the Trade Federation can just, like, rent an army, and unless somebody else with an army goes and does something, there's. There's nothing the Republic can do. And so I think they're, at least this is my theory, right, is that there are some elements of the Republic that are basically like autonomous nation states with armies.

And they've already, they've already crossed the Rubicon. And for a while have been like, well, they don't really govern us. So who gives a shit? And then you've got the Republic trying to do takesie-backsy on not having a standing army. And being like, no, we're a unified nation state. now, and we have an army that showed up from, I don't know, but our Jedi are going to run it. Right. Yeah. So, you know, for centuries, presumably, or millennia, you've had this state where you could be a member and not worry about the, the nation's army coming to your home planet and telling you you were doing things wrong. Maybe you would face sanctions. Maybe a Jedi would show up and negotiate your, you know, you into doing something else.

but the government couldn't Washington D.C. could not send troops to your door because there was no there was no federal force right instead every state inside of the country that was the republic could have their own military if they wanted to invest in that military and that is one way you can do a republic you can do a federation that way it's just going to break bad probably if there is a large scale conflict with another federation-sized force, which there now is because of how half the federation broke away, half the Republic. So, I think, sorry, Alie, you had something? Oh, I was just going to say, it's really interesting how it seems like a lot of this fracture happens because they banked so much on the cultural, like, fear of Jedi that for years and years and years and years, people thought the Jedi were the strongest people ever. and if they come through and say something,

you have to listen to them. So we don't have to fight any wars because, you know, this guy will come and talk to us. But now you have this whole Jedi. You have a war. The Jedi are leaders. Everybody is like, what are you saying? That's such an interesting.

I hadn't, that makes perfect sense, though, because you're right. Like, when they show up in Phantom Menace, they're already figures of dread, at least, of the Trade Federation. And so, yeah, there's an element of, like the Jedi have at some point started to believe this is all founded on respect for like their wisdom and abilities and they've completely lost track of this is founded on fear right like this is you have not had to renew these credentials in quite some time but now people are like can you really make us do anything and they're going to have to they're trying to figure out if they can right yeah and uh apparently the thing that they can make them do

is get blasted by a giant ion cannon whoops now we're stuck in space in a space capsule just a quick thing there's also good Assoca Anakin scene because Anakin's like will go on a scouting mission

and I do want this is later in the episode but I just want to close the loop on this whole Jedi Council thing Asoka notes correctly that Anakin appears to be doing exactly what Asoka suggested and is like you're taking my idea but nobody took me seriously

but you're just doing it and Anakin gives a slightly infuriating response but the more you spend time with the Jedi Council seems to make perfect sense he says doing what the Jedi Council says that's one thing how we go about doing it that's another that's what I'm trying to teach you and basically tells her

the way she said what she said was wrong exactly right like you just have to play their game a little bit you have to tell them that you are you know, dealing in their terms, and then you can work around them. Yeah, that you can just make a stop on the way. Not a good sign, though, right? Where it's basically like, look, I know, our Jedi Order sucks. And if you actually want to do anything, you just have to say, yes, sir, and then go do whatever the fuck you wanted.

And that's what he's teaching. But also, like, that appears to be, this was Quigon Jen's conclusion, right? and presumably not the first Quigon Jim was probably also not the first person who believed that, right? Yeah. So, Duke who believed it so hard that he went off and became a role leader.

Let me tell you about Cepho Diaz. One day. The other, another thing here in that same sequence is there's a bit where Anakin lords over Yalarin that Yalarin will listen to him where he basically like tells you Lara

to go do one thing so that he and Asoka can go off and fuck you go do the extra shit yeah and he's like

that's one person who I know will you know listen to what I say or something like that right and like hmm really

you really want to like twist the knife on this dude like at all it's a bad it's a bad plan oh and there's one of their thing

so they do they do eventually tumble the fact that Asoka and Anakin are off doing their own mission that basically

rescue mission that they were not of the rights to do. And the, and so the thing that happens, again, like for a kid's show, there's actually a lot of things that, like, kids are learning things about, like, children who watch the Clone Wars will learn about tracking the difference between what someone says and the actions they take. There's a point where Yoda observes the separatists and Duke who always seem to step ahead whatever the Jedi Council decides. And Palpatine immediately asks, hey, where is Jedi Skywalker?

And then in the next scene, turns out he knows where Skywalker is because he's got him on the phone. And he just calls Skywalker in front of Asoka and plays good cop to the Jedi Council's bad cop. And it's like, you know, Anakin, I understand where you're coming from, but you really have to do what the council says on this one you've got to go back to that escort duty and it's one of those things where

Asoka is probably too junior to realize how wildly inappropriate this is but it's wild right because like on the one hand the Jedi Council's saying we don't know where Anakin is and the next moment Palpatine has this complete side channel relationship with him that nobody else in Anakin's chain of command knows about and Asoka does just because she's there by accident and no one cares. She's a Padawan. Yeah.

It is fun to see her have access to that relationship. I'm excited to see that continue to develop. Meanwhile. But yeah, the bulk of this episode, right, ends up being she and Anakin

in their little ship, which is kind of a cute little shuttle almost. It has enough space to have like a lower compartment docking. area? Also, it's called the Twilight, which is a perfect name for an Anakin ship.

And two, is it literally the ship that he got at the end of the movie? Like the thing he crashed the attachment? It looks like the same ship. Maybe it is that ship. Yeah, it does look like that ship. He liked it and hot rodded it a little bit. He added a real doctor droid to it instead of a

hologram one. Yeah. But yeah, it does look like that. And so it's like them scanning for life forms in the debris field of this big fight. versus, meanwhile, inside of that escape shuttle or the escape pod is Plow Coon and the, you know, handful of clone troopers, hoping to avoid detection as the malevolence is like cleanup crew goes around crushing escape pods with this kind of, you know, construction ship thing that just grabs construction or grabs escape capsules and squeezes them until the air pops off. we get a lot of like clone death in this episode where it's just they those clones just get killed yeah they just fucking yeat like three of them into the fucking planet behind them it's nuts no big deal it is and the and the other clones are watching it happen like from their other pod like faces

against the glass watching all of their friends just fucking suffocate in space it's so fucked Yeah. And then the other big thing this episode is this connection that, that Asoka has with Plokoon, which is a big part of why she won't give up on him, is this sense that he is okay, that he's alive out there. And her, you know, constantly trying to convince Anakin to hang on just a little bit longer, to do, you know, one more scan for life forms to, you know, cross your fingers and hope that you catch, you know, some wind of Plokun's, uh, Life. And Plow Coon's doing okay. Plow Coon has decided to fight back against the Crusher ship by, I guess, going outside without a helmet on and doing some Jedi shit in space. It's awesome. I just wrote Plowcun fucking rules. Like, his whole, like, the moment he just, like, stepped out into space without needing to do anything else, I was like, okay, this is very cool. He's got some, he's on some shit. Jedi Master shit. Yeah. And also potentially the species he is thing. I don't know if that is a thing.

I don't know if he can, can he withstand like no atmosphere because of being a Keldor? Or is that 100% just Jedi shit? I don't know. No one knows. It's good. I don't know. I don't know. Oxygen is poisonous to his species, which is why they have that, that like, rebrand.

breather thing on their face. But you need some kind of gas. Presumably, right? Yeah. Do you think his mask has like a backup air source just in case? Maybe. Maybe. Like if your filter gets fucked up, you want like a tiny non-oxygen tank.

Yeah. I would activate that really quick. Yeah. Either way. I love that he strokes it like a beard. Yeah, it's very good. Also, does he have eyes? Those little lenses.

Like, what's going on with the little eye? pieces. I don't know what's back there. I don't know. I love him. I must know more. But I want to respect his privacy. I'm torn. Yeah. Also, while the clones see all their

brethren getting sucked out in the space and killed, they do, again, sort of talk about how they're convinced nobody's looking for them. Nobody's coming to rescue them. And they say, and Polkoons, like, why do you think that? Even though they're 100 percent correct. A hundred percent right.

And they sort of say, and they're kind of down on it. They're like, we're clones, sir. We're made to be expendable. And Plow Coon gives, you know, the good guy answer where he's like, not to me. And again, is that real? Is that just, I need these guys to be on form? I believe Plow Coon believes that. And also, if the situation was reversed, if this was Anakin out here,

lost with some clone troopers, Plow Coon would be back in the Jedi Council being like, we did what we could. And unfortunately, the realities of the situation mean that we need to protect those who are still alive instead of wasting our efforts on. But for the lifeboat, Plow Coon's like, I need to get out of here.

And they're going to help me. You all need to believe in your value because I need you to be valuable to me right now. Also, again, clone individuality, I don't know what's going on, but they're all, they've got a motif for their armor. I don't know if it is associated with, like, the unit they're in or whatever, but they've all started doing, there's like sort of a stylized sunburst pattern on a lot of their armor. It's not the same. It's individual to the trooper, but it is a recurring motif across that entire unit. And so, like, is that based on which Jedi you serve?

Is it just in this breed of corps that is forming up among the clone trooper units? I don't know. But, again, we're early in this war, and they're already starting to diverge into at least subgroup identities. And so that's just a – it was an interesting note to me. But, yeah, and so Asoka gets the vision that they're out there, and they rescue the clones and Plocoon, and then they have to make an escape from the malevolence, and they figure out what's going on.

They're like, hey, this thing's got a big ion cannon. Yeah. It shoots a big purple lightning ball, and if you get hit by it, your ship shuts down, and then you're just sit and ducked. Super dangerous particle effect. Most important thing in this episode, Plow Coon and Asoka hug.

Yeah. When they reunite, they hug. They do. Because he was her master. Yes. He is the one who, or I don't know how long they were, like, they trained, but he found her, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

As a baby. A little toddler question mark, I guess, is like a younger than Anakin, so younger than nine. Right. So probably like five, six, somewhere in there, presumably. And I love also that she speaks like, she at least says hello in Caldor. she says What's the Is that?

Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. I like that he says it way more confidently than she does in a way that's like very honest about her. She doesn't really know that language, but she learned how to say that. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the juxtaposition between, well, I wonder how it will continue to develop, but there's a couple of moments between Asoka and Anakin, that really have me questioning, like, what does this, like, Padawan to master, like, what is Asoka really supposed to be learning?

Or when I think of, like, Anakin's spiritual development talking about being in touch with the force, all these kinds of things, there's a moment when Asoka, as they're, like, flying to, before she realizes, I think it's before she realizes that they, they're on the rescue in the rescue zone or whatever she says um like anakin there's something i need to tell you about why i like spoke up back there which and he's like shut the fuck up like she does not care at all and it feels like he's like it's fine because he knows where they're going and he knows he's going to prove her right but also let like what was i don't No, what was Isoka going to say?

Like, does Asoka feel because she had, you know, has this connection with Master Plokun from him being the one who rescued her or recruited her or whatever, that she can feel him out there. Like, she still feels his presence out there. Like, when a Jedi, I feel like Yoda's had those moments when something bad happens and he's like, whoa, felt that. Like, I think, I think fucking Asoka would have felt something. Everyone would have, if you're such fucking super Jedi masters, you might feel like an absence when somebody like Master Polakun who's so in touch with the force is severed from it by dying. So she says that and he's like, fuck off. And then they fly there. And then she has the vision where she sees Master Plokun like standing on the pot or whatever.

and I just feel like where is how are we how is Anakin going to nurture that connection to the force because I like it feels like

his what he's going to give to Asoka that's being set up here is like you know the Jedi council are by the books and sometimes you have to go off the books and like that's Anakins

like that's his teacher that's the lesson for the day but that's is going to be his lesson for life because that's who Anakin, that's like the Jedi caricature that he is. He's the one that like deviates from orders in order to do what he believes is right. And it feels like given the Clone Wars movie and this first few episodes, like that's really what's getting reinforced constantly over and over again with

Asoka. Whereas like another master might have been like, that's right, you know, when you have those instincts you should lean into those instincts yeah like that's part of what connects us to one another or something like that exactly like Yoda talking to to fucking Luke while they're in the swamp land like he's constantly talking about like what are you feeling when you look at ray and Luke later on in life he they're they're constantly talking about like what do you feel what do you feel like what is the force telling you like what's out there it's like so so concentrated on the force and I feel like what where is that Anakin's just trying to get as many achievement points as he can he's trying to get that gamer score up and that's the lesson it definitely

feels like we're never going to get an Anakin birds moment right like we're never going to see him have that sort of relationship with the force and people around him like yoda did where it's like I got that mountain down and also these birds approve of me and I can communicate with them I guess I guess so But he does have this like intense connection to the force because he's able to feel suffering

like the suffering of his mother from fucking light years away or whatever and feel that so so deeply like that's not I feel like that it just disappears at times that seem convenient to I don't know what

it just doesn't make sense to me why it's not well he remember people told him to shut that shit up, right? So why would he ever know to tell someone else not to do the same thing? Right. Like he doesn't, no one's ever modeled good pedagogy for Anakin Skywalker as far as we've seen. Right, which is why he doesn't buy into it.

That's why he's constantly. But that doesn't mean he has a good model to then deploy. Right. Having a bad teacher does not make you a good teacher. It means maybe you can identify what bad teaching looks like, but you still need someone to connect to you and be like, all right, here's how, you should actually respond to these things. Like, you know what I mean? But if he has, if he's someone that had premonitions, saw them confirmed, like, he's had

that, that relationship validated, why he wouldn't, like, I don't know, why that wouldn't, why Asoka saying, you know, I felt something or I'm feeling something. I mean, the truth of this is, we're probably. six episodes away from them deciding about that story. And being like, oh, Al-Aa, when you have those feelings, you better listen to them. Or, hey, Asoka, be careful with those feelings because those are dangerous or something, right? Like, the answer is we'll get, we will get to an episode where they decide they want to tell that story finally. Right. Yeah. And it feels like part of the like umbrella story is like, what are the moments in Anakin's life where like his internal

forced GPS or is fucked up because he's being too arrogant or he isn't focusing on the people around him or he's too angry. Like we see that in the episode that's coming up. We see him where like Asoka's calling for his help from 20 minutes away or like 20 feet away in the Clone Wars movie and he's just like, I got to go. I'm upset about something. So I, you know, it illustrates points of Anakin here that are frustrating and I guess are illuminating in some way, but it is frustrating to watch sometimes.

I agree. Also, I think just two things that are going to be wildly complicating to analyzing any of this is, one, the Jedi have lost key amounts of connection to the force and their ability to, like, read the world through the force. And two, Anakin is leading a double life, and there's a lot of keeping concealed. And so, like, this is a character who can't be too transparent about, like, hey, here are some choices I've made about how they have a person to be a Jedi. And so I think there's probably, like, you know, in some ways, he's like, hey, you go around the Jedi Council, all that, that's good. Like, let's be people of action. Let's get shit done. In terms of talking about how we connect to other people and, like, attachment, anything touching on attachment,

Anakin has very good reasons to be very reticent to sort of lay out his philosophy. Because it doesn't take long before, like, and I'm married. Right, right, right. So, wait, what were you doing on Tatooine when that happened, Master? Well, Padman and I were there. I mean, I was there, and she was, I had to protect her, obviously. I wiped out a village, TLDR, we got married. Oh, shit.

Nabu Holy Man married us, per the script. Yeah, no, I think one other complicating thing here is, you know, when they were all the ones attacks, hundreds or thousands of people die. And so I do suspect that someone like Yoda is like, oh shit, we just lost a lot of people. I feel that hundreds or thousands of people just got killed all at once. Plokun was probably in that mix and then moves on versus the specific relationship that Asoka has where she can sense him because of that tightness because he recruited her. They all like sat in a circle together with each other for like 30 years.

I think that's a tight thing. No, it is not like that. It is not. Listen, I love the EIC's advice that I worked with. I couldn't have sensed them. You know what? I could have sensed if some shit went bad for some people and I would have been like, yeah, okay, good. Ooh, that feels good.

Fuck that guy. But I would not have, but there are people who are like, yeah, I respect your work. You do a good job at this. But we've not built that relate. Because remember, the relationship that she builds is before she's been taught not to build attachments. Right. That's the most interesting thing, right? He's like, he's the last person that she met before she became a Jedi and was allowing

herself still to build those sorts of human regular attachments. And also he was the person who plucked her out of all those other attachments she would have had and been like, well, off to Jedi school. Remember, you have no one now. Yes. No one but me. But not me. You don't have me.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm just a transit for you. You have the force. It can't hug you and it can't care for you, but it's with you, always. I was so glad they hugged. Yeah. Anyway, we should probably get into the next one. So now we are thoroughly in our Sink the Bismarck arc, you know, where we've got to destroy the super battleship, but first we got to weaken it. So we will send this Hail Mary fighter attack off to go take on the malevolence.

And so the action sort of passes not totally from Plokoon, but Plowcun's going to be part of this. But now it's going to be Anakin's show. Anakin's going to lead a Y-wing attack squadron, Shadow Squadron, on an attack against the malevolence. And they figure out that the malevolence is probably going to be trying to target a major Republic medical base in the area. And quick thing, some wild figures already. So we see that Duku has sort of figured out that this is going to be the play. He wants to attack this medical base because it is treating 60,000 wounded clones. This war has already generated 60,000 wounded who are being treated in this one medical

collection facility. Yeah. So we can surmise just the body count is getting asterisked. economical out there. Oh, yeah. It's bad. It's like, it's, though, it's so hard for me because how it's so difficult, when you talk about fucking huge numbers like that, it's like, it's like the billionaire problem.

Like, we can't, we can't, we can't, we literally cannot conceptualize a billion dollars or whatever the fuck. So when they, or then they're talking about like 60,000, thousands and thousands, it, like, it feels fake. It doesn't feel, like, where are the real. where are the real costs? Like, how do you, how do you visualize? How do you represent what losing 60,000, like, what 60,000 wounded people look like.

You just have shots of a ginormous fucking medical base in people walking around. But, like, 60,000 people, that's a town. That's, it's, it's. Yeah. Well, and they're fucking stuck in their, like, eggs and cartons. Yeah, they're in the back. They're all in their, they're all in the back to tanks. Yeah, exactly.

Which is, by the way, the Kaminoin's run this place. And so naturally, does it feel like a regular hospital? Not really. Does it feel like a weird hatchery? Yes, it does. Like, Nala Se, clearly a gifted scientist, gifted physician, but also, maybe a bit of a mad scientist. And so Nala Se is like, yes, bring me the wounded clones. I will fix them so they can go back on deployment.

I do love the medical base, by the way. The fact that all the bays are perfectly fitted for the transports to just slot right in. Yeah, it rules. That stuff is cool. That design is really great. It's just cool to see a big frigate, like, detach, like, vertically from a station like that, and then, like, descend outwards is very good. I also like the Y-wings in this, which are, again, one of these things that we don't get in the episode

in the actual prequel movies that, like, great connection to the ships that will show up in the original trilogy. Here you get, like, a bulkier Y-wing, the Y-wing, it's almost like it's been filming in. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Yeah, well, I think the original Y-wings

do have a, hmm. They have a turret. They have a turret. But, like, it does appear they have an optional, like, co-pilot spot that... But then also, it's that... It almost looks like it's, you know, the Y-wing in the original trilogy

looks like a Y made of matchsticks. It's like very linear and like boop-bop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. I just did something with my hands. No one can say it's fine. This, on the other hand, is like, yes, it's a Y shape, but it's been kind of filled in to be triangular, and it doesn't have that sort of just kind of, you know, grid shape that the Y-wing of the future has.

and any time the show gestures at, okay, here's technology that's going to change over the next 30 years is a fun. I love that. I do love that.

You know? Yeah. So the theory here is that Duku figures that by threatening these wounded clones, he can force a battle on his terms. And he says that, you know,

the care these Jedi show for their troops is a weakness, unlike the disposable droids. Now, we've seen sort of that care has a curious quality. But nevertheless, it is real. Like, the Jedi think they care.

The clones think they care. And Grievous perceives it, at the very least, right? And so he's sort of tapping into the sense of this is a very familiar to us framework of, like, if you can bring someone back from the battlefield, you do not leave them. Whereas the droids, everything is disposable. Everything's about just sort of sacrifice. Um, Plokun notes that if he's going to threaten this, uh, this medical base, the, the malevolence can't navigate a very quick, uh, path to it. Because space in Star Wars is weird and it gets very crowded. And even though real space is full of big empty spaces, um, the malevolence

in Star Wars space is just too big to get around easily. um it's like it's like driving in boston you know where it's like there's just some streets where it's like oh you can't make that turn you can't you can't you can't take a truck down star o drive um and so the malevolence has to go the long way around but that gives an opportunity for just some good old-fashioned star wars shit we're going to take a really dangerous adventure route to beat them beat them to the punch. Shadow Squadron is going to go get this done. And by the way, at the

opening, somebody else I enjoyed here, Anakin's like, and we're going to do it clean. We're just going to kick ass, get the mission done. No one dies. And Shadow Squadron's like Exo or CO is like, yeah, minimal casualties, maximum effectiveness. And Plow Coon's like,

that's great. And then takes Anakin aside and is like, listen them. Are you sure that is going to fly for a mission like this. Like, Plowcun doesn't say it out loud, but I think the subtext is Plokun is like, listen, you know a lot of these guys are going to have to die, right? Like, you understand the business you are in.

Like, it's okay, they don't. But you need to. And also specifically, we can't do this if, like, six of them die. If six of them die, we lose this fight. We need to have X amount of them to make it to the bridge of this ship. Otherwise, we will not succeed at this mission. So, like, for real, run the fucking numbers, kid, you know?

So, but Plow Coon has no further questions. No, matchstick says they're good, so they're good now. Which, had he asked a few more questions, he would have learned that they're going to get there via something called the Belmora run. Nobody talked about this in advance. Like, no one. I would want to know. And it was just like, I got this. Follow me.

Speaking of Boston, I know a place a few blocks from here. I heard about it as a child. Spacers talked about it. Uh-huh. Yes. I think there's angels there. He might as well have said. There are angels of a sort on the Balmora and Run.

They definitely got wings. This is one of those things that's wild to me because I've been to Balmora in Old Republic. But Balmora as a planet doesn't... I was like, what? Are you united? In Moro Wind, different Balmora. But Balmora, like, as a planet doesn't exist in Canada anymore. This is like it.

Like, the Balmora run is kind of all that's left of Balmora, even though the place Balmora was like a planet you could go to in Old Republic. But it just doesn't exist anymore in Canada. Why? It's like, yeah, I guess, because there's nothing, there's no other place. This is the only canonical reference to Balmora anymore. Well, yeah, but it exists in the older public, and now there's nebula there. I mean, there might have been a star there.

I guess you're right. Yeah, yeah, whoops. That planet sucks. The planet's, like, diseased. It's gross. Anyway. That's why they had the suncrush rat. So, yeah, so they only talk about this as they go on the Balmora run.

And Plow Coon's like, hey, uh, where are we going? What route are we taken? And Anakin's like, we're taking the Belmora run. I heard about it as a kid. And Plow Kuhn does the thing that this is TV show logic. He goes, oh, no, we have to get out here

because the Balmora run has the Nibre Mantas. And right on cue, Nibre Manta's appear. And they spook them. I love these things. These things are cool shit. Yeah, they're so fucking cool. They're just chilling. They're just fucking viking.

They're just, they're eating that gas. Eating the gas. They're probably doing everyone a favor by eating the gas. I'm guessing. I don't know, that gas is a little good. Space ain't going to clean itself. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they're just cruising. And we just get like cool ships through the fucking nebula, dodging. Oh, yeah. Single file. Single file. Is this where one of the ships gets fucked up? Or is that later? One does.

I think an R2 unit gets popped off. Yeah. And then someone's stabilizer gets fucked up. Matchstick. That's matchstick. Yeah. Matchstick's fighter is wounded. I think you lose a couple others as...

It's one of those things where it goes well for a few minutes, but once it starts to go bad, it starts going bad fast. Because, like, the mantas start to panic. The pilots start to panic. It's a more chaotic environment. Kind of breaks bad. but most of the squadron makes it out of the nebula after we get our iconic Star Wars, giant creatures thing.

Is there also a monster in there? I think they're, aren't they supposed to be the monster? Are they not? There's nothing, but they're like just big mantas. They're chill. Yeah, they're just big mantas.

Yeah, but you could easily fly into one of them. Well, the whole tension is that you don't disturb them because theoretically, They're more, like, some shit's going to go down if you scare them. Well, if they just start moving around fast, then you've got a big problem. They're just like, oh, what the fuck is that? It's like a fly. So they make it through and they get out of the nebula.

Basically, right as General Grievous has opened his assault on the medical station. And the first thing that happens, you know, again, this is a show with a big body count. The medical station is like evacuate the walking wounded and to get them out of here. So they're out of harm's way. Grievous is like cool, unescorted transport ships, open fire. And massacres all the clones that they sent out. And while he's doing that, he sends a fighter squadron off to engage the Y wings. And now it's like this whole thing, yeah, Plow Cun has said we can't lose that many fighters.

immediately this bomber squadron is now in a dog fight with whatever those little like fighter droids are. It's like the battle fight. Yeah, I don't, you know, droid fighters or something like that. I forget what they're called. They're all right. They're kind of neat, but they don't, they're not as distinctive as anything else, design-wise. Yeah. So the ion can it opens fire on the, on the Y-Wings.

They all make it out of that, except for Mastick, who doesn't quite evasive. it in time so so he's lost uh they managed to survive the fighter onslaught uh and they begin making their attack run on the malevolence's bridge and the malevolence opens up with flack and once again the are the jedi good at this because anakin's like hey no problem it's just flack we can fly through it and it's asoka who points out no they can't they're not a Jedi who's connection with the force makes them a good pilot you're going to lose all these people and and var de lost matchstick we lose tag uh our first named trooper deaths i think is that is that correct so far pour one out i guess pour two out um uh and yeah uh soka has to give this hard sell which is

which again is like this is this like inconsistency or or it's not necessarily inconsistency i think alley was right last time to talk about that the heart of this tension for Anakin is when is his when is his suffering and forced GPS off when is he so consumed by something that he loses track of what he should be caring about and this is a case where he's like he wants to win he wants to go destroy I mean it's it's stupid as fuck at a certain degree because it's really him being like gur I can't believe grievous attacked wounded troopers I'm going to kill that motherfucker no matter how many dead troopers it takes to do it and like that is the mode he is in, and it's very self-destructive, or it's not self-destructive, it's

clone-destructive, because he's going to be okay. And, yeah, like, seeing her pull him back from the ledge, and then, and then, you know, theoretically, then he's going to pull her back from the ledge in the future. That is that, like, rotating, orbiting relationship that the two of them have, that he, and it's what we know that, like, Yoda wanted from the beginning was, like, to have a positive influence in some ways on Anakin that would calm him down, and And sometimes that looks like Kim needing to be a teacher, but often it seems like it's her being the voice in his head being like, yo, you know, Sky Guy. Can we not kill 18 people today by mistake, quote unquote? So he listens, right? And instead of getting the kill shot on grievous and losing all the clones in the process, he redirects everybody. I guess Plokoon is like, hey, Have you seen Independence Day? Have you seen Star Wars?

Let's attack the big gun instead of the bridge and we'll blow it up and can't do it anymore. And Sky Guy is like, yeah, let's do that instead of this death charge. And then they do it. They go over, they blow up the side of the ship. The ship is too strong to be destroyed instantly by that. But it does knock out the big eye on cannon that made it such a devastating weapon to begin with. um and a bunch of clones get to live i wonder if they realized how close they came just getting got oh you mean on some guys like a suicide attack yeah on an idiotic suicide he could have

just done it himself to be honest yeah i don't know maybe he couldn't i mean actually that's the thing is he couldn't have maybe the thing he needed is bodies to stand in the way right it's like oh if we if all ten of these ships go up towards the thing plow coon and me'll probably probably be okay. Right. Our ships will get through it because the people will be focused on taking out the other ships as well. That's also the Star Wars formula, though, because you look at, like, Luke dropping the little

thing, like, you look at a new hope, and also in the prequel trilogy when fucking baby Anakin, yeah. There's always, like, the main person is going to. to accomplish the goal, but they need to distract the firepower away. And that is just like pure fucking sacrifice that is for. So it's, but in this case,

at least, but in those ones, it's to attack the big weapon. But in this one, it's so that fucking Anakin can land a headshot on general creepin from outer space. Yes. He's trying to get them subscriptions on Twitch.

You need to get those headshots I think this is one of the weird things about I think there's a couple things Like one is that This plan goes wrong in part Because Anakin has no sense of What combat flying is like for normal people He just doesn't

Like he's like what do you mean You just fly you just attack Just don't get shot by the lasers Just be good Yeah it's Get good There's that legendary like there's that hark of vagrant

comic about like a Canadian flying Aces like Roller 1 like flying school and he's like so what I recommend is don't get shot down and one of the guys like but what if one of the enemy

pilots gets behind us and starts to shoot us down and he just looks at and he just looks at it's like that sounds like bad strategy son just do what I do stick to winning and that's kind of Hope that was helpful. Yeah, and that's kind of how the Jedi role.

Like, they're just like, well, no, you just kind of do the thing. And they don't understand that, like, they don't fully grasp. They know they're special, but, like, they also have their own strengths. And Anakin just has no sense that, like, he's not in the top, like, 10% of pilots. He's in, like, the top, like, 100th percent of pilots. And he's just like, no, to me it just comes easy. And he's fucking force power. Like, he's sensing shit around him.

Like, people can't do that. But I will also say that, like, to a degree, like, it makes a bit of sense in that we got a taste of this in attack of the clones. One Jedi can just be overwhelmed and just gun down. That can just happen. Like, they do need people around them to run interference and help them. And so, like, to a degree. agree. It's like, you kind of need to make it so that Jordan gets to take his shot. Jordan's got, you need four other guys on the floor so that Jordan can take his shot.

Do you think that like when, when they're in the hangar and they're like, okay, you three, go with Anakin. They're just like, fuck. Like, I'm a die today. I'm a die today. This is it for me. I should have done. It was good knowing you. I should have taken the sick day today. Jim and Raygun and water bottle. Lampshade. It's the same with everybody, right? At least in these episodes, there's like the juxtaposition between like Plokoon and Yoda being like,

you guys are really valuable to me and I don't want you to die. And then Anna can be like, I'm good at this and you should be good at this. But like at the same time, Anakin and Yoda treat the clones expendable. in a similar way. Like, they both literally jump off of a cliff with those clones and are just like, well, you'll figure it out. So it's like, I, the, the clone wars is already so much about just like two factions throwing bodies at each other in the first place that like every clone who gets in a platoon

with a Jedi at all is just like, well, fuck. I'm going to be the guy who dies today so he can do a cool lightsaber thing. And that's not just Anakin. That's just every That's every... Go set a screen Except a hundred people die when you do that. Right, yeah.

I have to be with the main character today, so I'm not going to make it. I'm the NPC to his main character. The fucking... The other side of it ain't good either, because if you're just out there against these... These trooper or these droids,

maybe you win that fight, but you never know when a Saas Venturist or General Grevis or whatever that... fucking tank commander guy. Yeah. What was this stupid name? I don't remember. Worm loathsome.

Worm loathsome. In my fucking brain now. Thanks, George. That guy's going to show up with his tank squad. I guess we're dead because that's a guy with a name. Another interesting thing here for me was just, what is the reporting order? What is the hierarchy here?

Because Plokoon does not say, Commander Skywalker, this has gone too far. Clones were going to attack the weapon. instead of the bridge because I don't want you to die. He says, hmm, we could attack the side of the ship. Despite being a Jedi master on the High Council, he does not pull rank. This is all the way through this mission is Anakin's command. He has command of this entire mission, despite Plokoon ranking over him.

So I think part of it. I mean, it's not his fleet, right? It's not Plokun's fleet. It's an Anakin's fleet Yeah This is Anakin's a fighter pilot Like you defer to him

I guess Until it becomes really patently obvious That like oh I need to I do need to step in here But it's funny because it Of what Natalie just said Which is like this is Anakin's fleet Like we've seen that now over the last two episodes

It's like okay Anakin Where are you deploying your fleet And this is the same way That the Republic's army situation already existed. You know, you didn't have the big centralized oversight commanding a unified army. You had little independent kingdoms and planets that maybe had their own group that they could move around.

And they're just doing that again, but with the Jedi having their own battalions now, that are their little pet battalions that they move here or there or whatever. Plokoon doesn't come in and be like, well, as the ranking member, I'm now taking this into command. and we've back at the Jedi Council and with, you know, Palpatine, we've talked through everything. We're going to do this plan.

He says, like, I guess I'm here now. What do you want me to do, kid? Yeah, why doesn't he get, like, a reload of his fleet? I mean, he lost his shit. Maybe he's on that respawn timer. He's going to wait for the next shipment of clones. I mean, I don't know. Anyway.

This part does make sense, like, okay, just a quick thing that gets very weird if you, like, look. into naval history, for instance. Sometimes you will frequently have fleet admirals on board the ships of other commanders who lead ships on their own. And like, the routine is, you don't tell that person what to do with them or their ships.

You still give fleet admiral orders, but you don't be like, hey, can you maneuver in this exact way? And I can see there being some logic to it being like, hey, it's Anakin's Command. it's his show they're his forces he theoretically knows this better which is why i think it takes so long for plokoon to get in there and even then not like pull rank but instead just do the maybe something else would work um and i don't know i guess it probably would get real messy if you have j Jedi because they're all so arrogant like a man

Imagine, imagine, Mace Window, Ben Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin show up to another Jedi's fleet. And all of them feel they can just, like, offer some opinions. Yeah. Yeah, it would go back. Can't have that. Well, and this is, this is the, I think that's to me the most, the interesting thing about it is that, like, this was a situation where if Anakin didn't make that decision, a bunch of people were going to die. Yeah. So that he could, so that he could get his headshot.

Well, I was just going to say that, but Anakin is also the one who, like, had to be pulled away from his clones in the movie, where he was like, no, I got to help them. So I think, like, in a weird way, Anakin can be oblivious, but I think he cares in a way. I mean, this is the end of the episode. Nala Say even notes that, like, he's taking this really hard, harder than other Jedi take losing clones. And Nala says, like, what a weird thing for a Jedi to feel. So the episode ends with Obi-1, now having arrived. his own task force and he's off in pursuit of the malevolence uh they're they're in a stern chase and just trying to run the malevolence to ground because uh the thing that always happens

star wars happens the ship's hyperdrive broke just that's that's how it goes uh again this is like uh you know the bismarck was brought down because it couldn't use its rudder anymore uh because an ineffective fighter attack broke the one thing it needed to make an escape and so That's what's happening here. The malevolence is being chased down by Kenobi. And it appears to be just a matter of time as Kenobi's forces are running down the malevolence. Grievous is on the phone, getting increasingly panicky about what all is going on. It's fun.

And Duku is like, hey, Senator Amadala is nearby. and then we see Padma's ship and 3PO, Clone Wars 3PO has a very finely tuned bullshit detector. Oh, he fucking sees through it all the way. Did you write down the dialogue? Yeah. Because I did. Yeah, good. So they're on a mission. I don't know where they were. What did they think they're doing? Awesome. Do you remember this? The thing that I have, yeah, so the exchange that I have is C3PO. says, my lady, are you sure

the information from Chancellor Palpatine is reliable? And Padmey says, yes, it was secretly given to him by the Supreme Executive of the Banking Clan himself. If they leave the Separatist Alliance, it will go a long way to shortening this war. So she's been fed information from

Palpatine, or presumably claiming that the executive of the banking clan, which is one of the founding members of the separatist alliance, wants to leave. Switzerland doesn't go meet him. anymore. Like, no.

Banking Clan is like, we're done, we're good, we're out of this shit. We want to come back into the fold, but we want to talk about it. Come meet us in outer space by yourself. Don't bring anybody except for that real cool droid you got. And we only told Palpatine. We only told the Supreme Chancellor. So she stumbles into the path of the Malove. 3BO knows.

Just real quick. 3BO knows, right? he's like you cannot trust palpity this is like one of those things where like it feels like 3PO's deference can't quite just say like hey am I the only one who sees how fuck things are getting around here

yeah that's true he's too polite it's against his programming to be like yo watch out he's a protocol he's a protocol droid he's he's a secretary and secretaries know everything like he's got a call log

where he's like you know it seems like every time Palpatine reaches out with some suggestion something fucked up happens he has fucking Palpatine's little black book he's like he knows he knows what the fuck it is but he just can't say shit Amadala gets into the path of malevolence

and is immediately like she's getting tractor to board and Anakin is you know panicking a bit and Padma is just like absolutely not just keep attacking. I'm not going to be a hostage. Blow this thing up around me if you have to.

Because remember, Fanda attack of the clones, Padmae's ready to die. Yes. Padmae is ready to die. Bad, bad reason to die, IMO. But do you, girl. So, naturally, Anakin immediately ignores this.

And it's like everybody stops shooting the malevolence. and so then we get a lot of adventures on the inside of the malevolence. Amadala sabotages her own ship so it can't be, so she can't be taken, and it's going to do some damage to the ship from the inside. The battle droids are just conducting a real crap search. Yeah. Yeah, and hiding in some rubble, the, you know, we get like all of all the, all the, all the, all the classic, you know, kids show you're stuck on the enemy ship, you know, checks are checked, boxes are checked, of like, all right, you have to hide near the communication device, but behind some rubble or whatever, and then you got to sneak out the room just as the enemies come in the room and you got to, you know, meet your friends halfway across the ship. You're on opposite end of the ship. You've got to meet halfway. All that stuff is fun. I don't know. There's a cool tram in the ship. Way better than the factory.

of the ships. Oh my God. Train scene. Train scene. Their trains are good. I like them. The like relationship between Anakin and Pad may not really improve here, though. They're not like a good couple in this episode, I don't think.

No, but they do take the first excuse they can to make out on the enemy ship. They do. It's not a train, isn't it? Who wouldn't? I think it's dangerous. I think this is how, listen, you're going to have liberals in your tweet mentions and talk about Compromot after this, for sure. Because if Grievous sees a single screenshot of the two of them, like, in that tunnel,

it's done. He's going to leak the pics. He's going to leak the pick. It's over for Anakin. Anakin's canceled. Or just more importantly, Padmae's in danger. This is why Superman can't let people know he's Clark Kent, because he doesn't want his loved ones to come into harm's way.

The second that people know. A picture of Anakin and Padmae embracing as they enter a tunnel. Yoda looking at the picture, hmm, a metaphor this is. Oh, God. It's, it's, yeah, I don't know. They, they go for it. They go for it also like 20 feet away from Obi-Wan. I guess he's like on a train about to go away the other direction.

Probably fine. Why isn't Obi-1 sensing the horny vibes? as he's pulling away. Like, everyone is just so fucking head empty all the time to the forest. All the time. It's so funny. I think Obi-1 knows. For him to be like, oh, you just let C3PO behind, I'll go get him.

Don't worry about it. You think he's, like, providing an opportunity. I think so, yeah. Go meet with your wife real quick. Right. Yeah. I think there's a bit of, he always sort of played around the fact that, like, look, Annikin's a young guy's clearly got a crush on the senator.

He has no idea how far this is gone. And so he continues to be like, I know you love being around the senator. And it's like, because he thinks I've had relationships like that. Yes. Yeah. With Ventris. Let me tell you about me in Ventris, my boy.

Yeah. But he's also at the same time, like, Aniken never speak to Padman. ever about anything you think because it's fucking weird and you're just going to freak her out a lot well that's just good advice yeah he's just trying to help him out that's being a wig man that's just true unfortunately um the other the other i mean the other thing that does happen here is we get we get a little bit of obiwan grievous duel here we get that grievous does wield lightsabers um and like can do that despite clearly not being like what we think of as a force user

traditionally, right? This is a motherfucker who just goes to town with strength and multiple hands and shit with light sabers. It's, I think a thing may be worth, two things worth saying. One is, again, it's interesting to compare this to the Tartikovsky stuff. The end of that first Tartikovsky scene ends with Yoda feeling how dope grievous is at fighting through the force from across space, from across the galaxy. And this version of grievous in combat is not as impressive, but he's still like, you fight Obi-Wan and you don't die and you're not like a Sith apprentice.

That's pretty fucking good. But the second thing here, I think that's interesting, or I guess it's worth saying, is get ready for, I guess, 100-plus episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi being the only one who can interact with, I guess, sorry, I guess Assoca can too, specifically, Anakin Skywalker will never interact directly with General Grievous in this show.

What? So get ready for this because in Revenge of the Sith, there is a single line where General Grievous and Anakin meet for the first time and say some shit that is like, I thought you'd be, he says like, I thought you'd be taller or something like that. What? Uh-huh. And so...

Yeah. So, I forget the exact line. I should have looked it up before bringing this up. He expects Anakin to be older because of his reputation. And so because of that, for the entire run of Clone Wars, they can never actually meet face-to-face. That's so fucking funny. So there will be week after week, missed calls.

you know, one of them slips in while the other one slips out. Oh, this is painful. But they will never face down with each other. That's really fun. Thanks, George. This is very, that's very foolish. That's very, very foolish. I don't know why you would be like, yeah, grievous is going to be the villain of the show now in the Anakin story.

But I do like it because they're like opposite sides of the same emo, confident guy card. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's good to see them. Say more. Give me, give me more about how, about emo, about emo boy grievous. You know, he has tantrums. He believes in himself. He has a lot of like, command room confidence that I find really funny, which is like,

if I'm sitting here with my little droids and I'll talk shit to them and I know that I'm good at this, I'm good at this. But then he's out and about and he'll like talk shit, but he still has to like prove himself. I like that Duku is always like, well, you've disappointed me and you have to prove yourself to me now. And Grievous is like, damn, I do. This is where I start to order Grievous.

So, yeah. So Padma and Anakin sabotage the ship so that it will just do a like suicide dive into the nearest moon. And Grievous realizes this is happening way too late to avert it.

And he has to get on the phone to Duku. And Duku demands a report. And Grievous is too scared to even reply. He just turns off the radio. And it's the one

thing where I'm like Left on red. Put my phone on Do Not Disturb. But also, I think this is where like the terrible thing is. Like, Grievous is also a stunted child. Like Ducu is the person that he craves approval and

affirmation from. And Duku plays on that right and left. And when grievous, and it makes Grievous more prone to fucking up, because grievous cannot express, like, things are going bad and I need help. He can't do it. And so, yeah, here at the end, we get this, like, childish inability to admit what has happened and just kind of like, I'm just going to go home. And I'm not going to talk about the fact I lost the super weather. I don't want to worry about it. Yep. Like, dad will find out, I'm just not like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to tell him, though. I will, I will just go and wait in my room. He'll get the report card.

Yeah, this is a very Anakin thing where it's, you know, it's like I can't handle, um, I can't handle being faced with my shortcomings by the people I need to prove. Yeah. You know, he'll keep coming. up in Clone Wars. He's in a bunch of episodes. We do get a little bit more from him eventually in terms of what his

deal is. You know, he's 7 foot 1. What else do you need? He needs more arms. He's got enough of them. Need more arms. It's fucking cool to fight with the lightsabers of the Jedi you killed. That's just a cool note.

That's just a cool thing to have. but you know but you got to do different cuts with them man like that's why that's why Obi-1 beat you is like if you just do two overhand slashes you might as well just have one blade what are we doing

it's fun that he is the one of the apprentices of Duku or one of the I guess you know protégés of Duku because he's so different than Duku in so many ways but fundamentally

is he just Duku without all the pump, right? Duku is not out here doing good. He's not winning these fights. He's not winning these negotiations. He is also negotiating with an iron fist instead of like the sort of softer velvet glove that he presents with. Duku would also have probably lost the malevolence here to the same exact outcome because he's just as ruthless as Grievous is. But Grievous just doesn't put on any pretense. is he'll knock the shit out of the...

I mean, this is part of that one exchange where Grievous says... Grievous knocks the head off of one of his droids. I think this is in the second episode. I think this is in a shadow of malevolence. Knocks the head off one of the droids and Duku is like, ah, you know, the... You don't treat the York troops with the empathy that the Jedi do theirs. And Grievous is like, yeah, that's a weakness of theirs.

and Duku says something to the effect of, like, we'll use it to crush them, you know. But he starts, but he doesn't start at, we should use that to crush them. He starts at kind of, you know, loosely, yeah, chastising him for not putting on the air of caring about people. But Duku doesn't give a fuck about these droids either. So I think that's an interesting contrast between the two of them, for sure. But Duku has a way. I mean, again, like, he's coded as a very upper class card. He's Count Duku.

He's an aristocrat. Like, even among the Jedi Order, he's kind of the aristocrat of the bunch. And he has that thing that a lot of, like, wealthy and powerful people have where Duku can just absent himself from where things are going to get dicey. And so he's like, I'm a great admiral. I took the malevolence around, and we rolled up on so many Republic plates and just whacking. them all. Now some real fightin is going to be required. Grievous, you got

this, right? I'm going to go do other things. And the part where it's like, okay, we're going to be like now we actually, you know, are going to be held in account for this, Duku ain't going to be around for that. Duku's on to the next thing. Kind of

an entrepreneur, really. You know, in terms of the follow-through, that falls to other people. Duke, who's the visionary, and he's going to sort of bounce along to the next thing. He's the idea guy. Yeah. He's the idea guy. He's the one you send to, like, introduce the deal to, like, start.

But you've got to send in someone else to write up the contract. But he's going to go. He's going to schmooze him. You're not wrong. And he's going to... And booze him. And hopefully not lose him. But he's going to try to just establish the relationship.

and then you have somebody else go and clean it up. But. Duku's staying up late to put slides on his holocron. Oh, my God. So funny. Putting the deck together. Oh, God. Love it.

Separate of space. Vertical integration. Synergy. Battle droids. Yeah. Oh, last thing on this thing for me. Just good, I wrote drone here, is what I wrote. humor is what I meant

this episode. There's a bit where the droids all jump and two of them miss the jump and then one of them makes it onto the train track and then a train just shows up and hits it. That's just, that's just Looney Tunes. That's just great. And the other one is the bit where the three droids

come into the like look down on the train places and two of them like go to shoot and the third one is like do not shoot at the Jedi. Don't do it. And they do it anyway and they get the blaster bolts reflected back at them and he's like i told you and that's extremely good you know they're learning they're paying attention yeah i love them my favorite my favorite moment in in comedic moment in this one is when uh padmay and anakin me like anakin forces

uh padmay to him to like while she like jumps from train to train to grab him and obi one's like I will do the same with C.3PO and starts to force him and a fucking train just, like, collides with C.3PO, like, mid-fucking jump. And he's like, oh, I suppose I'll go and retrieve him. Oops. Like, does not give a shit. Like, it's totally fine. Just chilling. Poor 3PO. Poor 3PO. He's really, he really takes the brunt of a lot of these escapades, I feel like. Oh, yeah. You know what a few people? feels a bit like is that um this obi one canobi is based on other alec Guinness characters like in in some ways where he's a bit more of a martinet a bit more of a like very polished dumbass

but like is kind of a dumbass yeah and there's there's a bit of like guy is very swaggering and self-confident but like his wins and losses not amazing um certainly i'm more amazing and a lot of people's, but he's just very like, I can do that. Leave it to Opie one. I feel like 30% of his screen time so far has just been beard stroking.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. A hundred percent. I mean, it's a good beard. It's great to see. I'm not complaining. Yeah.

And look, once they start lighting it a little better, like, it's going to be great. I have to say on the subject of lighting that these powers, The last four episodes have sold, not completely, but done a lot more to sell me on this art style and animation style than Clone Wars the movie. Like, there is some specific close-up shots of, like, Ventris's, like, face and different things like that where you see, like, the paint stroke, like the brush strokes and stuff, and I just love that shit. So I'm, I've come very far around on the art in it, the art style especially. I'm still, I think the animation is getting progressively better, but I'm enjoying it so, so much more.

Space, I think especially looks good in this show right now. The, what was the name of the play? Albregato. Albregato, whatever, what else, system from the Y-wing episode. or no, that was from the, that was not the Y-Wing episode, that was the Plochun one, but like the huge red planet

that completely, like, dominates the screen with all the debris around it, looks sick. All the Y-Wing stuff and the Nebula was really fun to watch. Especially compared to, like, some of the jungle stuff.

I don't think that the jungle looked great. In general, organic land-based spaces seem hard for them to do still. But ship interiors and outer space stuff seems great. And then, yeah, I think the character design stuff has been pretty, has been getting there, you know. It's fun to look at Plow Coon for a few episodes. It's fun to have Obi-Wan show up and, like, bring a different energy to the screen.

I think that's going to end up being one of the show's strengths is like, it has a, it has a pretty deep bench in terms of characters it can deploy. And we're only just scratching the surface now. There are so many characters to come, so I'm excited. And we'll meet a few more of those characters with rookies. And then the two-episode series, Downfall of a Droid, or that's the second one. Look, there's two Droid episodes. That's the right. No, that's right.

Huh? Yeah, Downfall of a Droid and Duel of the Droid. So, episodes five through seven of season one. Yeah. So we'll be getting into that next time we do this. and I think again we will have two very different sorts of Clone Wars episodes another of those standalone type short fiction style episodes and then a return to the progression of our main plot with our main characters

but that will do it for this week's edition of a more civilized age you can find me on Twitter at Rob Zackney Allie where it can be will find you. They could find me over at Allie underscore West. Austin. At Austin underscore Walker. Natalie. At Natalie Watson.

We hope to join us again for that next episode. Please rate and review us on the podcast platform of your choice. And until then, remember, none of this is as long ago or as far away as you have been led to believe. But also don't let your babies grow up to be Jedi. but also that one but both good pieces of advice yeah also don't create clone armies

that you lose like if somebody delivers a clone army to you I would say don't go pick it up don't just send it return it and I demand to sender and I demand no idea

and I demand We're going to be able to be. We're going to be. I'm going to be able to be. Oh! You know what I'm going to be.