A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 08: The Lurmen Arc (Clone Wars 13 & 14)

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

If there is one leading question this podcast has raised so far, it's "What role do the Jedi really serve in the Galactic Republic?" It's fair to say that we've been pretty critical of this ancient order of religious space cops, and fortunately, the writers of Clone Wars have decided to bring our skeptical perspective into the show directly. Someone who can speak truth to power. Someone who can confront the hypocrit- Sorry, sorry. One second. I'm being handed a note.   Ah! Well. Nevertheless, Next time: Episodes 15-16 Show Notes Fallen Clones: Flash (not FLESH as we thought), Lucky, and Cameron 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 Zagney, joined by Ali Acapora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. So a friend of the show who was watching tonight's episode sent me a text a few nights ago, asking, why is this episode of Clone Wars about colonial Irish mere cats of the Velt who are deeply committed to a philosophy of nonviolence? And that's a great question that I'm not sure we'll be able to answer tonight, but did remind me that if you have great questions or just want to hear us answer questions like that, you should check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash civilized. Once a month, we do a Q&A podcast covering the episodes we've discussed most recently,

and I think this month's Q&A is going to take us through the Blue Shadow arc. So thanks as always to everyone who continues to support us on Patreon. We've been thrilled to see that we're still growing our base of support at a pretty steady clip, and it's meant a lot to all of us. So for today's episode, we have another two-parter, but one with a bit more of a through line this time. In Jedi Crash, Team Anakin rides to the rescue of another Jedi Knight, Aila Secura, or Sakura,

who has found herself overmatched by a separatist fleet in the course of the rescue. Anakin is grievously wounded, and the Jedi are forced to make a hasty escape that sees them crash land on the planet of Maridon, meridun, brigadoon. Right? Maradun, I feel like they've said. Maradon.

That's what it looks like. While there, they seek help for Anakin, but they encounter a group of the aforementioned pacifist Mirkats, led by an elder named Tiwatka. Securin, the village elder, Spar, about why the Jedi fall so short of this pacifist's ideals, but he reluctantly agrees to provide aid to Anakin. And in the second episode of the Ark, Defenders of the Peace,

that's where this little pacifist straw men gets cut down. by the arrival of the separatist army led by General Lock Durd played by George Takai. They quickly humiliate Tewatka and then appear to withdraw, but it turns out they're just setting up a super weapon that they're going to use to slaughter

the Lerman. That's what the Mirkats are called the Lermen. Anyway, that forces the Jedi into a stand-up fight and forces the Lermen from their own moral vanity into a direct battle with the separatists. So, since we're going to be dealing with a lot of bullshit pacifism for the rest of this

episode. How about that fleet battle at the start, huh? Pretty cool, right? It's really good. I have a note here that it's just like this episode intro is so much more dynamic and interesting than the Captured Duku arcs. It's done in like six minutes. It's so, it's like tense. It introduces stakes. It's just well plotted. It's just well, you know, directed and animated. Like everything about it is just a step up from Obi-Wan and Anakin chasing. Duku around a ship for too long. Even though in terms of like scenery, it's very similar, right?

This is like the better version of that same arc. It's all about like combat aboard a, in a boarding action, aboard ship. That boarding action is sick too because they literally drive a clone trooper transport into the side of like a carrier, which like, okay, yeah, sure. You know what? Let's go. Why not?

I don't know why that thing didn't crumple on impact, but it didn't. Were those, uh, green droid commander Was that the first time we've seen those droid commanders?

Oh, I think so, yeah. New droid just dropped? New droid just dropped still doesn't care if other droids die. Extremely doesn't give a fuck. I felt so bad for that. I mean, I guess

is this rhyming? Like, I don't know. Is this rhyming? Is this rhyming? Is this rhyming? Because I feel like, has this, this is like something we've seen before. Like, I felt

like this was like, and now the droids are doing it, of like, the you know, scrub droid talking to the green commander droid and saying, sir, there are hundreds of droids on that ship. We can't burn it down. And the commander

droid being like, I literally do not care. Please kill them all. Immediately. Why not build a droid to say, I don't care, you know? Like, you're not always going to be there to say, I don't care yourself. It's true. I mean, that's just what Grievous would have said. But I wonder if that sick.

I mean, yeah, is that droid being programmed to say, I don't care? Like, this sacrifice. It's just, it's an extension of the attitude of Grievous, of, of Count Dukhu, of all of the separatist leaders about how expendable their armies are. And I feel like this moment is really meant to be this kind of like, God, they're so fucked. Like, how fucked are the separatists that they would just kill all of their droids without even thinking about it?

When we were just talking a couple episodes ago about how clone troopers are getting just buried at the beginning of every conflict. and are just fodder, really, for the war itself. So, I don't know. That was an interesting moment to me. I think it's actually an alarming sign for the Republican some ways, too, because what's sort of been laid out is this notion that as many clones as there are, the separatists can simply churn out more troops and accept higher losses.

And so I'm kind of codified that. No more of these sub-commanders in the field, you know, trying to win these battles with, like, tactical acumen, you just have somebody in there who's programmed to view it all as, like, almost like material changes, exchanges in chess, where, like, just looking at this thing utterly cold-bloodedly and being like, I do not care if I lose every single droid, I send aboard that ship, that's a perfectly good exchange. In fact, that's a huge win. So we might as well just open fire while they're still in the middle of that point. warning action and that is an like a separatist army that's fighting that way is going to cause more problems for the republic uh because the republic like the math is against them and so the minute it's a bit like the late civil war i think in some ways where the union just kind of realizes like we just can bury these guys and just keep hitting them in the face and they're going to collapse

that's kind of what this little doucheback droid appears to be doing i mean there's nothing stopping that the next evolution of this is like completely droid piloted ships right that are basically just battering rams that you could just why not just

fucking fly a ship into the Republic fleet why not you could just it's all expendable they can manufacture this stuff at such a fast rate they have endless amounts of money somehow there's nothing stopping them from just

Like, just making the most ridiculous sacrifices to just the most ridiculous trades. Like four people this week have told me like, I can't wait for a more civilized age to get to the banking clan episodes of Clone Wars where they get into the economics of the galaxy. I fucking cannot wait. I need that so bad. The money does not exist right now. Apparently there is going to be an arc in which we deal with the banking clans and the Republic like needing to get money from them to buy. buy stuff. And that's exciting to me. I cannot wait. I just want to also shout out the B2RP battle droid, the ones with jet packs that show up in this sequence and just like land on enemy

fighters and shit. I think they're just like basically like those other big bulky battle droids, but these ones have jet packs and jet packs are cool. I like them. Yeah. I agree. I'm down. Definitely the best part of this fight for me was one of one of those lands and you can like see the glass on the Stormtrooper ship break and then just fucking tears the top of it off. It's very cool. There's some horror movie stuff happening in this intro. And yeah, when that Stormtrooper is like, there's a dude on the cockpit window of your ship in the high atmosphere.

And a dude is punching through it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. They get through it. It's fine. They, you know, get separated. from Anakin who's trying to hold them off, they get onto like a different smaller frigate

that's part of the, that's docked with the big carrier, and, uh, and he gets like blasted by I guess just like the ship exploding. Um, and they drag him inside and get away, but he's fucked up. We get him on life support. We get a drop of the Darth Vader breath, um, uh, while he's hooked up to the machines. Oh, does that sound cute? I've read, I've read this twice now, including from Star Wars.com, and I've listened for it and can't find it, so it must be mixed in deep. If I just read it in the Wikipedia, I wouldn't have even brought it up, but Star Wars.com says it's there, so I guess I believe them. And maybe people listening heard it. And then, yeah, then we get the stuff we don't want to talk about because

it's frustrating. I don't know. I have stuff to say about it. I don't know. I don't want to skip too quickly past Sakura. Sure. Yes, you're right. I think he's introduced as yet another version of Jedi that we encounter and I think we have one interesting exchange during that whole um there's kind of a cool like there's a series of like close shots just held in profile as the two Jedi are just tearing through these corridors and you just get a sense of the mayhem they're causing but you don't fully see it it's just like flashing lightsabers and like droids getting slaughtered uh as you sort of keep pace but there's a point somewhere in this where i think where somebody asks um succura about

Anakin are all Jedi this reckless. And Sakura replies, you know, well, at least the good ones. And so we've met. Now we are meeting yet another slightly more renegade style Jedi, somebody who's a little bit less maybe up their own ass about the, like, how cool, calm, and collected the Jedi always are. And she's kind of looking at Anakin as like his approach to things where like, hey, let's just die. dive in, let's go, people need our help. She looks at that and she's like, that's a good Jedi. Which is interesting because it also implies, you know, in the crucible of this war, we've

realized we have some useless ass Jedi out there. Some motherfuckers don't know when to jump in. Yeah. It's also a fun contrast because she's also, as we'll see through this episode of the next one, at the same time is a no attachments Jedi, right? Like, it is not, they have not fallen into the, like, there are two types of Jedi in the world, Anacons and Obi-Wans or Anacons and, you know, Yodas or something. Because while she is a jump-in-head-first, Saber-Go, Sabergo, Saber-Go, Saber-Go-Ber-Goe-Ber.

She is also a, listen, Asoka, like, don't fall for that attachment shit. You've got to let it go sometimes, and that's what being a Jedi is about. which is, I think it's interesting because it, you know, I think that that speaks to the ways in which she is able to throw herself into everything. And maybe a difference between her and Anakin, Anakin throws himself into things because he gets attached to things and thinks that the things he loves are worth defending. Whereas Ayla seems like she's able to throw herself into things because she is detached from, she does not have that attachment to things, including maybe her own life. She's willing to say, like, no, I'm not going to let attachments to. physical things or relationships get in the way of me putting my life on the line to fight for those things, which is an interesting distinction. Yeah, there's like an important gap between them,

especially in the context of like Anakin gets hurt saving the others, right? Like he lets himself take that fire. And he does that like cool force push to save everybody. There's a lot of good like force movement stuff with Anakin in these two episodes. I agree. I also, I do dig, just in terms of action sequence, the escape from this fight is really cool where they're trying to do like a hot landing aboard a Jedi cruiser. There's another

gruesome clone death. They take fire and the pilot is killed and like head slams the hyperspace button and they have to do like an emergency undock before they jump inside the cruiser. And so they just do a blind jump and we have a kind of exciting

like hey we're about to crash into that star. That's cool. the crash land on this planet. I have a small note about buttons. I feel like if you had a ship that was capable of hyperspace, that perhaps you wouldn't put that under a single button press. That feels like a low barrier to entry to me. like maybe it's a sequence of buttons like one two three yeah or like a little lid

I want to back this up I feel like there might have been a safety catch over that button that had been flipped up because they were doing stuff you could be right in the next sequence when they're trying to avoid crashing into the sun there is like a safety release mechanism to like disable the navvy computer yeah you got to have a well the same thing is we don't in the past we've seen like throttles to do hyperspace not a button right Right? Maybe the Lunning Falcon has like a special, like, safety mechanism with a throttle instead. Han loves a throttle. Yeah.

Yeah. He's also like a, like a DIYer. He's like maybe that was like a little aftermarket throttle he put in there. He makes his own keyboards. He changes his whole ship console. Yeah, yeah. He's, I'm with him. so they crash on the planet and anakin is pretty jacked up and they have to split up and we get the first of asoka's lessons about thinking of the greater good she can't stay with aniken everyone's got to go and try and see if they can find some help oh i forget but how do they know this planet is inhabited because the crash landed and found a very useful pictogram just discarded near their crash site

depicting in a crude scrawl Now this is a crude scrawl Of like some ice age looking shit Where like dude stabbing a big monster Next to a big tree And there's like a little village near it or something Or maybe there's just a big tree It's literally just a tree

It's just tree right It's a distinctive tree It's a distinctive tree Yeah It's just a big tree I mean Also Go ahead

The thing is There's not much On the planet So I guess How did they find this How did they find this? It's a big planet It's a planet

They happen to crash land Next to a sketch A sketch path How many of these are there Are the is this mass Is this the newspaper Even if it was A planet is big

I played no man sky And those aren't even real size planets Yeah but you Found things No Man's guy and like experience coincidences and like incredible things. You know what? I guess the force says I guess the force guy didn't land where it did, right? I guess so. You know what? You can always defer to the force in this case. They were like, here's we're going to land on Lion King planet right next

to this sketch. But what is the function of the sketch? I like your newspaper theory. It's an editorial cartoon. You're saying why did someone draw it to begin with? Why does it exist? Yes. Good question. Okay. If I was like a mere cat healer, right? And I was like, there's monsters near these big trees. And, you know, if anybody comes through, I just want them to know not to go near these trees. Maybe I would draw a couple and just leave them around. Yeah. Beware of giant. Beware of weird, like turkey tigers or whatever the fuck this thing is. They're really cool. I like them a lot. Yeah, the turkey lion. They're called Mastiff Falones. Sure. Is that after Faloni himself? It's spelled different, but probably. It's an extremely avatar The Last Air Vendor-Ass animal, too.

This is extremely like the vibe that they were working with on the other show. Yeah. Just hybrids. But yeah, so this is how a Soka kind of saves the day. She's like, hey, you might think we're fucked

and like on this completely deserted planet, but look, this is basically all we need to know to find whoever lives here. And surely they, will have with their advanced technology of tree bark etchishatch, surely they will have the equipment required to address what appears to be some massive internal trauma to Anakin. Anyway, off they go, heading across the belt. And we get a night full of misadventure. Rex, noble Rex, stays with Anakin. They are menaced by the

Falone. You can just call it a turkey lion. It's fine. Yeah. A mastiff, Falone. If you, if you need to get it right,

P-H-A-L-O-N-E, Phelone. Faloni. Mastiff Faloni. A bunch of Dave Filonis took off after them. And then they find the tree. And the tree just has big acorns. The biggest acorns you've ever seen.

And they fall and they nearly kill them. But they realize. somebody around here is rolling these big acorns away. And so they begin following the acorn tracks. Well, most of them follow the acorn tracks. A bunch of the clones who don't have names until we're about to name who just got killed. A bunch of the clones just get waxed by the turkey mastiff vulture things. And it's pretty horrible.

Their names, by the way, are Cameron, lucky, and flound. Flesh. Yeah. Flesh? Yeah? Flesh. Like your flesh. That was a lazy day in the clone factory, right?

You filled out the clone forms and you're like, I need a name for this guy. Flesh. Okay, clock it out. It's like this is. You did some, you did some shit to get named Flesh. I don't know. These are the three, these are the three categories of fucking clone names. It's like just a person name.

Cameron. Cameron. Body parts. Flesh. Or something ironic about the way you're going to die or something. Like. Yeah, because he definitely got ragdolled by that turkey thing. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the fight where, like, the turkey throws a dead clone into another clone's face. and that's fucking rough. Like it's cool unless that's your boy being thrown at you in which case

it's horrible. It's horrible. It's a rough one. It's a rough one. But I guess we learned later that this was not

the correct approach to dealing with an onslaught. Maybe you should have just talked to them and asked them to leave you alone. in a peaceful way

and you could have just kept going, you know? Or maybe you could have done some cool rope tracks. Yeah, you've got to at least do some cool rope tricks. That's, you do some cowboy shit. Right, this is cowboy country. That's right. Imagine if you had the same skill set

as Sonic the Hedgehog. That's true. That's true. It should have enrolled some of the clones in like some 4-H training. That would have gone better Anyway, so they get through the night And they sort of roll into this town

Where people just turn these big acorn shells Into their homes And they arrive And they ask for help And they run into A very Irish-sounding Big Mere Cat with a big bushy beard T. Wadca

and he wants nothing to do with this. He sees their Jedi, and he makes it very clear, they are neutral in this war. Yeah. He spent some bars at first. You know what I'm saying? I was with him at first. I was like, yeah. Violence breeds violence.

Jedi are no peacekeepers. He's not wrong. There's a back and forth. I forget who says, Asoka says, we're fighting for freedom. And she like, lift her arm up. And, like, are you? I don't understand why you. believe that because the separatists are trying aren't they're not a hegemon like this is one of the

things that falls apart from me with this entire metaphor like not to jump ahead a little bit is that the the separatists are not as far as we've seen big time like oppressors in the mode of the way we talk about how to stand up nonviolently against any sort of hegemonic force right like in in questions of nonviolent resistance you're resisting someone or something that has power over you and they're not in that's not the way the separatists have been shown so far the separatists are not the Confederacy

as far as we've seen depicted they are they are secessionists but they are not seceding so they can have slaves for instance that's not what we've seen on screen they certainly have slaves because everyone has droids and we've also seen that the Republic

doesn't give a fuck about the way people are treated on its periphery either. So it's not like their hands are clean on that shit either. So it's very, a lot of this stuff is just so weird to me. Yeah. It's super weird. Like, if you want to make Asoka sound naive, that's fine, whatever.

But even Ayla is like, wouldn't you fight for liberty? And like, what about their liberty to fucking leave the Republic? Like, that's all they want to do. These people specifically, and I think this, Rob, goes back to what you were saying about the art. So the other thing we learn here is they're not from here, that they colonized this place, quote unquote, which they didn't bring many supplies

very recently. Since they left, they fled the war, which at this point, if we're being as generous as possible, is one year old. Genosis is the beginning of what we consider the clone war is beginning. That was one year before this, and that's assuming it's literally as far away as it can be, I guess theoretically you could guess up to 24 months, it would still be the one year difference in calendar date, you know, but that's not that long. That's not that long ago. We're not talking about this being a generational thing. We're not even talking about it being like a decade or something. They've been here for some amount of months and didn't bring supplies with them seemingly, built their houses out of acorns. I don't know what their money

situation was. Very clearly they were like, we got to get the fuck out of here even if it means living in big acorns somewhere. So, hey, I have a question. This is this is like a big question how the fuck does time work across the galaxy the Republic has a calendar that it demands all of its members work by is the answer how does aging work

cells age over time so you still just you go by the galactic standard year in terms of counting like how old you are even if you're you don't rotate around the sun that in that time like I'm yeah that is correct well it's just you you log in to the republic time dot is right and it says that it's two o'clock even though the sun is wherever the fuck it wants to be there's multiple of them who gives a shit and then you know you say oh I have a media get three that's it it's like the beats system it's swatch beats yeah which is the best calendar system and they should bring it back fly out Okay, that makes sense to me now. I was just thinking about how people were flying to other planets and staying the same and not like... I guess I just was thinking about like interstellar and how...

Oh, yeah, no. This is just not that world. Gravity doesn't exist that way. The force exists. That's the thing, like, the true shit to really remember is the smallest thing in this world is a being called a will, W-H-I-L, which is a living embodiment of the force. shout out to Will for drawing that picture of the big tree of the monster

yeah that was Will we'll put that shit together that was all real shout out to Will bro people should say all will in this world all the time that would be so good

Caldugu I'm coming for your ass and that is on will anyway but yeah the Jedi come from the Guardians of the Wills originally anyway we'll get there in some way probably

yeah but once again Yeah, this is a place where Star Wars notoriously fungible about, like, time. Like, this old, wizened elder sounds like, oh, we've been out here waiting out this war for decades. And it's been like, dude, it's not like weeks. Like, basically, it's like, oh, we wanted in this community with this deep-seated beliefs. No, you went, you found a cult. Congratulations. You guys stumbled into a cult.

This crazy old grandpa is like, my beliefs in passivism mean we all have to go live in the acorn village, and you will do as I say. And by the way, I didn't bring any of our technology. Yeah. What the fuck? Here's a carving knife. Where were they before? Where were they before is my question. I'm so curious.

They're nowhere because they didn't exist before this. In fact, they're based on a species from a comic originally that are called, let me see if I thought I wrote it down here. They were called the Amani from an EU graphic novel that was a partial inspiration for the story. they would change to the Lerman, change to the Lerman, because the Amani proved to be too violent and fearsome. The Lurman were originally a design for attack of the, no, for Revenge of the Sith. And so there's like concept art from Revenge of the Sith stuff with them. And then they didn't get used. They got cut from that before they even got like shot or anything.

And so they're like, let's use them. We got them kicking around. They're cool. Let's put them here. which is weird. That's such a weird side step, because, like, if you had kept it the same race, you could do the thing of, like, well, the home we were from was, like, really into joining the war.

We were all going to get enlisted or whatever. That's fun. And now we're an acorns, which would be more compelling. But nobody's enlisting anybody. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Right, right, right. No one is into this war, which, again, is part of the weirdness around framing a non-violing.

a nonviolence and pacifism thing is that like the way this culture sidestepped that bot was through clones and not having to draft anybody or sign anyone up, right? Well, we mentioned clones. One of the most interesting and

frustrating conversations in this, again with Aela and the main Mirat guy, is he she's like, he's like, it doesn't matter who started the clone wars. And it's like, you can't say that the Jedi

didn't start the clone. Wars when they're called the clone Wars? Oh yeah, she's like, I'm sure you are aware that the Jedi did not initiate the clone wars. Like, as if he was like, oh, shit. You didn't start it?

You didn't start it? Oh, okay. Yeah, here's some rope. We'll come through right now. We'll fuck them up. You know we got your back. We got rocks. We got big acorns. We got red corn.

rope and we have they got a super bomb they have acorn juice that has feeling proper shoes together yeah i'll send you my boy wag two by the way his name is wag two wag one is busy we lost wag one on the way over here gotta get another one they should have named him sonic two that would have been ideal also it is kind of funny i'm pretty sure the dude calls him wagtoe and everyone just is like they start reading the anglicized version of the word, which, oh, it's wag too. And it's like, that's not what grandpa said.

I'm pretty sure he said wagtoe. And they're all like, yeah, look, I'm reading this off a sheet. It's better than Assook calling him little guy. Like, within 20 minutes of meeting him. Like, she's so constant thing. That was out of pocket. I was like, Assook, you need a fucking relax. Assoca lost points on this whole, this whole arc.

Assoc had came in looking strong after roasting Anakin last time. This week, looking bad. You need to have this character who is naive and like, and you have to, like, I get, they're trying to represent that she is gung-ho and has not had to think about any of this shit, has believed that she's been taught she's fighting for freedom and liberty and shit. And so this is, like, it's good to have this conversation. In fact, I'm just going to read this Foloni quote, which is a long quote, because they know that this wasn't, I'm just going to read the quote.

One of the interesting complexities, Faloni says, that I think we're beginning to explore in the Clone Wars is really the Jedi's role in the war. One of the ways we're able to get a new point of view on that is by having a group of people who were pacifists. This will become a theme. And he hit it like

that. He's like, this will become a theme that you see a little bit in the series where there are certain people who are claiming neutrality in the war who are claiming to be pacifists that want no part of the war. And their view is, their view of the Jedi is not as docile as you might think.

This kind of ties in later to Revenge of the Sith when you see Palpatine basically try to implicate the Jedi as trying to overthrow the government of the Republic that they're trying to stage a coup. We show these different points of view that kind of compromise the Jedi or show them in a way that we're not familiar with. I thought the Lerman were a good way

to start introducing this theme. It really puts Ayla Secura on the spot. It really puts Asoka on the spot. They think that they're fighting on the side of good it, and here they have to meet a character and get confronted by the idea that, well, maybe you're not, and we'll play that out in several different ways. Anakin feels differently about the war

than Obi-Wan feels about the war. Asoka gets caught in the middle of that view, and how does that develop all their personalities? And that's really, I think, one of the most interesting threads we get to explore in the series. So I'm glad they were thinking about it. I'm glad they took a swing here, even if I think some of the pessimism stuff

is weak because it's real straw-man shit for the reasons we've already started to talk about and we'll continue to. But at the very least, it's good to know the people making the show were like, listen, people reasonably believe the Jedi are the reason for this war. And that is why they buy it when Palpatine says that they were trying to throw a coup because they already didn't think highly of the Jedi. So baby steps, I guess. I'm not an incrementalist, but baby steps. I do also think, like this entire episode just kind of captures how naive everyone is.

We get Asoka broaches with Sakura this notion She's like, I get so confused We're forbidden from forming attachment But we're supposed to be compassionate And I'm like I feel like First Day of Jedi School This is probably something we should be covering But Sakura's answer is not actually that reassuring

Sakura first she's like I get it I also had a master I cared a lot about He was like a father to me naturally I couldn't have that because let's see here I realized for the greater good I had to let him go don't lose a thousand lives to save one okay but that's not the that's not the math we're dealing with here man like it's one of these things where it's like one of these days we might have to do the spock like greatest good you know the needs of the many type thing but it's like you're seriously building your entire philosophy around a like trolley problem

of like do you like ride the trolley over a million people or do you like let it hit your Jedi master and it's kind of it's kind of weird where Sukura is like yeah I cared about somebody too but obviously you know sometimes Jedi have to make decisions for the good of millions so we can't care about people like that and I'm like that feels weird that doesn't feel like a really great answer to this dilemma and it doesn't answer I think what Assoc is kind of driving at which is that attachments can make you strong. And Asoka's already seeing that, and she and Anakin are both picking that up. Like, their bond is making them stronger.

In general, until, like, maybe his ultimate fate, Anakin's attachments do drive him to be a better version of himself sometimes. And so Asoka's, like, it doesn't always track. And Sakura's response is just kind of this like, yeah, I cared about somebody too. Had to kill that off. Just that part of my head to die. And, like, when little Mir cat dude, sorry, now I'm doing the Asoka thing, when the little guy, yeah, when Tiwaka is like, Jedi, what is it, Jedi are not peaceful or something, Jedi are, Jedi are not peacekeeper, Jedi are no peacekeeper, violence breeds violence, Jedi are no peacekeepers, and he does specifically say, freedom and peace require fear and death, we colonize, the fact that he was like,

Unlike you, we, we're fighting for freedom. And he's like, freedom and priests require fear and death, we colonize this. Like that whiplash. I feel like that quote or that line is such a, this story was written in 2009 or 2008 where like space colonization was full stop considered a different thing. Yes. Because no one had done, not no one. People, a lot of people had not in. the argument that this is a metaphor that was also deployed by real colonists,

that the world is vast and filled with spaces, ready for us to go to and find our own new world, is literally the metaphor that real colonists used when arguing for why they had, why they should go out and do this to, you know, the Americas, but also, you know, in many other places in the world, right? But in that moment, Sakura looks at the lightsaber on a hip. Like, it's the first time she's saying it.

Like, Oh, shit. Huh? I've killed people with this thing. Now you mentioned it. It's a little weird that we all get these when we're kids.

Huh. I don't know what to say to this. And she sort of has to rally yourself. She's completely shut down. She reengages over T later and tries that, you know, I'm sure you know, we didn't start the war.

But then T. Tiwaka, like, this is when we start, This is when I start to realize, oh, this guy's just a straw man. He sucks. No side is free of fault. It takes two to fight.

And Sakura says some bullshit back. Something about liberty being worth defending. And he says, but is it worth killing for? Fighting doesn't mean you have to destroy everything in your path. Only when you lay down your arms can you make the claim to me that Jedi are peacekeepers. And it's like, okay, man, like, they're not destroying everything in their path. Like, that's not what they've, like, you can argue over the course of this war, maybe they are. But I think in terms of his view of like, well, any sort of fighting becomes this sort of total, like, destructive act.

And there are no circumstances in which it is justifiable at all. Like, making a claim to, like, resolving conflict in any way requires, laying down arms, regardless of who is on the other side. It's like, oh, I'm sure, I am sure this philosophy, uh, is going to stand up to a test real well. Yeah. Um, I mean, this is why I kind of want to know where the mere cats came from, because if you consider, let's say, let's say it's a world where the, the, the, the, the, the

Lerman lived peacefully. They had like, bountiful resources. and the republic you know and and there became a conflict there because of the resources themselves and you know destroyed the earth destroyed that planet whether it's over actual fighting between the separatists or republic maybe the republic like took control of or like you know was like we'll protect you if we can have all of your shit or something like that like when he says like violence

follows the Jedi. It's not wrong because they are doing some kind of violence by just... I mean, when this episode ended, I was sure that the Republic Fleet was going to show up

and that, you know, fucking Count Dugu was going to be like right behind them or something. That didn't happen. It happened a different way. But it, it, I, I think there could have been, like, I could have been with that argument there if I had had any insight into what the Lerman's experience of the war was prior to this. I don't know. Well, I think you're totally right and I wish they had given us some element. Let's take him at his word and say they lived at a place where violence arrived and they

fled that violence because they didn't want to fight or suffer under that violence. I think that like, I have no problem imagining that world for all the reasons you just said. They could have been Rhodians and we would understand this. Do you know what I mean? Rodeans were like, ah, shit, we were, you know, I can't believe war showed up here. We wanted to get the fucking, we're starving. Let's get out of here. Like the conflict has made our world worse. We've seen examples of this. So I don't think that that's too far. The stuff that bugs me about him is I think a thing worth saying is that a key part of doing media criticism is to recognize that the terms of a fictional debate are set up by the creators of a media object. In our case,

there is a debate that I think has a lot of merit, which is all, it's actually not a debate, a debate. It's many sub-debates about what happens to civilians in wars between great powers. It's a debate about how to extricate yourself from a conflict that your nation-state is pursuing. It's about pacifism or non-violent resistance. These are two different things. They're related, certainly, but they are not. You can be a non-violent resistor and not a pacifist, for instance, or an activist who believes in non-violent strategies without being an actual pacifist. a philosophical or political pacifist. All that stuff are realms of debate that I think are valuable.

All of it gets undercut in my mind because the creators of this two-part sear or this two-part arc produced T. Watka, who is a caricature of a pacifist and a non-violent activist, and the separatists being led by a cartoon villain that, and literally the cartoon villain that the U.S. paints its enemies as. but it it doesn't at the same time the

that enemy does not have the same history and ongoing relationship to oppression this dude just

exists to kill people so it's not like he is a stand-in for and we'll get there in next episode

but the separatists are not just a stand-in for the US which means that Tiwat Ka is not

a stand-in for a non-violent it's not a stand-in for Martin Luther King Norris are the separatists are the separatists, you know, the British Empire, and so he's not a stand-in for Gandhi,

despite the Irish accent, you can't really map this to the British occupation of Ireland or any sort of internal Irish or Scottish, because some of these characters also have a Scottish accent, and it blends together in a way that I think is like, e-hmm, none of it maps in that way. And so you end up with a caricature of this sort of these complex philosophies having a sort of debate with interlopers who are naive and or positioned as naive but who don't have who themselves aren't offering an ideological difference and then an opposition which is just burn it all down or the evil bad guys and when that is the opposition that makes the that is allowed to make the cartoonish pacifist even more cartoonish because it's so obvious that that position is wrong that his critiques are unfounded on top of them not being well made to begin with, now the thing that it comes to the conflict with is, is, you know, built specifically to undercut his argument. Yeah, that definitely tracks.

A thing that I kept going back to, especially as we have the, like, separatist general guy show up, is, like, how would this have played off if he was, like, 20% even nicer? Like, if this had been Duku, who could have, like, had his cool accent and, like, been nice to them and made his offers and, like, sat down and had tea with this dude, like, it would be a much different conversation in terms of like, well, we want to hang out here and start doing war, I guess. Instead of this just like, packing those acorns full of explosives. Exactly.

But yeah, it's just so, it's so black and white in a way that is super frustrating as you watch it. I think you're right. Because like if Count Duku had come and just been like, listen, we don't really give a fuck about you guys, but we just want to build a base here. like on the other side of the planet and we're not going to really bother you but we are going to like start building weapons of mass destruction I feel like elder Mirkat would have been like all right but just don't bring it around here or whatever like he's kind of just

like as long as it's not but I don't know because he told the Jedi to get off the planet Like his fear was that somebody was going to follow them and that conflict would ensue. And I think the other thing that, so I think that there's two things. One, I think you could generously say with this guy, this guy does recognize a dynamic that is familiar from the war on terror, which is the moment one side shows up in a place. The other side shows up because there's this horrifying logic of we have to fight each other on all fronts at all times. and wherever one maintains a presence undisturbed, we have to go fuck with them. I can't remember if it's an apocryphal bin Laden quote or not,

but there's a quote attributed to bin Laden where he's talking about all I have to do is like all it requires is somebody to wave al-Qaeda's flag somewhere in the world and America will send everything it has to go fight in that place and soon they will be fighting someone

they'll find the people who live there. And to degree that that is the logic of sort of imperial overstretch is that you start lashing out at enemies and creating more and more because you can't let the aura of omnipotence get punctured. And so I think he is on to something here

with his notion of if I let anyone interact with us, the other will see us as a pawn in this fight. We suddenly exist to this conflict. But the thing that does drive me just up the wall with his character is that he is so clearly there to stand in

for a lot of the defense you hear of like state military violence where it's like oh yeah it's okay for you to say i don't believe in uh i don't believe in violence uh but that at me but wait until someone shows up and wants to take all your shit and wants to kill your people this is a policing thing too right this is the classic rejoinder to abolish the police is well who you call when someone tries to come and take your stuff yeah and it's like we get a bigger imagination do some reading Right. And in this case, it's like the rebuttal is that this war wouldn't even be happening if the Republic had just decided to peacefully collapse because it was serving no need whatsoever. Like the minute you decided to say, well, we're going to have to stay in the Republic. We were going to be heading down this road. We want no part of it. But nevertheless, we do have to sort of maneuver this character into a place where they need the protection of the Republic by the end of this episode. And so for the. the order of good and evil

to be reasserted, which I think takes us into the next episode. Like he does Wattu the medic kid. Wag too. It's written as Wag to

and everyone says wag too except for grandpa. Right. I also don't think he says wag. I think he says like way tough. Is he waog? Wag?

Yeah. Okay. But anyway, so they provide adequate actually more than adequate. Sorry. It's a stunning cover. I have to point out the moral of the story or the quote of the story.

When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose a side. That's the opener for this episode, which is just like why, if you're making the, I don't even know if they're trying to make a pacifist argument, or are they just like, look how fucking stupid this guy. is. Oh, yeah. They're not actually trying to make a pacifist argument. They're just trying to show that there are pacifists in the world. I don't think I think these episodes are explicitly anti-pacist. I think these episodes are explicitly against the notion

of, like, radical nonviolence. And I think that there is, I think there are good arguments against non-violence, against a doctrine of simple non-violence, let's say, right? I think that there are many times where violence is part of a radical

answer to oppression. Like we can point to, you know, many times in history in which revolution is the right reaction, in which violence against your oppressor is not only necessary, but an important step towards broader, you know, liberation. That is, that is, I'm fine with, but the, but they are absolutely creating a straw man pacifist here who is senseless and whose relationships are positioned in an unrealistic way so that he can be absurd. I don't mind critique of pacifism. I think there's a world in which those dialogues have been happening for thousands of years. We're not going to stop debating pacifism anytime soon. This is going to be a part of human dialogue forever. But I think specifically when you've built a series that is

so in conversation with the war on terror to have your first conscientious objector be presented in this way is an abject failure. Yeah, that's the thing that I'm so frustrated by with this quote because when surrounded by war one must eventually choose aside fuck that why do you have to like why is the only option to conform to one or oppressor or the other like that's what that's what frustrated me so much about that quote because it's like no there is a reality in which people don't join either side you see it all over the outer rim tons of people out here haven't joined a fucking side because they have their own methods of like keeping after their communities or whatever and and are just on their own taking care of themselves.

Yeah. Well, we don't, the thing that's so frustrating here for me is like there could be a version of this episode. There's a lot of different versions, right? There's one in which, uh, the Lermans are on, you know, a separatist, a separatist planet and are in fact being oppressed. And nevertheless, because their pacifists won't, won't join a republic. effort to try to beat the separatists back.

There is a version of this where the Lerman live on a neutral planet, but there is some sort of resource when we get the version that you suggested before of the like, hey, Duku shows up and says, there's a resource here we want, and then you get to have that conversation around, hey, are you actually throwing in with a side by simply allowing them to coexist with you or the Republic wants to build a base? You get the war in the pocket version of this that is like, hey, just by having a base here, you've entered the war. And we don't get any of those things.

Instead, it's as if they exist in a vacuum until war shows up in the vacuum. And that's just not how war or culture has worked historically. And then the war is going out of its way to say, and fuck this particular village. Yes, exactly. Yeah, do you want to explain? Well, so, okay, so, Anakin's all better, fighting trim at this point. You know, Waito, just an incredible position. you know he had some good gear in his kit and uh but no sooner has aniken sort of been on the mend

than the separatists arrive in that sort of cool like uh skylab type spaceship they've got uh it's a cool ship it's pretty neat and it arrives they flee uh into the countryside and we meet general lock dird um a Very big, bloated, morally corrupt Vinal, separatist general. Lots of stereotypes here about, like, body types. Also, like, you've got George Taked, but unfortunately, like, also kind of playing, like, Asian Warlord, who again, like, corrupt, indulgent, Vanall. It's just generally not a great look, even as Ticay is having visible fun with his lines and the character.

Yeah, he's having a blast. This is the first time a mainline Star Trek actor crosses over into Star Wars in a non-like bit part video game type role. So shoutouts to that happening. This is history. We're watching history. And part of history is this guy immediately taking a dump all over the Lerman's passive, pacifist nonviolence, where he's like, welcome, you're now part of the separatists. You know, you now live under the separatist umbrella. He says the separatist protection, which is really interesting.

He's like such a jackass, but is still doing this air of like, we're here to help you by doing weapon tests. And it's ridiculous. And then orders the droids to ransack this village. Yeah. So they do. He has them going searching for contraband evidence that maybe the Jedi had been there. And once again, we have, everything's getting extremely blurry in this episode.

I want to talk about this a little bit. so first the guy turns the lermint against him by executing a needless invasive house-to-house search of this village he just showed up at you know who's done a lot more of those in recent history than like anyone else is like u.s military forces like this is like this is what an army of occupation tends to eventually get into when they're doing counterinsurgency type shit so we get this where like pretty clearly maps to that type of war they are they're satisfied that that there's no Jedi, there's no Republic presence. So they're like, cool, see you later. We might be back to do future searches. But no sooner have they left, then they start setting up like a little sci-fi stockade and what are they up to?

Well, they're there to do a weapons test. And they're trying out a new weapon that is like, in true Star Wars fashion, like the brainchild of Locdurd, but really it's something cooked up by a technician and Count Ducco, called the defoliator. it is a super weapon that will leave machines unharm

but will destroy all organic manner I feel like it's not as cool it's made out to be because it turns out to just be like a fireball that it's a fireball metal's fine that's how much did you spend an R&D on this it's a big fireball so we get him doing a test

of like firing a shell at two battle droids and we see like a wall of fire sort of blow across this field scorch the earth and two battle droids are fine the defoliator just by the name is more suggestive agent orange again like this is called this is more having more echoes of like american colonial wars than anything else where like in vietnam because the jungle became a major tactical obstacle to the U.S. way of war, they started spraying a defoliant all over the country and to kill plant life.

And then in combat, they would lay down tons of napalm to just like set huge swaths of countryside on fire. So the thing is, Agent Orange isn't a fireball. It's a chemical weapon that has long-lingering effects. It poisoned a ton of people, including a lot of U.S. troops who ended up being sent into areas that have been hit with Agent Orange. Here we get, it's just a cool fireball.

But the fact they're using it is clearly, like, they're evil for using it. We've got to stop them. And even though we have a pretty good test, they're like, and now for Schis and Grins, we're going to fire it into that Meerkat village. Yes, exactly. And again, it speaks to the primary thing that falls apart about this. At this point, I guess we're calling them an occupier because they've decided to build a base here, right? But the thing that ends up being, so the specific maneuver, and this is why I was trying to, like, orbit around before, but now I think I'm going to have closed in on it, is in the, there's a core metaphor for clone wars, right? This is the thing we've talked about so many times. And for the prequels, Lucas is not afraid of this. The Galactic Republic is the United States of America slipping towards authoritarianism and fascism. It is a, it is a republic that has failed to serve its constituency. It's failed to serve.

the people that live there. It is filled with corrupt bureaucrats and moneyed interests. And it is unfortunate, but the fact is that powerful people here can slowly push this even further towards the kind of centralized control under the hands of a few people who are absolutely politically and morally repugnant until it gets transformed into what ends up being an empire, right? That is like the thing that happens in the prequel movies. But here, the signifiers of the American Empire, Agent Orange slash Napalm, the ways in which homes are, you know, searched in the beginning, are not deployed by the Republic. They're deployed by the Republic's enemies. It's similar in some ways to the ways in which that recent call of duty re, you know, switched, reused the high. way of death and rubbed America's name off of it, right, and put the Russia's name on it.

Obviously, there's a difference here. We're not literally talking about America and Russia, but that's the same sort of like, we want to play with these ideas, but it doesn't work if the Republic is the occupying force in this story, they say to themselves, instead, let's make it the separatists who are our cartoonish bad guys. But when the bad guys are so cartoonish as to be identical to the boogeymen that the actual empire in our real world cooks up so that they can justify their imperial attitudes and actions, then the metaphor unravels, right? You need the Republic to be the occupying force if you're going to deploy the republic's real-life analog America's, you know, actual uses of actual imperial tactics and weapons. Otherwise,

the metaphor just falls off the road a little bit. You can still have a fun, you know, you can still have a fun and, you know, exciting military story in that scenario. But the, but if you want me to engage with it in terms of metaphor or politic, at that point, you stumbled. And the last thing I'll say is, what's funny is this is kind of a needless misstep, because it's not like insurgent movements do not often end up being extremely coercive in their own right as, like, wars go into the late rounds, and you start seeing things get a lot uglier on every side. And so, like, it's very easy to imagine even a separatist force that does begin with just, hey, we want to get out of the Republic, starting to look at neutral spaces with resources and being like, look, you're either

with us or you're an enemy, and just trying to force the issue that way. A resource play would have made perfect sense in the scenario. If they were like, hey, those big walnuts, we need those big walnuts. That's a, that fits. That makes sense to me. The strongest armor in, in the galaxy. The walnut droids are. Well, it just, it just, they make, they make, they make, they make the separatists look like just like they're evil for the sake of it which just it just there's nothing meaningful there like you're just showing look how evil these guys are they're attacking the defenseless mere cats the Jedi are going to come save the day you it there's there's nothing to take away from that other than yeah the Jedi have another good deed under

their belt or whatever like it just there's something there's one of the really important takeaway though from the scene the lermen appear to have fairy friends what so waitto has like a tiny little lermen like a tiny little flying lermen that he's like hey tell uh tell my dad that they're going to hit our village with a nuke and this tiny little creature no more message, no little, like, written message. This little tiny, flying, navvy-ass thing takes wing and flies back to the village to pass along that warning.

And right away, I'm like, holy shit, hold on. They're magic users. I think we just found the secret resource of the Lerman. They have domesticated fairies. Sure. Or they have tiny, or maybe when they're juveniles, their tiny little, like, winged creatures

turned into the big lermen, and they lose their wings. That's very good. Yeah. I mean, that would be really cool. That's the world-building detail I'm here for. Me too. Just while we're on this beat, talking about the weapons test scene,

I want to call it the art direction in the skies in this entire arc. It's so good in this scene. And also the only other scene where we're like seeing active battle, it's like these gray, black clouds that are stormy and horrible and then usually for this planet it's like this nice pink color that like gets more intense as like more action and like more tension is happening um even in the beginning scene with the the the like big air fight the like blue sky is so blue that it like seems oppressive

so shout out to this is such a step up from the beginning of the season where we're often saying the inside of ship scenes look good and then they have to go outside and it's just like cut and paste they've gotten there in so many ways visually yeah absolutely so the Jedi are like fuck it we got to do something and step one that yeah they're you know hidden out in the tall grass and i think it's either wrecks i mean it's either wrecks or bligh because they're like the only two clones left but uh i think it's blah I think it's Rex. Rex is like, I can't figure out those villagers not wanting to fight, no pride, I guess.

And Asoka chimes in and says, I call it no courage. And the two of them there, I was just like, fuck off. I mean, first of all, the fact that, like, to object from violence means you don't either have pride or courage. is just such a close-minded. Like, I really, I want, I want to see Asoka grow from this because it is just such like an insular worldview that the only way to deal with conflict is like by the sword, by the lightsaber, or whatever the fuck. Hold on, though.

I love this. I'm glad you brought it up because I love it because I think it is, like, it's not a good look for anyone involved there, but I think it gets to something very real, which is the contempt self-appointed guardians eventually begin to feel for the people they feel they guard, like this attitude that like, fuck these worms, not getting behind us and like not having, like, not having the sand to stand up for themselves and protect what's theirs, uh, and instead like looking down on us for being, you know, being the watcher on the wall, right? Like, that's, And so I kind of like that, and by the way, this insular mindset is part of the defense mechanism of a police state, creating, like, creating willing soldiers who don't question this stuff, they become self-alienated from their society.

This is a major dynamic, like, especially like police forums, for instance, a major concern in, like, criticisms of American police is that even if you started reforming the institution a lot, cop culture has become a thing totally divorced from local communities and has become like its own thing and it is suspicious it is fearful and it is like contemptuous of the society it serves i was just to say especially when in our case in this case the who are your soldiers it's people who are not from any planet in the republic and a priest cast who are taken away from their local communities at birth how does any other attitude develop this is right And this is the only one. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

It's like they never grew up in a tank and got flashed and got like combat training flashed into their brains for 12 months. No, you're, I mean, you're completely right. It is, it is, I guess when I say fuck this, it's just like, it's so damning of how self-validating like this, the Republic, I mean, Jedi generals in their fleet are. like they have to constantly justify this shit to themselves they have to reinforce that their way is the right way and that anyone not immediately falling into step behind them is a fool and is to be looked down on and i think this speaks so much to something that we're a lot of what we're talking about last week about like a class divide like it just And I think that will, as long as this continues, that will only continue to grow. Jedi have to live among the people.

We got to bring them out of their temple. We got to put them in apartment buildings. In the neighborhood. Well, and what's going to happen when clones start getting a realization of like there are other lives that you can live outside of just like living with your brothers in your combat unit until you get killed by Turkey. Eagle so that a fucking someone with a laser sword gets to live thanks great that's the other thing is like man like you're trying to be like oh what a great life fighting fighting for high-minded ideals shame my entire family was killed by a tiger eagle while the Jedi did nothing all feet away it was just like ah everyone just screaming if only the Jedi had an

invented rope to tie the eels down. Did we skip that note? That happened last episode, right? The watoing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Wagg, yeah. Yeah, Wagtoe taught nonviolence to...

Actually, speaking of rope, and there might be a connection. Because not to pull away from the frustration of that say, that conversation, because it makes sense. But we have ELA chime in there and say, like, sometimes, you know, it takes a lot of courage to stand up for what you believe in, which is, like, an important point of view to have represented in this conversation because otherwise this conversation sucks out loud. The reason Roep brought me to there is because she gets a really cool rope scene

during that weapons test, and one of the clones almost gets, gets got and she like swings down and grabs them and it's really cool so like maybe you know maybe she has the right idea all along she picked up a little bit of rope technique

yeah yeah yeah that's the signifier of good ideas in these episodes it's ALA and Wack 2 right totally can I tell you an ALA thing that's super funny to me and I think maybe would have completely changed the character so again

Faloni says that, in one of the kind of featureettes, that when this character, so this character comes from the comics, and in the comics, she is like similarly like a cool badass Jedi who like gets into the shit. Her master, by the way, is Quinlan Voss, who never, who, that part of the canon is like gone now because a lot of the comics were about her and him. And he's, I think he still exists in the canon, but the comics about the two of them do not anymore. And so when she is like, yeah, I had to let go of my master. She means Quinlan Voss who like betrayed the Jedi order and left to go do his own thing or like gray jeddied himself, right? He was like,

this ain't the way. And she lets him go, right? That's my, that's my understanding of it anyway. The other part is that like based on how she was written, the studio wanted to give her like a street smart American accent.

And then Lucas came in and was like, she's a, she has a French accent. You got to give her a French accent. And it's got a suck. She's a hot guy. So, yeah. And like, I so wonder what this would all feel like if she was just like, if she sounded like she was from Ohio or whatever, from Cincinnati, you know? Yeah.

Give me Cincinnati, Aela Sakora, please. I would, I'm here for that. Sometimes it requires a lot of courage to stand up for. you believe. Yes, exactly. Yes. I'm with that. That might have been an improvement. So, the Jedi decide they're going to infiltrate

this clone base, because the entire thing, they got to take out their communications array, they got to call for help, and then they got to go and get, they got to intercept this force being sent to obliterate Mirkamp Manor. We get a Knight Commando scene. It's good stuff.

Like, I enjoy that Anakin just relentlessly fucks with these droids and uses, like, a skittering little stone that he's force controlling to just lure them into a brutal lightsaber massacre. The way he lifts it up in the dark is extremely fun. It's, it's, all this stuff rules. This whole, like, stealth sequence is great. It's a mix of, like, comedy and confidence porn is the way I put it. Like, it unfolds in a really snappy way. Yeah, it's, it's cool. it goes off without a hitch

I don't feel like there much else happens in that sequence they basically like they wax the base and then they go and deal with the army right yeah the army was already on the way

is that the situation right they need the shuttle they wanted to go get the shuttle from the base so that they could have a way off planet and so they have to go get that and fuck everyone up meanwhile there's an argument between father and or grandfather and grandson

father and son I think no I think you're right I think it's father and son I just called him a grandpa for no reason earlier I guess the little the fairy is the is the grandchild law where Wag 2 is like listen

we need to help these people we need to help ourselves we need to fight we have skills we can use them etc etc and T.wot Ka is just like, nope, we are going to continue what we've been doing for generations and not fight, even if it means we just roll over and die, essentially. Which one thing to identify is this is just a continuing conflict that I think we're just going

to see for the next, we've seen it so many times already in this one season, a conflict between youth and like institutional thought it's just it's interesting how much that varies i mean it just it feels it can feel so inconsistent at times because sometimes i feel like okay asoka yeah she's kind of like asoka feels like one of the most muddied characters with this because i feel like she's extremely young. She's under the apprenticeship of one of the most kind of off the beaten path of Jedi there currently is. And yet she like, she flip-flops so much that I have a hard time kind of kind of getting a sense of what, she really believes in like she like oftentimes just feels like a parrot of something else someone like

somebody else said that and she's just kind of parroting it now so i i really want to get more of a sense of her her own voice but yeah i just i have a question about that at that point for where Osoca's at in her life and career is that maybe an appropriate angle on the character because like I think there's two things one is a practical effect of this is a show written by several different people and so Soca is going to be a character

who is kind of what you need her to be depending on like what you want to unpack in an episode but I also think Osoca is somebody who speaking for myself what when I was like sort of soaking up new ideas in like late high school. When I was 14, yeah, like what I believed was very negotiable depending on what I just read, what new idea I just encountered. And like, it could swing pretty quickly and wildly as I encountered new thoughts and new experiences. And so,

like to a degree, like, I'd like to think, yeah, surely there was a, there was a sort of moral core of like who I'd figured out I was. It's been a while. It's been a minute. But I, but I do it of Asoka, and, like, is her changeability a good take on what that character would be at the stage in their life? Yeah. It's not so much that I feel like Asoka is particularly frustrating. I think the muddiness to what you were saying, Rob, is probably... I mean, the other thing is, Asoka is being exposed to different Jedi all the time. who have different approaches have, you know, whether it's Plow Coon, Aila, or Kitfisto.

Luminar, yeah. Or Kitfisto. Everyone has their sort of approaches. I just wish that, like, we got a little bit more, just a little bit more time with, like, giving her a little bit more space to say. something because I feel like right now she's all quips like it's just these like one-off little interjections that she kind of butts into conversations she's all snips and no words and quips and quips I get what you're saying because like it's at this point of the show what we've seen of her so far they should make a commitment to whether they want it to be a

generational argument or not, right? And that's why, like, this scene between the grandpa and his son or whoever he is is frustrating because it's like, we don't have the history of those characters, we don't know what the grandpa went through, we don't know why this younger kid has a different view besides, like, thinking

I don't want to die, which, like, whatever. But with Asoka, it's like, we keep seeing her encounter these other Jedi, and it's like, it changes week to week whether or not she wins that argument. And she always either wins or loses the argument, because She's like, she's, you know, she's serving this purpose within 22 minutes.

But, like, we haven't seen a ton of her, but we've seen enough of her that, like, what's it going to be? You know, like, I want to see her grow over the series. But, like, at this point, you know, what is the real disagreement that she has with the masters above her? And, like, why isn't that sharper? I just want to hear her say more shit. I think the last time we did was the Luminar stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Or maybe this is just a particularly, now I'm thinking about it. Like, okay, what are the Asoka arcs so far? It's Plowcun. She's right. We have to go say Plowcun. I have this connection. Master, I feel like we owe it to Plow Coon, who I'm close to, to give him the benefit of the doubt and trust that he's out here.

We got to go get him. And they do, right? So that's, she wins that argument, right? Then what's the next time we see her? The droid stuff, completely wrong. 100% wrong. but for a reason I think that that show is that show she looks like an she's made to look like an idiot and also Anakin looks like a cruel asshole for the first

episode of that arc but but she's she's technically wrong there the R3 is a spy so that side we got we got that side of it then the next time after that was what was uh saving Luminara And she's right on Luminar, right? She's like, listen, trust me, you got to let me help you fight Ventress. Ventris is, you've never fought anyone like Ventress. I've encountered Ventress before. And so she's right there.

And then I guess some movie stuff, but I feel like the movie never had anything like a debate about anything, right? No. Yeah. I think this might just be a particularly bad Asoka arc versus. Yeah, maybe it's just been a while since, I mean, because she wasn't in. the entire d of the last like she was barely there so maybe it's just her absence that i'm feeling more strongly right now that yeah like her that that's the reason why i i want more from her in these she just feels like she's got particularly less lines than i would like her too

is really what i'm trying to say yeah and then when she does talk it's like really frustrating or it's really empty yeah i definitely get that there's not too much more so we get the battle outside the village the Jedi work with the Lerman who sort of do already are bending the rules

it seems like the Lermen are definitely helping the Jedi set up a breastwork of the Big Nuts even though the Jedi are mostly using the Force to move all the shit around but they've built a they built a little like fort of the Big Nuts and

And they're going to use that. They did do that. Pardon? I missed it when you said what you just said. One more time. Oh, they built a fort of the big nuts. Oh. Weird.

My audio just cut out again. What? They built a fort of the big nuts. Oh, okay. Yeah. So they've got a face down. The big nut arf. This is the big nut.

Who wasn't brave? enough to call this the big nut arc. They were cowards. So the separatists are rolling up. They've got, turns out the Jedi also lifted a couple

mobile shield generators from the separatist base. Oh, okay, from the separatist base. I was like, where the fuck did they get those? Well, one piece of technology I was like, yeah, was that the only surviving thing from the fucked up plane? crash.

I do kind of like the shot of they get the shield deployed just in time as the defoliator shell comes in and the bubble of the shield covers the town. The defoliator hits it. And you see the sort of like, it's a cool moment of all the little Lerman realizing like, oh shit, this is what we were up against of like the fire washing over the shield. That shield's not going to be busted. by the defoliator so they got to send in the droids and we get a typical like bomb rush the Jedi the Jedi go and kick all their asses more waves are sent eventually the

Jedi are pushed back over the nut wall and it sort of splits into two fights Anakin cars his way to the artillery and the rest of them are fighting the battle droids It's within the town now, and the Lerman are like, fuck it, we're getting involved with our ropes. And they tie a bunch of the, it's a good rope trick. I don't know if it makes sense. They sort of tie a bunch of the droids together and bring them all down. And then Asoka, in a weirdly flashy, but like, again, kind of inert move is like, running around, dragging her lightsaber on the ground,

decapitating all the droids. It's incredible. It was so wild. It was just like the, the method of execution there was really a lot. Really efficient to cut off heads. Just drag, like, she's like skipping, like a giddy child. Yay!

Massacre. Pacifism. Never heard of it Absolutely not I don't know Again if you're a Jedi You should not be fighting a defenseless person They're already unarmed at that point

They're not people They're droids and no one counts them at all Because They're not They're incapacitated God I don't know fuck is the thing They don't They bring fucking George Sakey's character

With them They arrest him He doesn't get killed despite developing, like, a device that will only hurt people. Yeah. And explicitly not hurt the people that they don't count as people and only count the people they count as people. I do enjoy the general dird is sort of just babbling about how good this is going to be for his career.

How did you not talk about how terrible of a name that was Lock Dird? So you're talking about, like, how good this is going to be, how this is probably getting in real good, with Count Duku and maybe even meaning of promotion. And the battle droid is so visibly warred by this. Like, I do enjoy that some of the, even the lowliest BDs are starting to be like, man, again, like, man, I just work here. Like, okay, you just, you want me to fire the gun now? Okay, I'll fire the gun.

Oh, yeah, that's very exciting. Thank you. Yeah, but I'm sure Kavduku would love to promote you. All right. Got a quote here from the series designer, Killian Plunkett on Lock Dirt's design, by the way. We decided that going with this sort of really big, heavy, rolling guy with an even bigger hat than Newt gun raise would just,

would work. It would sort of sell that this guy was extremely flamboyant and very bossy and even more gluttonous than your average nemoideon. Rob is leaning all the way back in his chair. What does the hat have to do with this? Why bring that into this? And also flamboyant? Like, that was not like a character point here.

Like, why would you think, why does flamboyant cross your mind? Yeah. I don't like that. Yeah. I don't like it. I do like it when Anakin force raises a droid and then force drags it to him and slices it in half that. That's fun.

That was cool of me. There's just a lot of good action throughout this, even though this is such a basic one side runs at the other side. One of my favorite little notes on this in that action is, I'm sorry, I'm laughing because I just realized that the third. thumbnail of this is them standing in front of the big nuts, and it's very funny looking when you think of it in that way. But when they're running, when they're charging at the droids, like they can't kill all of them as they're running past them. And so you just get this great like inner mingling of the two sides. Some of them are going to get past us. I hope the shield holds and the other people. And that's just a good moment. It's good. And I think,

Al, you mentioned some of the lighting and work on the sky. I also think when the fight moves under the shield. I think everything having that weird uncanny light underneath the US shield is really cool. Like, it is no longer night or day when they're fighting under that thing. It's really cool. I dig it. The skies are like really well-painted murals in this episode in a way that's just like, they understood that they have to bring brushwork to battle here.

They have to actually touch this stuff in this way that's not just like CG graphics, you know? it's good it's really good and that was Defenders of the Big Nuts Yeah right We do end on the last note With them basically being like

What do you think little guy Not so bad And the elder says Perhaps we do owe you thanks But I still wonder At what cost And right on cue A trio of Republic Cruisers

Appeer in the high atmosphere Which is now like the third episode where the end of the episode is like military authority being asserted by the republic's arrival and like the good guys have won but also let's be clear

whether these little lermen have chosen a side or not a side has been chosen for them they are now part of the republic they didn't vote on that whatever their you know government was in this town which seems

yeah it seems to be grandpa king of the lermen um whatever it was they just you know some subset of like we're joining this shit we're in and now the cost is you're going to get a republic military base on this planet now for sure yeah 100% is this the last time we see the lermen this is the last time in clone wars that we see the lermen no no more lermen we're done with lermen sorry i know we all love the lermen lirmer there is a lerman in a comic tied to Rebels There is a Lerman Jedi

Jedi master Gikto Nelmo In the Dick to Nelmo Gick to Nelmo What happened at Dick 1 Gone This is the High Republic Into the Dark, the young adult novel Written by Claudia Gray

Which I think our friend Keith is also reading that one And like this more than the first The entire Republic book, Alley. I think so, yeah. I'm actually surprised that the Jedi is before this interaction and not after it, because I can imagine the Republic being like, we're here now. Where's your youngest? Can we have some of their blood?

Because we might need to take an infant back to the Jedi Council. Yeah, what was the cost? The cost is Bill over there. He's going to come with us. Bill, too. Bill two. Who has to come home? I have to read this other detail.

Lerman were native to my Gito, which that's a planet, I guess. During the High Republic era, Lerman Master, Lurman Jedi Master Giktu Nelma, was highly respected for considerable force powers, the tribe present on Merodon during the Clone Wars, avoided contact with the galactic community. Generally, Lermen were thought to be unintelligent. However, during the separatist occupation of Meriden, Loughdard admitted the Lerman were smarter than they appeared. 17 years later during the age of the empire,

Jessa Spanjaf, a data security specialist on Lothel, claimed that a programmer's tasks were menial enough for even a half-blind Lerman to manage. So this is like a classic go-toob. They're not even really, they don't even think like people,

which is not clear in their depiction here at all. Like these are not, these are just a sapient space species. It's like, like, so. So we're going to lie to the part where the Republic and the Empire spend 15 years. trying to get the lermen to become like useful to the war machine and they're like oh these slothful useless lermen all they know is fucking ropes. Their little hands can fit into our factory machinery. All they know is roaps.

Roops will do you though. We saw today. We did see it today. Those lorps wouldn't work. Ropes. Ropes, not lerps. I said lerps. Do they say lirps? Oh, we're going to end this podcast. Fuck. I'm... I might have to say out loud that ropes and nuts has been pulls of thought for the last 20 minutes of this episode. And if there's anyone in the audience who's joined me, I've validated you. Thank you. The director of this episode will go on to direct two dozen, over two dozen Clone Wars episodes,

over a dozen rebels episodes, and over 10 resistance episodes. This guy's a lifer. Oh, brats. The writer of this episode never. wrote another episode. So there's that. All right. Well, I think

I don't know. For me, like, I didn't get as frustrated with these episodes as I did with our previous duo. I think for me, it's just the analogies are all over the map and it's just not sophisticated enough to imagine

a version where the two sides principles can be in a fair dialogue with each other. And all the resolution depends on these really convenient contrivances and the Lurman, by the end of just this parody of like militant pacifism to no political end.

It's pacifism without politics. Yes. So, totally. I think they're better episodes to watch than the Duku episodes in terms of like they're prettier and more dynamic. The action scenes are fun. They're more dynamic.

Yeah, just like pacing alone is a huge improvement. Yes. Totally, totally, totally. Pacing is like, it's, it's, I think the first, the intro of Jedi Crash is such a good example of what we mean when we talk about pacing. Um, because I think sometimes we could be like abstract when we talk about that stuff, um, um, because we want to get into talking about whether or not, you know, whether or not an episode is, is dealing with pacifism in a, in a nuanced and, you know, interesting way. But I think that Jedi Crash specifically is an incredible example of how technical filmmaking, pacing, and all that other stuff are, like, distinct from thematic content or connected to thematic content, but can be strong despite having problems with thematic content. That episode blew by for me. I was shocked.

I was at the end of it. That's how well it was it was paced and directed and animated and everything else. So, like, yeah, I think shows continuing to grow. growing pains. They're real. Yeah. So I think, Rob. Or next time. Pardon?

What are we got next time? So next time we're going to have, I think we've got a pair of strong one-offs. We have trespass and the hidden enemy. And one is a story about the murkiness of warfare and alliances on the fringes of what has become an imperial conflict. And the other is about these imperial grunts that we've been. talking around, but what the show was named after them, the clones themselves, and some of the inner life that they might have as they fight for a cause, not their own. So that's, that's what we got to dig into next time. I hope my memory of those not being overly kind

to them. I hope they stand up. Trust pass, I'm not sure how I feel. I remember thinking it looked really good. Hidden enemy, I remember liking. Not only because we get some inner life clone stuff and similar shit but also because there is some Obi-Wan Asajaventurous interaction fucking folly

I'm so excited to watch that stuff again I remember being very into it at the time I think that's the one I watched I was like oh that's where I knew I was like oh yeah I'm so excited

I've missed them so in the meantime be sure and rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice i'd like to think we're a five-star podcast and uh really i think we can all agree on that so no no need for further discussion uh you can learn more about supporting a more civilized age at patreon dot com slash civilized we hope you'll join us again for another return to a more civilized age but until then don't follow grandpa mirkat off a cliff Ha ha ha ha. I don't know.