A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 12: The Ryloth Arc (Clone Wars 19 - 21)

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

“Another armed occupation is not a free Ryloth. How long before I am fighting you, master Jedi?” -Cham Syndulla On and above the Twi'lek homeworld of Ryloth, battles rage between Separatist and Republic forces. This three part, anthology-style arc gives us different perspectives on the conflict, and that's true in more ways than one. These episodes offer us both our most paternalistic, simple minded vision of racial harmony yet and our first de facto "radical" figure. Oh, and no, before you write in: They are not French. Next time: Episodes 22-25 (S1E22-S2E3), Hostage Crisis + Magic of the Holocron Arc Show Notes Fallen Clones: Slammer, Tucker, Axe Barthes on the cover of Paris Match   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 Zakney, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. So this week, the Clone Wars is back to being a full-on military sci-fi procedural as it embarks on a three-parter covering the Republic's campaign to liberate the Tweedek home planet of Ryloth from a separatist occupation. Each part covers a different phase of the operation. Storm over Ryloth is about the fleet engagements that break the separatist blockade. The innocence of Ryloth takes us in with the first wave of troops who have to disable the

separatist air defenses to enable the landing of the main forces who show up in liberty on Ryloth as they mount a final assault on the separatist stronghold and unite two factions of Tweeduck resistance against the separatists. But I'd also say these three episodes are three snapshots of the war and the experiences of the people leading it, fighting it, and living through it. Storm over Rilov is a familiar story of a young commander, Asoka, in this case, getting her first taste of real combat leadership and the things that go with it. Defeat, grief, angst, and a little bit of glory. Innocence of Rilov is about the clones and their alienation from the people they're supposed to be saving.

and how that then gives way to a real bond with their cause and a broader definition of common humanity. And Liberty on Rilof is about what it really means to have Jedi masters like Mace Windu on your side on the battlefield and just how much negotiation and diplomacy is required to hold the Republic's military alliances together. Let's just get into this first episode, Storm over Rilof. This was probably my favorite.

It's got a simple outline. Anakin and Asoka, they're leading the fleet to break the separatist siege. Asoka is leading the bomber attack. Anakin is leading the fleet. And their first attack is absolutely wrecked by the separatist commander Martuk. It's made worse by the fact that Asoka ignores the retreat order, gets most of her squadron killed her first time commanding it, and Admiral Ularin is put in a coma by a vulturedroid kamikaze attack on the bridge that is straight out of the Battle of Endor.

We see a lot of tension bubbling to the surface in the wake of this as Anakin tries to walk a line between reprimanding Asoka for disobeying orders, but also trying to support her through a thing he's been through himself, which is... Yeah, I think he went through 12 episodes ago. But in the fungible timeline of the Cold Wars, that was maybe years ago. Listen, I can scroll down to the malevolence arc. We started with the malevolence arc. It happened that we saw him do this thing. Exactly. The exact thing.

The exact thing. Yes. And this time the shoe is on the other foot, but when Asoka sort of snaps back at him, Anakin's both taken aback, but also recognizes there's some justice in what she's saying, and that leads him to his solution for both the military situation and Asoka's relationship with him and her new responsibilities. Anakin is going to lead his own suicide ramming attack on the separatist fleet. And Asoka, question mark, question mark, question mark.

She'll figure it out. She'll win the rest of the battle. So she has to- She'll simply win. Yeah, I'll toss it up there. She'll spike it. We'll win. Don't worry about it.

She'll figure it out. He's her mentor. He knows that she does good under pressure, I guess. I guess so, right? I guess that's the vibe. The vibe is like, is like, she lost that first one not because of a failure of command, but because the situation was wrong, we had imperfect information. If I just let her go out of the get, I bet she wins this time.

We don't have to overcorrect. Look, sometimes shit goes bad. You take two for the company. That's just how it is. And, uh, good, just had to, uh, get over. And she does. She does, uh, come up with a plan to solve this, this problem of, uh, the separatist blockade. but the clones she's leading don't trust her.

They trust Anakin, they trust Admiral Ularin, they don't trust Asoka, and Asoka has to both find her confidence in her own plan and her ability to trust that confidence and get everyone on side with this plan. And it goes well, they kick ass. They move the ship sideways, it's fine. Part of the reason they don't trust her is because, of course, who had to take two for the company. that was Slammer, Tucker, and Axe, three clone pilots. Other good clone names this episode. Kickback, swoop. Slammer.

Slammer. Slammer. Slammer died. Slammer was the first one who died. Are these all characters from the outsiders who didn't make the final cut of that? Yeah, there has to be an episode that just has like a golden boy and all of the other. Yeah, we're pony boy, pony boy. Just clones rafing hot rods in the street.

just like all right everybody time for some shore leave and then it's an American graffiti for like 30 minute episode we've skipped over some key details here I just want to slow down a little bit one Captain Martuk Tuk has a dope set of goggles that have a weird red blue spinny thing that I don't know what it does there's a note about it in the trivia function of that. It says the spinning scope device on Captain Martuk's data goggles was partly inspired by the mechanical monocle worn by a Kodan fleet officer in The Last Starfighter, a 1980s sci-fi film about a kid who's very good at playing video games, and so then he gets

recruited to go to space and fight for real, to save some people. Currently being reworked by Gary Witta, I want to say. Rogue One's Gary Witta, the book of Eli's Gary Witta. Originally, Martuk was to have died aboard the ship, but he proved interesting enough to George Lucas and the Clone Wars crew that his life was spared. A new scene of him leaving the bridge was added late in the making of this episode

and a line of dialogue was given to a battle droid explaining that Mar took fled and an escape pod. I love the idea that George Lucas can look at Daly's and be like, no, he can't die. He's cool. Let him live. I think that judgment was correct. Me too. He was cool. The first non-sith assassin type character

who seems competent on the separatist side who actually seems to be like basically this is a he's a little bit of a poor man's throne I suppose Well it's funny you say that for reasons we'll get to Yeah About about some stuff in this episode that is literally thron shit So in what way do you mean that he's a poor man's throne

So it's not just that he's a competent commander He's also one interested in getting into the psychology Of the people he's up against Like when he realizes that Anakin is going to be leading the fleet against him He pulls the files on Anakin and like tries to like figures out like he's playing the man right like that's that's kind of his approach to this how do I beat Anakin specifically the implication is he would do something different he even calls out if Obi-1 were in charge of this it would be a different thing I think

but like Anakin is more aggressive but this seems like a strategy that is now I mean as we see in the next episode and I think I'm not sure if they mentioned it in the in the third one as well, but definitely in the next one, the other antagonist of, the main antagonist of the second episode also calls for a data file download on Obi-Wan. So it seems like there's this new separatist strategy of collecting intelligence on your enemy and using that in your strategy to attack them. So that's interesting to me. Yeah, I like this vibe for them. I like the idea of it being, like, recognizing the generals, because they are generals and recognize them that they have different styles of command and take different types of actions. And I'm glad that

they don't, that they don't, like, send this dude off to die because he seemed, like, it's what Rob said before. He seemed competent enough. Like, you know, even competent generals lose fights. Like, sometimes you just get out flanks. Sometimes you just, you just, you just lose. And, uh, and I'm glad he'll be back. I hope he'll be back. I don't know for sure he will be. The first, Nemoidian we've met who isn't a punk like this is so again like sort of undercutting the maybe racial determinism

of Star Wars here you've got a guy who's like on the front lines of this and like sort of lusts after the fight as opposed to the trade federation goons who are basically always the first to hit the exits and the message has always been to this point

you know Nemoidians real gutless weasels and here this is you know, if nothing else, the guy seems reasonably brave, not stupidly so. When he realizes that he's cornered, he also knows once time to piece out,

but hey, that's just the separatist way. I will say on the note of racialization or direct connection to human ethnicities, we do get a new word, a title for a character in this episode, which is that Wat Tambor is notably called an emir. And an emir is like

is like a human, it's a human word, it's an Arabic word, uh, that means something like Prince. Um, uh, and I'm always like, I'm, I'm always very, of many minds when it, when it comes to like deploying the word like this in a sci-fi story. Because on one hand, it can be nice to see languages that are English deployed that suggest a variety of, of, of, of life and, and, and that draw on all of, human existence. However, like Tequito. However, like Tequito, when you deploy a word, it often has a not just a connotative or not just a denotative, but also a connotative set of meanings. And when you release a story about a character named in Amir in the mid-2000s,

what's going to come to mind are various leaders across the Arab world. And I really want to know, I wish I could ask the writer of this episode, what work did you think? saying a mirror was doing for you, like, is it just a fun word to say in your mind? Is it that it evokes a certain type of leader? What type of leader do you want that to evoke? And it's just one of those things that I, like, I as a storyteller often come to this dilemma of like, when do I want to deploy a word that is not an English word? What is it that I'm trying to leverage here? Am I trying to just be more exotic? Am I just trying to, to, am I specifically referencing cultural traits or historical thing? Like, I'm certainly guilty of this in some instances as well.

of like thinking like oh yeah I love the way that sound I love how that how I when I say that is that enough for me to just put it in here it's probably fine but I feel like this one like especially given what we end up seeing of Wat Tambor being kind of a greedy prick in a future episode that we'll get to today I feel like it's a little bit loaded in a way that I don't know sits with me and it's not overdone they're not calling him the Amir over and over again it's not said in any sort of like stereotypical way you know what I mean. Like, no one is doing Jafar voice when talking about Watt Tambor, or when Watt Timbor himself certainly doesn't have that. But it's something I think worth putting a little mark against, not a mark against, but like a mark down near to be like, huh, this is worth thinking through and, like, looking for in the future. Yeah, it definitely becomes a little fraught when it's like, the only time that we've seen this used in Clone Wars is when it's an enemy in the episode. It's like the episode's antagonist. And it's a series of episodes that is increasingly in conversation with ongoing wars and American wars in the Middle East, right?

So you could also ask, like, I mean, right now, are there a lot of, are there a lot of great emirs in the world, or were there in the mid-2000s? Yeah, but does that audience, but does that audience, tell me five emirs the audience would know versus seeing the word emir and them now thinking about Wat Tambor? Do you know what I mean? No, I do. I get it. but I think this is where it gets muddy is like to agree. It's like Arabic shit. But also it's like

but is there also like a political thing here too where it's like no he's like we're trying to evoke some specific type of like prince or like government structure more than like an ethnicity. I don't because the show's so uninterested in doing this. That's the thing. We don't know enough about the techno union yet that Wat Tambor is from and

once we do we can like Is that why he has those stupid little steampunk goggles? Yeah he's he's he's one of the tech union guys. He's a Skokohan, which we also don't know anything about Skokoa, or Skokko is the name of the planet. So yeah, I think we will eventually get some tech union stuff and maybe we'll know a little bit more. But I think it feels worse to me because Wat Tambour, the way that he's introduced in the first episode, is so, he has such a down.

turn by the end of the third episode in terms of just like his characterization his attitude like when he's in throughout this first episode when he's communicating with um the uh separatist captain i forget what was his name again the nemoidean uh yeah martook yeah um he seems like very competent very on top of his, you know, shit, like is just communicating very clearly what he wants, what he needs. Like, there's no overt characterization in any direction that I think comes off of him until we get to the third episode where he's, you know, scrambling for defenses and trying to figure his way out. And then suddenly he's like, this guy. Like, it feels like it comes. out of left field and I think that the inconsistency in which Star Wars deploys non-English

references or words or languages doesn't help the situation because I think Allie is really spot on and pointing out almost always it's in context of the opposition and it just never it's not very consistent. Like, I don't know. There's a mirror doesn't come with other signifiers. It's just a mirror. Like, there's no other, like... I have, like, a new complicating detail that may change the way we think about this,

which is interesting. And it speaks to classic. Two things, potentially. One, Clone Wars doesn't often have enough space to do the thing it wants to do. And then, two, the ways of which these episodes get rewritten and re-edited often and changes take place, which happened both in this episode. I mean, it happens in every episode, but I can talk about some small changes in this episode

and a larger change in the third episode. He is not an emir from Skikoa or from Skokko. He is the emir of Rilov. Duku gave him that title that seems to be a Tweedek title, which I'm back in, baby. That fucking sucks in the right way. Okay.

Right, yeah, exactly. Oh, wow. He took that title. title that is a native title for the Tuelech leadership. And that, I wish, would be in the screen and not just on this website. I'm looking at. That of Tuelx being like desert people and now being an education, having their own tribal, like, there is a resistance, there's internecine strife between the right of the Tweedox.

Okay. Suddenly this makes sense, right? Suddenly I see where this was on a whiteboard in an episode doc and then got cut by the time it gets to the screen, and then you fucking have someone who says, well, he's still in a mirror. We know that that happened, so we can still call him an amir. But that's not what the episode shows. They just call him Amir. We're missing a line that is like, like, he is no Amir to us.

Right. And when we get to episode three in this series, there's a lot there that change from the original conception of what this arc was in which Champsendula is like a completely different character that I think would have explained some of this. So we'll get there because that stuff isn't worth its own conversation in a big way. Anyway, I didn't mean to derail this first episode so severely, so quickly.

Yeah, I mean, so I think one of the things I really like is for my money, this is some of the best space battle that we get in like all of Star Wars so far. And certainly in the series, I think the only thing it really holds a candle to it maybe is the battle in the high atmosphere in Jedi crash um that sort of starts out that episode but but here everything is informed by basically the episode is informed by a tactical layout it gives us which is basically that there's a blockade

anakin has the only forces that the republic can allocate to breaking that blockade right now and he has to do that to clear the path for the invasion fleet so the first the first act of this episode is just their first attempt to go, go straight in and break through these defenses. And they really get crushed in part because they're up against somebody who is smart enough to hold back his real strength until the Jedi are fully committed. And then once he springs the trap and calls in his reinforcements that were on standby, immediately Anakin and Ularan realize this is not, this is, that, that's the ball game. They got to get this entire task force out.

Crucially, Asoka, who we saw, like, being really nervous, taking these forces in, being nervous, being in charge of a squadron herself for once, she is, she's already in, basically, like, attack mode. Like, they're sort of in the shoot beginning their attack run when the retreat order sounds. And you sort of see, from her perspective,

there's not a lot of clarity. about what's happening. Like, they're currently diving on the flagship to try and get through this. And she just wants to push through and get this done. And that ends up. My read on this was they were going to take a beating in this regardless. But it seems that because Asoka stays and tries to, like, push through, she gets stuck. It's harder to escape.

and like anika and eularen can't retreat the fleet and just leave her there so they end up having to stay to try and recover asoka and that leads to the loss of a ship um you know the the flagship getting hit with a was a vulture droid in the bridge um you learn getting hurt and those those fighters uh getting destroyed it's pretty intense and and pretty much a disaster that isn't entirely on asoka but she did like compound it yeah i was i think the whole sequence of asoka getting the call anakin being like you need to come back we are in trouble she says you're overreacting admiral i can get us through aniken jumps in and says asoka we are in trouble i order you back here and then she concedes and um comes back and then one of her pilots says, why are we retreating?

And she says, we are not retreating. We're following orders. And I feel like this exchange was so frustrating to me. I mean, it reinforced in my head, Asoka is a teenager. Asoka is 15. She's 15 in a fighter pilot ship. Commanding five other people.

Yes, exactly. two-year-olds in a fighter pilot ship. Yes, exactly. And I think the failure here was to trust in the fact that she didn't have all the information. If you're in the sky zipping around at a billion fucking miles per hour, you're not going to have a sense of the entire battlefield. And I feel like that she, the fact that she did not take into account. that the situation had changed. There were now, you know, like four more spaceships from the separatist side that just showed up out of nowhere and were pounding the Republic fleet.

I, I, and then to, I don't know, the idea that that is a retreat, like, no, your new order is to go and protect the, the, From the incoming attack, it's not, you can, the, the clearing of her whole, the reason, her mission was to clear the way for the fleet to enter, right? To clear whatever. That was no longer going to happen at all because there were new things happening. New ships were there. If you clear the way, but there's no fleet, then you have not cleared the way for the fleet. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, she's, she's, it's rough. The admiral calls her up again and is like, Asoka, please, where are you? And she says, cool your jets, admiral. I was like, the admiral is going to die in 0.2 seconds. And the last words you're going to say to this man is cool your jets, Admiral. Yeah.

The disrespect. I was like, bro. There is shit going down. This is not the time to be petty. Like, you need to just get back to the ship immediately. So, you know, I think a big part of that is her being in the moment projecting her insecurity at her core about being able to command this fleet. She just wants to get the job that she was first told done. but it

doesn't bode well that there's not a lot not a lot of adaptability like she tunnel visions in a very similar way to Anakin I want to say something about that though

in her defense this type of battle is a very classic Star Warsy type of battle and by their very nature they lead to tunnel vision like the key is enemy fleets and Star Wars tend to have some sort of secret weakness or an important command ship.

Like literally, Martuk is aboard basically the same type of shit that Anakin blew up in Phantom Menace, right? Like, so to a degree, it's one of those things that's really tantalizing where you can start see through her cockpit glass, there it is. There's the goal. Like, if we can take this thing out, like, we're going to walk through this. Like, we just, like, we've got the way as clear we can get through, we can take this thing out.

It's very tantalizing. And ultimately, taking that out is what this hinges on. Like, once you sort of rip the guts out of these droid fleets by taking out their command chip, you know, that's the ballgame. And so I think the other part of this, I think you sort of get a sense of how just the way these sort of Star Warsy battles can mess up people's risk evaluation. I think really comes through here where, like, it's so close. Like, she's got her squadron with her. It's there. We can just do this.

Like, you're overreacting, I can see. And what's missing is this understanding of, like, how badly the situation can turn in the next 30 seconds that you're not anticipating. It's the world in which a half-court shot is worth 50 points, right? I was like, all I got to do is hit it from half-court once. If I hit it once, we win. I'm like, okay, well, I guess you're going to shoot a lot from the half-court line. But it's like, okay, yeah, the half-court shot is 50 points, but the – but there's a lot. note the team everyone on the team is dead right but every miss is worth minus five points yeah

people are just like throwing it throw it throw it like negative 70 negative 75 negative 80 it's golf it's like yeah I think that the thing is even if Asoka gets the mission I mean even if she clears like she gets the mission done there's not going to be the person to to do the big thing to close out the battle so it just seems like that that version of tunnel vision she's not going to be the one to drop the bomb on the fleet

like she is just opening up the lane that's it she's not Anakin you know two years old dropping the bomb in the cruiser she's just like fucking brooming out the leaves

in front it's just you know It's, it just feels like such a misconception of how, or misunderstanding of the dynamic of a battle. She's no, right? This is the, and this is what this episode is. Um, I was a little frustrated with this episode, mostly because we've done this bit before, which I've already said. And it's like, like, some degree, having already executed this from Anakin's perspective means that you have a good grip on what the arc. is going to be, and also it's a stock story, to Rob's point. This is what Star Wars space

stories often look like. Space battle stories look like. And to see Asuka go through the kind of hoops of this arc was like boring to me. I will say that the conversation that they have in which he is like, you know, in which they go back and forth about his history, that one little like brief conversation about this is good. where she's like, you get carried away sometimes, and he says, all that means is I understand what you're going through. And then goes on to say basically, like, she's like, I lost so many pilots. And he says, take heart.

That's the reality of command. And, like, that exchange, I think, is maybe makes it worth the retread because that perspective is nice. But I really had a hard time with this episode, not out of, like, any, no ideological things. I think the characterization was right for who these characters are in this moment. I was just kind of I was just kind of bored with it because of how beat by beat it was down to the big trick at the end, which was if we move our ship sideways, they'll come in to hit it. And then when they come in to hit it, we'll launch our fighters from the top and now the top and bottom and Pinser attacked them, which is literally an Admiral Thrawn trick.

Faloni notes that there was a big overhaul. You know the scene where she's at the hollow table and she's like figuring this plan out basically? That came from basically apparently one of the early cuts of the episode didn't get the quote is we weren't getting how bad Asoka felt and it seems as if from that

they'll sort of like how does she turn that bad feeling into a Hail Mary plan that led to the scene in which she's at the hollow table and he specifically says that it is a throng strategy from Air to the Empire that he lifted

and he was like we need a cool space strategy good thing these books exist that are filled with cool space strategies she'll invent the Marg Saville right now it's 100%

and it's like it's fine like I don't I feel like this would be a thing I train my battle droids like to be wary of it's like anytime a spaceship turns on its side, why would it be doing that?

What is the reason it's doing that that you should believe that it's purposefully showing its soft underbelly to you? Be cautious, please, and they fall for it, and it's fine. I think this is a totally well-executed episode. It kind of just fell flat for me, and picking, trying to, if I had to put it all one thing, it's just the like, I know these beats so well that it's hard for me to feel excited about it. Even the, I do like the kind of back and forth between Martuk and, and, and, and Anakin. Like, there's stuff I like about it on paper.

Talking about it makes me like it more than watching it, you know? Yeah. And I can talking to Martuk is definitely the best part of this episode because he's like so close to the screen for some reason. And then when he's finally like, well, I've got to go because I'm shooting the ship at you for some reason. He's like walking away from the camera. It's very, very funny. I love that Martuk was like This is going to be a meeting of the minds

Two geniuses Come to the table To do war And only the biggest genius Will come through victorious And Anakin was like Ha ha ha ship gober I'm going to shoot this shit into you

Bye bye My favorite Legend of Galactic Heroes arc Right here Put Anakin up against Reinhardt. Let's go. So I think part of it is just

I love a really well shot and conceptualized space battle. I love the sense of like these things absorbing a ton of punishment and like the sight of like the burning Republic Star Cruiser trying to retreat with like one of its bridges completely aflame like I'm a sucker.

I'm a sucker. for the stuff, the sense of motion, the sense of these things being things that in a lot of episodes, they're kind of just like inert models in some ways. You don't see stuff happen to them, and here you do get a sense of like the give and the take of one of these battles. And I do enjoy, enjoy the execution of a stock episode like this. I enjoy the, I enjoy like a stoker wrestling with her guilt over Eulerin having been

hurt while waiting for that recovery and having to come up with this plan. I also have problems with that plan because once an incredible stratagem is unveiled in a show you're like, so that would become standard operating procedure, right? Like that would just

that's just how you do this now. Like you would always come in, you'd always sort of be drifting your ship into separatist lines. but I did like the sort of Council of War that Anakin's already left and he's like bye I'm gonna go I'm gonna go Ram Martuk and everyone is like well Anakin's the CEO like let's be clear here like Anakin's the real boss you Lauren is the other boss and you just got a bunch of people killed and nothing's been going right lately like are you sure this all feels bad and she kind of has to like trust herself and we like it's it's cool to see her like when pressed have to just commit to the confidence that we know that she doesn't really feel like we know she has huge doubts but she has to sell this she had like Anakin's already like the dais cast

they got to go and they all get to be on the same page and I do enjoy that scene of Asoka finally doing sort of the pound the table thing and like you know by God God, we're going, we're going now. I think it's a little bit undercut by the fact that Eulerin is resurrected for this. And he's like, I agree. I co-sign her. I wonder if I cared more about Assoca at this point. Would that have been heartwarming for me to see Yalar and like have her back?

But because of my lack of investment, I'm like, all right, cool, you're back. Dude, okay. Hi. How's the head injury? Yeah, that's a good point. I it's unfortunate that it feels like they the plan only goes through because you Lauren's like yeah she's right but God what if he didn't get up and the clones are like no we're not going to do it who different episode different episode but also more interesting I don't

know like the fact that you learn is just like thumbs up on this one and they just do it. Can we get that Order 66 thing a little early? No, I just, I like the fact that the clones are dissent, or that they, that they disagree, that they're not just like, you know, going with whatever some Jedi punk kid tells them to do because maybe they're a little frustrated with the amount of casualties that have been going down recently. But also I think that could have been such a defining moment for Asoka to really take ownership of this situation and be like, look, like, I'm the commander in charge.

Like, this is just what it is. We're doing this thing instead of having to get like the actual authority co-sign on it. And I wonder if it is an investment thing because I still like, I don't know. I still get so frustrated by Assoca so often. And I feel like it's because I don't really, she hasn't really established herself that's significantly from Anakin. And I think what you were saying earlier about this being just like a play-by-play, same beats as what we've seen Aniken do before.

The fact that Osoka doesn't veer from that course at all or differentiate herself really in any significant way, I still just don't know who she is. Like, she's just Anakin's, like, teeny sidekick for me right now. And I really want her, I know we'll get more, but I just want. No, that's not what I'm going to say this time for once. I know it's normally what I say. The thing that I was reminded of here is thinking about Rob a few episodes ago, talking about Assoca as audience surrogate as this is that you're a kid watching this and this is another hey sometimes being an adult you know sometimes growing up means taking chances and

failing and getting back on the horse and trying again and and that is like that is going to be this show probably until season three when it starts to kind of run in its own lane and not be as much of a kid show um at least that's my understanding uh and vague memory for the first time I got there. And I'm curious how much of the sort of like every time we see Asoka in this like makes a bad decision role, but then things turn out okay is that falling into a certain teachable moment like design, which which I think we recently found out, I forget, I forget what show it was now, but some show just didn't get its final season or a movie, they wanted to do like a final

movie for the show and Cartoon Network was like, this doesn't have enough kid lessons in it, so we can't green light this. This is just a movie about like young adult characters at this point and so we're not going to green light this because that's not like one of our core missions.

And like knowing that that is in the mix, I think speaks to some of why you end up with these episodes of Asoka just kind of being a doofus, making some weird decisions. You're not going to get away from the fact that she is actually 15.

No, you're totally right. All of the frustration that I felt for her in this episode felt like it was successful writing because she was like being genuinely a kid. Like her telling the admiral that like, oh, you're overestimating this. Like how, there's no way that she would know that. There's no way she should think that besides the fact that she wants to. And it has a mentor who does take these chances and they pay off. for him again and again and again.

Like, he, he, being Anikin's, you know, understudy probably makes you feel like you have to hit some home runs. You know, you have to make some big plays out there also. The answer he gives her all that means is I know what you're going through. Isn't an answer in terms of this will be guiding you in the future? No. And I have sympathy with this because I think one of the things that I tend to, like, like, One of the things I tend to think is that most of the time what we think we respect as principles, we actually respect in terms of outcomes.

And if somebody can be guided by the exact same calculations and exact same motivations, and if it goes bad, we castigate that person and we critique the principles and the logic that led to it. And if it goes good, it becomes survivorship bias and the motives and the logic behind it. are good and heroic and I think that's kind of the mold Anakin fits into is like he takes it over the edge routinely and sort of catches it he makes these like miraculous plays and probably the decisions are bad probably his decisions are bad his motivations in choosing them are bad but you can't argue with the like success he pretty routinely turned turns in. And Asoka is kind of trying to look for, okay, so when is the moment to take that risk? Like, when is, when is the moment you know fuck orders? I'm going to go for it. And the answer is, nobody can tell you that because you're kind of like, you're basically like, how do I, how do I make the half court three pointer? Uh, sorry, the half court 50 pointer. When is the moment to take that shot? And the answer is like, are you Steph Curry and are you feet? But also it's like, are you Steph Curry and you have a really high blood count of 50 point shooter genes or whatever?

Like, I think, like, I think that. All right, but let's just say, I have been in conversation with people who talk about black athletes as if that's the thing that's with them is that, oh, they just have a high athletic. blood count. The Splash Brother bloodline must... That is the way some people have talked about black people in my presence.

You know, I can't argue with you there. I know. I appreciate it. I've unfortunately been there a few times since I've seen that happen. But, yeah, I just think that

like, it's... Assoca is trying to, like, I don't know. It always works out for Anakin. The thing that Clone Wars has set, or that fucking Star Wars, George Lucas has set up for us, is it's always going to work out for Anakin when he takes these big risks. Sometimes, very, very few times it doesn't. And if it doesn't, that's only because it's motivation for his, like, evil arc or whatever the fuck.

Actually, let me argue with this, though. It's not just Anakin. This is the nature of being a job. Jedi. Like, yeah, sure, there's a lot of Skywalker Blumline shit. But like use the Force Luke, turn off the targeting computer is like, this is

the Jedi way. Of like, you know what? You know the thing I'm supposed to do and the whole plan we had and the way this is all supposed to work? Poop! Doing my own thing. You know what? Just let me cook for a second. Yeah. Yeah.

I've got a vibe through this one. It was vibe through it. And while we have met some, while we have met some Jedi squares, that is true. a lot of them like they might have different flavors of like fuck it I'm gonna do it my way

but when the chips are down a lot of them and this is maybe the frustrating thing Assoca's like when is the moment to do that and part of being a Jedi is recognizing when the force is with you

and when you are feeling it and this is the moment like you gotta trust your feelings and you gotta trust that you can do this and I guess I do have somebody with this because like if you review this almost as a sports anime

where like Jedi are like talented athletes they're stars what you're kind of you're like a lot of rules and procedures are designed for like routine outcomes routine results Jedi are special and part of like crafting like special star performers is like eventually they have to be inculcated with that ability to recognize this is my moment give me the ball yeah right and So, okay, by the end of this, Assook is going to take the ball. Well, this is why I say it goes back to the thing of, like, Anakin does not think that she failed in that initial run.

He thinks this is what happened sometimes. It was not the moment to take, it was not the moment. There was information you didn't know. You have blood in your hands. That's what it means to be a commander. Right. But I just think that when it comes to these, like, Jedi, like big,

know force moments they're they're always very much in action in movement like it's always like some sort of like kinetic you know sequence of events that like they're just owning throughout or whatever i don't feel like asoka has really had one of those like in touch with the force just vibing her way through just killing not actually killing but just killing it you know what i mean whereas in this situation she's not she's just giving a command that's not you don't get that forcey vibe from her being like all right we're going to flip the ship over and then we're going to send some flankies out and it's going to it's going to work trust me but aniken being like boom drop or like fucking Luke Skyworker be like

shwom hit the button or whatever like that those are these one in a million force moments and I just don't think that Asoka is really had and Jedi's are doing that all the time and we just-in a Jedi she's a Padamon she ain't a Jedi knight Jedi Knight Jedi Knights be doing that all the time and that's kind of lesson is Patelons get killed by Anakin Jesus Christ she's got the thing she needs to do at the end of this episode is she needs to be a supporting player and like she was out there trying to like be the star and like I guess by the end what she's being asked to do is a bit more of the like look part of the routine things the

Jedi have to do is command these fleets and like do these jobs sometimes while Anakin is out there being like I'm just going to troll the shit out of this dude and then I'm going to fly this entire cruiser into his face and he's going to be so distracted by my fan cam that's being projected into his bridge, he's not even going to recognize that something's up. Yeah. I just want to see Asoka win when all the odds are against her. Do you know what I mean? I think we have a lot more lessons for Assoca before we get there. But I think we will get there. That's probably true. I did enjoy the big Anakin on the view screen. And that's an episode one thing by the way that screen is what palpatine shows up on as

sidious talking to the trade federation at the beginning of that movie and they were like well we're in one of those ships again we should build one of those for them to like look at anikin's big face on thank you i'm glad they brought it back for me i enjoyed the um like took just bailing out and then we get the last like little shitty droid council of war And it's a bit of a repeat of when the Star Destroyers are going through the asteroid field and Empire Strikes Back, where Vader's got all the little captains reporting in

on the hall. And you see them basically eating shit on the hollow display as they just have this conference call going through. And we get a bit of that too of all the little droids are trying to chat about, like, so what do we want to do that now that Tuck is gone?

And the answer is, just get there. ass kicked um yeah and there's how much to it after that it's a pretty smashing success and the uh the way is open for the next episode any last thoughts or points about this one uh i've won uh i never want to hear uh anakin say that a girl osoka ever again that was awful for me i just don't think that should happen that's all i have to say that's all i have to say also this episode looked pretty good like visual I think yeah

episode by episode hate it more hate it more how about little one add a girl little one just the add a girl is the part that I don't like it's not the name it's the add a girl that just throws me off

that's poggers little one beautiful now we're back yes this is great all right Do you think Assoca went back to her room and just, like, was winding down with some fucking Twitch or something? Twitch streams. No, she went back to her room and she put on, like, chill out beats, but she was, like, she saw that really terrible one where it's her in her study room. And, like, it's terrible Star Wars, like, Lofi beats.

And they're just, like, remixes of the Los Lysley music. And it's sucked ass. And, yeah. Yeah. Everyone should. Everyone involved with them. bad. I would rather listen to that Pepsi Lofi Beats channel

than I missed the Pepsi Lofi Beats. That blue blue. Red can, that's a no-no. Blue can, that's a... What was it? Is it a go-go? It can't be a go-go. It might be. I had to do a search for red can

over here. Huh, where did I talk about that thing? In one And what discord was I dragging the Pepsi Lo-Fi Beats to study to? Ah, drink a red can, that's a no-no. Drink a blue can, yeah, that's a promo. That's bad. That's bad.

That's fucking awful. Go-Go's better. Yeah. Uh-huh. We had it better than, believe it or not, we had better bars than the Pepsi Lo-Fi Beets channel. All right. So the second part of this trio of episodes, Innocence of Rilov covers Obi-Wan's landing with the first wave to establish a landing zone.

This is made tricky by the fact that asshole tactical droid TX-20 is using T-Lech shields to protect his proton cannon battery. After a bloody assault, the landing force is effectively fighting its way inland to this battery, but the Jedi haven't been able to land their main force as long as these guns remain operational. the group led by Obi-Wan doesn't really have a plan so they start doing some recon and they send out a pair of clones Waxer and Boil

These two clones Which one's the racist one? I can't think that's Boil. They're both a little racist but which one is the one to drop a slur within two minutes of this episode starting? Boil for here. Okay.

Great. Yeah and so when we meet them we get a sense of these are sort of classic like Hollywood grunt type characters in some ways where it's like they're they are like

pissed at their roles of engagement they're using racist slang to refer to the Tulex calling them tailheads two letters away from a real ethnic slur that was deployed regularly at the time by white members of my family

and they really just want to get this operation over with And you get the sense that for them, the easiest way to solve the whole situation would just be to level that city and just burn through and take out the separatists. But while they're off on this journey through the city,

they run into a Twila child, Numa, and end up following her through the abandoned city. They come to the ruins of her home, and we see them start to soften. This has been happening throughout their exploration of this depopulated city. But they start to soften. as they realize, like, what she's been through and, like, kind of what she's mourning.

Meanwhile, asshole tactical droid TX20 unleashes his secret weapon, a bunch of starving gut curs to go maul the clones. To escape them, Numa leads Waxer and Boyle into the tunnels below the city and reveals, along the way, the trick to capturing the proton battery. Obi-Wan, after trapping the gut curs in a pen, launches a sneak attack through these tunnels, seizes one of the cannons and uses it to demolish the battery and asshole tactical droid TX20 is killed and ripped to pieces by a mob of his formerly imprisoned Twilocks

The episode ends with Waxer & Boyle promising Numa to come back to visit someday And so I think we all learned this is a very special episode of the Clone Wars It's a very special episode for Waxer and Boyle I don't know if it's for us like it's just a normal episode But for Waxer and Boyle it's like damn Twilocks are people too I mean Obi-Wan really set it all up

when he said as they were landing Time to meet the natives Time to meet the natives I was like Bro Chill He's just going I feel like ever since we went to that snow planet

He's just full like explorer shitty man vibes Oh he's just for like He's reading Kills Kipling quotes on the drop ship in. The big thing for me, like, especially since, like, the focus of this episode is, like, clone socialization or lack of thereof, like, really what happened that they had to take a

weekly seminar on Republic Slurs? Because they have such a dictionary. They know so many. Where are they picking this up? Was it part of their, like, military school back on? I mean, what do we know? the what is the like socialized role of of of of tweelix it's what i was about to say pornography uh it is like exoticization and objectification and it's like that seems to be part of the daily curricula

as we look at their their their barracks like that's in the mix and so like to see like that's what have tweelix been for us thus far it's porn in the background and then to go from that to them saying tailheads, like from fetishization to annoyance, to annoying local natives that we are not allowed to, like, shoot through on our way to the droids is telling about the situation. Yeah, but that's true, but it's not like we don't see Twilocks in other social situations. Like, there's a Twilight Jedi master. There's Twilocks senators. There's, I'm sure there's a Twilight guy who, like, owns a cool shop. Like, there's not just, you know. Yeah. Uh-huh. But what I, yeah.

No, I mean, but hold on. In its defense, like, again, this show is about, like, the war on terror period. And, like, to a degree, like, I don't think we're meant to be like, yeah, they are tailheads. No, no, no. But here's my actual issue with this story is,

their arc is they show up and have a, they are, let's say, the most generous reading for me is, as clones, as part of this class of people being sent to die, they are alienated from the galactic community, which they're supposed to be protecting. They have no real conception of who these people are and have only seen their images through a pop cultural lens, a mass audience lens, an exoticized, fetishized lens. Here they come across real people and in the process realize the error of their ways or whatever. And I have two issues with that. is this is the sort of story that was told to us over and over again about the U.S. military invasions and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wow, there's a connection to the local culture. Look at the ways in which we are learning about these people and making lifetime, you know, connections with communities. We're going in with the best of intentions. And yeah, sure, sometimes things get a little hairy, but, you know, a long term, what we're doing is bringing democracy to these people. and being touched by their love and being welcomed by these communities. There's already a propagandistic connection or a connection to outright propagandistic reporting and works that came out around this stuff that would continue to come out around this stuff for the next decade after this episode air.

I'm through today, right, ongoing. The second thing is that Numa, Numa is an idealized innocent, right? The name of this episode is Innocence, Innocence in... Of Ryloth. Of Ryloth, right? Yeah, of Ryloth. I've written down here, aka six days on Ryloth. That's why I got confused.

And she is the ideal Tweedek innocent. She is a child who doesn't know many words, who cannot voice anger, who cannot show direct pain. And that is a thing that the absence of that sort of innocent is what leads many people, especially in the West, turn away, is the absence of a perfect victim, of a perfect innocent. They see people who are instead of being children and in pain and unable to voice anger, they see angry adults who have lived through occupation for decades. And so when I see a story about racists coming to like terms with their racism and like moving on because they happened to cross a good one, like it sets a bad standard and it is not a, that is not a moving story for me. that is in line with, especially given some of the imagery at the end of this episode, of Obi-Wan with Numa on his shoulder, of the Tuelex looking up at the Star Destroyers coming into land, all of that shit, like, not to jump ahead too much, but like I was,

I immediately thought of Barth talking about the cover of Paris match with the Black Boy saluting in the French, in the French uniform, right? The, the, I have the quote here, right? I'm at the barbers and a copy of Paris matches offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in French uniform is saluting with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolor. All of this is the meaning of the picture. But whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me,

that France is a great empire, that all of her sons, without any color discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. And the images of the Twelix looking up hopefully at the Republic cruisers, that like startling, striking image of Obi-Wan holding the lightsaber out with Numa up on his shoulder is like the closest we've gotten to American propaganda in this show that is more and more about the war on terror throughout this. And we can complicate that by talking about other elements of this, like, for instance, the fact that the Tuelex have French accents. and let me quickly undercut that immediately because

Faloni specific I'm going to jump ahead a little bit just to like finish this one point and then I swear I'll be done this this new rant of mine he says I mean the Twilocks have a French accent because that's what George asked for very specifically

my first instinct wasn't to have that but you know I do think that it gives them it gives them a certain flavor a certain characteristic so he kept that with A La Secura, and we kept that with Orn-Fritah. It's sort of, it's kind of fit in with the idea that, you know, it's kind of a parallel in some way, at least for when Henry wrote it. I guess that's just a coincidence. It worked well, but it wasn't an intentional direct parallel that we did. So, like, yes, you could come in and say, well, this isn't really

about the Middle East. This is about French resistance during Nazi occupation. But I think that that's, I think you have blinders on if that's the case. It's very clearly, as Rob said, like these are these are stereotypical American grunts in a way that many stories have been told about and so evaluated under that that like rubric it's hard for me to come away with this episode as anything other than a very you know high-minded liberal this is the dream we send our yes we send our soldiers to enforce democracy yes there's a chance that they have bad impulses around what the people who they're supposed to be defending are But they'll come into contact and their hearts will be changed, God damn it. And we just know that isn't what happens. And that image is often used to justify further action or to prevent structures being in place to prevent the harms that are coming from this stuff. Right. Like what year is Abu Ghraib, right?

Like this is time and place like exactly right for some of the worst, most aggressive and egregious crimes that American soldiers committed against people from these countries. So, like, yeah, it's, it's my frustration with this episode was kind of through the fucking roof, despite it being a really well-executed episode with a great villain and some fun action and sequences. Yeah, I mean, it's, like, it is, I think one of the things that it is struggling with is that Clone Wars, as a show, will often gravitate towards familiar images. or beats from other military shows.

Like there's a sequence where they realize she's hungry and they give her like a little food bar. And like feels really reminiscent. Like versions of that shot have existed in a lot of places feels really reminiscent of in Band of Brothers where they give a Dutch kid chocolate for the first time. He's never had chocolate because he's grown up under occupation. That's this really like beautiful moment in the middle of this series.

And if you think about that, that was often informed by, like, Stephen Ambrose was a really useful historian of the 90s to become, like, he, people, people underestimate how revisionist Stephen Ambrose was. If you read the historiography of World War II that came out in like the 60s and 70s, much more measured view of World War II and like the way that war was waged. And here it's Stephen Ambrose as a very, just to be clear, is the historian whose work. got turned into like banded brothers and like that whole era of saving private Ryan and Medal of Honor games like that vision of the greatest generation off to war

to save the day golden hued there's a quote I think a lot of it because I think he was giving it in the context of certainly the invasion of Afghanistan I'm not sure if it's Iraq but he was talking about during war two

I'm going to butcher the quote a little bit but he said basically in 1945 the site of a group of armed men coming up the road to your town was terrifying to everyone in the world unless those soldiers were Americans. And if they were Americans, then it meant safety, it meant liberation, it meant freedom.

And basically his argument was, and we can do that again. Like we can win the war on terror by winning these hearts and minds through the essential goodness and redemptiveness of the US military. And that was a really comforting image of like Americans. soldiery in World War II, and people were quick to embrace that. And also, in embracing that,

it also sort of granted a carte launch for Imperial Adventure in the 2000s. And I think this episode drawing from a lot of the things that had that sort of Ambrosian stamp on them suffers a lot. And what's missing, because there's, I will say there's something else in this, which is there are also overtones of Samuel Fuller. Samuel Fuller made war movies too. He made ones that were way less sanctioned by the U.S. military and just as a director, way more interested in like the nasty untold stories of American history.

And is, sorry, did Sam Fuller make the Big Red One? That is correct. Yes. So, because Waxer and Boyle feel very reminiscent of the characters in the Big Red One, which basically covers this infantry squad from the landings in Africa through to the invasion of Germany. And you see, like, how the bonds, like, those sentimental bonds of brotherhood and, like, fellowship and, like, a decency, just get whittled down in the process of a long, grim war. And there's elements of that here, too. Like, Waxor and Boyle feel almost like Sam Fuller characters.

but by the end I think it all goes wrong with Numa that Numa is such an adorable little way Just a cute little babby If you just cross you out one baby Then your heart can be Can't protect the small bean

I can't be racist to the small bean And I think if the episode Like if Numa were different If Numa hadn't shown up there And their hearts just melt I think there would have been a much more interesting exploration of these guys realizing, like, why do I feel this way?

And the answer probably is that they don't hate Tweedlocks. They hate that they're there. They hate that, like, the fact that, like, the rules of engagement are, look, you can't, the things that would probably keep you safe, which is just blasted this town, guns blazing, you can't do that. And so more of you were going to die. And is this kind of previous victory? I don't know.

But you just got to do it. That's where these guys start to lose their shit. but the show can't quite explore that. Yeah. Yeah, one of the things that makes me consider is, like, how does this exchange and the storyline change if they run into one of the Twilac resistors instead of a literal child?

Yes. Hmm. Yeah, I don't know. I wish those two strains have been... And is it shut up in follower orders. Right. Which is, that's the attitude they have, but they can't bring themselves to say that to the...

I mean, that's not true. They do say that to the child. but she just grins and bears it because she's like I guess because she doesn't understand nobody understands right that's why well and I do wish

I think this would have been more interesting and I get in the format of the show that's hard but if they'd woven in this idea of yo like there's different Twiluk groups in here and like we're stepping into a complicated context and like if that had been there as well

where it's like oh they aren't just innocents passively waiting to be rescued but like hey, like, if you ran into, like, a teenage girl in, like, a teenage, like, Tweedlock, she might not be cool to see Republic Troops show up, or she might have an ambivalent reaction about that. And we don't get that complexity. The complexity is introduced in the third episode, but then dispense it very quickly. Yeah, it's so much, this trio of episodes makes me excited for the time at which the show will start to move away. from this is an arc quote unquote in which we explore a topic across an anthology of three

episodes and towards we're going to use these three episodes to tell a continuous story that introduces all the principal characters up top and then gives them a full 90 to expand and grow and and have that depth and interaction but i think i think we're hitting some of the limits of that in this arc because we don't know that there is a tweet like resistance until the third episode in this series about, in this, this arc about Tulek, uh, the Tweedk occupation. And so like not having that context, not just for us, the viewer, but for them, the writers and, and creators to have that run through these episodes and, and give those extra depth, uh, I think actually hurts it quite a bit because even just, even just a shade

of that here would have gone a long way, I think. And also it's different people making each of these episodes, right? It's not the same. writing credits. It's not the same directors on each of these episodes. And I think that that comes through because of how distinct they feel about the same conflict, you know? The other, the other thing is the clones in this episode aren't the clones that, like, work with the resistance fighters in the next episode. These are three separate, like, missions that are being carried out. And so there's no, it's not, and it's not really, the arc is Twilic freedom.

The arc isn't, you know, the arc is how do we, how do we stop the Twilic occupation? But there's no, the fact that in this episode there's such an emphasis on clone conception of Twylex and their treatment of them, their viewpoint of them and how that can change if you know you just meet um a fucking kid i guess that doesn't carry into the next episode at all because those clones aren't not going to call the twilocks tailheads anymore right these guys didn't get on the horn at the end of this episode and be like hey i'm thinking maybe we should cut it out with the ethnic slurs yeah i met a kid she seemed nice and helped us so now we're cool with them everybody yeah and it it also just I think the this episode was incredibly frustrating to me for all of the reasons already said

um I think it really just put the nail in the coffin for me when the little girl Nura Numa, what's their name again? Numa? Numa. Numa. Numa. Numa. When Numa sacrifices her life for Obi-Wan in front of the separatist tank.

You know. She offers to, right? She doesn't. She doesn't. No. She doesn't put her in front of the gun. Like, that's not. She's ready to die.

Yes. Yes. Oh, also, also, the other thing was, God. Obie want, so. you know, they meet up with this kid, they start to learn that Twilocks have humanity and are people to, you know, she protects them from the big dog lizard creatures, and then they get through the sewers, they bring her back to the rest of the clones. The clones are like, who's this? They're like, this is a kid. We found her. Whatever. Obi-1, zero hesitation. Let's use the kid for war. Let's use this kid for war.

She's going to take us to the war, and we're just going to use that for our wartime. And then as he's going through, like, the sewers and she's leading, you know, the fleet or whatever, um, Obi-Wan sees a, sees a droid, like, just cleaning shit in the sewers, I guess. Like, that's his fucking job. That's his job. Including Rotger shit. And. Probably the same was who got almost eaten by the Rotger earlier, which means to

that beat, but. Probably. Fed too. Shout out to that guy. The droid, like, looks up to Obi-Wan and it's like, man, I'm just here of cleaning shit. Like, please don't annihilate me. And Obi-Wan's like, you know what? I'm not going to kill you.

I'm going to imprison you forever instead of killing you That's that's my Generosity right there I'll probably let him out at some point No they won't dissect him Yeah like why would any I mean if I was a Twilac Having just been freed from the occupation

I'd fuck that joke oh yeah if the Twilocks get a hold to him It's game over that's it's over yeah It's done for that guy Yeah and then and then we get the the last moment of this episode is another you know like I think it's interesting that we have this the first episode kind of sets up this foreign language type thing with having the real foreign or you know our universe real foreign language word of emir and then throughout this entire episode Numa's calling them Nara the whole time and like speaking in different language and at the end

Obi-Wan finally reveals that she was calling them brother the whole time and I was just like I literally just shut my computer off I was like I need a fucking break I can't

I just It's so heavy-handed. It's so fucking corny. It's... The clones also call each other, brother. We're not so different, you and I. Little Numa. True.

You know, our cultures, even though we're grown from vats and raised for war from birth, before our accelerated breeding program sends us into the charnel house of the Clone Wars, we too understand the bonds of family. Oh, nightmare. Yeah, it's actually really funny. I'm rewatching the sequence now. One of the things that's like that's fascinating is so, you know, she runs out there to protect Obi-Wan, almost gets blasted, inspires the other civilians to rush in and try to

overtake the tank, killing this tactical droid villain, and beating the shit out of him. Right. Like, they are, there is a, this is, this is an angry, a rightfully angry mob tearing this motherfucker apart. And then above them, calming them down is the arrival of the, the, the, the, Republic cruisers who, then they have tanks and they, and they land. Is that how it means? Or they just finish wiping out the droids. I don't know that it was like, their team. No, I go watch it. It's fucking wild. Like, it's the same shot. They rip his head off, are beating him. And then up from above, income the cruisers and they stop and look up in awe. And it's like

there is a particular, those are two different modes of violence and one of them is being preferred visually on the screen. One of them is above the other one. One of them is signaled signals a return to order a certain sort of like justified correct model

of war. And you know, this next episode we're about to get to immediately complicates this off the bat in a way I did not expect. Coming off of this episode I was like, oh my God, please don't fuck up the Mesa Window episode. I'm ready for a cool Mesa Windu episode. That episode is not perfect by any means. But it does at least immediately complicate the Republic occupation of this place and make it clear that maybe some T-Lex think this is a bad fucking idea. So I think toward the end here, I think

this goes to something that's going to be attention throughout the show, which is that a lot of what the show is doing is foreshadowing like the imagery of the empire being the imagery of the good guys and victory in the Republic era that the imagery precedes the fascism and so like when we like those of us who grew up on the original trilogy

the visual of a trio of star destroyers little daggers in orbit above you that's a certain type of visual that implies something and here it's like ah you know cavalry's here thank God and we're going to see that a lot

and I'm curious how the show ends up what the show ends up doing with it because sometimes it feels like foreshadowing of like hey yes you know where all this leads right but sometimes a bit like here it feels like got them love it yeah didn't get the memo on what that is supposed to feel like sometimes

you know what is the point of this episode literally what is the point of this episode other than to be like here two clones becoming slightly unracist. Yep. Like there's nothing... That's the point. There's nothing about this episode that is, that will be carried into the next, or I have

very high doubts that it will have any ramifications beyond... No, hold on, but I don't think everything needs to. Like, I think if we're saying, like, what's the point of this episode? The point of seeing the clone perspective is to understand, like, who are these characters waging this war? Like, this is going to be, like, at times the series is about, you're going to get a... a one-off like rookies has no resonance like rookies does not mean like oh what what happens in rookies that's going to care through what cares through is our understanding of the clones and like

I think this episode does that I think it presents a fucked up view of like how we're supposed to read the clones but I do think its point is to like characterize two of the minor character clones like to give us two exemplar characters of like hey what are the dudes who are just like grunt infantry in all this what do they make of this like how do they react to this war they're engaged in may not be a well executed episode but like i think saying oh what's the point what's going to like what's going to be drawn from this what's drawn from it's just whatever you take away from it and that that can be good i don't i have no problem with i have no problem with telling this sort of story or or even this showing that perspective it's the it's the ways on which that

perspective is framed and i think one of the things that's telling also is just like i did a lot of digging around to see how this episode was received. One, there's an entire cohort of people who are like, people say this Ryloth Ark is about the Middle East, and they couldn't be further from the truth. And like, fucking, someone needs to rip the scales from your eyes. Like, you are just, you're pretending. You're pretending about this at this point.

But two, there's a lot of people out there who are like, I really like the Rylath Ark. This is the first arc that made me really think about the people in this universe. I remember watching this arc as a kid and feeling like it made me really feel for civilians caught up in war. And being like, whew, I bet that's true. I bet for a lot of little Americans watching this show who are 10, who got a very particular vision of what American style imperialism was doing in places that looked a lot like this,

and learned a lesson that like, oh, the civilians are the good people. And the idea, I guess the thing I want to underscore is the same thing I said, we said about Revenge of the Sith, which is like, this message does not hold up by the standards that I think we have today. At the time, I bet there were people saying that this was an overly politicized episode that was liberal and that like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because that is where the politics of the time were with regards to a present. Or we're saying the other thing, which is like, what a good image of American style. This is what good soldiers should do. They wouldn't even say America.

Like, this is a great example of good soldiers. And being on any side of that is just like such a different discursive place than where we're at now, where we are openly talking about what an occupation looks like, the ways in which empires are complicit even when they are supposedly acting on the side of democracy, et cetera. And that's a lot to think about. It's a lot to think about how much the frame has thankfully changed around these discussions. Right. I'm not surprised that this episode exists. I'm sure there are variations of this episode across children's cartoons in general. I think for me, it's, and maybe this is too, I'm like up two minds about this.

For me, it's it being in this specific arc. Like you have a three-part episode, or you're fucking making a movie at this point. You have three episodes of an arc, and this is the middle that, just feels like I'm I don't know I'm not getting a lot of momentum towards the payout of this arc that's kind of my beef with it but like I'm not I know this episode would exist in clone wars as a one-off I'm not mad at it for that reason but also thinking about what you just said Austin maybe it's the fact that this it that this was situated in this arc that it's given such a big significance because you're sitting in this context for three episodes that it like

speaks a little louder quote unquote for you know the audience to the point where people can look back you know however many years later and be like oh yeah I remember that arc I remember that episode whereas if it was just a one-off on a random planet and it was just like clones and one of the people, maybe it wouldn't have, maybe it would have gotten lost in, in the billion of episodes. Because we've seen better versions of, like, we saw trespass a few weeks ago now, a few months ago now, which is like a better version of the, let's complicate an occupation, or a story about the ways in which a separatist occupation can lead to republic

aggression to justify, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's like, they've done it better before. And I think, I think the more to, more to answer something else you said, there are many ways in which it's not a movie which is about the production side of it which is again like each of these episodes is a different director Gilroy is the only writer who shows up across two of them he's only the lead writer on one of them so there are ways in which I again I think that we're going to move towards a different feeling clone wars when arcs like this end up feeling more unified and less like three stories that at the very highest level someone said let's tell a story about a fight on Rylon Rylon off. You three do the, this team will go do the space episode. This team will do a take out the gun batteries, you know, clone focused episode. This episode will, you three will do an episode about the resistance and Mace Windu. Which, which is the last one that I guess we should probably get to unless we have, do anything else. Oh, I do have one other thing on this. I have one other thing on this, which is. This is our, it's not our first tactical droid, but it, Philoni in the behind the scenes featurette gives some. context for why those were developed. He says, quote, the tactical droid is the intelligent robot who is really calculating. I really know that he says the intelligent robot there for some reason.

He's like Threpeo. He always knows the odds of the situation he's in. He has data files and all the Jedi's that he knows their tendencies. That can be his downfall sometimes. And each of these droids, these tactical droids, is unique. They all have different voices. We'll see different ones. They have different paint schemes, different colors.

It really gave us an opportunity to have a villain that was smart. But that was disposable. That wasn't Duku. That wasn't ventures. So we didn't have to keep beating those guys. Because Grievous kept getting beaten early on in episodes, and I really didn't like that. I think it takes away from him. We need to see him have more victories, not always defeats.

I agree. True. Grievous squad rise up. Well, this will go on the next episode, but I do think the way TX20 is presented is like not only... So there's that functional thing that they serve. but also like you watch this character and it's like who's running this?

Like there's just an entire it's not just that the droid is like in charge of like command there is an arrogance and like glee 2TX20 and then the next episode I forget what the other droids

TA 175 175 is borderline and subordinate and by the end over that border and so like you start to You start to get the sense of like, yo, is there a SkyNet problem that the separat cause is starting to work towards where it's like, man, you know what we need are some good competent commanders? Ah, here's a, we're going to create genius tactical droids who are only semi-responsive to orders and love killing people. And we're going to turn off the central kill switch on the droids.

The next episode also has the line about how, oh, this must have been an old model droids. referencing the fact that the ones in Phantom Menace could be turned off instantly by destroying the clone or the whatever the droid command ship the Central Command computer thank you the Central Computer Alley thank you and the fact is like you know what these droids are getting more advanced they should maybe maybe break off on their own I like it I liked I want to see it happen I like these fucked up droids

I like the fact that they have motivation to, like, move, I don't know, like advance their careers as fucking evil commanders or whatever. It's just very funny. I like seeing, you know, them operate in their best interest. That's interesting to me. I love a droid with a career development plan. All right, so part three, Liberty and Rilof, has Mace Windu leading a Republic armored column through the mountains to the city of Lesu, where the separatists are making their final stand under.

the nominal command of Amir Wat Tambor, who is at odds with pragmatic tactical droid TA-175. Windu is unsure he has the forces to take Lesu, so he seeks out the Twilightak resistance under Cham Sundula. Sundula's resistance predates the Clone Wars and is anathema to the recognized government and exile of Rylath under Senator Ta. However, the diplomatic tension is resolved by Duku's command to scorch the earth and massacre the villages across Ryloth. Ta and Sindula set aside their differences and the resistance guerrillas join the assault

on Lassu. The plan to cross the drawbridge into the city walls almost goes awry, but here we get a real look at the Clone Wars take on Mace Winde, which is that he is a superhero, basically. He is the superhero of the Jedi Council, Achilles to Obi-Wan's Odysseus. Yes, yes. I love this so much. Wat Tambor tries to escape too late and is abandoned by TA 175

and with that Ryloth is liberated, the factions united and parading through the city. Yeah, I don't know. So, I think... Where to start, right? This episode raises interesting concepts.

I don't know if it's as interesting an episode as I want it to be. I will say I like, again, the increasing competence of the bad guys, they disable an armor column by taking up the lead and trailing vehicle and box everyone in, and the stage is set for a massacre,

but then we see the proto-ATST walkers that are basically just like little... Imagine a Vespa on legs. Yeah. That's kind of what, like, mace and a bunch of the clones board and, like, just go running across on these big mechanical chickens.

That's sick. just wreck the separatist defenses. That gives a little bit of foreshadowing of like, yo, um, Anakin and Obi-Wan are often like, aha, here's our clever strategy.

Mace will like come up with a plan, but also he'll just be like, I got this. You know what? I got it. I can just do some shit. Yeah. Well,

you know, pass me the ball. The, uh, the opening of this is so interesting to me. Not the, sorry, not the openings.

The opening is the, they're stuck on the, on the mountain pass. and jump down and beat it and all that and like the after that happens um you start to get the the understanding of of what each side in the in the conflict has from the separatist side you see them moving into a mode of um if not retreat yet at the very least the belief that like now is the time to to begin taking from this place at at absolute maximum maximum maximum maximum maximum speed. It's time just to really up our pillaging effort. But the more interestingly for me,

from the Republic side, you have this conversation about what the situation on Rylath is. And this to me is almost a really great variation on some of what we were trying to talk about in the part of the last episode, where it is very clear that the Republic is planning on using the resistance to their own ends here, right? It is. It is. It is. It is the way in which they talk about the resistance is the way you talk about a tool, not the way you talk about individuals. But it's not framed as necessarily a good thing that they're doing that. And I wish that some of that energy had been brought to that past episode because I think you can watch this and immediately understand that there are interests at play versus it just being like, here is a story that's happening. and just like there's sort of a fairy tale quality to that last episode or like a like a not a fairy tale but like that's sort of like you know a war story it's not a story about the politics of this place whereas in this episode immediately you have the leader of the the resistance on ryloth being a political radical and a rival to the other dude whose name I've already forgotten yeah is that one of this is ta it's or free ta yeah

because I kept hearing Orton Tahn or something like that. Like, that's not right. Yeah, or free Tah. And I just really like the ways in which we get the Jedi basically saying, like, I'm going to try to stay out of the politics. I'm going to do whatever I can to help these people. But also realizing very quickly that the only way to win is to end up being involved politically. needing to try to like thread that needle

and then we get Sundula who makes a very direct just like he has a demand and his demand is get the fuck off our planet when this is over yeah so I think the thing that

I want to know more about Sundula because one of the things that's missing here well okay so actually let me back up what is the fight about what is the what was the original divide there's a lot of I think I fill in the gaps quite a bit here based on the one demand he makes. The only demand he makes is, if we help you, you have to promise that the Republic will not continue to occupy Ryloth when this is done. Ryloth is for the Tweedek, and that's going to be our planet.

And so for me, I immediately go like, okay, is his, is his, is the difference between him in Tah, that Tah is like part of the galact, wants Rialath to be connected to the galactic core, wants to be part of this kind of globalist. vision of what the Republic is versus the more self-sufficient but we can't make that claim directly because it doesn't actually Sundula just doesn't voice enough to know what his actual positions are right I think I think he gestures at it though when he and mace Windu are like first talking and he talks about basically how they got there and he says do you know why we were massacred when the droids swept over Ryloth the Republic was unable to help us we were forced to surrender we came here unarmed the severed has brought tanks to exterminate us and ta is a senator ta is in the galactic republic sundula watched how being a member of the galactic

republic doesn't mean shit if you hold on palpatine says sindula was a radical before the war so Sundula's position predates, yes, like he's like, hey, the Republic didn't protect us. This is an echo of Uncle Ano's perspective on, like, hey, yet again, the Republic failed to protect a member state. But Sindula was leading some kind of resistance of some sort of radical faction before this war ever broke out. And so that's the thing that I'm left wondering is like, yeah, did he, like, they were already a member state of the Republic. So when he's saying, you have to promise you'll leave, that would be a new political, that would be a new political outcome because the Republic's always been there. They're a part of the Republic.

They are being brought back in to the Republic and being brought out from under. See, I was not reading that as we will leave the Republic. I was reading that as you will not leave forces on Rilov. That's what I assume. Because Mace immediately says when they're at the Twilocks celebration, you know, they're having like an evening. Windu asks Sundula, why won't you help me for your people? He says, I don't trust Senator Taw, his plans for the world after the war. And Windu says, the republic will help you rebuild.

We won't abandon you. And Sundula is like, your troops are going to. to stay for security. And then Wendy's like, yeah, you know, to keep the peace. And he's like, another armed occupation is not a free Ryloth. How long before I'm fighting you, Master Jedi? And I literally just wrote, let's go. But also, like, at the same time, in the context of Sindula's a little bit of, like,

Ta is a little bit afraid of Sindula. There's an ongoing, like, simmering civil war, maybe. And so to another extent, he's asking, like, yo, you promise to leave, and I can continue prosecuting this war, right? Like, it's not a simple, like, oh, like, I just want Ryloth to be free. This is a guerrilla leader who was already waging a campaign. He wants the board clear. See, I don't get that here. It's not clear to me what type of radical he is.

It's clear that he was a radical before the war, but does that radical mean that he was leading an opposition party? Does that radical mean that he was a guerrilla fighter who was always. already committing, you know, he's already bombing the capital? Or was he, is this, is this, like, what, where on the, the kind of spectrum of, hashtag, DSA to, you know, to, to, to, right, exactly, to Shea is this. Like, where, where on that? And I mean, a thing that excites me is I know we get more Sundula and that I know that a major rebel, Rebels character is Sindula's daughter. Oh, one of the principal characters of Rebels is Sindula's. daughter, which maybe they fucked that up entirely.

But I do, I want more Sundala after this. Right. Like, who could say, right? I think, I hate my radical father. I think that, I think the fact that the, the, the, what motivates Sundula to speak to Ta is only after hearing about the attack on multiple villages. I feel like that paints a complicated – there's just way too much ambiguity about the type of resistance leader he is and what his history is, because right now he's staking his entire MO on not wanting armed occupiers on Ryloth for whatever reason. To me, that reads previous to the war.

the Republic probably had stations or bases or something on Ryloth. Protecting Ta, protecting the established, right. Exactly. And, you know, who knows what the ramifications are like of that the further away you get from Taugh. That's the best, that's like the most I can get from this. But anything beyond that, I don't think. I just don't know. You know, but Todd definitely.

It's the most I've wanted, like, I wish this was three episodes. Yes. So, I'm a little uneasy with the sense that we shouldn't trust Ta because he's the fat character. Well, I definitely get the vibe. Yeah, sure. That, yes, absolutely. He's the prosperous, the prosperous burger while his people are all thin because they starve, because he eats, he physically eats all the excess wealth of, of, of,

Ryloth, and I'm like, mm. Yeah, I've been playing R.E.8 and woof. I'm right there every day now. I'm sure. It says a lot that Taw doesn't seem to have to have been on Ryloth in a while. Like, where the fuck is Taw at? A chalabi-like figure in some ways? It gives me, it just gives me strong, like, Sundula's the guy that's like, I've been on the ground. I've been here for the people. I've been doing. this shit and Tau's like you know in a palace somewhere or whatever. Literally, literally hanging out with

with Palpatine right? In fact, I need to double check it. He's all those movies in Revenge of the Shiff. Yeah, right? Is he?

Is that the dude? Because that'll change a lot. I gotta click on some button. I'm scared to Google to reveal a lot about I'm not I'm not sure but the fact that Palpatine is like very disdainful of

Sindula and clearly has an investment in Ta-Maintaining senatorship of Ryloth is very interesting to me. Sorry, I'm Googling it. I found he's in those movies. He's standing behind Bail Organa in one of these images. I don't know if he's like behind him,

you know what I mean? But is that one of the dudes on the dais with Palpatine toward the end? That's, he's not, no, he's not the guy with the big horns. That's one of those guys. But I, this is the fucking problem. I did a Google search.

I went to Star Wars.com found the image of Warren Freetah and it says a corpulent, corrupt Tulek senator from Ryloth and it's like, yeah, here we are. It's the evil fat guy. So yeah, I don't know. I guess there's some corruption involved

that they did not necessarily put forward here. Anyway. If Boss Tweed had been a twink, the history of like discourse around political corruption would have been very different. 100% If only The firebombing that happens in this

is like We've talked before about how it can be frustrating when the separatists are like cartoon villains But this didn't hit like that for me Partly because the order comes from Duku And what Duku says is Demonstrate the cost of a Republic victory Like yeah they're going to get us out of here

But we're going to make this so costly that people are going to to begin to fear the Republic and allying with the Republic because they will see how bad this can fucking go. It's like the fucking lemurs. It's like the lemurs. But I don't think it's like the lemurs in the way that no one cared about those lemurs.

Hey. No one gives the shit about the... Except for the people who wrote in to tell us that they were... They were mere cats. Yeah, but they were mere cats. They're fucking called the Lerman. It feels like it's the word lemur. Listen, let us live.

No one cared about them, whereas Ryloth seems to be something the Republic cares about the way it's positioned. At the very least, Orn-Fritah seems to have enough pull to get some cameras on the action here, so to speak. And I think it's fascinating to see Duku's decision to firebom to be as much about rhetoric and morale, or propaganda and morale, as about anything else. And also, it's just like, it's the most we've seen. civilians die in this show so far, right? The idea that, like, villages are just being bombed. Yeah. Is...

This is a real evil shit. It passed over pretty quickly, but I do think that that is a... The sort of appropriate catalyst for someone like Cham to be like, all right, I'm going to meet you halfway on this because we have to get these fuckers out of here. And then, and at the same time, I'm still going to keep my leverage so that you get out of here also. So I thought that was an interesting thing in this episode that I did not remember at all. It's very, it's a very real violent act compared to some of the other more cartoonish or goofy or. There's no super weapon.

Yeah, exactly. They just bomb them, right? And that's scary. Exactly. it feels very high stakes it feels very real it just like I mean the the whole the whole interesting it's like interesting that the last epithet of our for the last episode was the costs of war can never truly be accounted for and then this one ends up being compromise as a virtue to be cultivated, not a weakness to be

despised. Very interesting to me how that happens. But I still think the thing that works for me about this is and I came into this, when I saw that compromise as a virtue to be cultivated, I was like, oh, fuck, here we go. And they're like,

there's a radical on that planet. The thing about the framing that works for me is that at no point is Cham's position represented as fully or as, like, again, contrasted to the Lerman Elder whose reasons for not wanting to work at the Republic seemed comical, given his circumstances and history.

Whereas, and also his arguments are just like piss poor straw men. Sundula is like, y'all, I have good reason for this. And yes, he does end up compromising with his political rival who seems to be a corrupt politician who's more interested in his own game, presumably, than his people's safety. But that framing it as a step that Cham has to take to save his people

versus framing it as what happened with Lerman Chief, which was yeah, they're super bombing my home. I guess finally we'll let the Jedi fight. It's such a different thing, you know? Yeah, 100%. I think the thing that I appreciate about this episode the most

is that it takes Sundula seriously. it takes the you know quote unquote cost of war pretty serious or treats it pretty seriously and I just wish as usual that we had a little bit more context a little bit more depth in you know the actual inner inner politics of what's happening here what if I told you there was another version of this story that was worse where Champson Dula was not a resistance fighter at all. Quote, Champsendula,

who's the freedom fighter, who's a kind of leader of the French resistance. Here we go again with the French French analogy, which a moment ago... It's nothing like it. If anything,

they feel like a francophone colony, but they don't feel like France. And even their accents are so French. I mean, this is the other reason I went to Barth talking about the Algerian soldiers. So much of this feels like

a French colony rising up to, you know, like that, they read as Algerian to me so strongly in ways that are probably not well thought out, but that was like the resonance, I feel.

Anyway, he was originally going to be working with Wat Tambor as a sort of spiritual leader of the Twylex that was leading them and kind of keeping them under the separatist occupation. And then he flees with Wat Tambor at the end with money and gold. Hendry and I just couldn't get that version of this story to work. And then we finally started thinking, in this kind of story where Mesa is trying to take back this large

of an objective, there's usually a freedom fighter. There's usually someone with him. And once we start going down that path, it kind of clicked to how Champs and Dula, to have Champsendula be the Ryloth representative of that home army, the resistance fighter. We saw it on Udipal, what Obi-Wan says, if you have warriors now is the time.

So these guys, these are the Rilov soldiers that are fighting against the occupation, trying to free their planet. They're not sold on the help of the Jedi at first. And he goes on to say that he really likes the line about how long until I'm fighting you, Master Jedi. To him, it's just another army. The idea that the original version of this was that, like, he was some sort of religious leader, you know, radical cleric champsendula would have been a nightmare conclusion to this trio of episode.

So glad we're not talking about that right now. I mean, exactly, I mean, the irony for me is like, oh, word, does Star Wars have a place for it for a radical, powerful religious sect to maybe lead people into trouble? Yes, the Jedi. It's been happening. Like, maybe the reason you can't tell the story is because the other character was Mace Windew, a powerful religious leader in his own right. So, yeah, I'm glad we didn't get that one. You know, I don't know. There's a bridge.

There's a, there's, should we talk about the coolest action scene so far in this series of episodes? The silence scene? Yeah. That was so weird. I was so, I, I was just like, what the fuck is happening? What show am I watching right now? I'm not mad at it. Like, I think it's funny.

I like, it's not the way the show does action, though. Exactly. That, to me, it's when a show with this amount of material that is just like, you're, you know you're going to be making this for a fucking long time, just decides to do something completely off its usual you know whatever he gets that special

he gets the purple light saber he gets the special treatment with sound effects you know Obi-1 got that treatment they did the silent treatment yeah yeah yeah they got the like force crystal situation also happened when Obi-1 was

pulling the dogs that's a force sound effect we skipped that we did skip the force crystal mine in the last episode of people who didn't watch these Obi-Won didn't mind control a bunch of big insect dogs, monsters, to, like, move them into place where they could be killed more easily or trapped or something?

They were trapped. Okay, good. Yeah, so he could get out. Obi-Wan would never kill a native life form. But yeah, here we get this thing of just like there's an energy bridge. Everyone's standing on the energy bridge. And they have a whole plan of, like, stealing a transport filled with gold and driving it across the bridge because they're expecting their big, you know, stolen gold supply shipment.

The bridge goes out and everything begins to fall. But Mace Windu is Mace Windu, so he's going to do a platforming level. He's going to strider his way from falling tank to floating, what are they called? Stapriders, the things that the battle droids fly around on, all while the soundtrack has been completely removed. So it's just the sound of the air and the jumping and the cloth in the wind. and then drive it into the control center. Mase Mendoo's good at this. Give him the ball.

Mase Mendo revealing that he's actually the Michael Jordan of this shit. Him force-pushing the clones to the edge of the bridge and them, like, barely getting there was very cool. I'm sure the clones were a little frustrated by that. Just give us a little bit more. Just a little bit more, please. I like that the two instances, in which that happened are

Obi-Wan, like, force-pushing the grenades a little bit farther. Like, they don't quite... That's great. They don't quite have the reach for it, so he, like, just increased their range a little bit, and then Mace Windu doing it with people. Yes.

I want a game where the Jedi get to be coached, like sports coaches, and they're allowed to interfere with the force. You're allowed to extend the football just a little bit further. when you pass it. But, like, you can't be everywhere all at once. Do you know what I mean?

You can't, like, you still need your teams to, like, be doing most of the work for you. Anyway. Watching these three episodes, I was like, I'm ready for the tactical game of the Clone War. Like, I am ready for... X-com Clone Wars game. Yeah. Yeah. Because I do think the Jedi are interesting because, like, so often the Clone Army doesn't

have the gear they need, and they're just making up for it with the fact that, like, okay, how do we have nothing that can bust these fortifications. but we can float that grenade perfectly into the little opening. The Jedi as like a Swiss Army knife, like, force multiplier who can, like, make things just go a little bit better because they have the, they could be the right tool for the situation. But then, after they make the, after he does that shit, there's also a moment of, like, hey, you guys got this, right? You guys go clear out this entire fortress. I'm going to go deal with the emir. And so, like, the two clones are left to, like, charge through a mob of droids and then through the castle and, like, and they do, because the clone, like, the clones are also badasses at times.

Yeah. But it is. And the resistance rolls through with their, with their little, like, lizard mounts, right? Uh-huh. Natalie, how long would I think you to grind from one of these lizard mounts in Final Fantasy 14? Give me a day. I got it. Damn, she said it's already done.

I got you. What do you think? What's a day when you're time traveling, though? That's the real question. Actually, since that conversation we had on this podcast, I have not played by the way to C-14. Podcasters curse. We'll talk about the thing. You get it out.

It bleeds out of your heart, you know? I know. I'm trying to get back to it, though. You got to play one of those reapers. They added bunny boys. They're adding rabbit boys. Bunny boys is right. I said rabbit boys.

I'm corrected myself. No, they're bunny boys. They're bunny boys. They are bunny boys. Yeah, no, I, that was enough food for me to, to wet my appetite. So I'm looking forward to getting back in. Uh-huh. You know.

So I do think one little beat I liked. When they're going into the resistance base, I like that the clone, like one of the things that sort of breaks the ice between the clones and the resistance is like, cool wildebeest. Like the two motorcycle, like the two speeder bike clones

are like, hey, what's this thing? What's this big animal? And like you hear them sort of talking about in the background over Obey, over Mace's shoulder. And you see like the two Twilocks kind of be like, yeah, you know what, why can you just reach in there?

I'm not, that's a good. good beat. It's like both the curiosity. Now this is the sort of unity I want between my imperial soldiers and my local. Guys going to fuck with each other. Yeah, you know?

Guys being dudes. What's better than this? What's better than this? Dudes rock, etc. It's just what the Republic needs to heal its wounds. This is the cultural exchange we're talking about. I also... Dude just need to rock a little bit more.

Yeah. So the other thing in all this is, Natalie, at the start, you sort of flagged that Amirwat Tambor, it kind of is a fuzzy character. And I think for me, the thing that starts coming to view here is that at times from the people, and we'll see this more next season, there are a lot of moments where the separatist revolt feels like a plutocratic revolt. and the nature of that is that you have a lot of self-important shithets who feel entitled to a measure of power and prestige and importance who don't necessarily have what it takes to wield any of that and Exhibit A, I think in that, is Watamber, because he, like, if you think about his messages in the earlier episode like to, um, uh, took, makes sense, but also you start to realize. Oh, he is just a pass-through for orders coming from Duku. Those are Duku messages, 100%. And anything that actually has to happen is being carried out by TA 175. TA 175 is managing this entire occupation and defense of Lassu,

and all the Amir is concerned about is like, I just need to, we need to loot everything that's not nailed down. And 175. And then he fumbles the bag. He doesn't even do that. Well. Because he's trying to get that last bag. bag. And it's like, and T.A.175 is like, it's past time to go, man. We got to go. And,

and we don't see this, but we see Duku refer to it. T.A. 175 is out there diming out bad separatist commanders to Duku. Duku gets on the phone. It's like, hey, T.A. 175 says you are fucking it up. And so here's what we're going to do. And so like, T.A. 175 is just like, yeah, I said that. That's good. That's right. What's up? I'm loyal. It's true.

And so, like, I think this is the, I find this kind of enticing, this notion that the separatist cause, the sales pitch to all these stakeholders has been people like us should be running the galaxy. But they suck. And they don't bring the horses to carry on this war. And so the solution is, each of these little shitheads is going to get a few tactical droids to actually call. the plays and like yeah you're in charge but also all orders are going to be routed from ducu to the tactical droid and you'll just be like copied on them and you guys worry about your little treasure vans and uh yeah it's just an interesting vibe for for how the separatist campaign is going and i think does solve like the republic had issues um there are people like sindula who

had real issues with the status quo that predated the clone wars and wanted some changes to go through but the actual rebellion was driven by these like oligarchs who are kind of seeing this as an opportunity first and foremost to steal everything they possibly can um in the guise of this of this political movement i think that's a much more compelling read on what timbor and the other separatist leaders like that just makes them being dipshits way more interesting to you know like i feel i i get disappointed with the villain of the weak formula or feeling like you know it's just uh all you got to do is you know Turn the ship sideways.

Yeah, whatever. Like, that just, it's not, it's not as interesting to me because I don't feel like there's any skin in the game. Like, that's just, it's such a disposable, um, plot device to enact whatever the kid's a lesson of the, of the week is or whatever. So, but this read that you're introducing Rob is interesting to me because, first of all, the separatist leaders if the if the droids are really the ones like holding down the separate separatist occupations across the galaxy um and other you know separatist operations they have no knowing the fact that they just are eventually going to be decommissioned is wild because they just it's all it's all for nothing like even even one of one of the droids actually in this episode

says at the beginning towards the beginning of the episode one of them says uh we are independent thinkers um in terms of talking about some of the advancements that have been made in their like AI or whatever that they now have the ability to have like independent thinking And I'm just like, damn, like, this is, y'all, y'all could dissent. Like, y'all could, you can, you can be, maybe it's not so much dissent, but it's about being move makers in the separatist, like, army or whatever, like, making. They then, of course, do the punchline to that bit, which is what, seconds later. Roger, Roger, Roger, Roger, Roger.

Oh, yes. It's the funniest bit. That's very funny to me. It was very funny to me. to me. But I do think that you're right that, like, between them and 175, it's clear that there is, like, yeah, they are, they are, change could come. I believe in these droids. I know that's not what happens in the Star Wars history, that we don't get a separate droid rebellion, but we could.

Wait, it's not just that. It's the fact that they are not a constant variable, like, that they could, that think, that they can make change or make plans or, or. or, you know, do something that is not just enact whatever your commander told you or just do the expected thing of a typical battle droid. So I think the further characterization of the droids is really exciting to me. But it's just sad because I know that they're all going to, like, go into storage someday. I mean, it's not sad because they're like, you know, murdering things. people but like you know what if they didn't what if they had other lives what if they had a

cool shop somewhere you know after after we finish the clone wars you should like make a nice big cup of tea and watch iRobot starring alan tudic as the cutest little little battle droids who creates a droid society I think that the tactical droids are interesting because it does feel like, what is it? I think it's the other one, like, TX20, who's like, I'm a droid. I don't make mistakes. And first of all, that's a weird flex given the other droids we've seen, but I do feel like, you meet the tactical droids and like, oh, these guys like this. Like, these guys are digging the work of just, like, massacring clone armies and, like, overseeing. occupations. So yeah, I'm real curious to see if this dynamic between like the like false

leadership of the separatist cause and then like the actual like people making things happening if it's explored any. It's a very interesting choice I think to make the more advanced, the most advanced droids we've seen so far have like a perverse you know pleasurable relationship to violence itself um and even in this case the sort of you know indirect violence being done to the person who was his commander yes in wat tambour right it's not just i've been programmed to win this war or whatever and enjoy that it's like having worked with Watt Tambor now and seen how ineffective he is, there's a pleasure in

like basically hanging him out to dry. Yeah. I identify with that. Like, that guy sucked. Yeah, he was pretty. I liked his, um, his goggles, though. I think all the goggles across this episode, these three episodes

were really cute. Yeah. I like little goggles. I, oh, the thing about Watt Tambor that I love the most was when he would adjust the little frequency knob on his shirt. He did do that. That's true. When he was like... I don't know what that's for.

I guess changing the radio channel on who he's talking to. But he would do it like when he's... I thought so too, because he does it once on the virtual FaceTime. Yeah. He doesn't the very end too, right?

He does it when he's like standing right in front of someone like face to face. He like starts adjusting it. I was like, what is that for? That's cool. Can't get that repaired, man. I have a base window. Trivia, EU thing here for a shot that takes literally half a second. At the beginning of this

episode, Mase Mendoo is inside of one of the Walker units. It gets knocked down. He hops out. And then to, I want to say to free the clone who's in the driver's seat, he puts his hand against the window and it shatters. Like he uses the force to shatter the canopy. Originally he was going to cut it with a

lightsaber, but they wanted to make it shatter instead as a reference to shatter points which is Shatterpoint was a Mace Windu novel that came out around when the prequels are coming out and it's a Jedi ability that doesn't get talked of very often. Jedi can so not all Jedi, some Jedi, some force users really can perceive the shatterpoint

of an object or a situation. And an object, it's like, ah, if I just put the force right here, the whole thing will fall apart. and a situation or historically even here's a quote from Ace Windu I sometimes can see the weak places in an opponent

shatter points where the unbreakable can be broken they could occur in individuals and in events and so it's about like pushing on history the right way in order to like Oh yeah he's shatterpointed the shit out of Anakin Yep

let the master work yeah oh many times over it's like a this is the sad like in my vision you know mace might not even be dead

Jedi you know we see Jedi fly all the time cut to Mace Windows like direct marketing scam where he's like as readers in my book shadow point is Shatterpoint no sometimes you just have to identify the weakness in a

opponent. It's one single variable that'll change the entire system in your favor. And send me $199 credits every month to learn the secrets of financial shatter points. I also love it, Rob, you slipped and said Mace

window. Yes. Revealing. Ripped to a real one. Rip question mark. Rip question mark. Yeah, good point. Allie, what are you going to say?

I have a small Mace Windu nitpick here, which is a funny point of the episode, but it annoys me every time I see it. There's like a moment, and this is a great, I love seeing this in characters because you know someone's like cool and competent and cool in the battleground

where like, they're on the battlefield, there's a noise that happens, and he's like, and he does the pointy thing, so there's no, what's going on? Everybody be quiet because we got to go. There's enemies here. And then they get those loud fucking things.

and the rest of the scene is just the footsteps and it's like those quotes could have said something man like you were not doing yourself any favors but the walking tanks probably were going to make more noise than the radio the whispered radio communication yeah fair fair anyway i'm glad we saw blurgs that's a mando thing those are the lizards is that those are those the lizards is that those are Blurgs are the same creature that Mandalorian rides in the first episode of Mandalorian.

Gotcha, sure. It's the same little two-likey guys. And they're known for having very good traversal ability on rocky ground. So true. People always say that about blurts. More and more people are saying this.

All right. Um, so I, I think if there are no further, uh, observations or thoughts, like, that's, that's the Rilof trio. That's the Rylav arc. I think it's, they're all fine episodes. I, I think there are some major gaps in conceptually, uh, in them. They're, the second episode, instance of Rilof is in many ways, in many ways a misbegotten episode of Clone Wars. Um, I'd say these are very, it's a, it's a, it's a true of very competent episodes like technically and in terms of like editing and storytelling in terms of messaging it does it does kind of have the weaknesses of a series that at times is being cobbled together um on the fly rather than flowing from like a a vision of like how this world works and what the backstory is on each scenario uh that served up each week um but we will i guess we will learn more about Ryloth down the road, but for now we will leave the newly liberated Ryloth behind, and next week, Patreon Backers, we'll be getting a Q&A episode covering this arc and the

Blue Shadow arc. The next regular episode will see us introduce Dastardly Bounty Hunter Cad Bain. Hell yeah. You know, a Michael Mann character by way of the man with no name, just injected straight straight into Star Wars to get up to a whole lot of mischief. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm excited. Until then, if you've been enjoying the show,

please rate and review us on the podcast platform of your choice. Check us out on patreon.com slash civilized. And until next episode, please remember, Mira means brother. Bo. Bo. There is one thing which is that, based on the third episode, those clones are never going to see that kid again.

So we have that secured. That is true. That is true. In fact, another, it's very funny because it ends with like another different clone picking up a different kid. Like, remember? Hey, we palette swap that character. This is like, it's happening everywhere. I'd like to think that village didn't get bombed.

Oh, that would have been... Oh, my God! That's what Alie was saying. Like, based on episode three, they're never going to see each other again. I meant that the clothes aren't allowed to go back. The occupation ends, and not that they were killed. But... But...

There's lots of readings. Could be. Uh-huh. Tune in to next episode. Open-ended. God damn it. Fuck. I'm going to be able to be.

Oh! We're going to be able to be. I don't know. We're going to be able to be. I don't know. We know. We know. I don't know.

Oh! . I don't know. We're going to be. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.