A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 13: Hostage Crisis & The Children of the Force Arc (Clone Wars 22 - 25)

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Nope, you're not wrong. That guy in the hat? He is extremely cool. And extremely evil. We've finally reached one of Clone Wars great, break out original characters: Cad Bane. He's here to remind us that villains can be extremely competent, Jedi can be entirely too confident, and plot arcs absolutely coherent.  Yup. It's a good day to be a Civilian. Well... except for the audio issues. NEXT TIME: Episodes 26 & 27 (Senate Spy & Landing at Point Rain) Show Notes Fallen Clones: Todo 360 (Honorary) 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)  

Hey, everybody. It's Austin here. I just want to give you a heads up that the audio in this episode is going to be a little bit rough. One of the local files had a problem, and so we had to use our backup, which is just a record call to stitch that person back in. I had an option, which was either used just that discord call, at which case, like, a lot of people sound pretty bad. For whatever reason, this particular backup just didn't come through well. And so, like, Natalie is very quiet on it. Rob is a little scratchy. And then, and then, um, and then, uh, Allie sounds pretty okay on it, which is good because it was Allie's file that was messed up. And so I had to stitch the parts where Allie is talking or responding back in wherever I could using that backup. But that means that there's a discrepancy throughout on the way you'll hear people. Sometimes Rob will be very clear, and sometimes he won't be same with Natalie. I did the best I could. It took me all day and a half, basically, to get this where it is. I know it's going to be annoying, but the alternatives were worse.

I did my best to, like, try out the different alternatives and listen to them, and it was just, like, not feasible to do this a different way, unfortunately. And it's a good episode, so I felt like, you know, I'd rather go in and do the hand edit on it. But I did want to give you a heads up ahead of time so that if you were like, hey, is this sound weird? Yes, it sounds weird. Hopefully this won't happen again anytime soon. And I hope you enjoyed the episode, and I'm going to get out of your way. Peace.

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakney, joined by Ali Akampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. So today, we're living that outlaw life as we conclude the first season of the Clone Wars and begin the second with brand-new antagonist, Cad Bain. Since we're covering four episodes today, we can just dive into the broad outline of what's happening here, which is two storylines that revolve around this central new character.

He's introduced as a bounty hunter. I am not sure he technically qualifies as he does not trace a single skip in this episode. He might do some bounty hunting on the side. He hunts that one Jedi, right? Technically. There's a bounty on that Jedi.

You know what? Maybe not Republic bounties. There's a bounty on that holocron. There's a bounty on, there's a bounty on getting Uncle, Uncle Zero out of jail. That's a bounty hunting. So, yeah, there are basically two major jobs. I'm going to interrupt this and make this already long episode longer. You all know the Nintendo thing about someone once asked them, like, so Samus is a bounty hunter, right?

Why don't we ever see her hunt any bounties? And apparently, and this might be apocryphal, but this story's got around a bunch, they were like, what do you mean she's not a bounty hunter? And people have to explain, like, oh, what bounty hunters do is that when someone has bail and they skip bail and they don't show up for their court case, bounty hunters track them down. Or when someone has money out on their head because they're a wanted criminal, bounty hunters track them down. And they were like, no, that's not a bounty hunter. A bounty hunter is like a space adventurer, basically. Yeah, we're like, you know, there's just like, it's just you do, you do stuff for money in space.

Look, Star Wars is ancient history and therefore the modern version of bounty hunting is a corruption of this old and storied institution, which was indeed, as we can see, and the Fire Strikes Back, space adventuring. It's freelancing. Yeah. They're just, they're space freelancers. Oh, shit. Well, wait, now I'm back on board with Cad Bain. I was like, I don't know about this. You should see his quarterly payments to the IRS.

It's a rocket. His invoices are stacking up. Get him paid. And just imagining like Cadbane's hustle persona on like Instagram. Like another day kidnapping the children of the forest. Not everyone's got the stones for this work. Rise and grind. He says,

Perhaps we should link and build. let me tell you this one time I had to like unlock this hall come right here's the thing I'm not a Jedi a lot of people would have let that stop them not Cad Bain okay when life puts an obstacle in front of you what do you do? Hashtag

Rise above Who's would be Bainiacs? No obstacles, only opportunities Baniacs is extremely funny I'm a Bainiac I might be a Baniac I'm not afraid to say it I will say I was like

the first time I watched that I was like I'm a baniac. And then re-watching it for this episode, I was like, oh, he's real bad. He's evil. He's actually pretty bad. Oh, I'm 100. I am 100% Team Toto. Toto deserves so much better than Cat Bain.

We should get into these. It was like watching somebody strap a suicide best to Niles Crane. It was real rough. I love to Niles Crane. Right, yeah. All right. So we basically got, Bain has two jobs. He's introduced at the end of the first season with a one-off episode, which is hostage crisis. And he's basically there to take a bunch of senators hostage in order to spring zero the hut from jail. And that's the job. It's a pretty straightforward smash and grab and just, you know, pull this thing off. And then the next time we meet him, the start of season, season two, he is the star of a three-episode arc revolving around a, revolving around what begins as a heist of a Jedi holocron, but actually reveals itself to be, I think,

feeding into our theory of Palpatine as guy who's just throwing darts at a board to see how we can fuck up the Jedi Order, because it turns out that this is actually an entire, like, Palpatine's going to get them younglings one way or another. And Bain is, like, the critical figure to ensuring that he can do that. In the second arc of episodes, basically, he steals the Holocron where the Jedi have their list of, you know, tier one recruits, basically, for the Jedi Academy. And then, because it's a Jedi holocron, he needs a Jedi to open it. So there's another episode where he's trying to figure out how he can get a Jedi to do that for him. He takes one prisoner, torches him to death.

That doesn't work. So he needs to force either Anakin or Asoka to do it for him. And then in the final episode, having secured that info, he goes and starts stealing younglings, posing as a, we'll get into some of the disturbing aspects to why this seems to work. But the idea is, it seems to me, that Palpatine is going to brainwash and create like Manchurian candidate sleeper agents in the next generation of younglings that this will be his Order 66 version 1.0 where he's like, I'll just do that straight with the younglings.

And all the Jedi order will be corrupted by the Sith, the come next graduation day. And by the end of that, the Jedi will have barely headed that off. But they will still quite be grocking the threat facing their order. what a four episode art like I feel like we really hit some some shit it's juicy it's all there I think they're all good episodes um they're like distinct in a lot of ways but they also do the thing Natalie that you were really high on that I was really high on which was what if Rialov had been a connected arc instead of being a series of like an anthology series um they build they build in little ways. One of the things that starts happening is Yoda senses things. The Jedi start

to sense things in these episodes, which is very important because it's all setting something up in the final arc or the final episode, which is what Palpatine wants those little Jedi babies for is he wants him to be like his personal oracles. He wants them to sense the future for him. And so like make that be the stakes. You have to show that the Jedi can still do that. And so like, because they hit that beat in those episodes, it pays off in the third episode. It pays off in the third episode, which is something that could not have happened in the first season of this show. They didn't know how to do that in the first season of this show. So, yeah, okay.

So I just have my doubts about the Jedi wisdom we're getting. For Haasus Crisis, a secret shared is a trust form. Yeah. Uh-huh. Like, what's the secret? Are the Jedi having sleepovers? I don't know. Well, I mean, I guess Anakin is, but.

Well, yeah, instead of going to his meditation retreat, by the way. I guess, go ahead. Speaking of morsels of meat, I think we get an incredible morsel in the intro to this episode, hostage crisis, where after the bounty hunter squad arrives in. on the landing, they clean out the blue clones, which I guess are just like the Corrassan Edition clone. They're not clones. They're humans. The Santa Guard, remember one of those broke bad in Cloak of Darkness.

Oh, true. Yes. Oh, okay. They have this little helmet thing. Yeah. Okay. Is that why they're blue because they're humans? Yeah, they're just the old, the regular Senate guards.

Yeah. They predate the clones. Gotcha. So the meat that I'm getting to is they clear out all the clones, or all the soldiers, the guard. And one of the guards calls another guard on the communicator and is like, what's going on on the hangar, blah, blah, blah. And one of CAD's droids impersonates a soldier and says,

Protesters against the war, we've taken care of them. Already, already winning. Already an incredible episode. So, so nuts. Like, the fact that we get this tiny crumb of, like, of a third of a resistance movement, You're telling me that there are, like, there are resistors, like, people are upset. People are out in the streets. Are actively on the streets protesting against the war.

It's like conversational enough. It's not like, you won't believe this. There are people here protesting the war. He's like, yeah, protesters. We cleared him out. Don't worry about it. Which means, it must be happening enough that the Senate Guard is familiar with getting rid of protesters. By shooting.

By, right? It's that, but also it's the droid that says that. Oh, yeah, totally. fact that this is like knowledge that extends to the world knows this yeah the world knows that people are unhappy about the fact that there's a fucking pointless war going on and that is really cool to me it's great that it's a great little morsel love that morsel delicious now you had something you also had something at the beginning of this episode oh i just wanted to give my kudos to the Clone Wars

Writing Room for seeing Padma and Anakin being like, we don't have to improve this. We can keep the vibes exactly as they were. Just as rancid. We know what this is. Absolutely rancid. So as I was watching this scene

play out between them, I was like, all right, meaty Anakin Padma scene. I'm going to get my fingers ready. I'm going to transcribe this word for word because surely this will be really interesting and, you know, right for discussion on Wednesday when we record this. And the whole time, I was like, why is this still going?

Like, why are we still? Why? More important about the way you feel about me? He says asking the most toxic shit I've ever heard. They're really trying me. Like, they really want me to abandon my boy and leave him for the, fuck boy he is but I'm trying my best to

try and see lighten him and they're really challenging me on this one he's rancid vibes out of pocket he's just he's the fact that he's like yeah he's like Padme's working

like she's at her office she's working trying to introduce a bill to the Senate that you know probably will not do much but in her eyes is like going to be, we get, we do, is this the episode that we learn what that bill is going to be in opposition to? Or is that another future? Is it in opposition to that bill or is it?

The enhanced privacy invasion bill? I love those words. Are we the baddies? Are we? Could we be the baddies? They don't, they're at the state where they don't even need to dress it up to get it passed. It doesn't even have to be the public safety bill or the, or the Patriot. Again, again, like people who maybe were very young. during the bush years.

It really was this wild, where it was like, oh, so we don't torture people. We engage in enhanced interrogation. Okay, well, what's that look like? You know what water porting is? Yeah. Well, imagine basically that, but like not war-crimey? But it's not a war crime when we do. Because I got the paper.

Like, we looked at it, we were like, seems legit. And, like, that was basically the bush years. People are like, all right, here comes the enhanced privacy invasion bill. People are like, fuck yes. We need to enhance that privacy invasion feature. And everyone's like, absolutely. Otherwise, you're with the terrorists. Yep.

Oh, my God. So she's working on that. Free speech zones, if you want to protest this. Free speech zones are a real thing. I forgot. Is she even, I don't even know if her bill is in opposition to that. We don't know. I think she's right.

She's working on something else. She's working on something else. And they called her up and was like, hey, this other fucked thing is about a pass like we should probably meet up before the vote or whatever and chat about it it's bail who comes in right right and it's like hey uh the we got emergency meeting about the enhanced privacy invasion bill we need to somehow cancel the vote and she's like oh right i forgot about that fire the invasion bill it doesn't seem too pressed about it to be no well and also we need to cancel the vote and i'm like there's the liberal

politics I'm used to. Are we going to stop it? No. Are we going to delay it procedurally for a few days? Yes. Absolutely. We'll reschedule that. Yeah. Okay. We did skip ahead past the bit where... Yes. This is so important. Annigan... Oh, go ahead. Well, Anakin is being annoying as fuck and is like, Padme, why are you working when we could be together as husband and wife instead of Jedi and senator, baby? And she's like I literally have a job I have to work I'm a senator I need to make bills I guess and his response is she's like this is important and he's like more important than the way you feel about me and she's like um I guess I'll play into this not more important baby but important um we need to be service to the

Republic to protect those yeah she like she like she says like the work I do and then catches herself and it's like that we both do is important is in service to the Republic right yeah to protect those who would otherwise be powerless to protect themselves and Anakin comes back

with the goat response of course but those are ideals isn't our love more important to you and I was like and I'm already like, okay, I need to abandon this transcription, but I'm still going. And then Anakin doubles down and says, Padmane's like, but he's like, no, no, but. There is nothing more important.

He's not that soft. He goes, no, no, but. It's like, it's like a little sharp. It's mad aggressive. Don't like it. Vives are off. He says, to me, there's nothing more important than. the way I feel about you. Nothing.

And Padamay's like, okay, let's walk it back a little bit. And he's like, do you call me a liar? You say it I don't, you know, that I'm not that important? Here, here, I'll prove it to you. She's like, that's not what I said at all. Who is anyone else hearing? It's not what I said. And he's like, here, take this.

He says, when I finish constructing my lightsaber, Obi-Wan said to me, Anakin, this weapon is your life. And he looks at her and he's like, this holding the weapon, he's like, this weapon is my life. And then he just instantly hands it to Padmay. And she's like, six the one. Yeah. Don't, you have a reputation for losing these shits. You don't ever hold on to your lightsaber.

That's the thing you do. Did he find an extra and give it to her to like be able to win this argument at some point? It makes no sense to me. As a gesture, it makes no sense to be like, This lightsaber is important to me, and I want you to hold it because you're important. Also, he doesn't know that they're about to be interrupted. So, like, is the plan, like, here, hold this for five, set? Like, how long is she supposed to hold onto it for in his mind?

Okay. Until he used to leave the office? No, the plan is to get some. Yeah, I mean, yes, yes. The plan is for this to be a very aggressive, sexual, innuendo-filled moment in which she picks up and says, Wow. It's heavier than I thought. And then they make out. And then they make out.

Um, yeah. And then there's a really sad line where she's like, if all you want to do is make fun of me, you should just go. And he's like, that's not what I want. And then they make out. Yeah. And it's fucking gross. It's terrible. I'm sorry.

I have to disown him in this moment. I can't claim them now. I'm proud of it. It's gross, but I think there's two things that I admire. about one actually you go to hear for toxic teenage boyfriend first love type shit uh second the show can't it's a children's show they can't be like hey sometimes you're young and you really like having sex with someone but they're not actually right for you and like sex is fun it feels good but like it doesn't actually mean the relationship is good but you can't have the show

just be like so anyway kids let me let me show the difference between like a good lay and a good relationship. So instead, we just get this allusion to it, which is Padma being like, that saber is pretty nice. And they start making out, and then the rest of the episode happens. It has also set up an incredible, like, time bomb of, oh my God, she has this fucking lightsaber. It could save their day, but it also is like evidence of impropriety. Seeing how she's going to have to navigate this is a fun stake to add to what would otherwise be. a very passive position for her to be in as a hostage, which is, it's just good. It's a nice little, nice little wrinkle. Rob, I mentioned this to you, but this is written by one of the

recurring writer on the mentalist to show that we both like quite a bit, Owen Mahoney. And as soon as I read that that was him, I was like, oh, okay, yeah. Down to the vibes between Anakin and Padmae at the start of this, where in the mentalist, there's often similar kind of playful bantering, but it leans. And it walks the line to like, this guy's a fucking prick, but the power dynamic isn't as messed up. And his, he doesn't, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't kill babies eventually. He doesn't, that's not where he goes eventually. And so there's a slightly less, it doesn't fall that far into, into the asshole territory. And also Patrick Jane, one of the arcs of him is to outgrow his

pittiness as a person. Whereas like Anakin is like I'm just going to give this full rain. Yep. We got to end there. Anyway, everyone should say a prayer for Padme because unfortunately

she has she has receiving good dick disease and I just don't know I think I think it's fatal for her. I think it's not, I think it's not gonna work out, so. I don't know, the Wiki says she died of a broken heart, so.

Yeah, that's one of the consequences of good, good, dick disease. Ah, I see. It, um, it, um, it can do that, unfortunately. Um, we, we, unexpected pregnancy was in there, too. So, like, really checking all the, all the possible side effects and outcomes of, just a classic case. Yeah. We really, every motherfucker, just to move on, just for our own time.

say, because I know we have a heart out tonight. We get every motherfucker that's ever been in this show in this episode, and it rules. It's nice to just see. And in fact, Faloni, I actually, maybe he doesn't mention this, may I'm thinking of a future one. Right. On this episode, he basically says, hey, it was important that we made these bounty hunters seem lethal and defective, which also we see some of that basically out the gate here as they start clearing rooms and taking this place over.

But we also just get, we get Palpatine. Okay, we get Padme and Anakin. We get C3PO. We get Baylor Gata, who's a new model, and he shows up a little bit here. We get all the bounty hunter people, right, which are more than, more than have names because there are some IG droids who don't have names, though there is one whose name is, it's like 3D, it's something 3D, I want to say, Helios 3D. Yeah, Helios 3D is the, is the IG who's like a cool paint job.

There's Shana Alama, who is the Wequay, the one who it looks like. who's a weakway alien with like the spikes on his face. There's Robo Nino, who is the little fish guy, who is the hacker. There's Orriss Singh, who's the sniper. There's Cadbane. Then we also get who? Orn-Frey Taw shows back up immediately, hanging around with Palpatine. We get Uncle Ono down in the hot.

So Padmae goes downstairs and immediately gets, you know, put into a hostage situation as Cadbane rolls through. But also there with them is a bunch of background people like Arthurians. What's her face? from Pantora is here. Choochee. Choochee is here. I don't think she's a line, but it's cool that she's there.

Everyone's here. Right, yes, yes. Is there you're going to this one or the next one? Next one. Next one. But it's just like, wow, look at all these extra characters. This is really cool. We also... And Zero, the Hut.

I forgot Zero. That's awesome. And, yeah, Zero, unfortunately, is in it. I was really ready to say goodbye to him forever, but unfortunately he had to come back. Um, I want to say that there was a character introduced in this episode that, um, I want to talk about. Yeah, sure. So when I believe it's Anakin, somebody is, somebody is moving through, is it Anakin or is it one? It's not Anakin. Okay.

It's the, it's the bounty way. It's shot a. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so Anakin, just to like set the stage, Padma goes downstairs to talk. about this invasion of privacy bill while she's down there uh cad bane steps in puts everybody you know into into lock down as as the rest of the bounty hunters hold them hostage uh i love that he walks in and it's like good morning senators which is just a great all there's like a real michael man vibe to a lot of this stuff that i just love um in this episode in the next i think have strong diehard

overtones right down to the fact that holocron heist everything like the second plot arc we get here the thing that Bain comes to depend on is that the Jedi are stupid and overbearing and its plot can't work without them Which is a classic Hans Understanding how the police work thing, right? The oh, I guess it's also a John McLean With the Bad Guys thing in some ways also

Right, because he realizes he doesn't have his lightsaber Yeah, that's exactly That's the thing that happens here is that Is that Anakin realizes, oh shit, I don't have my lightsaber And he's being chased by one of these IG droids And by the Weiquet, Shana Alama and that's when

I think this character you're talking about Shana kind of scans into a room and is like what's going on over here what's he see

he sees he sees a bimbo droid which I just want to say they're called Betty droids okay yeah

Bimbo droids that's better BD 3,000 I would like to say last week we did a Q&A episode in which

somebody asked what kind of droid would you be and we were presented with a lot of options we talked about bugs we talked about insects we talked about being trash cans all types of little things no one no one no one presented the betty droid and i think i'm uh disappointed Natalie, you know that I could not have been like, damn, I think you're a Betty droid. I think you're one of them bimbo droids. But I want to be the bimbo droid. Like, a hundred percent.

Natalie, what I think of you, I think of someone who looks like erotic Jetson's fan. That is, that's the vibe you give off. This thing is, this thing is so, like, out of context. It is like, to me, it's like, it is the most Jetson's ass does. It is streamlined design. Okay, it is a bimbo who's undergone streamlined design of the 1950s style. It's, so they're called Betty droids because they're supposed to be a love letter to Betty Page. I don't think that she looks very much like Betty Page. And the versions of these droids that appeared in the movies, because this is where they, these, they show up very briefly in either Attack of the Clones or Revent of the Sith, I think Attack of the Clones, are kind of terrifying to me. uh actually because of what's going on with their eyes it's the eyes yeah rob it's the eyes let me post this for y'all take a look at these here uh the eye situation is a nightmare to me we get a close up there's a good one if you do a search for betty droid what is this system

shock at looking right yes that is exactly right that is exactly right um i think i did if i just do search for BD3,000. What I get is a trading card, which is very funny. And that's a little bit more of a close-up here. And yet, it's like all-chrome body in the movie with bright red lipstick and then black eyes with bright blue pupils. And it's just not the vibe. The one in this episode.

I do see the Betty Page. Here I see it a little bit better. Yeah. What is their function? Being the chill. The luxury droids, it says. Hold on, I'm looking at the... High-end secretary droid, quote-unquote.

Oh, sure. Oh, no. That's the thing. I was like, why would it be in a Senate office? But then, you know, you need a secretary to take your phone calls, set of your meetings. So does this mean that C-3PO is naked? Because, like, they have coloring on them that makes them look like they have clothes on. So C-3Pio just...

Out natural all the time? Have you not seen the Clone Wars clip? I guess I don't know what a spoiler for you. No, no, wait, I think it's the animated one where, like, C-3-Rubio gets, like, new armor or whatever, and he's wearing a cloak, and then he takes it off, and, like, the animation actually does the link. That's the 2-D animation. That's the 2-D, the Tartikovsky one. You're right, I forgot about this. He's, like, look at my, look at my, yeah. There's even, like, a saxophone hit while the camera is zooming on his body. Yeah, I'm glad he got that attention. He deserves it. That's a new droid right there. Star Wars can begin C-3-Pos here. So, yeah, I'm officially changing my answer. I want to be a Bimbo Droid.

Thank you. Sophisticated vocabulator systems allow the model to project a large number of sounds and voices, including presets described as perky and sultry. On board expansion slots allow for user customization, with combat slash bodyguard upgrades being common, although not strictly authorized. Yes. Noise being the first thing of that list is terrified. Yeah, honestly, that's pretty, it says a lot.

The essential guide to droids says that the main selling point was not its well-rounded feature set and broad capabilities. Rather, it was the droid's remarkable aesthetics. It's sculpted curvature, gleaming and very well-defined torso, and gyro-stabilized gait that mimicked a provocative hip swing. Now I'm just imagining, like, 12-minute verge videos reviewing the next edition of the beady droids. of just like... What's that do with the beard? And he's like, now, I know what you might be thinking. You already have a BD 2000. So what makes you want to upgrade to the BD 3,000?

Well, it's all about the camera. And then it just goes from there. It's all about the custom noises. So if you're like me, you know, you've gone through the entire library of BD 2,000s. And look, I think there's some great noises in that library. Absolutely. But listen to what this 3,000 sounds like. And, yeah, it's just, and then slow camera pans over like, you know, I was, I had my doubts about the mat finish on this one.

I got some behind the scenes info. These were originally designed to be in, in Attack of the Clones for, sorry, in Revenge of the Sith for bail organa's office. But the scenes that took place in bail organa's office were cut. They were literally supposed to be that he would have. have a BD3,000 as his secretary droid. That was, like, he was attended to by her. So he stayed in, and they already made them. So they showed up in some background scenes,

but the scene that they were idealized for, that they were created for, got cut. So, like, from the script, they didn't even shoot it. But that's Baylor Ghana. So maybe that's his office. Maybe that she's up in his office right now. Oh, maybe. Anyway, the Weewee moves on, thankfully, pretty quickly.

Unlike us Unlike us Yeah We've met seven times More time It's important This is another morsel Of the episode

I see Weiquet's like Nice And then here comes The more civilized age crew Yeah We're the sickos We're the sickos

We're sickos We're sickos We're sickos That's okay Here's another morsel I think Two things One

I think the music in this episode rules, or it reminds me a lot of, there's like a lot of like Batman the animated series vibes as people are skulking around and Anakin's trying to get the drop on the various droids and other bounty hunters. And that the hand-to-hand fight with the, with the IG droid is just so cool. All the, in fact, all of the combat sequences where Aniken doesn't have a lightsaber and he's like, he's not, he needs a lightsaber. Like, they're so capable. They're able to go, if not one-on-one with him exactly, but like they can win those fights and the bit where the IG droid bends the rifle of the barrel of the blaster rifle

back at him and then he loses that fight but that moment is very sick um the way that they catch him is so fucking cool when they like he force takes one of their guns but it doesn't have a blaster unit in it and then someone else comes and shoots him i was like wait so it's an empty clip yeah i think that's what happens there yeah because he takes the gun and tries to shoot him and then can't and then somebody else comes and shoots anakin and that's how he Yeah, the person whose blaster gets taken, like, ducks to reveal Orr Singh, who is, again, like an established character. I want to say she starts in one of the movies she shows. Oh, she shows up during, I think the Phantom Menace, like, watching the pod racer race from, like, a higher, a high vantage point.

So I'm glad they got her back in here and showed that she's just, like, good at this. She's like, yeah, I know, Anakin. I can get it. That little brat, yeah. As well, him win the Bantu Classic or whatever the fuck of the thing. thing was called. So I think from here, after Anakin gets caught by basically both being overwhelmed but also falling right into their trap, things move pretty, pretty well through to the end here as the

plot just kind of locks together. So now that there's no chance that Anakin's going to be able to solve this problem, Cadbane basically gives Palpatine his marching orders and is like, look, you're going to let Zero the Hut go. You have no choice. Palpatine's like, I got no choice. He sends Ornfrey Ta over to do it. He complains about it, which rules.

There's like not a wasted second for character or wasted opportunity for characterization in this episode. I love that he's like, do I have to go to the prison? Why do I have to go? Palpatine, even though he's the most evil motherfucker in the universe, is also, he is just kind of a dirtbag where he's like, well, look, everyone has their part to play, and mind sure shit isn't going to the prison. That's you today

So you go to the prison I'll chill here And so Yeah he goes there They spring Zero the Hot We get some Some like classic Zero the Hot humor Dude when he came out

I was like you know what I'm ready to give Zero a second shot I'm ready for it And then second Why they have to come during the day When it's cool Even at that point I was like you know what

That's okay He's you know I also hate the daytime I also hate the daytime, but I was in 30 seconds after that, he said some other shit that was terrible. And that was just, it was just really, really bad. So. We brushed over one thing that is important and one of the huge reasons that Star Wars fucking owns. Yes.

Because the way that they get zero out is that they have to give him like a little like, it looks like a film clip. Yeah. Which is a parted disc, which he has to physically take to the jail and like, put in the door, I guess. It's weird, because none of that shit is automated. Yeah, I guess. It's like the equivalent of writing, like, signing a pardon slip or something, I guess. But it's just, it's, it's Star Wars, so it's like smaller than the USB drive.

It's like, it's like, I would just revoke those if, like, if everyone knows letters of transit are out there, I would just not honor the letters of transit that people are presenting. But in this case, it would have gotten senators killed immediately, right? That's the thing is. In this case, it would have gotten those senators killed immediately, which, frankly, he still tries to do. Cadbane, I guess the thing worth saying is that Bain ends up setting up a bunch of bombs around the captured senators, and that keeps them in place and gives him the leverage to go get zero and get off world before they try to recapture him. or whatever. Yeah, and he basically knows that Palpatine's going to try to betray him.

Yep. And so he's got the charges there to help him, like, basically bluff his, not bluff his way, but, like, he's going to bully his way past the barricade by saying, like, if you don't let me actually walk out here, I'm just going to blow up all those senators. But then, and this is their crucial insight in the Cadbane, the charges are going to go no matter what. He, like, as soon as he's clear, he's going to, he's going to detonate the charges either way. And so even though he told them, hey, just chill here for a few minutes.

And once I'm gone, the charges will deactivate. He intends to kill them all along. And it's Anakin waking up and being like, we get you the fuck out of here. Let's cut a hole in the floor. And the senators fall through this hole just as the explosives go. And everyone is saved. But the thing that did occur to me here, it sure is a lot of Palpatine's political opposition in one room

that we're supposed to get blown up and so it's like the next time we see Bain the implication is this is the first job he's doing with Sidious but I don't know

that Sidious was not part of architecting this first job where... We never see him say like the huts are paying us for this even, right? Well, yeah, I think he's answering

to Newt Gunray isn't he? Newt Gunray is the one who But the, who hired him for this. I think he says that in the first episode. That's wild. Yeah, that then, that then would speak to what you just said, which is, if that's, if that's the case, then yeah, that feels very much like a, like a Sidious all-long plan.

But, but you said at the top of the app that this, this first episode, Hostage Crisis, actually takes place after the next three episodes. Again, this is a thing that fans will point to and say, I believe what ends up happening is there's another episode later that references this in some way and that helps you clarify what the timeline of events is. But I think you can read this as our introduction to Cadbane because it was also our introduction to Caddain. Yeah, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying in terms of like his relationship to Sidious. That's what I'm speaking in terms of. Not like, yeah. Yeah, and it's hard to know.

I would say it doesn't seem like. he got this job from Cidius directly. I think they would have put that on screen if there was an intermediary, then maybe, but I love the idea of Palpatine not being involved in this because he sees all this happen and then goes, I got to get that guy number. Right. I have a job for that. I have a job for that, motherfucker.

And I also, I also like him, I like him not doing it because I like it when his day is ruined. And he's like, oh, what the fuck? Like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm supposed to be in control of the situation. I've lost control of the situation. And that's very fun to deal with. One other, a couple of other small things about this one.

One, Robo Nino, bad news. You know how they have a language here in Star Wars World called Arrubesh? You see it written all over the place. Sometimes it's like story stuff. Sometimes it reveals a little Easter egg or tells you something about a character. Robo Nino's little pack says Pat's fan on it, like Patriots fan, like it's his license plate. So I disown Robo so put that one out there. Also, he didn't even have a name in the script until it was like shooting time and vocal time.

Maybe they didn't know even said his name. He was called Fish Guy in the script. That sucks. Early treatment from Lovecraft. Thank you very much for your service. I fully thought that dude was Hondo, this whole app. Not Hondo, yeah. Not. Sorry.

It goes way too soon for it to be Hondo. Yeah, Hondo would have, like, Anakin's really, like, not even acknowledging the fact that, like, him and Hondo have all this. No, just a different person. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, and then, yeah. We had a force. mind

instance where Anakin forced minded not Honda into like not seeing him I guess

or like checking other floors which I thought was cool love to see Jedi using their powers I mean you don't but you know

yeah no I get it we also just got some I think again like the big thing that Faloni says and the kind of feature out about this one is just I know it's important to the fans that villains get a win and it's important to me too and out the gate

for this set of episodes like yep it is. This is an this is a win. It's a full win like Cadbane swept the opposition on this one, full points to Cadbane I guess he didn't kill all the centers but that wasn't his goal anyway. His goal was to get zero and he does

and I think that's just like a great debut. This episode did extremely well. This was the best ratings on any episode of the season, I think since maybe since the debut, it was like 3.3 million viewers or something. The series' highest ratings since the premiere, yeah. So they must have really advertised the hell out of it. And I'm sure you look at Cad Bain and you're like, yeah, damn, that's, that's a good character. He's awesome. I feel like we should do like a wrap around to talk about him after our final episode here a little bit just to see how we feel about them. So, we're right back with him at the start of season two, but first we're going to take

a little detour to check in on the war. So, season two opens with a bang. First of all, everything about season two starts to feel like there's more polish and finish on these episodes. It opens on a battle scene on Felusha, which sounds a lot like Fallujah. So there's that. That's a Lucas That's a Lucas joint That's where someone dies I think Ayla Secura dies there

During Revenge of the Sith, I want to say It's bad The big, it's the big plant planet, right? Yeah But If we had So the thing that we were getting at In the Ryloth Arc, which is

How good is the Asoka Anakin Pan are they bringing out the best in each other as teammates the answer would appear to be no so you know the war basically goes on as it is every time we check in on it the Jedi are massively outnumbered anakin obi one and asoka are being rapidly overrun by a massive droid army on the surface of planet feluccia plow coon has led a rescue fleet to help get them off the planet with uh again there's some orabesh here and frankly an incredible um thing on the screen uh during this there's a shot i don't have a timestamp for you but i can take a screenshot as best like kind of my of my screenshot of the his drop ship his like troop transport um has a little drawing of yeah uh-huh of him with two clones and then orabesh it says plows bruce

on it, which is the fucking best. I love you, Plow Coon. I love, I love it. Muscat, a diseased mind, because I love Plow Coon. Poe pros. Plos bros. I want to be a Plow bro. I've never wanted a tattoo, but now I'm like, I would, I would, I would be a plow bro.

Yeah, so Plow Coon is riding in the rescue. It's a hell of a battle sequence. Like all the models look great, the lighting looks great, the dogfighting. Like, Plocoon is in a pretty intense, like, atmospheric dog fight. All looks cool as shit. He shoots a couple of droid fighters off the back of one of his clone bros. And in just a symbol of, like, how things are going for this battle, the crashing droid fighter knocks out one of the last remaining armored vehicles that Obi-Wan Manikin still have

as they're trying to hold back this tide of battle droids. And they are trying to, like, they see their rescue coming, and they try to tell Asoka, it's time to piece out. Like, she was out on patrol, but it's time to leave. And Asoka tells Obi-One, Master Skywalker taught me to never let off when the tinnies are on the run. And Anakin asked later, as they're lifting off, like, why isn't, why isn't Asoka here? What's going on? He asks, where's Asoka? Obi-Wan, following your teachings.

So, Anakin, is she winning? And it is, like, they're bad, but also I kind of love them. The fact that, like, he can't bring himself to actually, like, take this seriously because he also is the, oh, you're bad just like me. I'm so proud of you. Like, and I get it. It's telling he doesn't make the call. Obi-Wan has to be the disciplinarian here who calls.

up and it's like, yo, where are you? You have a bunch of clones. You need to help not die. We need to leave. Anakin doesn't make that call. Obi-Wan does. And that's so interesting to me. Yeah.

She's not his paddle on? No, she's not. And, you know, I think it's a little worrisome for me because I feel like we're on like the third or fourth instance of Asoka just being like, fuck these clones. I'm just going to back. until the last breath or whatever. And I feel like, you know, every episode there's a lesson.

Asoka's had this lesson like three or four times in the past like month. Specifically about retreating. Like it's the same exact situation. Well, you know what they say. A lesson earned is a lesson learned. I like that when it's a lesson. cool dramatic scene, the gunships land in front of her to cut off

the suicide charge she's making and she blows up. Like, I think one the cool things here is, in the previous episodes, it's maybe been a lit like, oh, poor Asoka. Here we get really foul-tempered, just like,

child soldier just caught up in the bloodlust of the moment. Like, what the fuck are you doing getting in my way? Like, I was going to fuck up these droids. And Anakin's like, you know, Anakin snaps at her. They're about to overrun you. You just can't see it.

Which is like the final articulation of the, like, you can't see, like, where you stand in these fights, you don't know what's happening. You have to trust your COs. And this is... You just can't see it is such a good line. Sometimes you want to say something briefly and it's really hard. But the like, you just can't see it summarizes so much about what the core of this problem is.

Yeah. And I would say that them pulling up off the ground and Asoka, like, looking back in just, honestly, terror at the unbelievable amount of droids, like, just closing in on her that she literally could not see from her vantage point on the battlefield is, it's really compelling. it it does it holds a lot of weight and like the way that aniken's face is just like stone cold like I think in his look to her there's a lot of like what am like what am I passing on like she she is my paduan and this is happening over and over again and so clearly this was a losing fight and yet she was so had so much conviction in her ability to succeed

and I think there's like I think in his face there's a deep like I think there's a horror for him too that he's just like what legacy is he creating and like what you know how is he damning this girl

by being such a poor master I think one of the things too that saves this arc from just being another Asoka you need to like pull it the fuck together is that in the next episode the roles are kind of going to be reversed where it's Asoka who's like starting to like

the coin is starting to drop of like we're on a bad path here and it's Anakin now who his you know his blood is up he wants to go like run the table and she's the one who like blows up and basically, you know, says it is time, like, it is time for us to draw a line under this, basically. We have to, like, we have to take this owl and just go.

Totally. And I think one of the things that makes this series of episodes work is that in some ways, they're a great team. In other ways, they're mismatched in a way that they can never fully bring out the best in each other because their worst impulses will fire off at the wrong time. And, like, one will always. always be pulling at the wrong moment in the wrong direction for the wrong reasons. At least that's how it feels now.

Totally. And I think it's telling that we have things to say about this coming off of the Ryloth version of this story where I, at least, was very frustrated by how samey it felt, how much it just felt like a mirror of the previous Anakin episode. I think, like, the advances in the depiction of these characters in their facial animations and also just the writing being a lot sharper. And again, having narrative continuity on this arc helps quite a bit. So I also love, it's not a court-martial, but it's damn close.

And she's called on the carpet by the Jeddict Council. I do love this beat as after she admits, I wasn't being disobedient. I just forgot, which is all-time great. Like, yep, they're kids. Yeah. Like they were, but I also do understand what you mean. But she gets put on guard duty at the Jedi Archive. And she cringes and immediately asks for how long?

And Mace Window just deadpan longer now. Hits her with the school principal. Yeah, longer now. Uh-huh. He needed that. See you in detention all week, Asoka. I mean, I think that line that you pointed out, Rob, is such a strong one because yeah she's she's a kid she's not going to have like some not saying in this moment like when

you're put you know under pressure you're in front of like all of your mentors you don't want to say yeah i fucked up and i was being disobedient and like yeah i'm i'm you know i'm tunnel visioning when i'm on the battlefield you're like trying to trying to you know avoid you're just identifying what you just what you did and why you did it and explain but it's not even justification it's like an avoidance it's like I just forgot it's like I have I know I'm in the wrong I know I fucked up so hard I don't want to say it out loud like I'm just gonna say I just forgot because that's like the easiest thing I can get out right now in front of like all these people who I've disappointed it's like it's very much the feeling of like you fucked up and now like you're you know talking to your teacher or whatever and the teacher's like why did you do that? And you're just like, man, I don't know. I was just, I forgot, I guess. I was being an idiot. Like, so often, like, I think when you're a kid, not that this, not that there's always gets easier as you grow up, but like, sometimes your intentions at a moment are really hard to parse after the fact. And I, I so identify with, like, all the things she must have

rattling around in her head. Like, why did she do this? Did she actually mean to say, fuck off, Obi-One, I'm going to do what I want? She didn't mean to do that. She did, but she didn't mean to she thought she was applying some other lesson that was equally important and uh yeah i i think it's it's it's really well well handled and fortunately um she gets some she gets some time with jacosta new um who is it seems like a boring gig um it's definitely in school suspension but it ain't bad it's interesting oh that gig yeah i thought you've been jocasta news the thing that's interesting about her is that she does drop that bit where so one of the things she does is show uh uh osoka the or points out the vault the holocron

vault um uh and i think asoka says like have you been have you been in there and she's like uh not for a very long time only the jedy council can go in there which is interesting because it indicates that she used to be on the jenni council and now has just like retired to be like i'm going to hang out around books all day is what i'm going to do that's that's way more my speed at this point. And also this is our Kit Fisto cameo as he walks in and opens the door with the force, it looks like. I don't understand how that, is there like a force signature that he's like, oh yeah,

he's on the Jedi Council, he can come in. Yeah, everybody on the Council gets like a keychain. Yeah, maybe it's actually not the Force and it's just an RFID chip that he waves in front of it. The key fob, yeah. Must be just some Jedi Council only force move that nobody else gets to know yet. So. And we get, now Cadbane's back. Cadbane is back and he's in a film noir now.

Oh, my God. It rules. It fucking owns. I love it. They're like top-down shot of the underworld, first of all. And just like, and then him in his room with the light of the city coming in through the blinds. Oh, chewing on his, his toothpick. and the whole negotiation between him and palpatine is incredible it's like it just it works so well

like this is this is corny this is like this is just pure tropism but it works so so well it just it hits like it's like butter like so smooth um But, yeah, Palpatine calls them and is like, hey, got your number from your business card you gave me when you stole all my, tried to kill all my senators. Here's a Jedi I want you to go and hunt, and also I want you to go get a Holocron. Don't worry, I can tell you exactly how to get in and into the Jedi Temple. and here's all of the blueprints for the entire structure and should be pretty easy. And he's like, well, you know, I'm going to want the works.

And I just love, I love that line. And Palpatine's like, of course, like, you can have whatever you want. Money's no object. I love it. This, this. And to to do, it's toto, right? That's the next scene. Oh, okay.

Yeah. we cut to. Oh, then we cut to the Yoda. Yoda sends to something in the Force. Someone's going to break in. Someone's going to break in. Right. Yes. Yes. Force still works for the Jedi every now and then. Yeah, I know. I was like, that's a pretty spot on prediction from Yoda. Like, that's really precise. But maybe that's the way it's always been until recently. And that speaks a lot for why they've been, like, you know, we've talked about this a lot with the prequels where, like, they're shook because they're not able to predict things. the way they want to. Maybe it used to be like this

for the big picture and not just what's popping off in the Jedi Temple. Maybe it's also an element of so when they start to feel the most like force blind to what's happening in the future it's when Anakin is about to kill

all the Tuscans. And I do wonder is there an element of like he is now standing enough in the light that like that fog is being in the lift and like they don't have quite that like I don't know that's projecting a lot into the story

but I do wonder like at the fun read At this point, Anakin does feel like he's a little closer to his better angels. Yeah, such as they are. I mean, he's still a shitty boyfriend. But either way, the other thing I like here is, all of this is concurrent. It is daytime, bright daytime. Down in the depths of the city where Cadbane is, it is perpetual night. And it's the most, like, it's very blade runner.

It is, but it is also like, I think, the Jedi literally sit at the top of this world, bathed in the sun's light, and everyone else on this planet, down in Mega City One, down in San Angeles. And that's kind of Coruscant. Looks cool, though. Also, one other note. So, Austin, you alluded to this earlier. This is a Paul Dini episode. and I think for me I took a ton of notes on this episode and the only one I've taken as many notes on is Cloak of Darkness from last season which is the one he wrote and I think the thing that really distinguishes him for me is that

he is able to make his episode so dense with implication and action without taking screen time it's really something and I think a really dense bit of characterization and set up for how this is all going to go is this next scene where we return to Bain

as his plot comes into focus. Which is him talking to Toto and to this changeling, Caddo Parasidi, and talking about kind of what the mission is and giving Toto a security chip, he says, and also noting that they're going to also have to go after this Bolo,

Bola, what's his last name? Paul, Ropal. What stands out from you here, Rob? What's the bit where you're like the efficiency of this characterization as through the roof? So. Besides the body of the person that just happens to be in the roof. But actually there's a few things there. So first we have the...

I meant that seriously. That was not a... We have the sinister moment of like the way he's kind of cruel and shitty to Portoto, his droid. He's clearly doing something sinister to him. he's loading some sort of like malignant USB stick into his like little like base of the neck cargo pouch and he says no I'm just doing maintenance on you you better than memory glitches which is the thing that would terrify a droid and cause the droid not question what he was doing but no the thing that strikes me is two things this is Bain's room he doesn't say he killed that Jedi my read on this is that Jedi was brought to him like the killing the Jedi part was probably handled elsewhere probably by Sidious well that Sidious that I have your way in yeah right yeah but the other thing is Cato Parasidi we're not going to get many moments to characterize her but she's going to

make a couple interesting choices here and I think one of the things that works for me here is that you get the sense from the first when she sees like a dead Jedi just sitting in that corner. This is heavier work than she's used to. And so, like, one of the things that we're not going to get a chance to, like, meet this crew for very long, but I think one of the first things we start to pick up about Cato is that she's pretty ruthless when she has to be, but she's not a sadist, and you don't get the sense, like, that she does a ton of, like, assassinations.

Like, most of it is... Yeah. She's not doing wet work. Yeah. She's probably, like, stealing things mostly, which is what she's doing here, but it's one to steal from a bank or from, you know, someone's personal collection, and something else to try to steal from the Jedi, from the Jedi Temple specifically, right? Yeah, and also just by walking into this room, you've probably committed a capital crime.

Like, we have a dead Jedi here. Yeah. Yeah. We go back to Asoka, doing her best to make her new job as library security guard, interesting. Oh my god So poor The dead Jedi Ord innocence

Um Yeah Peridi Parasidi walks in there As Ord Enicence And And man Soca's a lot

Just pestering the shit Out of just a random Jedi Like can I help you? What are you doing? What's you doing? I think that whole encounter goes the same way If that's really Ord Enniscence.

I think that That's brilliant. A hundred percent. I think it's exactly what he would be like, listen, I'm just trying to go look at books. And again, like, I get the vibe. Paracetes, like, look, I'm trying not to raise the body count here. Just fuck off. Like, kids, you know what?

Take five. Get out of here. Just don't be here. If she could have said, like, the insurance will cover this. Just let this go smooth. Uh, she would have. Um, the other thing, though, is that, so the same. The system's glitch as the heist begins.

Parasidi pulls up the files, figures out where it wears an easy point to break through the shields on the entrance to the Jedi temple. But the minute it happens, and this is going to be, like, again, showcasing how badly, like, the Jedi have lost their way. They are tunnel-visioned. It's so good. They're convinced this is a raid on their military headquarters. They've got to be coming for the transmission codes. They've got to be. And they're the entire episode.

Every time there's evidence that it's not the transmission codes. There's a bit where eventually they're like, oh, that's an alarm from the Holocron vault. What could they be doing there? Getting into the Com Center. They can get the transmission codes. All right, I'll go to the Transmission Code Center. You go a different place in the Holocron Vault and we'll meet at the Communications Center. It's so funny.

Oh, it's so. so good. And again, like, it's, you get how they would, like, that's not a bad deduction to make. That is an important thing that they have. It would be bad if those were stolen, but they're just getting played. They just get played over and over again in this arc, and it's great. I feel so bad for Toto, though. I feel so bad for Toto. Most pathetic Droid Doth of the series so far. Like, he has a personality. Like, we meet Toto.

We, like, I feel like I know Toto. I know enough about Toto to know that he takes great pride in being a techno service droid, not a protocol droid, not a butler droid. When Cadbane is like, some, some butler droid you turned out to be. I'm like, bro, like, he's doing his best. Let Toto live. You know he's a techno service droid. I turned on the cad in that scene.

That's fair. Like, you're going to be rude to Toto, and then you're going to kill him right afterwards. I think the, so here's the thing. It was so cool. I don't think it's nice to be rude to him. I'm with you. But I think the plan to, like, kill all of the Jedi Council with a single bomb was a good plan. He should have invested in a quiet bomb that didn't beep a lot right before it blew up.

Because if he did, that's it. We're in the AU. Mace Wendellon, God, Yota, dead. Obi-Wan Kenobi, dead. Just like, boom, bodies on the board. It would have been great. Then Anakin would be the only one. left.

You're right? Yeah. He finally be on the council. What did you all think of the fight between, um, between Parasidi and, I'm so Parasini knocks out Jacosta New, um, takes her form and then, and then, uh, kind of eventually gets, gets caught, Yoda, Yoda calls Asoka as like, look out for imposters. And Assook is like, oh, word. Oh, Jocasta seems like she's not acting like herself.

And they get into a lightsaber fight because, uh, Parasidi has Ords lightsaber, though it was not a lightsaber duelist by any means. And they get into a fight. Filoni called this one of his favorite fights of the show. I guess through season two. So I'm curious what you all thought about it. I really liked it. It was a really good fight.

I thought the move where she like flips off of DeCostas back was sick. I like vividly remember that part of it. Um, but yeah, I guess it, it kind of settles at the end of, of her being like, you know, you're, you're no jacosta new, basically. Like, you, you may have her look, but you could never fight like her. Um, I wish we got a real jacosta new fight scenes. I know, I want to know what she fights like. During the scene, I was doing the annoying, like, Star Wars nerd thing of being like, Lord, lightsaber's hard to use. How would you be able to do that?

You and I think we come from that era of that being the belief, and I think we just both have to let it go. I grew up really believing that, like, you need the force to use a lightsaber well because it doesn't, it's not weighted right for non-da-da-da-da-da-da. And that's just not true anymore, if it ever was. I know, it's just not. It's a sword.

But last episode, when Anakin whipped out his lightsaber, Padme was like, like, I think there's. still trying to sell you that idea in that when i mean obviously there's like it's extremely phallic but padmay is also like whoa it's really heavy like also we don't know how how heavy or at innocence's light saber is we just know how heavy anikins is so you customize it true don't give me that look i think there's definitely like you know what you know what this is though it's kind of like where many of us went through a phase where we believe that the guitar was the most specialist sword of all time.

And, you know, you couldn't just wield a katana. You had to, like, connect with it on a soulful, spiritual level. And until it was, like, an extension of yourself. And then you get older, and you're like, it's a big knife. Like, it might be a very fine big knife, but it's a big knife. And it can cut people or it can bludgeon the shit out of them. Either way, they're going to be pretty fucked up. And I feel like that's a lightsaber.

Like, if somebody pulls, like, if you get a Jedi's lightsaber and a bar fight, a lot of bad things could happen, but they could happen to the Jedi as much as you. Who knows? Right. In fact, so what I'll say is, again, one of the things Filoni points out is you can see, you can see that in the way Parasidi fights with it

because she's mostly a conservative attacker and an aggressive defender in a way, because when she swings Per Foloni, she knows that she could cut off her own arm by mistake if she overswings or something like that. She's not like going all out with it. um in terms of the animation but i will say another thing that almost summarizes or or mirrors rob the thing you just said of like it's just a it's a sword and at the end of the day it's a thing that

causes damages i love they spent all this time you know gassing up this vault and showing us that only jenai master's code can go into it and then cadbane is like have you heard of explosives like i'm gonna just open it it's gonna open i'm gonna walk in and take my shit and leave um and again does just do it He just walks in It's interesting that he knows the right one to get I don't know how he knows that Does Sidius have someone on the inside

Who knows the layout of these holocrons Because they're not like marked As far as we can see Yeah that's a good point Like there's a hundred of them in there He's like yep this one Maybe with the plans of the Jedi Temple There's also the like

Here's the Wikipedia of all the titles of the holocross Oh yeah There's the card cattle What is a list of children? The reveal that at the end of this episode was mind-blowing. What did you think it was before that? Did you have something in mind in terms of what it would be? I didn't have something in mind, but it's just the implication that, like, yeah, the Jedi

are keeping a list of all of the four sensitive children that they just have on hand. They're just holding on to these names. Well, it's weird. Keeping it on a disc. Because it's not, is that in the holocron or is that in the Khyber crystal? No, the... So maybe he... Okay, so maybe this is the thing.

Does he not need this holocron? Does he just need a holocron? Yes, that is correct. To read the Kyber Crystal. Bola Ropal is the keeper of the Khyber Crystal, data on which can only be read by holocrons, which can only be opened by Jedi. Because also at the end, they don't know what he's stolen.

It's Cato telling them what the plan is that causes them to realize what's up. But they can't look at the holocron. and figure out, oh, this is what's missing. Right. Oh, yeah. Obi-1 is even like, why would you take a hologram? Yeah, that's interesting.

Because presumably it isn't stuff that's particularly, unless it's a very specific holocron, the stuff that's naturally on there that's been put on there, it's just like Jedi history and trivia. Like, why is his bounty hunter want that? What could he do with that? Not that interesting. I do also think it's interesting,

and it goes back to Rob your point about Parasidi being in over her head in terms of the degree. of how bad this op is that she just folds immediately she's not put under interrogation she doesn't say

I can give you some information if you guarantee me immunity yeah she says Boler-R-R-Paul you know it's Boler-R-Paul like it just instantly instantly caves

and that's interesting yeah I think I think by the end of this she's turned on Bain like it's just this mission's gone bad he's been unbearable to

work with. Like, she can't even do her job. Like, the reason she has to cut off Asoka is he won't get off her fucking ear. She has the hard part where she has to be like impersonating this Jedi and being undercover and he won't shut the fuck up about like what's going on. Hey, what's going what are you doing? What are you doing? Why aren't you answering me? And it's like, it's every overbearing boss like just control freak shit. And it's like let her let the master work. Like this is the part you paid her for and he can't do it. And then he blows up, I don't know if she knows that, like, he murdered Toto, but, like, she definitely, it started done on her. Her explosion, presumably.

That there were not escape plans for anyone but Bain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was very clear. Does anyone have anything else about this episode, or can I make my immediate one, my one, like, what the fuck are you doing, complaint about the remaining episodes? The only thing I would say is that the fact that.

the fact that Cadbane was able to break into the vault via explosives, like how much of Jedi shit is clouded in like fucking like security theater or whatever? Like it's just... This goes back to, in some ways this goes back to our old conversation about the duel between Luminar and Assange. How much of it is pomp and theater

like you said not just security theater but also security theater in this case but more broadly all of the reliance on tradition

and the kind of imperious weight that that carries gives them an advantage and one of the things that Cadbane has just like Assange does is no respect for that shit.

I am going to blow a hole in the door I'm going to take the holocron, I'm going to leave. Cato's going to pick up the lightsaber and use it against, yeah. Totally, exactly. You know, to her credit, Cato knocks out a Jedi master in this episode. Like, the Jedi can sense when things are about to go bad and she moves with enough speed.

And we see this from Bain again and again in these episodes where he acts faster than a Jedi does or picks up on a small thing stopping a Jedi from doing something. In hostage crisis, he notices Padmay's eyes dart up to the left. up to the right, uh, to see Anakin. And he's like, oh, yeah, word, Bob. I'm going to shoot up there immediately. Like, I'm not going to waste a second. I'm not going to like, who's that up there? Go check out. No, boom. Uh, and, and, and that's who he is. And I love that the weakness of the Jedi is in some ways. It's almost like a simple rock paper scissors, but most of the world, they're rock and most of the world is scissors. But every once in a while, paper shows up.

And paper's like, nah, I'm not. I, the better version of this is that for them to be scissors probably and for Tad Bain to be a rock, but you get what I'm saying. Cadbane's a rock. Tadbane's a rock. I agree. I think one thing I really like about this is it's not just the fixation on the military secrets that gets them. It is the utter refusal to acknowledge that there's some Jedi shit that's happening here,

that, like, the heist doesn't make sense unless a Jedi is involved somewhere. The, like, getting an imposter in there, like, all the warning signs. That, like, by the end of this, oh, my God, they're going after the list with the future of the Jedi order on it. And you can see, we're like, yeah, the Separatists would probably like it if the Jedi weren't around at all, and they'd be, like, cool with doing that. Yeah. But, like, the refusal to contemplate, hey, could this actually be, like, entirely about the force and the Jedi? They just can't see it, in part because, again, they have so, both they're complacent, but they've so fully embraced this role of, like, We're the generals of the New Republic.

Everything's about this war effort. And it's like... Well, and then two episodes from now, to jump ahead just a little bit, when they finally admit that it's Jedi shit, what do they do? They go, well, okay, well, that's just us. That's just us shit.

Don't tell the... You don't have to go report to the chancellor. We'll handle this internally. And that's wild. Like, they immediately close ranks to make sure that they don't show weakness outside, which does not work for them in the end, for obvious reasons.

All right, here's my one complaint. Next episode. episode 24 cargo of doom I don't love the name cargo of doom that's one two all right the khyber crystal the khyber crystal there's only one of them it keeps the information of every force sensitive child in the galaxy that's known about which means to get updated yearly let's say maybe more often than that right I don't think it magically gets that info put into it. I think someone's like, oh yeah, we heard about

reports of someone on tattooing, let's put those in there. It's Bolo, right? Isn't the implication that he's the like Jedi nanny at this point? And let me tell you, here's my beef. Don't give that to Bola Rappal. He don't got it like that. You have to give

it to a mace window or and you know what? Maybe he has good, maybe he has good bedside manner. Maybe that's the thing. But there's a specific role is to go to. But you can give him in a draft. He doesn't need all the addresses. He doesn't need to hold the crystal.

Yeah. He gets up to do a monthly check-in. It takes 20 seconds to get the Khorasan. It takes 20 seconds. I don't know if you keep it on course on. You keep it somewhere else. Keep it on, Elos with the lightsaber crystals.

You know that shit's defended. Keep it anywhere else. Keep it with three dudes. Three people. Right. He don't have backup. Keep three people on the Khyber crystal. They have one hard drive.

You can't cover LeBron with one. Dude. Listen, they're just kids. They're future Jedi. Only we care about this. Who cares about this? We're going to have... They're the future.

The Jedi need them. The Jedi can't get other Jedi. They never even got an Excel spreadsheet with the backup names? Because when he loses it, Yoda and he's went to are like, well, we don't know who it could be. We don't even have those names anywhere. We never even check it. We didn't even hear him say, yo, there's a pretty good one on Rodea.

They didn't even do that They didn't even do that They put it on a USB drive And gave it to their weakest member They gave it to the weakest member of the squad So he felt like he had something to do They were like we're gonna let Bola feel good about something Bola didn't even get the screen time

He didn't get the screen time He is locked up Credits roll of Bola lost already Which means it wasn't even interesting He didn't even put up a fight He got him in the fucking Metal Gear Solid torture chamber They got a bullet revolver oscillate shit They're hitting the circle button trying to live

He's not gonna live He don't got it like that You have to give it to someone Who can get through the torture minigame You have to You have to They made three video games About this

Force unleashed hits this shit That new Jedi, the Jedi fall in order Is this, this is the whole game Hold on I'm gonna defend this man Just on this point Oh my God His frailty

he his body gave out before he will did so you know what yes left it all on the field like he did the plot failed this is the thing it didn't work because the thing they knew is like this guy ain't gonna give it up and if he don't if he doesn't give it up it doesn't matter they can't use it now if they've gone to palpatine they probably could have used it so but they don't know that they're like because because the whole point the whole point is like this is the we'll get more into this the next episode the horror underlying this is the Jedi maintained monopoly on the force by just confiscating children

and making sure they're the only ones who know where all these like force-sensitive kids are and then they just fucking come and get it. Yes, it's evil. And like they have like a timeline. Yes. The mother of the kid is like you're not supposed to be taking him for a couple years from now

that like Bolo's whole job is like in maintaining relationships with these families to be like, no, it's chill. building consent to take their kids away. It's amazing. Yeah. It's wild. And again, I just, the first thing we see of Buller Paul is dude,

knock the fuck out, being dragged across the ground. It's so disrespectful. I just. It's so disrespectful. They really, they really did him so dirty in this, in this. I mean, shout us to him for not. He gave them themselves some favors by being stronger. Yeah, shout us to him for not giving it up.

But, like, I don't know. I just think the whole system is flawed. The whole, the whole. What if Bolo lost the crystal on the way to another planet? Right. He dropped it in the Wawa. It's gone. It feels like a thing where it's like the Jedi Council, you know, designated this to Bolo.

You're in charge of the Youngling's department. Yeah. And he made the decision through there. And he was like, no, he's going to get this crystal. I'm just going to keep it out of crystal. Do you think Bola Rappal caught feelings when Ankin came through from a different direction that he wasn't one of his recruits like when he was not this is not connected to the plot in any way but just in general when someone comes in not through

the bold rappal department when quigon shows up with another kid who's like and he's like I think this one's pretty good at the force I did a blood test on him and baller paul's like did you even like talk to his mom for five years straight because if you didn't we do we can't take him yeah I think mason bolo had a little pow wow before that meeting and mason was like no no no we're not doing this. We're not doing it. I have to defend my man. My man, Bola. Yeah, exactly. You don't understand quite gone. We, I already, I already, you know, moved to Sector

out of Bola's control this year. I can't do him bad twice. He ain't that, he ain't that, he doesn't deserve it. Um, on this torture stuff, because it opens on a brutal torture scene in which Bola Rpala is killed. Yep. It's torture to death. It's, like, mocked by the battle droids

and by Cadbane. The battle droids don't, the battle droid overseeing it, actually seems, one, like, hey, like, Cad, you fucking idiot, you're going to kill this guy. That one does, but there is the one who is like, who is like, he opens by saying, like, wake up master Jedi, or you will remain conscious Master Jedi. The bounty hunter has some questions for you, which we've never heard a tone like that from a battle droid before.

It's so aggressive. And it's deeper. You will, yeah, you will remain conscious Jedi is like one of the. like the most the scariest things that like one of the most horrifying lines that we've heard in the show so far like the fact that like this this this this battle droid who we've we've come to understand I mean this model is like the fucking Roger Roger beep boop guy like he's just he's a chiller but right now he's like mask the fuck off you will remain conscious Bitch, like, you're fucking staying awake for this.

You're about to spill the Khyber Crystal Secrets immediately. And then, yeah, and then he dies. Philoni about this. I know we have to go back to talk about a military operation because it's also about to happen. But while this, or while Obi-Wan or while Anakin tried to figure out a plan to get on board, and this torturing is happening, Philoni basically says, the way he talks about this episode in the featurette makes me feel like he got letters

about how this was bad for children. he has a very defensive tone. He says, well, Bolera Paul meets a very sad ending in this episode. But I have to say, it is exactly what it should be. I mean, Cadbane is not a nice guy. Cadbane is a bad guy. He is a villain. Villains torture people.

It's terrible. And at no point when we're shooting it and Rob Coleman was directing it, when we were looking at the footage, did we really feel that we should look, that we should back away from the reality of this scene. I mean, it is sad, but it's supposed to be sad when Boller where Paul dies. You can't really, we haven't really met this guy. You don't know him for a whole episode, so you have to find a way to have impact when he dies. And to see that he's trying to hold on and that Cadbane not only disregards the Jedi's life, he disregards his own droid to Rob's point, and tortures him to death. And he just sweeps his fingers across the brim of his hat,

which is very funny because Faloni has a cowboy hat on, which makes me start to think very funny things about Faloni and Cadbane. Be like, that's me. That's my favorite character. That's my OC. I mean just, that's just how he is, and I thought it drove the point home. I even that the battle droids in that scene come across is quite morbid. Their voices are toned down a bit, and they sound almost like undertakers. You know, I hesitate to say that I really like the scene, but I really like that scene because it says the heroes are in jeopardy, and when Asoka is in a similar situation later, you know that Cadbane might kill her. That is a high possibility. I don't believe that, because I know how the shows work, but sure. And thus, I think the scene has

achieved its goal. I mean, it's not incredibly graphic. We cut, well, we cut to the hand. We show a lot of expressions through the hand, you know, up close. And poor, poor Bola Rappol. I think Bola Rappol is some kind of odd, this is get ready. I think Bola Rpal is, is some sort of odd acronym for my old assistant. She, she's like one of the nicest people. That I do feel terrible about. At the time, we didn't know that Bola Rappal was going to meet such an untimely end. That was horrible. But A, it'll be memorable. I'll say that much. It's like weird sudden realization that he has to apologize to his old assistant because he named a character after her and then killed him horrendously is very funny. So, there's Faloni defending the torture scene.

You know, sometimes when we were working together, I wondered, what would you do with the scripts if somebody ever tried to take them from you by force? And I wondered, would you die for them? And I thought, yes. Anyway, enjoy this episode. I dedicated it to our partnership. It's so funny. That's hilarious. I think to me also, this is an episode where the battle droids are just a little more expressive across the board.

The interrogator droid seems a little bit freaked out by the fact that Bain just like raged out and electrocuted the guy to death. Like genuinely, the way it's like he has lost function. Like, it's like, oh, the droids don't like seeing people die. At least not like this. It's one thing if you get shot, if you shoot a clone trooper behind the armor, no facial expression, the clone bodies, clones in their armor could be droids, right? They don't have any extra degree of expressivity than the droids do. Seeing a person suffer, it maybe is different, even for them. Um, so the other part of this, all this is happening while Anakin is racing to chase Bain down with his fleet.

There's a huge, uh, fleet battle happening. And Anakin's doing pretty well. Um, New Gunray gets on the phone and is like, you've destroyed four of my ships. I think it's time to, uh, time to call this one. You got to tie it off. And Bain's like, um, I can't, because the Jedi's dead, so I need another Jedi. But fortunately, and basically his plan is, and this is the very Hans Gruber thing that's about to happen, he has figured out that he's just going to let the Jedi get aboard the ship, and he's going to contrive to make them be his safecracker, basically on the Khyber Crystal. and it works because the Jedi

it's funny this is gosh this hadn't occurred to me while I was sort of like taking notes on this but like one of the arguments you could make during the sort of reaction of the war on terror was that the reaction itself was always the problem that like doing nothing

frequently would have been preferable to any of the choices that were made during those years like just sitting back and seeing how things unfold and like not reacting would have been a hell healthier thing to do and things probably would have unfolded better but instead there was always this pressure no we have to like swing into action and make sure events dictate terms about how events unfold and here we see that where the Jedi are like no we're going to we're going to take this guy with crystal back but i don't care that we don't have boarding craft we have to get over there

yeah um and if you think about it if they don't believe there are other Jedi involved they should trust their encryption Right Like Don't let a Jedi anywhere near this thing And it's safe But they can't do it Yeah

They have to involve themselves They have to Which either means They suspect a Jedi could get involved Which is a scary thought That none of them actually vocalize But maybe they have Or they're so driven by that desire

To be in that aggressive stance And keep control through through throwing the first punch through being the kind of lead dancer that they commit a number of real unforced errors here. It doesn't care of me. Duku is out there.

So they do eventually this stuff will get in Duku's hands. He was a council member. Yeah, he could do this. That's what I was going to bring up, yeah. But it doesn't seem like, it doesn't seem like Cad Bain is thinking of Duku.

No, can I be... Like, why... Yeah, why doesn't Cidius just say, bring it to Duku? Oh, because, ah, ah, of course, and here we are yet again. Duku, the rule of two, says, there's a master and apprentice, and an apprentice. If I'm Cidious, I can't tell Duku I want a bunch of force users under my control, because then you're basically telling him, I'm making you increasingly expendable, because I want to be able to replace you with new force users.

Keep him out of that plan. Can't you get around that by saying, and I quote, I am going to use the slave conditioning procedure on them. You don't have to worry about that. No, because if I'm if I'm Duku, I'm like, are you going to try to slave condition me? I thought I was your apprentice. I think he's keeping this as a private, sidious endeavor.

Because like, again, the arc of all Sith lords and apprentices is the apprentice one day tries to kill. the master. And so there's always this, like, build-up of arms and, like, secrets and how can I have one over on you? In many ways, if I was Sidious, I would want a set of brainwashed Jedi babies who could see when my apprentice was going to try to kill me finally. So maybe he just wants to keep it on the DL for that reason.

It would be very easy to just call Duku and have him read it. You're right. I mean, can't... Can't Sidious do it? Palpatine's a Sith. I don't know that he has the Jedi holocron training. I agree with you. I also have holicrons, though.

But they're Sith holoons. You just twist the thing. I don't think you're just twisting the thing. It's like the lightsaber conversation. It ain't that like, oh, only a Jedi. No, if you can work with the force, you can do the whole, like, it's like bear-proof, like, snack containers. Where it's like, no, you just get two bears, and now they can open it. it. Like eventually

the Sith are going to get into your special Jedi holicron because it's like I'm just used the force to open this little curio box. Yeah. I do just want to say while we're on this beat of the episode people have talked about how like

much better season two looks in season one and that is so apparent by the fact that when Anika is on the bridge talking to the admiral, the plates on his armor chest piece actually like move when his arm moves and they divide and I was like hell yes they like went through and did like an update on all of their like most important character models

basically yeah it looks great um anyway they get over there they land some tanks they land some pre-a-t80s over there even though they call one of them in ATAT it's it's not uh I would just like to say that um those walkers are pressurized and they got magnetic fee Thanks. Good. Better in every way than the AT-A-T. They're very cool. We just have to say this.

Yeah. They're lower to the ground, which actually seems like a benefit to me. I don't know. They hopped out of a spaceship. They did do that one. Yeah, that one's good. That scene is great.

The zero-g fight outside is sick. Jumping around on the outside of the other little bubble helmet. Yeah, same. Like, it's extremely cool. And Bain, just being like, fuck you all. go hang out here die on the bridge

wire everything to my controls and the droids are just again maximally pathetic we got battle droid we're defending the bridge alone I hate this job union eyes yeah for real

I love the urgency and like confidence in the way that Cadbane delivers these orders to the troids. It just, it, he's, he's so competent. He's so sharp. He, he, like, on his fucking A game.

And he just doesn't hesitate. He knows exactly, he's like, transfer all of the comms, all of the ship controls to my, to my risk com. You guys defend the bridge. I'm out. Bye. Yep. And, like, doesn't waste a second on anything.

He's, he's so in control. And it's really. really, really fun to watch. Do you think his wrist-com is rare? Because, like, why do they need a whole huge bridge if he can control the ship from his from his Apple Watch? To be fair, the only commands he needs to execute at this point are probably, like, turn left, turn right, explode yourself.

That's true. Well, he did ask, he did ask Sidious for the works. So maybe Sidious is like, all right, I'm going to give you the Primo package. I'll give you I'll give you the battleship Apple Watch you know just in case You never know So yeah

Then we get another incredible fight sequence As the Everyone boards this ship Finally And they The clones plus the Jedi All run into Are they immediately in the docking bay

Or is in another room It's some other room So it feels like a hangar But there's a ton of munitions on it Yeah, that's the thing that's weird. I guess it could be a hangar technically, right? Actually, it might not be, because later the droids are fighting their way to the ship. Okay, that makes sense.

So this might just be the magazine for the ship. Okay, so they fight their way into this, into this warehouse, like, floor of the... They find their way into it. And inside, of course, immediately are a bunch of battle droids. And we just get a really good skirmish between clones and droids and then Bain and the Jedi. I guess he leads them in there. He does, like, the fake runaway and, like, traps them in there with a bunch of... battle droids and there's all sorts of trickery in this in this segment where like he shuts down

the gravity in the room so that everyone starts floating around they are competent enough to immediately react to that the clone troopers like magnetize their own boots so they can stand on things at one point then he shoots the ceiling so that the magnetization he turns it or i guess r2 turns off the or returns the gravity and bane shoots the ceiling so the one who's magnetized up there falls now that gravity is back we get one of the Jedi I think Anakin like pulls droid bodies to make a staircase

for him to walk on at one point it's just it's a really fun little exchange which is a step up from where they were last season and even little things that are like yes it's sort of a comedy beat but also it has this inevitability

when they realize there's live ammo on deck and everyone's taking great pains to not hit it Any droid just steps on the broken body part of another droid trips, and as it goes down, it shoots one of the shells and starts what is going to be a series of cascading ammo explosions that's going to tear the ship apart, whether Bain gives the self-to-order or not. Yeah, it's a great sequence. There's my favorite little beat in it is Anakin is charging a Cad Bain.

He's blocking all of Bain's blaster bolts. And as he's running, that's when Bain deactivates the gravity and everyone starts floating away. That's one of the things that he has on his wristwatch, by the way, is deactivating gravity. And because Anakin still has forward momentum, he's going to get near Bain and he, in fact, passes just over Bain's head. And when he does, Bain looks back at him for a second. it's as if he's considered, like, well, what can I, like, dodges the saber below? And he's like, okay, I see that you're going that way. I'm done with you.

I'm not going to make the villain mistake of standing engaged with the hero. I'm going to turn and shoot someone in the back, and I'm going to shoot someone else in the back. I'm going to use this chaos to my advantage and keep, like, getting rid of the ads, basically, in this fight and putting the numbers more on my side. And it's just again and again, it's so fun to watch, it's so fun to watch a competent villain to have a fight that's been, like, well-booked and well-choreographed because when the victory ends of going the other way, it feels earned. It doesn't just feel like, you know, something that was inevitable, you know? It's like how you describe talking about invade, when I was playing blood form and you were talking about, like, invasions and, like, liking the hunters as, like,

your favorite enemy because you felt like you were, like, actually going toe to toe with someone rather than just, like, exploiting a weakness. Yeah. I so much would rather that than, like, circle around and hit them from the back and the ankles. Like, that's not a fun. That doesn't get my blood pumping. What gets my blood pumping is being the cad bane to someone's Anakin Skywalker, you know? For sure.

In many ways. Don't we all? Yeah. So here, also we get another As Soca Miscue, as Bain flees, they sort of reenact the critical incident of the Ridley Scott action movie Black Rain, where the two partners are separated at a crucial moment. I thought you were going somewhere else. It's very funny you went there. Is that an intentional dodge, Rob, of the thing that actually gets reenacted here in some ways? You mean phantom menace?

Yes, I mean, yes, phantom menace. It's separated by an energy field dual of the fates moment of love. Which self was just no homage to Ridley Scott's Black Rain, in which Andy Garcia chases a gang of, like, Yakuza motorcycle gangsters into a parking garage and gets his house. head cut off with a katana while all uh michael douglas can do is cling to the fencing in in the garage and scream no it's great it's what a great movie it's not it's pretty it's pretty orientalist but right sure is it also ridley scott being kind of cool yes uh-huh uh point is anakin immediately is like this is not good uh-huh like asoka should not be don't chase that dude

there's there's a wake class here and you're not in it like you need to you need to make some games

before we can we can sort of send you up against Bain but she's already gone she's off for the races and the thing is

the thing is she gets his ass almost she wins yeah he doesn't you don't think that's a plan

you don't think him getting yeah you think again he's a good improviser not a it's that she gloats yeah it's that like yeah she gets him in this cargo bay and he gets

he like he gets the jump on her but she does almost finish the fight she kicks his ass and it is as she's standing over him crowing uh over him that he hits her with a taser much like they got anakin in a hostage crisis where again it's like um you know we'll just we'll just just tase that Jedi. Yeah. Well, I think this is, I think this is an interesting parallel to her fight with Cato in the last episode because she expects the rules of the fight to be respected. And at the end of her fight with Cato, she has her, you know, by the lightsaber and

Cato, Cato resigns. Kato, you know, is like, yeah, you got me, I'm done. And she approaches every fight with this same sort of attitude that, like, there are rules of the fight that will be respected. So at the end of the fight, she's like, look, I have the upper hand, I have you by the lightsaber, it's done, I win. But important distinction with this one, she doesn't have her lightsaber because she just got caught with the best insigory I've ever seen, that little step-up kick, sidekick that you see some good wrestlers do. And that's what gives him the opportunity. If she has him by the lightsaber, I think she's won that fight. But because he, early in that little exchange, disarmed her, it gives him that future window of opportunity to give her the little zap.

Yeah, he catches her as she's going for her lightsaber, and it's, yeah, you get to see those moments and act on them. I don't know what she does. I don't know what the counterplay is. I think maybe it's like, hold him down with the force and then do your grab the lightsaber? Or grab your lightsaber before you talk shit. right kick the shit out of him kick the shit out of him like if there's one thing I've learned from movie fight scenes just kick the shit out of somebody you knock him down just start kicking the shit out of them and like if you still get caught okay like you went bad but like we got some damage in yeah um but yeah so she pauses to gloat um Anakin we have a little comedy beat you Lauren is in peak he's just been kind of snarky the entire episode

Oh wait Asoka used the opportunity of gloating to say a slur again Just want to point that one out Wait what did she say? She calls him Sleimo Oh I thought a slur It's slime ball

Oh I thought Slema was like No Slemo is slime ball in huddies Oh I thought Slema was one of the Star Wars slurs that we've talked about before. We talked about it because it sounds and feels like a slur, but it's not. It does just mean slime ball.

I don't mean, it just sounds like a good cuss. It's like shit head. Yeah. Yeah. Asshole. Slime ball. I'm glad you brought this up because it's very funny that Assook calls him a slimo. And then Anakin walks in and goes,

I've got you now bounty hunter. Like those are equal insults, but that's what he is. pretty good at it. It's like, that's your job. Yeah. Totally.

Like, I don't know. Yeah. Well, again, it's just the contempt the Jedi have for skilled craftsmen. Like,

just, you know, CAD's out here working for a living. But, yeah, so Anakin goes after them

and immediately realizes, like, he's, she is in an airlock. This whole episode has Battlestar Galactical vibes. The exterior shots of the Battlestar-ass-looking, like, frigate sort of being wreath and explosions, is straight out of, like, Battlestar.

But also, somebody standing in the airlock about to be vented is, the whole setup for this is very Battlestar where he walks in and immediately realizes that before he can do anything, Bain will just vent her into space. And so we get a early, like, this is the classic. classic Anakin dilemma can he think of the greater good when confronting personal loss and he can't like asoka understands the stakes and she is ready to die to prevent this uh like secret from getting into cad's hands she she tells aniken not to do it and he just cuts her off i can't let you die asoka yeah and so he does the deal um be again i would have done it i'm sorry I'm also not letting Asoka die. I'm not letting my bestie at work and my trainee. I'm not doing it. But Annequin will never be able to make this choice. He will never be able to think of the greater good of it as a personal loss that he is staring down the barrel of.

Do you also think part of this? I like the scene a lot because I think it's a great illustration of Anakin at his best in some. it's an argument for why attachment is easy to want because it protects the people you love and because unlike a lot of other instances of attachment Anakin it is not also caught up in his ego

or his or like a depiction of what he needs or wants in a really gross like hyper macho way it is just his care for this person who he doesn't want to die and it is also a confidence that they can still write this.

I think that's part of it. What it reminds me of is actually something from the Ryloth Ark that we didn't mention, which is there's a moment where Obi-Wan says to Anakin you'll need your Padawan in a way that felt like

Obi-Wan thinking about the times that Anakin was his Padawan and was there for him in a key moment and helped save whatever the situation was. and that seeing him make this decision here does feel driven by you know attachment and affection for her but does also feel like it's from a point of conviction that however bad it gets we'll be able to solve this together in a way that will be the right thing long term versus losing you here will all be more doomed with you gone than than with you here and having suffered this brief loss whether that's true or not that's just the way he sees the world

that's the way I was reading this anyway he does go right after he's like we'll sort this out together after he rescues her so the minute he cuts the deal he cuts down the droids he saves Asoka Bain has already gone using his little rocket boots that we've seen before in Holocron Heist but

so there's two things Bain master improviser Newt Gunnery's back on the radio being like so how are you getting up out of this. And right on cue, two of Rex's troops show up. And like, demand is surrender. And Bain's like, I got a plan. But the other thing is now Anakin is fully tunnel vision. I'm like, we're going to get Bain. We're going to get him. And we get Asoka screaming at him in the hallway, patience, like just fully fed up. Yeah. Like, yelling at him, basically, we got to go. This is

done it's very um starbuck in moby dick uh where you know the you know the heavens of wreathy and angels uh you know trying to like give you like tell you to not do this um and this is finally her sort of uh breaking and forcing him to confront the fact that they have been beaten like it's done and them dying on this spaceship and this fruitless attempt to get him is not going to help So it's, it's time to call it. And it does penetrate. Like, it sinks in where he's like, this is correct. This is, this is real advice.

And it's the first time we've seen Asoka, but they see the bigger picture. She didn't admit it earlier in the show. But now she does realize, like, hey, we have gotten beaten, and we need to accept that sometimes. Yeah. And then she does, and then he does it back to her almost immediately. And she listens because when the final, I guess,

The body of Cadbane falls from a higher level, and the clone who killed him comes down injured. Yeah, we need to talk about that. I mean, it's very obvious at the moment, right? I mean, I did not. No? Okay. I immediately was like, oh, yo, nice play. Got him.

Really? I was like, damn, okay. I guess he doesn't talk when he comes, or he does. He comes over, he's like, no, sir, about, did you get the Khyber crystal? I'm watching this back when the bot... How would he get... He's put his clothes and shit on a clone. But he's blue.

Oh, maybe he's not. No. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. It's also just... This is a classic. This is a classic maneuver, right?

Yes. This happens in Star Wars, a new hope. I mean, they don't drop a body, but they do dress up his stormtroopers. And he's just doing the dress up his stormtroopers thing way before Han Solo and Luke Skywalker made it hot. You know? so smart he made it a hot line they made it a hot song i guess this is a second execution of this because he also gets out of the Jedi temple this way by just putting on a robe yeah you're right

i just gotta go there's a lot of people focus master of disguise they need to really be less like it's just a brown robe people like you gotta stop just assuming well it must be a Jedi only a Jedi could wear this shit shady old blanket and like hide his face um but but but but but Osoca wants to go get the holocron and and like there's no time and she's like all right fine so they they do I like this episode because they balance each other and yeah we're finally starting to see that work I will say that it feels like a little bit

of a jump from the Asoka of 10 seconds ago to then suddenly like have perspective and be like patience like we should we should leave like I want that for her it feels a little like I'm like out of left field for her at this point in time I think they can both see it in the other and not themselves that's the thing I'm taking from this is that like she sees it in him when he rushes ahead in his spaceship she sees it in him when he's running down the hallway he sees it in her when she's rushing ahead in her spaceship when she's running down the hallway but they can't see it in themselves and that is extremely telling and the thing that I'm curious about is how long until she can start to recognize it in herself and he doesn't

ever get that lesson and what is it that makes that path diverge if it does you know maybe it's another encounter with cad bane the two episodes are basically back to back like they kind do the thing where the first episode is like cad getting away clean as he just walks off the ship The Nanikins, like, weird, he's dead, but I can still sense him. And I'm like, I feel like in Jedi school, they should teach you to just trust that feeling. Like, the one thing the Jedi are good at. Especially in space, where it's like, where could he be? I sense his presence nearby.

Like, you're miles away from anything because you're in a tiny spaceship with eight other people. He's probably one of those eight other people. Yeah, your radius isn't going that far. Your fucking force radius is like, like, ten, feet right now the ship's not that big and you're in the middle of fucking nowhere it's really goofy so but i was like i i at the beginning of this episode because i thought that that was bain who like died and everything at the end like the reveal for this to i felt maybe i was just like the gullible goofess of of the the watch but like when he when he gets away i was like i freaking

I can't believe he got away again. Like, I just, I literally, I literally, like, keyboards, I keyboard smashed in my notes. I was like, bang, getting away again, just keyboard smash. I was like, I cannot believe he's done it again. That's very good. I was very frustrated. Like, he's right there on the flight deck. He's right there.

And Asoka, just kind of naively being like, hey, where are you going? What's up? And getting a vibe that, like, something's off with this dude, like, Anakin finds the blood and I'm like, if you put the pieces together people do it and they don't, he immediately hops into a spaceship and then Eularen

still in his full little like snarky like, oh, I'm gonna give Anakin shit every time he calls up and so when Anakin like calls in screaming for him to seal up the ship and lock down the hyperspace rings Eulerin's got to roll his eyes verbally at him first before actually giving the order

and that like, you know, You've been back for 10 seconds, right? What could have gone wrong already or whatever? That was infuriating. That's it. You just lost him. If a Jedi calls you being like, shut the shit down now, now, now, now, now, now, now. Like, why would you even be like, what are you talking about?

Like, why would you not just shut it down? Like, why are you even discussing it? He doesn't take the order. He says hurry. Yeah. Say that again? I bet Anakin wants to choke that. that guy oh i bet i bet all but he's thinking like man

if i could just run if i were running the if i were running this more myself an officer pulled that shit i choke his ass out right there on the on the bridge that'd be it for that guy picture everyone sees people get fed weeks yeah anikin's very testy very often the admiral gets his opportunity this is actually this is true they are the dream team of the clone army This is the best fighting force the Jedi have, and it's fractious. It's not always smooth sailing. It's true. But they've really screwed the pooch here.

Yeah. Because now they realize like, okay, we lost the list of children that we're going to confiscate. Time to think about it real hard. They split up to go stake out the various watering holes, i.e. children. that are unaccounted for. Which again, they don't know. Go ahead, Natalie. But first they have to group meditate

and like suss out where the fuck in the galaxy they can figure out like one kid to go meet up with to see if they're still around out of like the thousands of force sensitive children. Like it's... It's kind of an achievement

that they managed to do it. Because, like, I guess they are able to sense not only what kids exist that are force sensitive, but, like, specifically, these are the ones who are going to be under threat in the near future. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, because, it's, it's, it's, because. We don't get proof of purchase with the Jedi ever. Like, we very rarely get any proof of their fucking meditation for shit working. Like, most of the time it's like, yeah, I'm getting bad vibes right now. I'm not sure what it's about.

But the fact that they were actually able to, like, hone in together and get real tangible intel that, like, is, is really incredible. I didn't have faith in it before. Like, I have very little faith in the Jedi as who they've sold themselves to be as these, like, mystical, you know... You could not imagine the power of the force. No, I could not.

I think it's, it, like, is a nice gravity gun or whatever, but, like, I have very little faith in, especially the Jedi Council, to... to have a connection with, like, some real bullshit. And we see Anakin do well at this, which is interesting. Like, in this specific instance, at least better than Mace does. Mace sees Glyanselm, which is the Nautil and home world, but the child there, like Yoda said, has already been taken.

Whereas Aniken sees Nabu, which, you know, he has a very specific connection to Nabu. I'm curious if that helps the clarity of the vision and specifically sees a Gunken child screaming. and Yodah says that's the future. Like that's not, you see a gun and child now. That's coming. So we have time to get there and intervene, which is great. That makes me mad. I know.

Because in Revenge of the Sith, Annikin's like, yo, I hear my wife screaming. And Yoda's like, it's fine, probably. Don't worry about it. That's my first thought, too. Attach to us. When it's something you want, we better jump on this prophet. He doesn't say, I hear my wife screaming. He says, I've been sensing some dark things.

If he had said, I sense Padmay is in trouble. That would have gotten a different result, but he can't allow himself to do that. I will hit this hair until my grave, because it's about his inability, his inability to be honest about what he's seeing in that moment that prevents that, that, a resolution where people will actually go to help. And it sucks. It's miserable. Yeah. That's the tragedy. But he did say it about his, about Schme.

Oh, yeah, no, that's a completely fucked up on that one, right? 100%. Well, that was like, the Jedi are like, honestly, wouldn't be the worst if that mom died. Like, you know, it's better if he stops thinking about. Yeah, don't stop deembing her. You don't have to talk to her anymore. That happens a lot with Jedi, maybe? Dead moms?

And they sense it. And it's like, yeah, your parents are going to die. it happens and it happens to all of us but that's probably we left you're not you're not you don't probably not probably not while they're still in like paddle on training yeah yeah that's true like i feel yeah it would happen later when they're already like disassociated from emotion yeah you know so um i would also say does this show think rodians just suck Star Wars thinks Rodians just suck. I think so.

Because we get that Bain is doing his act of like, he's doing a wallet inspector act basically, where he's like, heard there's Jedi impostors trying to steal children. Anyway, here I am to collect your child without any warning, years in advance. Give me that child. Thank God I was here.

Wouldn't want those Jedi impostors to get your kids. kid. Here's a gun. Here's a loaded gun. Protect a child that is no longer here. If anyone claiming to be a Jedi should show up, just shoot them through the head and ask questions later. Goodbye. Also check out my men-in-black mind-erased device. Jedi have these. It's a fidget spinner. It's a fidget spinner. You dumb starry-eyed. It's so fucked. Rodea looks great, though, doesn't it?

They re-did it. They redid Rodea for this episode. And in fact, again, the big thing that I want to point out, the note that I took midway through this episode, and then again, I clicked on the featurette, and it was Follone basically just saying the same thing, was just like, holy shit. There's so many environments in this episode.

Filoni says, Children of the Force is a great illustration of what we couldn't do in season one. In season one, we'd be in one location, maybe two. Very few locations in between. They'd mainly be the same planet or the same. ship. Children of the Force. We start on the Jedi Cruiser. We go to Corrassan. We go to Mustafa. We go to Nabu. We go to Nabu. We go to Rodeo. We actually even went to Gle-Anselm. But Gle-Anselim is mentioned in the script. We used to go there. I cut that scene because I didn't think the Jedi actually,

oh my God, this is incredible. And we could just talk about this off of this beat. I didn't think that the Jedi actually give the kids back to the parents at the end of this. And I thought that the Jedi would realize that these kids from this episode have a traumatic experience and that unlike the Gungan baby who wasn't ready to be taken yet, these kids would probably need to be raised at the temple because they didn't know what Cidius had done to them. They didn't even know Cidius was behind it, frankly. So there's a little side that he has here in which they cut the Gleiancelum like sequence because I think it was them going to give the kid back to the mother after she's after it's rescued at the end of the episode, and they cut that because they don't

give the kids back. Holy shit. He stole the kid, and he's not giving it back. Do you think it's just eating crow? Because, like, I was thinking of the scene where Obi-Wan shows up and has to be like, can I have your kid after the kid has already got his horrible? Right. Can you imagine that?

You don't want to be the Jedi who's like, sorry about that. Here's your kid back. See you in three years. like at that point you're just like I'll just keep this kid The whole scene with the Rodeon mom though is so sad Because she's just so resigned

To a Jedi one day We'll just show up and take your kid Yep And they might be nice about it But you don't have a choice It's not like you can say no Like your kid is a Jedi They have decided your kid's a Jedi

Just because of the abilities They were born with And your rights as a parent And that child's rights as an individual just don't really register in that equation. And so it's like, yeah, and God, so Filoni cutting that beat, it's like, this is like a, there are so many things that are warped and twisted about the Jedi Order that if you stop and think about it, you're like, these guys need to be stopped.

Yeah. This is not, though, this is not it. This isn't the way to do this. I'll say also the rest of that bit is, is, you can't, you can imagine the production staff's nightmare when reading the scripts we got to go to all those different places and sometimes for a very short amount of time we had rhodia but we but we did it because rhodia had only been done in the early show we wanted to make it look better because we knew what we were doing better corassant was easier because you just go to the jedai temple that's not such a big deal anymore

we got waterfalls on nabu and you'll notice that the gungan city is not underwater because that saved us an incredible headache so this is this one is partially underwater partially above water this was a design choice as well as a survival necessity. There's a Moustafar thing, but I'm going to save that for when we get to Mustafar after we talk about Nibu. Also, though, rodeo? That's economic aid. Wait, say that again?

That's economic aid. It works. The Republic is sending the supply ships now, and the flowers are blooming. Their biome is complete. You're right. No slug monsters. Got rid of those real quick. I guess Pad may follow third?

The slug master, the slug monster eradication act passed unanimously through the Senate. Do you think Uncle Ono, after the hostage crisis was like, all right, you have got to get me some funding. They just held me up. Like, we, this is it. That's it, Padman. Send those checks. We're getting new don'ts. Find any, find any oil rigs around, or that's still not happening?

because I can't do much without that, bud. Need to be valuable. God, now I'm also imagining all of the senators basically being like old political bosses back on their home planet where it's like, look, I got the, you know, I got the Republic on speed dial where you want me to send the money,

but just make sure you remember who sent it. Yeah. You know, Uncle Ono putting his name on like all the public works projects on Rodea. So, they do, though, manage to get ahead of Bain in all this and intercept him as he's trying to steal the Gungan child. Shout out to Gungan Jedi. Yeah. Shut us.

The kid's going to become a Gungan Jedi. Well, sorry, actually, I guess that's not going to happen. Maybe not. We don't know that that kid, because that kid never goes. So that kid does stay in Nabu So maybe that kid lucks out And Order 66 happens before He gets killed by Darth Vader in like 10 years

Maybe he doesn't remember Can I just have this? He doesn't remember No Darth Vader is like hunting Jedi Okay counter Counter counter What if Darth Vader says

You can be my secret Gungan apprentice He has a soft spot for Gungan I love Gungens I was a good friend with Jajon Binks, you might know him as that bad clown that everyone hates.

People blame him for a lot that happened. Did you know he used to be a representative? They don't give representatives any power, and yet he still managed to fuck things up. Uh, so

they get Bain. They also torture him. a little bit uh they use their um side blast basically they they sort of crank up the volume they harmonize their thoughts and just start to scramble his brain like an egg and does it work no is it so horrible that he doesn't want to do it again yes and so they're just like all right well now you'll tell us it's torture they're like we can't do torture

And Anakin is like We don't have any other choice Let's scramble this guy's eggs And Mase is also like yeah Yeah Oh nice shadow Shatter pointing from Mace Windew by the way Oh thank you

Good Even Assoca who Just a few episodes ago Was like let's torture this person Um Lest we not forget like her very eager willingness to torture one of their captives a few episodes ago. But in this one, Mace, Anika, and Obi-Wan are all force torturing Cad Bain.

And Anika, Anika, Asoka, like, looks from the background in horror at what's happening. like is not like yeah this is some Jedi shit we're fucking torturing with her brains like it she really there's such a a like a distance between her and them at that point where she like she really like feels bad energy from like it's just it's she feels that this is like not the right thing to do And I think that look is echoed later when Anakin has to go deliver the report to Palpatine. And like Anakin walks in and the door's closed and she's looking at him with like the same type of like kind of horrified pain. Yeah, you're really going to shut me out of this, huh? Weird.

Yeah. Yeah. Two notes. Go ahead, Rob. I'm just thinking like this is her godfather where the realization of like who you're with. Yeah, yeah. Two things here.

One is I did write down the note, or not the note, but when I was, when I was transcribing that exchange about, about the danger of using, trying to use the force mind attack on him, when Anakin says, well, I wrote down, well, do we have another choice, smiley face? Because that was the energy of that, for sure. And then, yeah, just to reemphasize it, it's so interesting to me that they could have had Bain break under the pressure of three strong Jedi. and they don't.

They have him give in because the pain is too much after they fail to make his mind break. And that's a very specific choice to indicate that the information they got was under duress and it was about the pain caused, not about some magical mind, you know, attack or mind reading a thing, which I think is in some ways like response,

I think any depiction of torture is questionable because we know that torture is not an effective way to get good information. But I also think that there is something that in the version of this where they just reach into his mind and cleanly pluck out the information that they need, and it's, and it's, you know, no blasting harm was done, and it wasn't even that uncomfortable for him. It potentially sanitizes what is still metaphorically torture. And so I prefer this to that.

I prefer that it's clear that what they've done is hurt him until he gives in than that they, I mean, and also, as we do come to see, he does not give them good information, good information. He gives them mediocre information that leads them into a trap. So in that way, it is a good depiction of, a true depiction of how torture works. It is not, it is not that he does not give them where the children are, which he absolutely knows where they are. he instead leads him to his own lair where there are traps waiting to blast them so he can once again get away I just wanted to uh when Natalie is talking about earlier there with Asoka's reaction all this I am thinking about the difference between this and yeah like you cited cloak of darkness where she was ready to sort of play that card and I think there's two things one is that like it's one thing to take it on yourself to be like fuck it I will be the the bearer of the sin I'll do the one the I'll do the thing that I know I'm not supposed to to do, but I'll do it because it needs to be done. It's a

very different thing to see your three mentors without batting an eye I'll be like, so we're just going to crack this guy's brain, right? And they're like, yep. And it's clear like that's kind of a routine thing. Not like you know, it's not doing it every day, but like

it's a tool they use. The other part is she never intended to torture anybody. She was always like, I've got to be willing to seem scary. I've got to lean into people's fear. I'm going to use fear, but I'm going to use fear responsibly in order to like play, you know, to play this guy. And that's different from them just kind of without a hesitation being like, nope, we're going to follow through on this and we're just going to do it. And so yeah, it is kind of a illuminating

moment for Porosoka. I think there's something about the consequences. of this specific act. Like the setup is that doing this, using the force on a strong mind could destroy it completely. Like the fact that if they are unsuccessful in what they're, in trying to extract information from Cadbane, there might not be any information left to extract. Like who knows how, you know, like the way that they frame it

is like we could, we could lose him entirely. The same, you know, as the torture in, as Cadbane torturing, yeah, Polo. And they take that risk. And they only, I feel like they only let up because the information is too valuable. Like they don't, if, if they didn't have the risk of losing it entirely, I don't think that they stop Maybe the other reason they stop is because he gives them the information

Anakin says he's going to do it again and that's when he breaks that's when he says yeah fine I'll tell you He doesn't Like they were about to do it again potentially Yeah So So he lures them to a saw layer

I'm sorry I'm so sorry I have one thing to say we're running long time This is important. Fanfic light, alarm going off on the scene where. Obi-1 and Mace Windew look at each other in the ship. No better opportunity to have two people make out with each other than in a stressful situation when you're going to be stuck on a spaceship for a little bit.

This is true. And that I contacted these shows like, yep, yep. There's the moment. There it is. The thing is, the thing is, Cadbane is just in the back seat. He's not like in the rear compartment. Sure. I mean, you can still do it.

It's just one of those things are like, you also better write some money. You can't be cat bait in the cockpit. There aren't handcuffs good enough in the world. Whoever writes it is going to figure it out. I'm just saying the opportunity is bad. Yes, I understand. Hear me out.

What if they're hesitant to give in to the feelings? And Bain sort of begins commenting comedically about the obvious tension in the room and like kind of urging them to like give in to these desires because it's so obvious that this is. the right thing to do and can't they see um and so even though bain is kind of a monster even he can sort of see just the raw attraction there right but it's still one of it's still one of bain's tricks by by egging them on they become distracted and cad bain makes his escape yet again

but then they don't even care like they're just like you know i'm glad it's just us Yeah, this is fantastic. I love it. So, and that's, it's not a story that Jedi'd like to tell. So, they, they lose track of Bain, but they put together. His laser grid comes online and, yeah. And he slips through a fake wall like it's an ancient cursed castle. It's so good But really quickly

Like they figure out that this is a Like this is a Moustafar thing They do forensic analysis on Bain's spaceship And they discover And they use some math to figure out like Where could he have gone on this tank of gas And bam, it's Mustafar It's Mustafar

So they go there. This becomes a question on like the Jedi middle school like test next semester. This is why they have the story problems. So you can apply these concepts to things like where did that bounty hunter take the Jedi younglings? And the answer is to Mustafa and we get a very creepy, like it's a creepy sequence of like. there's this craiche inhabited by these

like evil like the evil versions of the uba uba droid they're like the insect versions for our Patreon listeners

in terms of what their designs are not the whereas the ubaubas are bugs different yeah you want to know

what the difference between a bug and an insect is Patreon.com slash civilized we should we should make sure

that a audio file goes up on a wiki somewhere so people from just like here side by side uh bug versus insect but anyway so these are like that yeah these nanny droids fucking suck these are like when um yanos and ghostbusters two appears as evil mary poppins to steal uh dana's child and it's all fucked up and stays with you for years even that movie's not very good but like listen i love that movie you're right it's not very good but i love ghostbusters too i can't help it me too especially like when vankman's decide to start needling Vigo the Carpathian. That's great.

That's great. But the other thing is, you have hollow Sidious, just capering and scampering and, like, in his very frog-like, creepy way, like, sort of, what's the way? He's kind of mongering the Jedi children. He's a very, very, like, goblin, like, he-he-he-he-ha. As he sort of unfolds, that he's basically going to turn these younglings into his sleeper agents within the Jedi Order and sort of bind them to his well. And you realize, like, this is the rough draft of him taking out, like, he's one way or another, he's going to get the young ways. He's going to turn the Jedi Order into an order of no future.

Um, and the first version of this is he's going to turn all the younglings against them and turn them into kind of, uh, yeah, I guess like, his minority report crew. Yeah. Army of forced talented spies trained in the dark side to peer into every corner of the galaxy from my, from afar. All my enemies would be helpless against such vision. This is literally the thing. Fails. I will have lost nothing. Right. That's, it's so good. It's so good. Um, it's such an efficient episode. So, again, I think all of these episodes have felt more efficient than normal, which isn't, which doesn't mean that nothing happens in them. In fact, a scene we barely touched on, we don't need to, is a little exchange between Palpatine and Anakin in his office, in which Anakin talks about how he thinks the bounty hunter is tied to someone much more powerful and Palpatty kind of shrugs it off smartly. But be like, oh, do you know, do you have any idea who it might be? Do you know, how patience, my boy. And the fact that this episode could be so dense with stuff, all these.

different places, all of these little illusions about the way the Jedi you know, recruit quote unquote children and what that means in terms of their place in the galaxy, the relations between the parents and the Jedi, all that stuff is in here.

And also, again, Cad Bain's Trick, you know, Bain's tricks happened throughout this episode too. And it doesn't feel like, what was the fours season one episode even doing with all this runtime? You know what I mean? Like, think about the, what's the episode with Duku? it's the it's the Honda episode

nothing happens in that episode you watch an episode like this and you're like wow they really missed it in season one they just couldn't they were just repeating things throughout an episode in season one because they didn't know how to fill that time but they didn't they didn't have the technology or the processes in place to do that efficiently

and go from place to place but I just am very impressed by it so same before we leave Mustafa I have this last Faloni quote about Mustafa. He says, Mustafa was a big, big deal. You know, with the explosions of the lava, the cracks in the facility, how are we going to do all that? That alone would have killed us in episode one. Mustafa was also a big deal for me, because I argued with George about it. It's really

Mustafa, George Lucas, obviously, because that's where the whole thing with Vader happens and the end was Anakin. Should he really be there? You find your fan self clashing with the story that George wants to tell. Because we, as fans, hold everything, oh, it's so precious to me, and nobody can know about Mustafa. Well, it's a mining planet, and they probably have a business. I'm sure things are exported off to Mustafa. We take it to such an uber serious level, and it always takes George to snap you out of it sometimes, and to say, but this is a great ending to the trilogy, don't get so hung up on it. That Revenge of the Sith is so much later. I mean,

you can dwell on that stuff or accept that this is a story that really works. And so the idea that Thelone was going to Lucas and being like, well, we can't end this arc on Mustafa. And Lucas was saying, no, of course we can. It's sick. It's really interesting. And the picture that paints to me, and I have no idea if it's true, is that, is this a situation where he gets the script?

And I was like, well, you can't, you can't take it to Mustafa. And then Lucas gets called in at some point. To be like, yes, you can. Yes, you absolutely can. Don't worry about it that much. It's okay that Anakin's been to Mustafa once. before in his life. Yeah.

I like that. I like that a lot. It reminds me that George Lucas calls them laser swords. Right? Yes. Like, one of the funniest things to me is George Lucas doesn't have the relationship that so many of the fans of the franchise have. To him, they'll always be laser swords.

They'll always be, he has a bunch of other things that he says like that with like various battle droids and shell he doesn't call them battle droids you know he calls them whatever the little robot guys or whatever it is you know what i mean um and i love that about his relationship to the work because it it ends up suggesting that like he understands it at that workman like level not at a he knows what he knows what he's making is not high art and that like the lore is important to get right but that it's not you don't have to be in that mode at the whole all the time you I respect that. Yeah.

But also kind of illuminates why the tension between, like, there'd be a positive tension between him and other creators working on this stuff, where, like, his willingness to fudge things and someone else's, like, commitment to, no, but this also has to cohere as a world would be the best thing for Star Wars, whereas queuing too much to one side or the other, probably the wrong. way for Star Wars to go. Just generally speaking, yeah. I wanted to shout out

them, you know, trying to escape. Anakin and Asoka get the, you know, win the fight against the nanny droids. Anakin force grabs one of the babies to him, which was really good.

And then he like gets to the door as it's like, you know, increasingly vertical, like the whole place is going, you know, into the lava. And he's like, where is Artu? And, like, Artu immediately opens the door. And it's like, I'm right fucking here. I have the door open. And then he's just like, no thank you.

No, like, shout to you, Artu. Like, he just, like, goes past. Artu's just, like, kind of standing there. Like, I've always here. I got you. Yeah. Always stressful Artu has your back. But, yeah, it is a stressful situation.

But luckily, we are, we, you know, the khyber crystal is examined, or the khyber crystal is destroyed, and there's no evidence that it was copied. Which, okay, if you can make copies of the fucking khyber crystal, I know. I'm not going to go down. It's a list of dames, like just copying and pay. Also, why didn't he send the list? Cidius I think he wanted the leverage

Yeah Cidius was like Go get four of those Pick out four Go get them Why was Cidius like Send that over Yeah it's weird

That he's like You go pick him You've done a good job More evidence that he's not a Micromanager Remember I said This is that Patreon episode He's like

Yeah pick four of him You decide He trusts Cadbane's judgment Cadbane knows What a good spile Look like one day So It's very funny

Yeah. This was the first time I felt like, because like Palpatine's characterization sometimes feels really weak compared to the like figure that he's supposed to hold in the universe, right? Where he's both this mastermind and seeing the eye and working all these different angles. But like he's never like, especially in the prequels, I never felt like he was very compelling on screen. But him like turning around to say, I lose nothing. If this doesn't work, really felt like the first. first moment where it's like oh shit like he's thinking about this but also in a way that's like actually terrifying totally well and also like you can't just foil a plot and say like and that's it save the day like the guy will just keep coming and as long as he's undercover and doesn't like tip his hand there will always be some other way he's undermining things and some other way that he is seeing a way to, like, twist the world and institutions around him to carry this off. And so, again, like, we have, this is juxtaposed with the Jedi rushing around to treat symptoms at all times, like, always being reactive, always being, like, firefighters rushing to the latest blaze and never looking for the arsonist, really. and yeah that's

The episode wraps with with Yoda saying the future of the Jedi is uncertain but also all of those motherfuckers are going to sit there and wait until the next thing to react to like they're not going to they're just not going to do anything about that

like if the fact of your order is uncertain like you're pretty confident in that but all you can do is is be passive and wait until like the next threat rears its head is just is that is that just like a deeply held false confidence in the integrity of the order itself that like oh we're too we're too big to to break like we're just we're we're we're untouchable I don't understand it When I see that stuff I often think it's well we can't fix it this second

We're not going to fix it in this meeting It's you just got back from this thing Let's and this is a double-edged story Because I think that's the right call Sometimes during a crisis is like Y'all just got back from some wild shit We can't solve this today But there is no clean day

There is no day coming where it's going to be like, oh, yeah, today's the day, we finally get to address the future of the Jedi. And that's the bad position they found themselves in, right? Like Asoka without her lightsaber, it's hard to see what the win is for them here because they have to undo a lot of harm that they've done to themselves over generations. They can't go back in time and murk that dude who fucked up the Jedi code. Patriot accounts are civilized. They have to, they have to, like, live with what they have now and inside of that, that scope. And they're, like, so much on the backstep through this entire arc, right?

Like, the, the thing of being reactionary, the thing of, like, oh, shit, we have a list of kids, and immediately, this is the biggest thing to us. And then having to be, like, oh, we're not even going to consider a different option than trying to break this dude's brain. Right. Like, it's, it's so much. firing off think about what they didn't get to do during all of this whatever else they were supposed to be doing

during this crisis didn't get done yeah well it opens with Obi-Wan being like man losing Felusha was bad news for the war and then like the next thing we see by the way when the Holocron is out there how many times they've been like

Anakin we can't spare any ships Cadbane making up with the holocron whatever you need son just how like we will like send our finest battleship uh to the idea that they were like yeah some clones died helping us get this but this isn't republic business this is jetti business is wild yeah well you know the clones are assigned to them yeah the clones were ordered by a jedi i guess so they're action figures right that's a good point they are action figures and not real people uh it also reminds me of the bit where bain

I think it's during the Gungan bit where someone is like she's safe now and Cadvain is like you really believe that you really think that love it yeah it's really good

I am really excited for his next appearance I hope he comes back I have no idea how long it is I don't know when he comes back but I'm ready yeah he's what's next for us

so I can't remember where we cut this off so we're next we've got sent at spy but then we are also going basically this is one of my favorite parts of clone wars. We all agree

attack of the clones did not do well in its last act. And the Battle of Geonosis not as impactful as maybe we wanted. Well, it would appear that Philonian company agree so they are re-racking the Battle of Geonosis

and we're going to do it all again but as like proper military sci-fi. I think the cut that we're making based on the list that we've pinned is next week is Senate spy and landing at point rain and then the next episode after that

will be the following three episodes so that will do it for this week's episode as always you can you can support the show on patreon.com slash civilized you may have heard some hints that we're having some good conversations over there and getting that deep lore

so go check us out on Patreon and if you already support us thank you so much for your support until then if you've been enjoying the show please rate and review us on the podcast platform of your choice

and I think to sign off we've got to say Cadbane may have done some things wrong you do have to hand it to him but with some caveats oh it's so good Justice Frito

Justice for Toto Hello. Oh. Thank you. Thank you. Oh!