A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 16: The Saleucami Arc & Lightsaber Lost (Clone Wars 31 - 33)

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Let's not beat around the bush: We have three episodes today, but one of them towers over the others. It's great to see our favorite Separatist general in "Grievous Intrigue" and it's fun to meet a new, Columbo-esque Jedi elder in "Lightsaber Lost," but over a year ago, it was "The Deserter" that confirmed just how fun doing a Clone Wars podcast might be. And boy, were we ever right.  NEXT TIME: Episodes 34 - 36 ("The Mandalore Plot," "Voyage of Temptation," "Duchess of Mandalore") Show Notes Fallen Clones: Too many to count. Special honors for "Front Door" "Grievous Intrigue" Featurette Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Austin Walker Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)  

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakene, joined by Ali Akamora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. With the Geonosis arc behind us, the Clone Wars is back with a trio episodes that capture its distinct modes. First we have a suspenseful action-movie adventure with grievous intrigue, then an episode that's ostensibly building on the arc of the previous episode, but is actually kind of a gem of a side story focusing on the clones and their beliefs and views. And then we're back to a kind of out of context,

out of time, Jedi detective story that provides Asoka with an opportunity to learn some unexpected lessons from an unexpected source. The kind of question if the right lessons taught or learned are the correct ones and the ones demonstrated by that episode. But we'll get there. We'll start with Grievous intrigue, however. And once again, the Jedi, as they often are,

they're trying to capture that dastardly General Grievous. They're trying to run him to ground. He's been up to his tricks. And the voiceover kind of implies that they finally figure out where he's going to strike next. But I'm not sure they have figured it out so much as that General Grievous finds Jedi Master Heath Kauff and tosses his shed.

It's rough That made no sense Imagine being Heathcoth And being like I'm gonna 1V1 grievous Being grievous right now He has the upper hand for like a split second at one point But like it's grievous plus like eight droids

And one of the droids almost beats Heathcath Straight up Oh yeah 100%. And the droids are just holding back I mean it's so good Yeah And so yeah the rest of the episode is a series of sort of deceptions and counter-deceptions

as first the Jedi think they've gotten a secret lead on where Eith Koth is being held prisoner. But wait, does General Grievous know that they know where Eith Koth is being held prisoner? And so we have a Jedi rescue plan underway on the one hand and a clever trap from General Grievous on the other. And the two plans sort of run alongside each other

as it becomes unclear who has the upper hand and it culminates in an escape from Grievous's flagship that sends everybody fleeing for the surface of the nearby planet Salucomai which doesn't sound like it looks on the page. Yeah, every time I look at it, I struggle to pronounce it. Selyukami. Salucomi.

Sleukami. Sleukamai, that's how they say. You got one of those cellu camis today. You got those in? I love, I love a salicammy. I love a salukami on a baguette. A little olive oil, a little vinegar on that. Some oregano on that joint.

You're good. Yeah, let's talk about Eith Koff and his, his boss battle. Okay, yeah. I mean, yeah, it is just ridiculous. I was like, oh, is this going to be like a, like a covert ops episode? The way that they introduced it of being like, Grievous' attacks have been hard to predict until now.

Like, I was like, damn, are we going to get some counterintelligence vibes in here? Are we getting... Absolutely not. Grievous just fucking shows up to their front door, to Eith Koth's front door, and just captures him real quick. Real quick.

It's a fun lightsaber fight, but like, that's kind of it. I, yeah. But the droids around, like, he's got... like eight or nine commando droids, right? Around, around him. And they're just, they're just, like,

corralling Eith Koth. They're just standing there, like, hyping up Grievous. Like, yeah, you go, man. We got, you got this. But at any time, any of them could have just zip, zoop, like, just... That would be it.

Yeah. That would be it. Yeah. I love that they don't get involved until Eth Koth, like, knocks out of the like zone that they're creating now they're like okay it's fair game yeah yeah totally 100% those the first set of like commando droids there's the commander droids and then there's

the whatever the i forgot the ones with the light wing sticks are called um but that first set just drop all of the clones the clones just lose also like like eathcots guard or whatever it's not it's just not breaking well for them now that there are this new like mid-tier droid in the The ones that have like big swords and like slightly bulkier heads But not all the way up to like top level They've got that like Matt Gray Finish on the artwork too

And that's how you know they're serious It feels like they have like better dexterity too Because they're like joints are so better design And they don't talk They barely talk at all Yeah And they're like slightly short They just seem more nimble

Like they're slightly like more agile just in the way that they their fight style is just like not as rigid as the commando droids and it is funny actually because we first saw these guys um gosh on that episode on that listening post i think where uh that's right we're on rookies and they didn't seem quite as menacing there but it like now that we know what they are and what they represent it is weird how like the design does echo sort of the harmless cuteness of the battle droids in some ways, but there is kind of a, there is kind of a weird, uncanny menace to them. They look goofy, but they're also like incredibly cruel. And I think that juxtaposition is actually

working to make them kind of a spooky villain, uh, because it is a bit like, it's a bit like remember in the movie adaptation of iRobot where like all these ridiculous like Butler droids like turn red and just kind of go bad. It's on the one hand kind of, kind of silly because the model's a little bit silly. But the other hand, it is a bit like a big, ungainly cartoon character has just decided to try and kill you. They look like evil Volkswagen Beatles, like bugs. And like in general, in general, they look like car, like the regular battle droids look like cars from like the mid-80s with like the boxiness. And then these ones look like the early 2000s, like the curve has come into the car design. And, you know, it's Matt Black.

and here to take your money. Even that, like, fish mouth sort of echoes that, like, um, like, design that became ubiquitous in the 2000s. Right. But they're also, like, way more humanoid, too. Whereas the old riots have these, like, sharp edges. Sure. Way more, like, design.

Right. You don't see, like, you could say. You see, like, ribs and spine more than you see, like, pistons on these. They're good. I like them. Yeah. And it just doesn't seem like. if these things can basically roll up clones pretty easily at this point that seems like uh oh like

the clone is sort of like you're not going to get it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's model is the clone they're modeled off the biggest badass that could be modeled yeah and they're kind of getting out loaded we're not going to get a 2.0 of the clones i guess the clones could get better equipment better armor better weapons but are theoretically better which is where the Jedi have fallen down on this Yes, yes. Because they didn't actually like speck out this army. They just sort of, they literally went to war with the army. They were gifted.

They were secret stent. You go to war with the army, your secret santed. Not the army you want. I have a question about the next scene. But I guess I should do it really quick. Heathcoth, it's an interesting thing about Heathcoth. Maybe one of the only interesting things about Heathcoth is that he's a Zabrak, which is the same species as Darth Mall.

And it's fun to just look at a Zabrack that doesn't have the face paint, but still has like the face. I guess it's like tattoos or, or is that, what's up with a Zabrack face? Is that tattoos? Is that scars? Is that like face plating? Why is it? Why are the lines on the face? What's going on there?

Those look like tattoos to me. I'm looking at them now. I don't know. I usually am looking at their horns. Fair. What do you think about the hair cuts? Because I thought it was a hood for most of the episode and then I realized it was hair. Not my faith.

Yeah. Not my faith. Like, man's not using conditioner. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like if you have good horns, you probably let your hair go because the horns are doing all the work. And you just can't do that. Horns look like a hairdo.

So it's like, it's like your hairdo is wearing a toupee. I feel like just shave it at that point. You know what I mean? Yeah. Let the horns speak for themselves. But you don't. Your horns are different. Your horns have different configurations.

You don't want to look like Bart Simpson. But you don't want to look like Bart Simpson. Okay, true, yeah. Like, damn, people out there, why are you dragging Bart? I'm sorry. I do like that the fight unfolds like a, like, in a video game, the first time you meet the boss. Yeah. And you, like, mow down the first wave of, like, you know, higher level enemies he's got.

And then it's like, oh, here are the ads, and these are, like, elite enemies. And the boss is still going to stand outside the play area, like, waiting. And exposition at you as you're, like, fucking up all these, all these minions. Is this the first time? Go ahead. I was going to say, is this, like, a completely new model for Grievous? Because he looks super different. I don't know.

That's a good question. He looks more triangle. He has bigger feet. He's introduced toe first in this episode, which I think is great. I don't know. No one has made mention of that in any of the supplementary material. None of the trivia says this is a new grievous model. I pulled the Faloni video for us to watch again this week.

I'm not going to try to make this like a recurring thing with the energy in it. We'll get there. At the end of this episode, I want to play the Flonny video. Or at the end of the episode, at the end of this segment where we talk about this episode, I want to play it. But yeah, he does look. I imagine they maybe just did a refresh. I don't know. He looks like more defined.

Yeah. And I guess this was a particularly, this episode particularly showcase like Grievous's different movements. Like he was doing spider crab. He was doing all kinds of stuff. So I feel like that maybe enhanced, having that example kind of enhanced the feeling of Grievous being this new, having like a new edge to him. You know, kind of put something together for me. This episode does feel a bit like a companion, too, Lair of Grievous, where Lair of Grievous is all about the things he's lost,

his sort of discomfort with parts of himself, the way he's still kind of a work in progress. And here, when he's being observed by the Jedi, he's always sort of putting on the front and he is, like, fully engaged in the battle, he is fully utilizing all the various things he can do, right? he does do those different movement types. We see him using everything but like the little stomach blaster that he carries,

but like he definitely goes to the like threshing machine thing a lot just to like dominate space and fill space in this. And it does very much feel like at a later point in this episode, some like the question is put to him like, what is all this for? And the answer is these moments where he gets to bring it to the Jedi. And so after he brings it to Heath Coth and takes him hostage, he immediately cuts a hostage video with Heath Coth to send the Jedi, which the Jedi, as you do, conduct a student assembly. Brough. Roll the little VCR in the TV into the classroom.

Hey, kids, Yoda's going to be your substitute teacher today, and he's got something to show you. this is why we fight want to see Jedi Master Heathcock get tortured too bad you're going to that was I could not believe I could not believe

the end of that little bit where he's like okay younglings hurry along I was like younglings they're just hanging there's a couple of them too it's weird that like why are they there who chose to bring those specific younglings

are we just trying to radicalize these like three people to be the anti-grevis squad? I think so. The whole thing reeks of like showing, showing an enemy of the state and being like, this is who we're up against. Look at how brutal and terrible this person is. Meanwhile, he's like, I don't go fuck about your state. I'm Republican. I don't care about. I'm not here for what Duke's politics are. I'm here because Jedi are evil and I'm here to stop them. I wish we got more of that this episode. That's like my biggest beef is just what. Grievous says how much he doesn't want, he's opposed to the Jedi, but we don't get any explanation of why that

is. He doesn't ever, we know, we know why here on this show when we did our research. By that, I mean, we read a letter, someone sent in explaining it to us. If you missed that, it's in one of our previous Q&A episodes, and it's wild. Just like a quick summary of that is the Jedi, according to the, I want to say the Revenge of the Sith novelization, two Jedi worked as mediators on behalf of, you know, investigating a situation where Grievous' home planet was colonized by a mega corporation and all of his people were, like, genocided or many of them were. And he was reading a rebellious faction. And like everything about what the corporation was doing is, you know, very clearly wrong and not like in our, we do a leftist Star Wars podcast way.

in the, that is how the book treats it. And the Jedi kind of were just like, well, they're here now. And it seems like they're doing everything by the book at this point. Maybe we'll find them a little bit or something. And that is it and did not like make it illegal that came back and ruled in the, effectively in the favor of the corporation. And grievous was like, nah, fuck that. Go find that Patreon episode to hear the whole thing.

Yeah, kill all Jedi. But we don't get any of that here. Yeah, I wish, I was, I wish we, I was, I was anticipating it, especially in the later confrontation between Obi-Wan and... Yeah, same. And him. I was, like, waiting for something more... Because he brings up again.

He's like, I don't care about Dugu's politics. I'm like, no, what do you care about? Tell me the thing. Yeah, just say it. Say it. Anyway, Allie, you had something... You had to think of a second new, Ali. Oh, no, no.

I was just going to see, the room that the Jedi are in looks like a break room. And I don't know why Yoda was, like, taking the call on that, like, table. The teacher's lounge. It was so confusing. Maybe he just popped up as Eith. where he's like Hey he's calling Hey

Maybe he's going to do a little WebEx lecture for us Oh no This is awkward Hey Grievous It killed me It absolutely killed me

When I forget who's I think Obi-Wan says it Obi-Ovon's like Intelligence reported Grievous was nowhere near Salukamai And then Yoda goes Yes

But often inaccurate our intelligence is. I was like, oh my God, you guys are so fucking bad at this. It's absolutely washed. Just ridiculous. You are a fucking laughing stock of a general

of a fucking entire republic's army. It's ridiculous. Do you think Grievous paid extra money like getting a ringback tone to make his hologram red, or do you think that that's on the Jedi side? Whenever Grievous calls and they're like giving their red filter, that we know he's evil.

I think it has to be grievous. It's like his lamb skin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Grievous has had to hit the angles for sure. Did anyone notice grievous more coffee this episode than usual? Yeah, they're leaning in on that for sure. Okay. I hope we get more.

Again, I hope we get further development other than Obi-Wan just being like, you're more mechanical than ever or whatever. Yeah, I wonder if that was. something related to something that Obi-1 says in their confrontation. We'll get to that later, but I just... Yeah. Yeah, that felt very prominent to me compared to, like, any other time we've seen grievous. I don't even remember him really in Clone Wars coughing to that extent in a single episode like he did in this one.

He coughs a little bit earlier in one of the previous episodes, but not as much as this. And not as like, this is loud. Like, it's meant to... It punctuates. Yeah, and yeah, and he's like slowed down by it a bit every time, like when it happens, which is interesting. Last thing on this scene from me, the way that they, so they determine where Iskath is because he does a little like sign language secretly. None of the Jedi pick up on this. Commander Wolf watching from a different holographic position, you know, he's on like the foreword on this.

And he picks up on it, Commander Wolf is one of the clones who has a sick new cyber eye for some reason, by the way. Yeah, he's seen some shit. Yeah, he's someone's OC for sure, for sure. Yeah, he noticed it. Closed biggest bro. Yeah, that's exactly, yeah. He's his close biggest bro. And it's wild that Yoda is like, yeah, our intelligence game isn't up to snuff.

And then immediately like, oh, yeah, but the clone is the only one in the room who can notice the very obvious hand signals. Yeah, that Obi-1 speaks, like, nobody else, like, can interpret it. except Obi-Wan can kind of... So is it a Jedi thing? No, I think it's like Galactic Sign Language. I think it's just like... Oh, word.

I would bet like... You know, there's also military hand signals or a thing that get routine... Like, used a lot to communicate. And so it does... Jedi probably don't think of using that that often because they're like, I will just, like, transmit my thoughts.

Like, we're united in the force or whatever. Or whatever. Whereas, like, where, yeah, a clone is like, oh, yeah, no, he's giving the signals. But, yeah, they think, but they think Grievous has slipped up. They're like, ha, ha, ha. Jedi Master Koff has put one over on him. By the time we get to the point at which Grievous is like, I know they're coming, I 100% thought that Grievous had made a fake hologram and had, like,

made Heath Coth do the hand signals to, like, just bring him right over. I was like, this is, this is Grievous's grand plan. Like, it felt, this is one of the best grievous, long game episodes that we've had. It's still pretty good, though. I think he still knew he would get, because, like, an important thing is, he lets him, he lets Heathcoth be free on the ground with arm motion for that call. He doesn't have him up in the, the T-Pose, you know? Or the praise the sun, like, why symbol?

Well, yeah, TV 94, his super droid, I forget what they're called. The human... Tactical droids, I think. Yeah, tactical droid. Put some sick art on his chest also again. Yes, his art is sick. Also, the clone, like the green clone armor I'm really into. Yeah, great.

But, yeah, he said General's prediction of your tactics has been 100% accurate today. It's like, Grievous knows every beat that they're about to hit. Yeah. Which is even, like, it's even, um, even impressive to me or something like that, indicating that, in fact, the tactical droids are just constantly, like the one in the, um, the, the, what do you, the Twilac planet arc, who was constantly judging the emir, um, uh, being like, well, this guy is an idiot. Uh, here we have why, you know, Grievous, for what it's worth, Grievous does kill a lot of his own tree. It's true. But when the tactical droids are like, damn, you got to respect Grievous, though. That's how you know he's an effective commander.

Yes, it's true. Yeah, as I was thinking about, it's like, Grievous understands that the nature of this war is like he has pieces that move like rooks and knights that all have the value of pawns. And so he can always exchange those at a good rate. And he knows the war he's fighting, or he knows part of it, at least. Um, yeah, no, I do, I do love the tactical droids, uh, they're so into themselves. Um, yeah.

And he, and tellingly, Grievous is playing it close enough to the vest that the droid doesn't even fully know what's up. Like, the droid does think, like, we are overmatched here. And he begs grievous. He's like, hey, we can't, we can't go in on these guys. Um, this is not the play. And Grievous is like, you know, just kind of trust me. And what we realize is, the two.

parts of this plan are Obi-Wan is going to slide into Grievous' DMs and taunt him and be like, you ain't shit. And Grievous is going to go kick his ass. And then while that is happening, Anakin is going to launch the rescue

mission for Eith Koff and they're going to slip his little ship onto Grievous's flagship. And if all of this works well, They will rescue Eath Koth and capture Grievous. They're going to run the table on this. But all of this presumes Grievous doesn't know what the plan is. And Grievous up front is like, this is what Obi-Wan and Skywalker always do.

This is their iconic plan, like trick and split up. Yep. Which is a pretty cold read on these guys. It's not wrong. They do it every time. Like literally every single time. Also, it feels as if Grievous knows that he's not allowed to meet Anakin ever, and so he can do, he can always just focus down at Obi-Wan. It's like, well, Anakin can't kill me because we, will you first meet seven seasons from now in Revenge of the Scott, or revenge of, uh, of, uh...

The Sith. The Sith, yes, of course. Well, my brain just shut down there. Revenge of the Skywalker, obviously. Revenge of the Skiwomened, yes. In a way. I want to give my first, uh, dead, clone shout out to the clone that had the next to the front door duty as grievous was

slicing that that that bridge door open I just felt so bad for that dude I just it felt so futile I mean obviously everyone else died too but just being right next to the front door as as as grievous the Jedi killer is walking in yeah unfortunately I None of the dead clones in this episode have names. And so they will not go in our... I guess I'll just... If people who don't read the episode descriptions, I've been putting all the dead clones

and also honorable mentions in the episode descriptions. And so unfortunately, it'll just be, you know, many unnamed this week. Okay. Can you put front door guy? Front door. That's his name, front door. Yeah. Um, yeah, better than cryer or whatever, cries.

Cries, that's my new favorite. We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there. We're an episode away still. It also killed me when, when, uh, Grievous was chatting with TV 94. And, uh, he's like, or maybe it was one of the battle droids or something, but they're like, sir, there are a bunch of ships coming out of hyperspace. And he just goes, are they Republic or separatists? Like, just so matter-fact, like, does not...

Okay. Which game plan are we running? Yeah, which one is it? And it just killed me. He's so chill. He's so chill. He's just vibing. Can I raise something about this episode that none of us have talked about yet?

And this is my big... I don't like this episode very much. I just say that here. I enjoy talking about it because I like you as friends, and I like talking about Star Wars with you. But I think this is a very... This is an episode... The note that I wrote down, I think, somewhere in here, is... This episode is like what I thought Clone Wars would be before I started watching it.

Competent sci-fi action show that breezily slides past anything interesting about the subject matter. He reiterates that he doesn't care much about D. D. politics, but it refuses to give us anything on why he hates the Jedi as much as he does. Why are A.D. Galia and E. Coth here. The thing I was going to say is, none of us have mentioned that A.D. Galia is the secondary character in here. Her name doesn't get fucking used in this whole episode, basically. They don't get any characterization besides Eith at the end being like, you should should have traded in my life to get. grievous, which, like, they wouldn't have gotten him anyway.

But why is this not an Asoka episode? Why do we spend so much time with this character who, if you don't know the expanded universe stuff, you don't know who 80 Gallia is at all? And she doesn't allow to do anything except, like, she'd be competent in action scenes, which is fine. But, like, coming off of the Barris Offie and Luminara stuff, it's just so rough to go into an episode where we get two new Jedi and neither of them get any sort of, you know, know, anything, any sort of shape in the characterization department.

Well, it felt like the whole episode was about this, like, subtext of Obi-Wan talking about this previous encounter that, or previous encounters that he's had with grievous. Like, when he's getting sent off on the mission, he says, the good general and I have a history. I'm sure he'll want it to even the score face-to-face. When they, like, are face-to-face with each other, they're, like, you know, they have this. It feels like it. It feels like it This is where he says that he's his mutilated body or whatever, right? Exactly. A futile quest for power.

Yeah, your place, a mutilated body and your place is Dugu's errand boy. Like the whole thing. And this is why I was thinking about grievous being more coffee than usual. The whole thing was kind of hinting towards at this like greater arc between Obi-Wan and grievous. that doesn't, we haven't really seen other than them just kind of butting up against each other and having, you know, various, like, fights over the past, you know, season and a half or whatever. But there hasn't been some do-or-die moment between them that would get you to this type of dramatic confrontation, like this type of one-on-one where it really feels like, it feels like

Anakin and Grievous Meeting and Revent of the Sith. Like, this was a mini version of that. And it didn't feel warranted at all. So I would agree. Like, I thought, I thought, I wrote down Adi Gaglia's name at the beginning of the episode. And then I just completely forgot about her because she was just never around. And it was just. It's a bummer, because I think she looks cool.

She has the head tentacle things going on that look like a hat. We love those. We love them. Anyway. Sorry to derail. I, uh, no, I mean, it's, it's. It's a pretty boilerplate episode. I do think it, I think the way it unfolds is, like, it is competent, and there's some pleasure in the competence.

Like, I enjoy the fight that, like, Obi-Wan and Grievous do have. Like, despite the fact we know it's kind of foreordained that they can't really, you know, damage each other too much. They do wreck that control room pretty thoroughly. It's a pretty good fight. And we do get, yeah, we get Obi-Wan trying to get at, like, why are you doing this? And again, we only get Grievous saying, you know, what's his motivation? Well, I'm the leader of the most powerful droid army of the galaxy has ever seen. And Obi-Wan's response, and this is kind of point to where the next episode is going to take us.

But it's an army with no loyalty, no spirit, just programming, what have you to show for all your power, what have you to gain? and General Grievous channels Noah Cross from Chinatown here and says a future, a future where there are no Jedi. And I think, again, I do really wish he would enunciate why that is important. And I do kind of feel like it's one of those things where it's like, oh, no, you're a side character, Grievous, not everyone knows what your beef is. Your epic origin story is unknown to a lot of these folks. And so there is, in these scenes, he's like, I just hate the Jedi.

and you know what you did and everyone's like I really don't who are you look the Jedi archives are not comprehensive we know this we don't know Wikipedia they are not but no no yeah they don't they're like I don't know who you are man I'm sorry and yeah and I meanwhile the trap is sprung in Anakin and you know they're trying to rescue Eith um but They're ambushed by the tactical droid. TB 8, TB, 8, name? TV 94. TV?

Yeah. Oh, I thought it was like TB, like, you know, Tom Brady. Oh, Tom Brady. Tom Brady. I do enjoy the dark amputation comedy that ensues as the tactoid is going to, like, blow the nuke on the bridge and they cut his arm off and he's like I gotta get that arm because that's what the detonator is

and after a whole rigamarole he picks up the arm with his other arm and then tries to press the button with the arms that been cut and you see the actuator on the shoulder just sort of flex as he's trying to match the button and realizes oh like droid phantom limb

got him and then they just kill him he could have just moved his fucking finger over an inch and tapped it I was losing my mind I was like, oh, my God. He was making a little production out of it. He was going to be like, aha.

And he should have just nuked it. He was in it for the performance. Yeah, he shouldn't have tried to, like, you know what it was. He was dancing in the end zone, but he was on the five-yard line. So we were with Deshaun Jackson situation. Yeah. So I enjoyed that stuff. And then basically both, like, Eiff is rescued.

Um, but Grievous cuts his way off that ship and, and he cuts his own, his own, one of his own droids off the ship to, or as he throws him away and gets in the, the escape pod instead or the landing craft. Yeah. And it's interesting a real bloodbath of a Jedi. Like this is, again, was this worth it? Uh, because Grievous without hesitating is like, kill both ships, open fire point blank on that Jedi cruiser. Um, Like all those dudes, Obi-Wan sent to the bridge to take control of the ship again? Yep. Dead. Yep. That was going to be my second dead clone shout-out for this episode is the two guys Obi-Wan ordered to the bridge

like 10 minutes before fucking grievous just blew it up. Felt really bad for them. How many people were on that ship? I feel like maybe a lot. Like maybe the whole. the whole crew was still there except for like Obi-1's immediate squad who also got killed

but remember grievous has killed like dozens of people on his way there and back probably too so like and this is not one of their full-sized like proto-star destroyers this is like a smaller version so maybe it's not that many but it still seems like a lot of dudes died

on this on this plan and I do like it's a good sequence the the battle in the docking of like corridor connecting the two ships as they as their connection collapses

as the Jedi cruiser crashes and the grievous flagship is trying to break away again pretty grim stuff there clones being sucked out in the space and yeah that was the whole point of

Adi Gaglia being in this episode was for her moment She shoots the whole... Yeah, you're right. Cody must survive. Canonically, he does, and so, of course, yeah. He must.

Yeah, and then they need Anakin to come back around and rescue them. Now, I did skip over one thing. There was a point where they did have to decide whether they were all going to go try to cut off Grievous as escape or just send one of them. Aniken decided, weirdly, he was like... Like, I'm going to take, I'm just going to escort this guy to the shuttle. And so, yeah, so he is not the one who tries to cut off Grievous. Yeah, he sends Adi. They can't meet.

Yeah. Which there's that, that right there is a decision that feels, yeah, just tie to, we know they don't meet. Because that's the most, going to fight Grievous is the most Anakin thing that he would do. And like, he just doesn't do it here because he can't see it. They're really tight. Who could say? I mean, and the other moment being

when Obi-Wan there's a brief moment where we have that that exact thing Anakin chasing down grievous, but it's Obi-Wan in this moment where Obi-Wan is like, Grievous is so close I can get him. And I think it's Audie who's like, we gotta

go, this place is about to blow up. And Obi-Wan's like, okay, and then just leaves. Good point. He's like, oh, yeah, that's true. Okay, bye-bye. Grievous, see you in like 45 minutes when we land on the same planet. So the thing that does redeem this episode for me a little bit is at the end when, you know, grievous is going to take over the fleet battle.

Everyone else is going to pursue grievous on the surface of salukomai. Everyone's like, well, yeah, job well done. You know, we carried off the rescue. And cough does kind of make the point. He was like, I was not worth it. like grievous would have been the target like i would like i would have rather not been rescued if it meant getting grievous and i do think a thing that i like that this alludes to is um jenai are willing to sacrifice everyone but other jedi at times um and it's

kind of telling here that when kath says that i think koth is dead on accurate like in terms of the you know the scale of the war it would have been a fair exchange and he would have happily made that sacrifice, but neither... That's a queen for a king. Like, that's not, that's not, or it's a bishop for a queen, right? Like, that's a great trade. We don't even... Who is Heathcoth?

In fact, East Coth was dead before this episode. We'll get there in a second. Like, we don't... Heathcoth isn't Yoda. Heathcoth isn't Mace Windu. I'm sure Heathcoth is out there doing good things, but like, grievous is grievous. If they just fought a straight-up fleet battle, they would have won that fight. Maybe Grievous gets away because Grievous tends to do that, but that would have been a substantial victory in terms of numbers, or in terms of fleet size, at least.

Maybe not in terms of numbers because we know they could just build more droids. But yeah, if they had actually just gotten Grievous here, that's a trade that they make with clones day after day for less for smaller wins, as we'd learn again next episode, as is reiterated again. Um, well, and Anakin's response to it, which is the most not Anakin response ever is, uh, fuck what did he say? He says, this way you get to live to fight another day, right? And he's beat, and it, and usually when he says something like that, it's like through gritted teeth, like he's, it's not genuine. But in this, it was like the most empty, like, ah, yes, we get to live. another day like who are you like Anakin was just not not not you not your Anakin today no he wasn't he was just like he was like just moving the action moving the

plot along but not actually a part of it in his characterization at all like he was just there to pick up Heathcoth basically he just wasn't there was nothing about him that was I have this feature at oh my god I don't hit play yet because I need we need to come in at the same time because the energy off the jump on this is incredible um and his enthusiasm you do remember I came off of this episode being lower on it than most of you so and going here to be like okay what type of deep shit are we going to get from philone because this stuff can always turn around an episode for me hearing them talk about something um but just know where the the the the F or the energy is and And then also know, going into this, that part of what he's responding to is a fandom response that says,

Heathcalf died in episode two. Okay. Well, and he'll explain some of it. Well, okay, ready? Three. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, you're ready?

Okay. Three, two, one, go. Grieve's intrigue is your kind of episode. If you haven't seen it and you haven't, too bad, because you really want to see this episode. It's classic Star Wars. I mean, right off the bat, lightsaber fight. I'm fucking done. When does that happen?

Last time, Reven's a sick. It's right in the game. Lightship fight. Bleu my mind. I couldn't believe it. What is going on? What is going on? You know, there's the whole thing.

Dave, is Heathcost still alive? Because I thought he was on a gun ship and Gino's just, I didn't see him die. I didn't, I don't know. I looked up in the source books. I emailed Leland Chee. He sends me back a Holocron. From the script from episode two,

when he thought he was killed. I talked to Pablo. Everyone seemed sketchy on it. Yeah, it says Eifcoff is among the fatalities included. George said he could kill him. But so often inaccurate, our intelligence, Eve. And I said, I am fucking good.

Yeah. Okay, there's the answer. So Eith Coff is a lie. Originally, Originally, Eif Coff died. I don't like that Heathcoth dies at the beginning of this episode. And I'll tell you why. Because too often we introduce a character in the Clone Wars.

And he's really cool. And then he dies. And you go, wow, that's a really cool character. I can't wait to do more. Oh, he's dead. We can't do anything worth it. I'm always saying this. Yes. So I said, you know what?

We're going to save Heathcote. you all took a great risk rescuing me. Well, at least we all live to fight another day. I swore more was coming. Well, we're going to save Heathcoth. And?

And Star Wars Season 2 available on DVD right now. Magic of rewrites. Yes. So to unpack a little bit of what he said that we maybe didn't hear through our laughter. ETHCath is in a gunship that blows up in episode two. They show him blow up. And in the script, it says he's among the casualties.

So I guess he decided, Follone decided, we need that Heath Coth guy, got on the phone, called Leland Shee, who I believe is the keeper of the holocron, which is like the lore master of Star Wars. Leland Chee called Pablo Hidalgo, who is another, yes, who is another important, like, chief creative guy. Between the two of them, they are like the lore, the head of lore for Lucasfilm. And then they both said he's dead. And so, Filoni said, well, let me just call George. And George says, yeah, you could use that guy. And so now he's alive again. Because of course he did.

Oh, does that ever feel sketchy, too? you talk to the holocrine master and you don't get the answer you want. You're like, I'm just going to talk to George. Why not just make another fucking... Yeah, why isn't this guy important to you? I don't know. Make a new one of this guy.

It's not like this guy... Again, it's not like this guy had a bunch of characterization in episode two or here. Just, like, his design is fine, but like, just do a different Zabrak. Exactly. I don't get it.

Anyway, thank you for humoring me. This, Faloni's... Also, Rob, I'm glad you had a cup nearby. not have an explosive spit take on the screen I did not I thought I was safe yeah

I was like okay yeah the energy is weird it's gonna be fine and then it got weirder it got weirder is this his vibe for all of these no he's normally not this normally he's like oh yeah a lightsaber lost well in this one

we had an interesting thing where they were going to be in croissant and so I thought like oh we should do something where we're doing a little bit of the background of the war and blah blah blah And so we'll have the speech from Palpatine. And it's really just for the super fans. But that's his line normally. Circles, ovals, etc.

Right. Well, like, I think whenever he does a circles, ovals or a, is Heathcath dead or a live thing, I'll set. I'll, I'll excerpt those for the podcast, you know. He, like, he, he has to be fucking stoned out of his mind doing some of these. Like, some days, it was a Saturday and they had to film some pickups, but he, like, already wrote it off for the day and then they called him in and he was like man i'll be there i guess i guess yeah come someone could pick me up i can't drive uh and then they just we get circles and squares and ovals and then we get fucking izith koth alive i guess that's what just happened and i'm so grateful

for it listen i i love it this is this is delicious food to me it's fantastic lightsaber fights what does that ever happen in star what does that ever happen so i think he means i think it took me a few watching of this. I think he means what is it that we get a lightsaber fight in the opening seconds of a show. And I still think he's wrong. I'm so sure

we've had them in this show since Revenge of the Sith. Filoni is the Joker. Yes. To me. He is... You see clips like this and so much of Clone Wars starts to come into perspective when you realize... He thinks very deeply about a lot of stuff.

But also, he is just an excitable nerd about a lot of this shit and picks his favorites because they're his favorites you know. Yeah. And because he can.

Because he can call fucking George Lucas on the phone and be like, hey, bud, I want to bring this homie back because I like his horns. Yes. The opposite also happens where we'll get there.

Lightaber lost comes from George insisting there be an episode where someone loses an important weapon to them. And I believe that's because he likes the Corasawa movie stray dog, which that whole episode is just stray dog, but less, but much worse, yeah.

It's fine. Oh, boy. Stray dog's just great. What are you going to do? Yeah. Well, yeah, stray dog's about, we'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. Stray dog has things to say. Yeah, anyway. What's funny is, I was like,

is he wearing the same clothes as when circle cut versus square cut? No, it's a different day. No, because he has the hat on. Yeah. In the circle on when he has the hat off, It's a different day. I was sort of wondering, like, I was kind of with Natalie where I was like, is this just the same day where he's just like they call him in and he's just like, sure, I'll show up. And like, you get him, he's down on one, but then he's like mysteriously up on another take. But no, this is just, he was really jazzed.

How often does the hat appear in your feloni? Almost all of them are the hat. That one that I sent you was like the only hatless. Wow. Maybe a couple other ones. Circle gets a square. Yeah. Is you really a Mario hat situation here?

A Mario hat situation? The hat? Like the living hat? Yeah. Hat is Filoni. Yeah. And like without the hat, he's like, circle cut. I think about sometimes Yoda.

Or a ratatooie situation where it's like, Linguini can't cook when the rat's not up there and the underneath the toke. Yeah. Also, I... Let the cowboy hat cook. I have to say the fucking, the intelligence. insert into this was it's so funny

it's so fucking funny if you are out there and you're the ones who edited you edited these featureettes please let us know we just have some questions to ask off the record we just want to hang out yeah yeah I just want to tell you how much I love your work and your artistry on these I'm not

going to shake the image of that guy pouring over that book for my mind anytime soon for David to just be like I'm going to call George George, who we know does not really care about this shit. Right. Who calls them laser swords? Like, okay, there's another, I'm gonna, since we're in the, we're in the, we're in the Faloni zone right now.

Yeah, and I'm gonna do one final Filoni thing, which is the featurette for this next episode, the deserter, which we're gonna, you're gonna summarize in a second, and you know that it's an, it's an episode, there's a lot of deep themes and a lot of interesting, big picture things, including stuff that Filoni's talked about in these featureettes before. He's talked about those things. He's talked about clone loyalty. He's talked about whether or not this stuff is, like, the interesting ambiguity about, like, are they brainwashed or are they, do they come to really love their? Like, all that stuff is something he's touched on.

The featurette for this episode is all about how he was determined to get the Dajaric, the 3D chess game they play, perfect, just like in a new hope. And I need you to know that he does it all. He does, like, he does all the, he goes over how, like, they did the same exact. They made sure all the same monsters are there on the board. They made sure it was all the right number of tiles. They looked at the made sure that it was the right kind of claymation, low frame rate thing. And then when they showed it to George Lucas, Lucas is like, why don't you make it look smoother? And he had to explain to George that he felt like that.

It was true in the game in the world that like that table doesn't produce a higher frame rate. It's clunky like that. It's junkie like that. And George was like, that doesn't make any sense to me. but okay sure and Faloni has to be like sometimes George doesn't George doesn't understand

why we love things in Star Wars is like yeah okay good I'm I love George Lucas because of this so much that like he could be yeah that's sick put that in my movie but I'm not going to worship it like yeah yeah I mean I honestly can't

even get on the I can't I can't I can't attune to the Faloni's own frequency on this one because a oh wait okay yeah it would have to

I was thinking about technology so if a new hope is in the future yes it should have a higher frame rate it should have a higher

but it's like a beat to shit spaceship with a legacy console on it you know what I mean right yeah this like this is also

Star Wars technology is not linear true because like there are no battle droids in a new hope this is a classic thing

when these movies first came out, was like, where will all this cool technology go? Why does it seem like, which when you think about the arc of like, why does the technology at the height of this glorious republic seem better than after it descended into fascism and imperial, you know, a huge empire? I don't know, why, you tell me. But, but yeah, anyway. All right, so with the next episode, we ostensibly are following grievous down to the surface

of Silukamai for a pursuit. episode wait one thing one last thing on the last episode yeah i i have to say the the um the little intro quotes for these three episodes were were absolutely wild and the first one being for everything you gain you lose something else was just like i mean yeah like that's true but like if I gain a million dollars what am I losing my shitty apartment grievous yeah you like grievous get away in exchange for a million dollars it just isn't it worth the trade yes yeah i'd like a million dollars that would be nice someone offers you a million dollars to let this guy go would you so yeah yeah probably yeah it's like this like you you can get a 200 million dollars

but you have to, like, slap your friend. It's like, no problem, bud. I will give my friend half that money. Yeah, I'll pay him out. Yeah, don't worry about it. He's going to come out of this nice, nice. If you are a billionaire and would like to pay any of us $200 million to slap someone else on this podcast, I bet we could make it work. We could make it happen.

Indecent proposal, starring the Three Stooges. Anyway, yeah. And then this one was, it is the quest for honor that makes one honorable. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? I think it's trying to validate characters who don't need validation from the fucking Jedi wisdom book. The Jedi quote of the day calendar can fuck off with its input on the deserter. Yeah, so, Obi-Wan and the clones are descending to Silucomi to. run grievous to ground and that's going to be the overarching framework for this episode but really

the point of this episode is to get to something that happens early which is that they're basically going to stake out every single other landing pod that crashed because they know that grievous is trying to find one like a working radio and they have to split up and leading the other party of clone troopers is commander rex who you know is one of our standby characters among the clone troopers. He is the blue-armored sort of right-hand man of Anakin Skywalker. And he is now going off on his own on this mission, and it doesn't take long for him to be ambushed by those aforementioned commando droids. And he is wounded and taken to a nearby farm where

like the farmer well sorry it's half of a couple so a woman and her two kids are there on their farm her husband is somewhere else they let the clone troopers bring Rex in treat his wound but then the rest of them have to depart

and resume the pursuit of grievous and what comes to pass very quickly is that it turns out that the patriarch of this little family is a clone and he has fled the clone army and the cause to start a new life with a family of his own living as a small farmer on this backwater planet and immediately Rex has a problem which is that everything that Rex has been trained to do says that this guy is a deserter and needs to be brought in Um, not only, not only has he betrayed the Republic as far as Lex is concerned, but also Rex is kind of hardwired to find this morally offensive, uh, the choice this character is made. And so what we get is an episode where Rex is confronted with the life he could live if he fled this cause and has a debate with himself, uh, effectively about the

virtues or vices of this decision. And then the other half the episode is some Star Wars shit happening. Obi-Wan continues to pursue grievous, grievous, nightmare boss, not good for line infantry droids, if we're

being honest. And the two farmers, the farmer's adorable children do kids movie shit and they accidentally turn on a clone trooper a commando droid landing force

and so Rex has to defend this farmhouse and this family with this deserter and we get a cool gun battle and if the parallels to the Western Shane were not clear enough at this point

they will be by the end of the movie where literally Rex rides off into an identical shot from shame to resume the war. But as arch as I can be about this episode, I think that core of it where Rex meets the deser and they discuss this choice and why one finds it offensive and one found it inevitable works. It works both as writing. And I think it also works incredibly well as performance. And as animation. I think some of the expressions, the way these scenes are acted and acted in the way acting works in animation where like facial expressions, line readings, it all comes together really beautifully here. And there's a lot that is happening on the screen that isn't even

necessarily happening on the page. Yeah, I obviously unsurprisingly really liked this one, both for the kind of core content of the rex and cut conversations but also because of how well the rest of the time on the episode is used does up with grievous like doing a forced march with all the droids who are slowly powering down because they're not even being allowed a moment to rest and also because he has all his stuff up on the beast of burden instead of letting even one of them ride All of the little details of the rest of Rex's crew are interesting.

These are some of them even more kind of aesthetically distinct clones that we've seen. We see a blonde clone. We see a clone with the tattoo or the haircut words. Did you look at what they said? This is Kicks and he's the medic head medic. He's the medic and his thing is a good droid is a dead one. And, like, bro, you have, you have, bro, you droids in your crew. R2D2 is right there.

That's a droid. That's a good droid. You can't. Yeah. Can you not? Hello? Can you not? That is foul.

It's funny. We never saw the other side because it was just a swastika on there. We would have seen it if the camera ever. Come on. That is foul. I thought it was going to be like. It's rough. Mind, body, spirit or some shit.

I don't know. Some medic shit. Yeah, mind body spirit. Brotherhood, you know, like... Yeah, some fucking... I get it. You're in a war against droids. Yeah.

But the droids are all around you. You've medical droids on your team. You're a medic. That is nuts. That is fucked up. Is it nuts? The Obo-Dubon droid is a fucking... They're no good to you?

They're out of your delivery babies. Yeah, I got some of them to, exactly, yeah. The thing that gets me to is Wikipedia refers to this as a tattoo. It's not just like head shaving and it's going to grow out, and it's a phase. I thought it was, yeah, when I first saw I also read it as just hair where I was like, oh, he just had it. He went to the spot and got a fade

and also got all like the sick lines and then also was like, yo, send him a message. I want to be on the battlefield for the next two months. I want them to, when the sniper looks at me, I want them to try to read my hair instead, which will throw them off. It'll disorient them and then I'll get them. I mean, yeah, but you're also

probably mostly in the medical tent. Like, you're probably not actually encountering that many droids outside of literally the ones who work for you. So what the fuck, man? Okay, okay, wait, pause, though. Nevertheless, I still think he looks better than the blonde one. I mean, it looks cool. I just wish I didn't know what it means.

Like, because it's foul. That is just foul. Oh, maybe he doesn't know. Maybe, no, I'm sure he reads Arvash. But I was hoping it was going to be like, I got a bad conji on his bad congee tattoo. You know what I mean? mean. I bet. I like the dude also who, um, he's got his helmet decorated with the massive painted logo for the clone army. And if you take the helmet off, he's got the face tattoo

perfectly positioned in the exact same offset position. It's on the helmet. It's fascinating choice. Dedication. It's so funny. The clone is part of him. Yeah. I mean, there's a helmet. It's a helmet. I would like to say that the droid army should unionize. I don't think it's going to work, unfortunately, because they have a shut off switch and no one is afraid of hitting it, unfortunately. I felt very sorry for them

as they were trudging along the desert and Uvis was being really mean. It's just so funny. Revis doesn't even care about that luggage. What is that shit? He doesn't have luggage. He doesn't have shit that he's worried about, but he's like, no, I need,

you can't ride the, The Will de Beasts. I need these. I need these power converters or whatever. Yeah, that feels like a power move rather than like I value the contents of these packages. Like, it feels just like, no, fuck you guys. You walk on the ground while me and my shit just ride. Ride and comfort, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say, I like, I actually like the sense of place this planet has. Now, it's going to be kind of, we're going to get to that farm. It's going to be kind of idyllic. But I think the other thing I like about this, this whole episode, because they go from, the hunt begins in the day, it goes through the night. It has this sense of, like, they are fighting a war at the far-flung, like, edges of the galaxy in some ways. And this has a, they've landed in this, like, distant, wild, like, bucolic place.

And, you know, for, the whole thing, the sense of sweep and scale of like there's these small little groups of troops moving through this like huge all-encompassing landscape as they try to slowly figure out where in this massive landscape is is the next you know crash shuttle where is the next place that grievous is trying to go I think it like I like just everything about this episode I like I like the visual impression it makes um and i think it does a lot to give it a different vibe than a lot of the other like worlds they fought on or like crash landed on where they can feel very um well like in the in the plant with the pacifists uh the little the little prairie dog the lormon yeah yeah the lormon there's not

much to that right it's some really crude like you know here's a tree here's a big a big nut that is also their houses. And when they fight the clones, it's kind of, again, like sort of a bare landscape table that we see a lot in the first season. Here it's like forests, hills, fields, crops.

It's great. And I think that gives it this sense of also being a place where one could escape. Like I think it feels more real when Rex is confronted with the possibility of like, you can just light out and leave this war behind. This feels

like a planet where one could do that where one could just like walk away and never be found by all these troubles so often i feel like when we're on a single planet with multiple different environments they feel so segmented from each other like we are literally just like dropping in a different zone of the map or whatever but this this has been one of like the most cohesive even as there is like change in landscape. I mean, it's not super significant, but it feels more cohesive as every character. Yeah, there's like a progression. Yeah, totally, as they're moving through. Um, I like that Rex just gets got here. That the, that the commander droids again, just get the shot. They just set it up. They get the shot. It should be a kill. It's center mass. It's like right

in the solar plexus. It's like, I think the dude says, uh, kick says, like, if this was too inches to the left, you'd be done. Yeah. So, yeah, it would have been straight to the heart. So those, those, uh, those droids get killed, like almost immediately, but good hustle out there. Actually, don't they punch out? No.

And they try to run away and they get caught on the way out. Yeah, two speeders, two speeders head over to them while one tends to wrecks. Oh. And they over. Yeah. Good effort, command of droids. Yeah. No one will remember this. They put one center mask.

Like, what else? Yeah, exactly. No one will know about this. Grievous. have no idea your sacrifice. Oh, they did so well. Yeah. So he is carted off. They immediately, you know, realize that these weirdly cute little tiny elephant creatures near them are like large, placid, familiar with humanoids, like

animals, which means they're domesticated. And so they go looking for the farmhouse. They immediately find them. And it is a Twilock farmer and her two children. and the kids apparently have not been briefed on what the whole deal is because one of them is like you look like my dad and I feel like I would have made clear like hey you know it's just rude to talk about similarities people may have to dad you know people don't like it people don't like to hear that they look like daddy or if you see someone that looks like daddy press the daddy emergency button we have on the door or whatever. Yeah. And so I think the the Twilight woman, what's

her name? Sue. Sue. S-U-U-U. Sue. She plays it very cool. Like, she knows this is trouble. Does she? I think she does. Compared to the kids. I mean... Yeah, I mean, she barely wants to let them stay. Yeah. She tries to be like, we, sorry, you can't stay. here you got to go fine use the barn yeah what are you going to do i don't i mean she seems hospitable she brings them some fruit like she seems pretty hospitable yeah well once they're not

going to leave you can't like that's true they don't want to give her a choice they're like we're carrying this guy into the barn like he just yeah we're going to be here we're going to be here for one day like be cool but she doesn't seem very apprehensive of them do you know what i mean like she I feel like if I knew that these were the people that could, like, arrest my husband and take him away from me, like, I would be pretty shook by them being there, and I'd probably tell my husband to, like, hide or some... He wasn't there. I know. But he came home. Yeah, they've got...

I think he went in there. He knew what was in there. He wanted to have this conversation. Like, I think in the same way that... Rex has this revulsion toward this character. Yeah, right. Because he also desires what this character has, right? And that's Rex's conflict here.

But I also think there is a bit of, there is a bit of this character wanting to, there's a bit of vanity to it, like wanting to have this conversation with a clone, wanting to like sort of show what he's done. what he's made of his life. And so, like, for me, he knows Rex is in there. He's ready for the fight. He's ready for Rex to react exactly the way he does. And in so many ways, it's because he's been alone. They're all family. He's had this conversation in his head.

Like a dozen times, right? Dozens of times. And now he's going to get to have it for real. And honestly, it kind of goes exactly how he planned it, all said. Pretty much. You know, I think Rex is maybe, Rex doesn't falter in the end and doesn't, like, agree. that he should desert but like he makes all this you know cut makes all of his points and and we'll dig into them but rex effectively you know comes comes around on the idea that cut

has made a good choice a defendable choice or at least given the choices he's made is living his life well is living a good life given what he's decided to do right yeah there's a really interesting exchange in their first when they first meet each other where Rex immediately asks him for his rank and number and then he's like I don't care about that kind of stuff my name's cut lequine which is like the most like cowboy farmer man name um cut lequine um cut and run yeah exactly uh yeah i wonder if he got cut before the Lequain. Like, if his name, if his, if his clone name was cut, because they were like,

let's keep an eye on this one. The Twilocks, you're sort of like vaguely French, I guess. Yeah. Is this his botched attempt to be like, uh, yeah, I should probably have a twilucky name. Le, La, La Quain. I mean, I think his wife's name, right? That's what I assumed. Yeah, I thought it was his wife's name.

I also assumed, yeah. Sue Lequane. Yeah. I mean, it would be in Laquine. It also does sound like a cowboy. Yeah, it would be. But he would pronounce a Lequeen, for sure. Yeah, he would, yeah.

Bongiorno. Boniorno. Exactly. But then when Cut asks Rex for his rank in number, or what his number is, he goes, believe it or not, I have a name too. My name is Rex. So I was like, hold the phone. Are, is naming, okay, first of all, Lequine's kids are pretty old. They, I don't know.

We know where he's from. We, he's one of the first clones because he, he says when he deserts. He left after Geonosis one. Oh, genosis. He leaves after geonosis. Which is, is what, like, how many years ago now? One to two years ago, I believe. Okay.

Well, I don't know the, the growth rate of, uh, Twilocks, yeah. But those kids seem pretty old. Yeah, they do seem a little. Maybe they're from a previous relationship. Who could say? The like, you could say. The like skin-toned thing, like they were trying to communicate.

I do. Yeah, they're supposed to be. They're his kids. They're his kids. Yeah. But I was curious, like, is the name thing new? Because the whole thing, the whole exchange then becomes like, at some point they talk about names and something like that and he's like oh i gave myself a name

because uh i wanted to give myself a name and he's like uh or he's like it's easier uh to identify me by my like my superiors by my name and he was like easier than a number so then i was like when did the name thing start is the name thing new like have clones not always had their kind of little clone nicknames and has there was there a certain point at which like only some distinguished clones got names or i'm just very remember if like commander cody had a name an attack of the clones or are we to believe that all of the clones in attack of the clones were just rank in number i yeah i don't know because they may have been in that first battle because like his only experience of being a clone is cam is camino and that first battle and that is it

And so, like, it's totally conceivable that for that first battle, no one was given nicknames yet, and then they started to open up to that after the fact. I don't know. It's an interesting thing. The other thing, weird thing that this conversation implies is that, like, it's the Republic assigning those names and not the clones, like, we've assumed. Like, they're kind of, like, jovial nicknames. Are they just, like, going through a word generator?

Because it's, like, really... Maybe it's, like, the Republic in the sense that you have... to get approval for your name where you've like send it up the chain and then like your commanding officer gets it approved

but it's like I don't know Jedi lightsaber thing or sorry the exact the exact line is the exact line is not that they're given to them

yeah cut asks you know you have a name rather than a number why is that and what he says is perhaps our leaders feel it's a more efficient

way of distinguishing us which could just mean that our leaders allow us to take names because it helps distinguish us. They could still have the authorship of giving themselves the names. The thing that would be coming down from the top would be being allowed to do that.

But actually, Cuts' response to that is more efficient than a number. I doubt the Camanowans think that way. Still a name has to make you feel. So it's actually the Caminoans. This is happening at the Caminoin level, question mark? No, I don't think it is. I think that, yeah. Yeah, my read on that was the people who made the.

clones wouldn't have given a shit about that but there's something about and this is there's the clones here are also dealing with the ambiguity of their own situation right like what is me and what is imprinted on me like lequine is kind of curious like okay we both sense into instinctively that name and individuality is somehow important wasn't important to the cam and owens and yet it has been recognized that it is important to like clones um and this also i think Where this is really pointing is also, like, there's two things. Rex asks what happened to this guy, and he explains that after Gino's won, his entire transport goes down, and the ship crashes, everyone's, like, wounded or dead, and the clones

come, and they start executing anyone who's left alive. He watches his entire unit. Remember, in Clone World, your unit is your family. It's like you're part of your generation of clones. He watches all of them getting like executed among this wreckage. And he flees. And in the act of fleeing, he feels one like ashamed. You know, he abandons his family to the clones, to the droids.

And also everyone he knows, all his brothers, is now dead. And he felt like completely. worthless. Yeah. And he explicitly says that he, his life doesn't have any meaning and that, and this is maybe just as important, because it's not just that he lost his clones, his clone brothers. It was also that he was just another expendable clone waiting for his turn to be slaughtered in a war that made no sense to him, which is like, and again, these are the first

clones out, which is interesting because this is, this isn't even the war yet. Yeah. This is a battle that hasn't, that doesn't have. like the propaganda machine hasn't kicked into full gear yet in a real way and that's something to think about in terms of the different perspectives that these different people have well it's a it's a great detail because you can imagine it like these early generations of clones are like toy soldiers sitting in a box waiting to be brought out and they're brought out into basically like the Omaha beach scene of saving private Ryan yeah with no context it's just like you're loaded on to a transport and everyone is getting like killed right they don't have they haven't been watching videos of grievous uh torture jett i or like they don't have the they don't have a reason to get um the only good droid is a dead droid or whatever tattooed because like oh i guess we're fighting droids i get oh by the way we're going to fight droids yeah and i mean i think i think you see that in in the exchange that uh comes right

before this one where rex is like how or rex is like how or rex is like how How would you know how I feel about identity and, you know, having a name and all these kinds of things? And CUT is like, because I'm as close to you as any life form can be, you've thought about what your life could look like if you were also to leave the Army, choose the life you want. And Rex is like, what if I am choosing the life I want? What if I'm staying in the Army because it's meaningful to me? And Cut is like, how is it meaningful? and Rex says because I'm part of the most pivotal moment

in the history of the republic if we fail then our children and their children could be forced to live under an evil I can't well imagine and then Cut says

if you were to have children of course but that would be against the rules isn't that what somebody programmed you to believe captain which obviously the programed is the callback to the general grievous

exchange with Obi-Wan where Obi-Wan is like you and the army with no loyalty no spirit, just programming. And the last thing is Rex's response to that is no cut, it's simply what I believe. It doesn't matter if it's my children

or other people's children. But that's him winning the fight is the thing. Because the actual argument, the argument isn't, we have to set this up the way that the show sets it up. Because the argument isn't between someone who believes you have to go fight a war versus someone who believes you have to desert.

The actual fight goes back to what they say in the barn in which Cut says, I like to think I'm merely exercising my freedom to choose to not kill for a living. And Rex says that's not your choice to make. And so the actual terms of the debate are, do we have free will or not? And if you can get Rex to say, I'm fighting this war because of my free will, and I have a right to execute that free will to live the life I want to, then cut wins that debate

because that's what he's done. The alternative is for Rex to say, well, no, I'm just brainwashed and I have to do what I've been programmed to do. And Rex will never say that because he doesn't feel that. But who knows why? But the fucked part about that is

he says, that is not your choice to make, you swore an oath to the Republic, you have a duty. But there was never a choice. There was never a swearing of an oath in the way that you were choosing to swear that oath? When has there ever been that in the world? And this is the point of clones,

is that there is no outside of ideology to swear to serve on behalf of a nation is to swear inside of that nation's ideology already. You're already compromised as an actor, et cetera, et cetera. Like, there is no one, obviously the clones have it particularly bad. We've talked about the ways which is like a crime against humanity, the way that they're raised,

they have freedom disclosed to them from the moment they're born. But, like, core to this is the idea of, like, does anyone, is anyone able to choose inside of an imperialist state? When they make the decision to enlist, that enlistment already comes after, you know, a lived amount, decades of being programmed to believe, being taught to believe that this world is one in which it's better if, there are pivotal moments in which this empire's army has to be deployed in order to make the world better. And of course, the irony of all this is not only is Rex wrong about what side of this he's on.

He is as close to the wrongness as he can be. He is directly reporting to the person who will help usher in the, the, how did he frame it, a moment of history, a type of evil that you like can't well imagine. It's a rough moment. You better start imagining it because you're going to bring it into existence. The other part I find so interesting about this is the focus on children and the future. Yes, yeah, yes. This notion of, were the clones, like, is this just a by-product?

Like, you know, did the Caminoons give a shit that the clones think of it in these terms? Or is this intentionally there where, like, we're, like, just about any creature, there's, like, a strong, any mammalian creature, basically, there's a strong, like, reproductive drive and a thinking about, like, the future. And with the clones, that's obviously not intended for them, but it is useful for them to think that it is somehow a, like, future thing.

That, like, if one of the things that motivates Rex to stand in line for this cause is this notion that he's doing it for his children, his children's children, it's a paradoxical thought Lequane calls it out immediately but like if this like according to the terms of our servitude

you don't you're not going there's not going to be your children and there's not going to be your grandchildren Lequane did get those things the only way that he could which was he pieced out he obeyed like that instinctive imperative that he thought was like I do want a family

and he just left and so he has what all the clones on some level maybe want, which is a future. We're also getting an echo of what Jango wanted. Yeah, right. What's the one demand Jango made besides a bunch of money is I want to have one that grows up that I can raise, that I get to imprint directly in terms of being a father, not just being a raw material, but that we know that that comes from, or we know that that exists in Jango as an individual, whether or not that particular drive, how much of Jango was in them in general,

is always up for a debate because we don't get a clear snapshot of how the Kaminoans, how that process works. Again, like, to that, to that, we don't know when they're named. We don't know how much the programming is like literally brain-to-computer downloads, how much of it is just practicing the same stuff and being in an educational program. But, of course, educate, like, I don't know, I'm deep in my authoritarian structuralism here. And, like, the educational system is one of the biggest ideological state apparatus there is. This is where we learn what it means to be a good person and learn the various roles that we can come to fit into to help reproduce society itself.

And so I love an episode that's just a closer look at what that looks like. What happens if you flunk out? What happens to clones that don't make it through the program? There have to inevitably, if there is variance in the outcomes, if cut can exist, if a blonde hair guy can exist, then. Then there have to be some people who just don't make it out. And the same way that there are Jedi paddalons who don't become or younglings who don't go into being compatelons. What happens to the clones that don't make it to clone status?

Quick an objection here. This is not an invitation to get emails about the bad batch or what we're going to learn there. We will come to see probably some of the variant outcomes with the clones will get there. Trust. it's it's uh rex's response to uh this children comment of like it doesn't matter if it's my children or their people's children just feel so much like the line he has had to tell himself like he doesn't even i was expecting him to deliver that with like some concession in his voice of feeling like some dejection of like fuck that is the reality of my situation but you know like doesn't matter

if it's minor whatever but he says it in this just like such a rehearsed like instantaneous like brain switch way where like through this whole thing he's wavering a little bit and then like the propaganda machine turns on and he's like it doesn't matter whose children i'm here to sacrifice myself like for my country for my republic and to make that even more interesting it's not only that just that he's heard that a bunch. I would wager he said it a bunch because he's command staff. Yeah. Right? He's management in a real way here. That's the

thing that's kind of most compelling to this this sort of conflict that Rex here has and to your point before Austin, which is Rex is in a leadership position. I think we said like in an earlier episode he commands like thousands of people at this point.

It's some absurd about people. I don't know if it's I remember if that was him or Cody but both of them are tons. Yeah, I thought they were like hand in hand in that. Played captain, it's 100, okay, it's 144 troopers. Okay, that's still a significant amount. That's a lot. That's a lot of people.

And he's getting a fresh one of those every couple missions because they're getting wiped. But like, I mean, it's easy to watch this episode and think to yourself, like, Rex isn't going to compromise in this way because he has the position that he does. He has a responsibility he does. He needs to be a leader in that way. But like, in the long. game of him knowing that this is possible and seeing that this has happened that like there is a different way for clones

to be happy. What happens to Rex when he sees someone in his unit who's clearly not built for it? If like we get another guy like in the the radio whatever, yeah, yeah. There was the traitor and then there was also

the guy who was just like, I'm not built for this, right? Yeah. Or is that the same guy? I think that was the same guy. There were two different traders, is why I'm thinking of this. But, like, what's keeping Rex at that point from being, like, okay, there's somebody I can get you in touch with? You can't go to this planet necessarily, but you can have the sort of, like, support system in the transition out of the clone army, right? Like, he knows that this is now an option. I don't think it, I don't think it is, because I think that if that final battle,

like fight sequence doesn't happen I think 100% Rex still calls this wool in like I think what to me the last the last sort of line he says to him

is after the Battle of Geonosis explanation um Rex says cut is like I was just another expendable clone waiting my turn to be slaughtered da da da can you understand that Rex

and Rex says I've been in count battles and lost many brothers. They were my family, my home. So like there's no difference to Rex between his brothers as his family and his responsibility and his obligation to cuts my children, my family, whatever. And it's not until this fight sequence that that is really solidified in Rex's mind of like, okay, so this, this, you know, cut is still willing to fight. fight and, and, you know, protect the people that he's responsible for. But the last, the last line is you're still a deserter cut, but you're not a coward, which is like... Right, but I think that that's a priority thing. What's being revealed from Rex there is, I care about who you are in the...

I care, I care about cowardice and courage more than I care about hierarchy here, right? He comes into this thinking he cares more about the rules and duty, but in the end, he cares about the willingness to live towards your duty as best you can, whatever that duty is, and that you should have a duty, because he doesn't report him. Otherwise, he would report him. And I think we're going to, my, my, my, the deeper read on this really for me does come back to Rex as someone who is insisting that clones have free will and that to be a good clone is to use that free will to take up a duty and fight for it. And for him that duty is and the way that he's, maybe he's just convincing himself of this, but he's convincing himself. or he believes that it is best when clones make the decision to then support the Republic that way. Because to not agree with that is to accept that you're part of the galaxy's largest, like, crime, which is the brainwashing of thousands, millions of clones and marching them to their deaths. My counterpoint to that would be the fact that this justification, this rationalization in Rex's mind is grounded. in an active violence is grounded in in combat competency like what ali's saying before of like what about the people who are just not cut out for this who are just not cut out to like be warriors

or fighters or whatever that like how how could how would rex recognize their not being cowards outside of not being competent fighters like what about the person who's yeah i'm i don't want to fight anybody, but I really love agriculture, and I'm really, really good at, you know, whatever. But if it's not... The climax of this episode isn't that because he had built this farm, they had enough

food to feed a nearby village that was going through drought, and so Rex recognized the value that he was adding to that community. Exactly. I get what you're saying. Exactly. Like, that's what holds me back from thinking that if Rex, you know, had other...

That he would help someone else. outside of that person, you know, displaying some, like, combat aptitude of some sort, some sort of like showing some element of courage that, but again, I think that that's an important distinction from where we thought Rex was at the beginning of this, which was duty and hierarchy above all. Like, it's a small step towards courage as represented as combat aptitude or something. and the willingness to put your life on the line. But I think that's an important one when what you were surrounded by is people who have put their, who are forced to put their lives on the line.

Because it opens up the possibility that someone who wants to step away, who you know in their heart is a good person, is not necessarily a criminal you have to snitch on. And like, that doesn't mean that I think he's a leftist icon. No, no. And I don't know that it would have helped. It would not have helped our traitor from the first season. You're 100% right there. But I think that it's a, I think it's hard for me not to watch this and think that Rex got sort of played in chess to a place where his mind is now going to be moving in that direction. Right.

More interested in why is it that we do the things that we're told that we do than he was at the beginning of this episode, which to me suspect is a long term win. I hope so. I have a hard time not seeing this just as, oh, this is a meeting of equal minds and like that chess battle like you know was like a was an even score or whatever was like an even fight and so in this in this scenario rex is going to give this due to pass because he met rex's you know expectations of you know a fighter uh a leader whatever da da da like i think that it's hard for me to believe that this isn't just a special exception that Rex is making off this very specific encounter of like near-death experience,

basically, that would be carried over into individual interactions with people in his 100-plus squadron. But you can't put the genie back in the bottle, though, right? Like on a long enough timeline, Rex is aware of what's possible for the clones and like what they're capable of and that there's another option. And maybe it's not right away, but a year from now, the closer they get to the like evil that he's afraid of, he knows that he's close to. The other thing there really is, again, I think if the terms of the debate had remained, is it good to work for the Republic or is it good to have a family, he would come out one, one, all tied. But I think that the second that that debate ends up being, do we have free will to decide what we want to do or don't we? And he says, yes, we do. And I'm using it to support the Republic.

He's taking an L there because he's forced to admit that it is possible for a clone to not be deviant and still have a desire to do something else. Like he does not, because that's free will. That's free will, baby. Either however you don't. And he can't bring himself to say, you're broken in your head because of this. I just, that, that, that sentiment isn't really grounded in Rex by the end of this. Like, when, when Rex says, it doesn't matter if it's my children or other people's children, does that meet with your approval?

Cut responds perfectly to each their own. That's what I always say. Like, I feel like it's still so centered on cut being sort of the, you know, being the foundation for this like we have choices we can we can do other things my choice but that's so far from when he called the traitor defective yeah saying does that meet with your approval means that we're in we're able to be in discourse together and i'm cure i want to know if you agree with me or not when they were dealing with that traitor they straight up said your brain is broken soldier like and that is shit that is deployed against real people often inside of imperial militaries who do disagree with

what the situation is. But to me, does that meet with your approval is, like, is said with, is a snarky, like, it's, it's sort of a grapple for power. Yeah, absolutely. It is snarky, but that's because he's getting rolled and he knows it. Yeah, yeah, he's getting owned. So, I think there's two things here. One, with the, with the traitor, there was this element of, the whole thing happened so compressed. Like, literally, it's guns drawn. There's this inability to, like, the traitor's argument is basically you all are basically slaves. And the clones are sort of angrily denying that. But if Rex doesn't engage with what Cud is saying, if he's like, no, fuck that, we don't have a choice, we have to do this,

then he is sort of conceding, well, we are just, you know, we are just sort of golems bred for this war that is in our own. But the other thing I want to call out here is that so much of this, is also about Rex coming to terms with these desires for himself. Like, I think one of the things that really comes through, especially in the early shots, as it starts to dawn on him, who cut is and what cut has done with his life. The expressions, the delicacy of Rex's reactions and expressions in that part of the episode is super good. Like D. Bradley Baker is putting in great work, you know, voicing both sides of this conversation.

But I also think you can see in Rex, in all his initial reactions to CUT, there's that mix of like anger and fear consistently across the board. And when you see him looking at Cuts family, you can see like this faint yearning of like he wants these things. and so I think something else that he does need to get from this is the kind of reassurance by the end cut shows that yeah he is still a capable warrior and is still capable of holding these ideals of honor that Rex holds dear but Rex also holds them dear for himself Rex is the badass and I do see so much of this as like an argument also I mean this is the nature of the clones. It is kind of an argument with yourself. Rex comes out of this, you know, as you were just alluding to, Austin, you know, you're not defective for having these feelings.

You are still, you are still who you believe you are. Wanting these things does that mean you are failing to live up to them? You can still live up to these ideals. Now, we can question what those ideals are good or not, because I kind of agree, like, follow to the logic conclusion. um like rex is laying out Rex is about to write Heinlein star ship troopers right where it's like well when you've been a good clone the clone army maybe at the end you can have a small freehold

right but I think yeah where we do leave off with Rex is like this recognition that okay wait so just wanting to sort of lay down arms and just get away from war doesn't mean

you're incapable of being a good member of this clone family it just means that's been changed in how you interpret it

you've chosen Yeah I still think you know I do still think Natalie's right in the sense that if Cot was like I won't fight

I'm done fighting I'm not gonna fight these droids when they come from my family because I put my gun up and I'll never fight again this episode

ended with Rex being like you're not just a traitor you're a coward too and then that's the end of that right yeah but I So I do think that, like, the reiteration of, like, violence is the, being capable violence is the way that you are in respect is dead on.

But I do think that it's interesting at the very end when he gives his reason for leaving it and staying, it is not the galaxy needs me. It's not the Republic needs me. It's my family is elsewhere. I have people I care about because he's come to terms with, like Rob just said, the fact that that being his primary motivator and not this world historical. I'm in the moment. Like, this is a pivotal conflict, blah, blah, blah. That's not what motivates him. What motivates him is those 144 clones that look up to him like a big brother and who will die, you know, with or without him, but maybe die without him more quickly.

And I think that that is, again, I don't think this is a huge change in character. But Rex, we're going to get a lot more Rex as the show continues, I suspect, because it's Rex and Cody. You know, like they're the big ones. And it's hard for me not to see this as a step towards. something with him. Now, maybe it's a step that gets overwritten and he becomes Anakin's right-hand man in Vader's fist. Like, I don't know. I don't know what the arc of Rex is. Yeah. Maybe he ends up, like, we could get an episode four seasons from now where Rex comes back here and kills cut because he knows that he's a traitor hiding Jedi or

something. You know what I mean? I don't know, but this feels like a setup to me towards some sort of arc for Rex about about his belief in individualism or not individualism in the in the ideological sense but in the sense of maybe in the ideological sense like he does believe that that he is not just a cookie cutter person and that the clone shouldn't be limited to the pure the purest version of what they've come out of the the factory being taught to do I think you're right and I think sometimes it's difficult for me to remember that specifically when it comes to Rex and Cody, that they are going to have this very long narrative arc over the course of the next six seasons or whatever because...

Right, I bet we get more wrecks than grievous. Totally, totally. And it's just, I think, given the context of the clones and how, like, expendable they are and everything like that, like, it's hard for me to remember sometimes that they're not just this, I mean, the show tries to remind you and stuff, but it still isn't really solidified in my brain the individualism of of each of them and specifically

how significant of characters Cody and Rex are. I like that slips my mind all the time. So I think just as the show goes on and we spend more time with them that will change for... Yeah, if this had been a Kicks episode or if Kicks had

learned. Right. I'd be like, yeah, okay, cool, two clones now agree, sort of. It doesn't change shit. Right, right. We're never going to see this guy again. Yeah. You think we're going to see Waxer and Boil anytime? Oh, I bet.

Next time we go to a new planet with a people living there that they want to be racist towards. Well, they'll be there. They'll be there. New slur just dropped. So, speaking though, cookie cutter, I would say the rest of this episode kind of is. Oh, yeah. I forgot there was more.

They're tracking down grievous. They find him. They figure out which escape pot he's going to to activate the radio. Simultaneously, the La Quain kids go out in the farm, and it's very Spielbergian, where it's like, oh, gee, what's this? And it's like, obviously something you should not go fuck with. And they're like, I'm going to go fuck with it. And they go in, and they hit the light switch, which instead of turning on, well, it does turn on the lights, it turns on the murder lights. and activates a pod full

Commando droids And the Commando droids And this is kind of the chilling part Without orders They're just like We're going to wipe out this farm Like they just get turned on And they're like

All right Murder Murder Murder And the kids are like This seems bad They run and warn Mom and Dad

Like hey we No They don't really Own what they did They're just like They're like, monsters are coming or whatever. That we had nothing to do with. These two kids...

Big egg in the field. Just hashed a bunch of murder droids. Yeah. These two kids are just the most, like, generic children characters. Like, can't we... Can't he come to dinner? Or, like, can't... You're so cool.

Or just, like, random show... Yeah, they're just... One of them is voiced by Kath Susie, who is Phil and Lil in Rugrats. And, like, they're both, both of these actors, these voice actors are just like all over American animation as various little kids and other stuff. In fact, I mean, the, it's worth saying, Nika who plays, she played Jack or does she play the other one? She plays, she plays one of them, one of the kids, is Assange Ventress, which is wild, being like, well, now I'm going to do a little kid voice. I mean, I don't mind the voices.

It's more so just like all of their interjections and like their whole shit were just like, yeah, these are the two fucking little. And just the models, they're kind of unctious, right? Like the whole, like, we just need the two most cute as a button fucking kids ever. And that, I've always found this stuff uniquely off-putting. There's this, yeah, like, all right. This is a weird aside. Austin, it may be cut.

But there's the webcomic Penny Arcade, right? And fuck Penny Arcade for a lot of reasons. But one of the things that always got under my skin and it started to become more and more prominent was that as the artist who draws Penny Arcade started to enter more of a dad phase. He started to draw kids more often. And he had one flavor of kids

which always a big, big adorable buck teeth and like a runny nose. And it was just always the same kid, just the most cute little like rug rat inspired bullshit and I hated it because every kid was portrayed that way and you like when kids are portrayed this way to me it always feels alienating and that whoever is doing it doesn't fully see kids as individuals like they see them as like little tikes yeah little pets little like little half individuals and it kind to bugs me. Like I'm much more

of the Bill Watterson style of like kids have complicated emotional terrain. Calvin. Calvin is a comic that is interpretable by kids, but is also a good representation of how where the fucked up places

kids go in their heads. Even if they don't have the language to communicate exactly where the thoughts take them. And that's kind of what gets at me about these kids is they're just there to be these like symbolic, like, Lequane went and had the cutest family in the galaxy.

Yeah, I mean, for being a kid show, the fact that, like, two kid characters that are, like, playing a semi-prominent role in this episode are just the most, like, I don't know, nothing little shits. Are we saying bring us back? Pebo, what was his name? Is it Peebo?

That's not even the one of I was thinking. Wait, who's Peebo? No, Peebo was, what's her name? Pee-Pee. Droid and Slaver. Oh, oh, oh. Pee-P was the farmer, the fucking Jar-Jar-Gar-Gar-Gar-Gar-J-B. Jay-Boh.

Jay-Boh. Yeah. Bring back J-Bohood. So. Miserable King. J-Bohud loves Jake Paul. Oh, my God. Oh, he does.

Oh, my. God, hate to say it, but true. Anyway, yeah, Rob, the rest of this episode, they fight. Grievous fights Obi-Wan. Obie Grievous gets away. And Obi-Wan was like, well, this was fucking pointless. Yeah, I actually love how... That is a...

Yes. Yes. Such a good line. Like, the end of this episode, he's like, we're right back where we started with just the most venom. Oh, it's so good. And, like, fucking disappointment in his voice. Because the clone is like, are you all right, sir?

And he's like, no, I'm not all right. Like, we're right back where we started. I love it so much. I love that he gets so heated up about this. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, so that's kind of like, and then Rex literally rides off into the sunset. Oh, quick thing.

In the movie that kind of inspires the shame, that is about kids having complicated views to the world end of their parents. And here we just have these cute little idyllic kids who don't have any weird feelings around like, here's this character, this parachute into our lives that changes our own. understanding of the world.

Yeah, here's multiple people who look exactly like my dad. That's weird. Interesting conversations would be held. Daddy, what's it mean when you say to each his own? That's it. That's all we get. That's all we get? Yeah.

Anyway, again, imagine me having elements of all the conversations we just had, they go, I can't fucking wait to see this falloney feature at. Can't wait for him to drop some knowledge. And then it's just him being like, well, the chest table. And I was like, all right, what the fuck are we doing, Dave? Dave, what are we doing? Sometimes good things happen when he's not in the writer's room. Like, everyone's like, we're cooking up something real special, boss.

And he's like, you got that chest table right now, right? And they're like, what? I got to say, the way the camera was just lingering on the chest table, like it felt gratuitous. felt like oh we're really like this chess game is really the thing that we're focusing on right now so it does not surprise me that feloni was like i got to make my chess game and that was so cool awesome to be clear you didn't actually want to show us some pheloni clips no no no no i'm good we're good i only that first one it was the one that had the energy yeah i i don't like to do the deep quote of a feloni because it's it's bad podcasting it brings

all the bad podcasting bells in my brain. But that one, that first one we had to say. That first one was special. Yeah. You don't even need the footage. You don't. I promise. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So our last episode here that we're covering is lightsaber lost. When does this happen? Ah! Sometime in the middle of all this. Yeah. But it is a Asoka and underworld Chorusant crime story.

And it starts off with, so, Anakin and Asoka are trying to bust up an arms smuggling ring in the depths of Choracan. And they descend to the mean streets of Corrassant. And Anacan's like, I'm going to go fuck up this bar. You stay here and make sure the guy doesn't get away. There's an important thing to say. I know this is just the buildup here, but there's an important thing to say, I knew this episode was going to be a dud within the first 10 seconds,

within the first two seconds, if you don't cut the opening, because Assoca sees someone coughing on a bench and gives them a disgusted look. And I was like, this is so foul. That was so fucked out of pocket. It was so fucking uncalled for it.

Like this man's just sitting on the fucking side of the road. just having a little cough and Asoka walks by him like he is just she looks like you know you know when a character in The Sims sees just like an absolute trash pile

and it's like it's so funny this is the most prep school Asoka we've ever gotten like it's clear I suddenly believe Assoca came for means and like hates we know that's not true

because she was right oh she was rid of the Jedi Temple that's kind of like being raised in means with means I mean yeah but I was like I'm really in it

for it now when I saw that yeah yep yep yeah and so it doesn't take

long before she gets jostle so Anakin does his thing which is I'm gonna fuck up this bar

yeah everyone comes pouring out of the bar and Asoka um god there's so many misdirections too

because we get like paranoid suburban girl vibes from Asoka where everyone she sees is like that's probably a crook that's probably a crook I mean the fact that she's like

she's looking at the guy standing outside the bar and they're like looking her up and down and she like like puts her hand on her lightsaber like some bitch like pulling out the pepper spray like just walking on the side like I was just like dude what are you doing like this man's just the bouncer

to the I mean later on when she has to talk about who the dude is. She doesn't even know the species. She's like, I guess she's kind of like a fish. Like, you know, from like the fish planets. Are you fucking kidding me? She's so foul in this whole episode.

And then the first time she meets the old man, she's like, okay Gramps. I'm like, dude, why are you just like fowling everyone around you? You're just such a little shit. Extremely flagrant. Yeah. It's wild. It's so wild. Anyway. Not her most

likable episode. or admirable. So in this crush of people, she gets knocked over and somebody lifts her lightsaber. Like it's nothing. Like it's like boom, done. Like nothing.

And then Anakin comes out and he's like, hey, what's up, Snips? Why do you seem so shaking? She's like, nothing happened at all. I thought I saw someone. And like completely lies about this. Now, the interesting thing is you might think that the fact that she instinctively

covers up what she did here and what went wrong and never really cops to it might be like a key to what's going to happen here the teachable moment it isn't and this is not like this isn't the lesson this episode is going to teach no but she just decides to bear face her way through this and i do kind of find this kind of sweet though i guess she bonded with um what's her name jacosta jacosta yeah yeah um i guess she bonded with her because she can't tell anakin because Anakin has apparently given that fucking speech to Asoka as well of Jedi's lightsaber is his life

and so she's like, I can't hypocrisy of the greatest order. Yeah, this entire episode premise is ridiculous because Anakin has never kept a lightsaber longer than a week. He's single-handedly... He's single-handedly...

Sniffs, here you go. He's single-handedly supplying the entire black market's worth of fucking lightsabers. So the fact that she's like, I can't tell my, I can't tell Anakin, he will get so mad my lightsaber is my life, he'll be

so mad at me. I'm like, bro, he probably lost his lightsaber in the bar and then found another one off someone else that he lost earlier. Assook, go on Hollin at eBay, Google Lightsavers. The results will shock you.

Wait, wait, isn't that that uh-huh they all have they all yeah they all have a little antich and skywalker label maker fucking wrapped around each one of their handles with the label maker don't lose this one you turn it around in a quarter i mean it this time um so she goes to jacostanoo and she's like uh okay so i fucked up and i lost my lightsaber and jacostanoo is like i don't know if i can help you with that i'm a librarian but i know some someone who can and is like, let me find the oldest Jedi possible. She literally says he's an elder Jedi, which is like when Jo Kostin knew called you elder,

you know your oldest shit. There's something about this that really fucks me up, though, because he's apparently like a criminal specialist. Yeah, like he knows all the, yes. And he's just like, he's the expert on. Correscent Crime. Was it like pre-clone wars, were Jedi just cops and this guy was Columbo? And, like, that's why he knows what's going on here and, like, has been looking into this for years?

He apparently shows up as a hologram in one of the High Republic novels. And if they make a High Republic novel of him just being a detective... I would read a Colombo novel about this guy. Like, he is telling it. So here's the thing. He does rule. So basically, the conceit for this episode is everyone really loved Uncle Iro from Avatar. What if Uncle Iro solved crimes and just really got under the skin of his young apprentice?

What was the Fireman will get princes? Yeah, what if they were? I'm honestly surprised that this fool never pulled out like a little teapot and sat down and had some tea. on the side of the road. For real, honestly. Like, actually. So, yeah, but anyway, they will go on an entire caper. It turns out he is a

very good detective. Because unlike anyone else in this universe, he actually can put two and two together, which nobody else. Like, if somebody just put him on the case of who's the secret Sith Lord, history would be totally different. It'd be done.

No one is telling him about, no one is telling him about, no, Because if he knew, he, like, that's why he's, like, stuck in the library. Like, he's not led into any Jedi Council meetings. He's not going to any of the Jedi Council town halls. He probably doesn't even know Palpatine's in charge right now. Like, he doesn't know who the prime minister is. He's just in the library all the time. And they just let him out to do his little crime stints every once in a while.

Otherwise, it'd be done. It'd be a done deal. Yeah. Instead, they're just like, why don't you just put on your little hush puppies and read your paper. and hang out the library and talk about the good old days before we were regimental commanders getting thousands of clones killed a day.

Just to be clear, you do know what it is literally Uncle Iro, right? That wasn't just a joke? It's Uncle Iro's voice actor. Of course it is. Like a dead asses before he passed away. Oh, sorry, is it the second Iro? Okay, yeah, but the first voice actor

for Uncle Iro passed away before Avatar finished sending. Ah, so this must be the same thing. second iro then i think so yes starting in season three correct correct correct um so this is the second iro correct second still it's the vibe it's the vibe you nailed it also he looks incredible one day i gotta put a picture of this guy this is the oh my god is this not the fucking vibe is this not it one second oh this motherfucker grumpy his face vest that's uncle ireo second uncle iro yeah that's uncle iro yeah that's

All of his photos, all of his photos on IMDB are him looking grumpy as shit. Oh, my God. Oh, that's not true. Oh, he's smiling in this one. I love, I love Tio, Tio, Iro. Tio, Iro. This is actually what my Tio looks like, like 100%. Like, not a joke.

This is just, this is my Tio. There are multiple people in my family. He was lucky I know that vibe. His name is Greg Baldwin, Herbert, we want to look him up. He's done a bunch of other stuff. He was Aku in Samurai Jack stuff. He was in... Oh, he was Frank Fontaine in Bioshock, apparently, which is interesting.

A bunch of other cartoons and stuff over the years, and a lot of video games. He was in fear, Rob. I know you're a fear person. So he was at least one... Was he the mad scientist in fear, aka like the dad of the... I don't know enough about fear characters, Rob. I'm not going to lie. Norton Mapes is who he was.

Shoutouts to Theo Gregg. He's from New Mexico. I hope you're having a good one out there, Greg. Yeah, this one's for you. But the entire thing's going to be a pretty straightforward, like not a very hard case to crack. But at the end, like Asoka is going to be sort of patted on the back

and send off the teeth. what she's learned to the younglings, which is nothing. But before we get there, I do like the vibes every time they do this, and they're like, what of course? That was just Blade Runner. I'm like, I'm listening. Because

Asoka's the biggest asshole possible of this guy. When she meets up with him, she's like, you can't really help me. And he's like, what did the guy look like? She's like, a fish guy. And he's like, fine, I'll put fish guy into the Jedi

search terminal and he's like let me let me just narrow it down for you the various types of fish guys that exist on this that that might be hanging around this world and he brings up a pack of mugshots now we should know mugshot identification deeply unreliable not not known fact people in general terrible at identifying faces across racial lines i can only imagine that gets way worse when you're talking about like actual different species. I'm sorry, I'm a big admiral akbar stand. I suspect I would have a hard time telling the admiral akbar model from a different like Kalamari character. If you put them, I'd be like, they're two Admiral Akbars. The answer's no. But anyway, he basically puts one species that fits the

bill and is like, is this the guy you saw? She's like, that's him. And it's like, I don't think you, I don't, like, this isn't going to stand up in court, but it doesn't need to because this is an off-the-book's investigation. There's not going to be a trial because she just wants to avoid ever copying the fact that her lightsaber is out there, working its way through the underworld, because again, this whole movie is channeling the Kurosawa Maffuni film, Stray Dog, which is about a young, hot-headed cop losing his a pistol on a case, and then frantically trying to recover it before it makes its way into the underworld.

I have a question. And also, yeah, go ahead. I feel like if, you know, in a post-Annequin or, you know, current Anakin Jedi Order world, that I would perhaps, also just with lightsabers in general, being that they are incredibly powerful weapons with literal like fucking magic crystals in them and shit I would put a little tile on one of those motherfuckers like I would put a little tracking device

and then I would just open up find my lightsaber and I would just GPS yeah it's like doing the little beep noise or whatever like and you just follow that shit your argument is made stronger by the fact that they do a little beep thing in this episode but he does deploy one of these tracking devices

is they're like huge they're a little cumbersome like they're like the size of those like pop socket things that you could put on your cell phone which works for a cell phone but not for a lightsaber yeah we just put it in the bottom

of the lightsaber you know what I mean maybe but then it affects with the aesthetics it does or just invent smaller GPS I can't this is almost a guess Star Wars technology

yeah all of of our engineers are working on clones or not clones um droids they're separatists now um well yeah so she's like great

fish guy I'm gonna go bust him and he's like no I'm gonna come help you and this is good because Asoka's terrible at this thank fucking God she meets up with first of all they go to the noodle bar and Blade Runner

and And she's like, you got any lightsabers? Just the most nark shit of all time. And like, sidebar, if you're a criminal fighting, like selling lightsabers on the black market, if a 14-year-old girl comes up to your stand to asking for one, you say, go to Macy's. We don't have that here. I'm sorry. It's tough.

You don't have a code word for light, like, like you, anyone that comes up asking. for lightsaber, like, you know they're a narc. You got to know the fucking code word for whatever the thing you're selling is. That's just, that's dealing 101. I'm sorry. You're not putting that shit in your government surveilled phone as lightsaber. Absolutely not. Yeah, hell no.

Absolutely not. We should also just say that, like, we get a bunch of cyborg, cyborg quorum, cyborg authoritarian in the background. Everyone just has the most, like, we got to influence. event, new, like, underworld Star Wars character names. Uh, the character names, the, the first dude that they go to, the squid-looking guy who's a quoran with the robot eye is called Lali Wallo. The, the dude that's with him who like immediately just spills where the guy is, is named

Jan Des. Uh, the, the fish guy that we've been talking about is named, was it Ban. Banamu. Banamu. Banamu. And then the two, uh, the three remaining. like main character, side characters in this are knack movers

which isn't anything. Ione Marcy and Casolita Cassie Cryar, which are the two ladies at the end there. Ioni and Cassie are the absolutely lovers

on the run. Thelman Louise. Yeah, Thelma and Louise. Yeah. Uh-huh. Killed there. There's a photo. We'll get there. I was a photo I need to share. Yeah. I saw it too in the backer. I will say that this

the second dude next to the tentacle man says something really interesting to me which after he gives them the information or maybe right before it he says I hope you remember this and someday do me a favor but he says it completely sincerely like yeah this is an exchange so like remember this because

I'm going to be like knocking on your door and collecting my my favor in no time. It was, I just, like, the way that the first dude, after they figure it out, you know, after Assoca was like, hey, I'm obviously a fucking Jedi. And he was like, oh, you're a Jedi. What the fuck? And like, the second guy was like, oh, okay, you're a Jedi. Yeah, like, I'll give you some information if you're going to, you know, do something for me later.

Well, and she, so, she's picked up some bad Anakin habits, too. Because, like, throughout this exchange with these two, let's face it, pretty low-level, like, selling lightsabers and DVDs out of the trunk of their car and, like, vibe dudes. Yeah. She's, like, ready to start throwing, like, throwing people around the room and, like, pulling, pulling knives on people. And Sanubei is like, no, we can just get the information. We can just be cool. And she's like, listen, you piece of shit. If you don't tell me what I want to know.

So, like, she's very much like, you know, old school police detective in training in some ways, aka Dark Jedi. And Sanubay is just like, we can just get the info and go. and he's trying to mentor her but probably I'm not I'm not sure she's getting there and this starts to come before as they go start tracking down fish guy banana ramma Bannamu and she gets there and Sunube's finally had enough where he's like you need to quiet down and she's like what do you mean I'm being quiet. He's like, not physically quiet. Your mind. Like, and he makes the good point.

We're Jedi. We can tune into people's emotions. I can't hear this guy's emotions over yours because you're as terrified as he is. Um, which, you know, in so many words in Jedi speak for Kew's just chill. And the answer is no.

Um, though it was a good effort. But in fairness, I don't know what you're supposed to do when you are faced with fish waluing. is dead ass like someone said all right well we know jar jar is a little racist and we know wado is a little racist but if we put them together they'll cancel out the racism it'll double double racism to nothing and instead it is just the biggest cartoon character i've ever seen i i i it's unbelievable his voice i i was in shock i was my my jaw was on the i was flattered So what's going on with this voice? Because I was getting like Greek, Mario Italian.

I see, I think it's, so the thing that actually reminds me of are a pair of Greek characters from the TV show Home Movies, which if people, you know, you know it, you know it. But if you don't, you don't, it's a lot. Italian, Greek, Mediterranean, European, right? That's definitely the, but also doing, come on, I'm just a little guy. Yes. His defense, he's a little guy. You know, he is a little guy

And Asoka is throwing him against the wall In front of the Jedi elder Like Yeah, she was held nothing back In front of this old man Bad looks Was ready to be evil In front of a Jedi master

You're still a Paduan You're not certified yet Like they could This all could stop This all could end for you But the whole thing is off the books Maybe she trusts that Grandpa will rat her out But Grandpa's not going to get reprimanded

For going on a little outing out of the fucking retirement home Like they'll just be like, get back to the fucking library man And he'll be like, okay, and he'll go fall asleep It's fine Like Asoka could actually get in some shit for this You'll get on library duty again I will also say I think in the defense here of of Grandpa Sanouba.

He's actually showing probably what effective Jedi mentorship should be, which is like, he's there to put the brakes on it if it's going to get really out of hand. But like, I do feel like he is consistently trying to be like, hey, okay, so you made a mistake. Let's talk through it and do better next time. And I feel like that's a loop that we don't see happen a lot with Anakin, which usually the loop is, okay, well, next time kill those droids more. effectively, and she's like, got it. I mean, it's funny because, like, yeah, there's a big lesson for Asoka throughout

this whole thing, which is patience, it's go slow, it's all that shit, but I don't think at any point in this entire episode, like usually when you have the moral, you know, Asoka or whoever the character that needs to learn the lesson is, we'll finally use that lesson in the last in the final confrontation or sorts and and that will be the whole payoff the moral payoff for the whole episode not at all fucking we'll get there but fucking sinube just does everything for the whole he does it all this whole episode is sinube being the fucking hero of the whole thing asoka's just like she she what is she bringing to the table to sunubay's table right now nothing it's no

nothing. Basically nothing. Anyway, dude says, I sold the lightsaber to knack movers. And Sunubei is like, oh, the crime guy? And he's like, yeah, the crime guy. I just feel like it's worth mentioning that Snoopi has a

problem with Asoka almost hitting this guy, but not with her lifting him up and smashing him against a wall. So, yeah. We're being very complimentary to his mentoring, but I think it was a little lacking, in my opinion.

Yeah, in that moment. Well, he stopped her from doing the big beat-up, but he gave her a little beat-up. But maybe next time you'd curb the little beat-up. It's a process. Baby-seps. It's wild that she was like, it's wild that he was like, are you got to be quiet? Like, mentally, emotionally quiet.

She's like, got it. Lift, throw, slam. Give me my fucking lightsaber back, you piece of shit. And he's like, ah. So they go to NACs, and NAC is not back. And he's like an assassin. what he is, right? He's like, uh...

He's a big... Yeah, he's a big time crime, crime lord. But he's like an uptown criminal. Big dangerous guy. He's on the Upper East Side. Yeah, he's on the Upper East Side. He doesn't mean anything when the whole city is a fucking city, or the whole planet is a city.

That was so weird. Is that like, yeah, northeast. Upper East Side, up, like literally are we going up or are we going up? I think also up. Right. Well, they do get a quadrant later, like a minute later. So you go to the upper east side of G17, I guess. I say, sure, yeah. So they go, place has been tossed.

And, yeah, the dude, you know, the dude's dead. And they quickly, they find his partner, Ione Marcy, who sort of peers out and is very scared. And Asoka goes to search. She runs into another character. but something about Ione isn't ringing a bell with Sunoube he's like you know I'm picking up you're very scared you're very anxious but

I'm getting something else off you too and then he just starts doing the Colombo thing or you just relentlessly fuck with somebody and you start like alluding to the weird like ah just some weird parts about your description of what all happened here but also he just seems like kind of old man so she doesn't really tumble

the fact that like he curls up next to her and pads her on the shoulder He is planting a tracker the size of like a drink coaster on her back. She just continues to try to bear face this. Meanwhile, Asoka has a rooftop chase where she's pursuing this character, Cassie. And along the way, as they're doing the rooftop chase thing, they're jumping across like an intersection. And she ends up dangling from a huge big brother-ass. video screen of Palpatine

delivering his speech. I couldn't make it out, but the speech sounded ominous. I have it. The Jedi are doing... Yeah. I have no doubt the Jedi are doing their very best to ensure the safety of every citizen of the Republic. The accusations that the jeddic created the clone war to give themselves

more power over the government is absurd and I will not stand for it. The scene then cuts here back to the Colombo episode and then it comes back and it's Duku and his clone army. To support the Jedi's efforts in the war, I ask the Senate to pass these laws, giving more jurisdiction, and then we lose it from there.

Yeah. So it's literally him saying, it's not the thing I'm saying privately is happening, by the way, which is that the Jedi are using this. But also, if you could just sign these laws that give us more executive power, that would be sick. I love because it's like two forms of propaganda where the people who, you know, might not have been clued in on the rumors that the Jedi are. he created the clone war to give them souls more power

Palpatine's saying it on a screen makes them think, oh maybe that is true and maybe I should be less loyal to the Jedi that's a win-win for Palpatine and then he gets to say by the way I would love to have more political power here to help them in this efforts

it's like the weird it's like the for your consideration billboards all over L.A. around like award season where like they're not for anyone that is seeing them really they're for like the the 20 or 100 or however

many fucking voting committee people that are like meant to vote on whatever the fuck so it's like the fact that this is a billboard like a video billboard in the middle of the city on like a highway like you're zooming and you're zooming past

a thousand miles per hour like how are you supposed to oh I guess the president of space is doing a talk right now can we can we Or you've got to put it on on your radio. You know what I mean? You've got to be like, oh, the CNN billboard or whatever has. Yeah, maybe it's like every single billboard you see is just the same thing.

So you're getting it as you like cruise on. This is like a state of the union. What do we think this is? There's just like a daily. This is like C-SPAN is on. Yeah. I don't know. I think it's, I think there will be like a fucking.

What's the juice, like some fucking juice out after this? I don't think it's like. There was. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying the Jedi should turn out of TV once in a while Because like It's all right there

If the dude is doing the Anthony speech from Julia's Caesar You should And Caesar is not dead yet You should probably think about like what's coming down the pipe at Wait where's Caesar at? Who could Caesar be in this scenario? Yeah Uh-huh

We then do get more rooftop chase up This chase is fine I hate this chase And I'm mad that this episode disrespects me enough to have two different chase seeds in it when the first one is so long and so boring. When Asoka says the words Terrellian Django jumper, I get so bad. Yeah, Trellian Janko Jumper. A thing.

What's it mean? I mean, there's a Wikipedia entry about it. It exists, but it's just that leaves feature. And it's like, it's a thing that they invented to have them hopping around. I don't know that there was any Star Wars fan that was like, oh, I bet this lady's a Terrellian Janko jumper. That would be really bad for Assoca. Wait, hold on.

I thought that was like an old-timey Star Wars slur. No, this is like, oh, you know, she's a real jango jumper. This is the first time it's said. This is the first time anyone ever says Terellian-Jum-Germper. Well, we have to have an excuse me to jump around. I said, this is a Cyborg. No, she's a Torellian. Then there are a species of sentience native to Torelia, apparently.

Okay, so Torelia is a planet. Correct. And what's a fucking jango jumper? She is. You know, she jumped really well, and there has to be an explanation for it. They're gifted abilities that made them natural athletes, including... New slur just dropped. New slur just dropped.

Including, being capable of running great distances at great speeds for long periods of time, being able to jump fast distances. Compare one of the force-enhanced jumps employed by members of the Jedi Order. Uh-huh. Infuriating. Well... Yep. That is ridiculous.

Also, as we go through Movers' house, and he continues in interrogation, we do get a glimpse in the background of, like, happier times, of what this family looked like in the before time. You want me to drop that image here for you to see? It's wild. It's so good. Here we go. I'll note that this does feature a claw mark across it because of how he clawing. it as he was being killed. Oh, damn, it's like that.

It's like that. This is what I'm saying. I didn't see Cassie in the background. When I saw this in the episode, I only saw Nack and Ione. Yeah, Cassie, so this is an image of NAC who is in like a suit jacket with like a red shirt underneath it and a big piece, like a big like gold piece around his neck. He's looking wide. He looks good. Randotians before. Normally they're like a little bit thin, like bossed from Empire Strikes

back. His face is, is, it's a wide one. Yeah. And he's sitting next to Ione, he was in a sort of a throne, like a sick chair, and a nice dress and all her jewelry on. And then leaning on, and his, one of his hands is on, is on her right arm, kind of gripping it. And his left arm is on her left shoulder. but then around his shoulder are the pink or the blue fingers of our our Trellian jango jumper

His name I've already Cassie who's also with her other hand holding Ione's hand Her free hand So it's like that So watching this episode This dynamic was like the only redeeming thing of this whole

episode was like the whole time I was like I wish I wish I had the episode where Cassie and Ione are conspiring against NAC or or just what's what's their vibe like like what's their domesticated life like in the years after lightsaber lost aired this is from wikipedia some viewers posted in venues such as the Jedi Council forms that there appear to be a romantic subtext between Cassie Cryar and the lone sorry and Ioni Marcy Pablo Hidalgo mentioned via his Twitter account in 2016

they were written to be a couple he subsequently wrote in the 2018 reference book Star Wars Scum and Villany case files on the Galaxy's Most Notorious which made this detail more apparent and gave Cryer the full first name Casalida and that's why Disney had him killed

no poly relationships in Disney World they're just good friends they're just good friends they're just good friends They're just good criminal friends who like nearly burst into tears when separated from each other at the end. Yeah. It does seem though

the scheme has gone so poorly. Well, it's all... Actually, I have some sympathy, though. This asshole is collecting a lightsaber. Yeah. And their perfect crime, a Jedi just stumbles into the middle of it. Yeah, it sucks, dude.

They didn't hurt anybody in this, except for a killer. The guy they poison and kill, but he's in a sad. He's incessant. And they kill him. Sure, they kill him with the poison he uses. That's, that's, that's poetry. You stepped in front of poetry, Asoka. Come on. That's a net good for the world. That's a net good. You know who else kills killers all the time? You know, how are you and they different? Who could say? Not at all. Unfortunately. They're more competent. While they've got some game, they are not stone cold killers. They both, you know, you get Cassie who immediately is like, I'm on the run across the rooftop. Yeah. Ione panics in short order and it's like, hey, you've got to pick me up in the car. I need to get out of here. The gendar, the robot, the robo gendarmes are here. After Sunubei does his drawing room speech before assembling all the suspects. And so she bounces out of there. His big thing there is like, huh, it's a pretty big guy to, uh, you said, you said there were a bunch of guys here who came after, who came after him. Is that what you said happened? Because we found a lady. And she kind of stumbles at, because yeah, it's funny because you said the lady did it. She's like, well, I'm in a bunch of.

A bunch of people. I just read a bunch of people. No, no, no. It was, it was when Asoka is describing the Terralian Django jumper, she says that she's a female. And Anoubae, what's his name? Sanube. Sanube is like, so the assailant is a female.

And then he goes back to her. And the whole story was, yeah, a bunch of dudes came in and killed NAC. Even though NAC didn't really put up a struggle at all and looks pretty. unharmed physically. Right, that's where he's like, huh, it seems like a big guy for someone who could have gotten, you know, out punched.

Weird. Maybe he's so disrespectful because he opens that up by being like, well, he wasn't that good of a fighter, huh? And it's like, why are you clouding him? He's dead on the floor. Yeah.

Yeah, so he's like, funny because my partner just said that the assailant is a female that she's chasing and she was like oh no I'm found out and then she calls up her girlfriend and she picks her up in a hot rod so and they flee to the L train yeah they'll never they'll catch us here unless they have transit cops on the payroll oh no they do so one does lose a little bit

of sympathy over the course of this end game here as so Cassie's response to being coroner is like I'm going to pull a knife on this mom and her kid and Asoka tries to be like take me I'm a more

valuable hostage and Cassie's like you're a Jedi you're hell you'll do a mind trick or something and Assoca's like no I totally wouldn't I promise but it proves to be irrelevant because when Cassie does make her break for it Sunubei has driven, again, like the French guy

She's driven the next stop. Yeah, but like, is the mass transcendent course not so slow that he can beat it? I mean, yeah, he's a l-speeder. Do you think Chancellor Cuomo is investing in the L schedule while there's a power grab to be plotted? Oh, no. True. True. No, like absolutely Sunubi just took the like Chancellor Palpatine,

like Memorial like tri-quadrant tri-quadrant highway and just like took the faster route between the two stations. Yeah, he just went down 14th Street on his speeder bike and went from first ab to third half

and fucking met her there. It was no problem. And I don't know when he did this but he changed his lightsaber into a cane. Oh yeah, he has the staff light saber. It's fucking cool. I just do want to zoom in.

on Asoka being like, you know how valuable I am to the Jedi because it's just like a standout moment of people just saying shit on the show. Like we haven't gotten like, not since the lady on that planet was like, well, we're going to live for honor. Have we just heard someone just saying shit that makes no sense on this fucking show? Yeah, like Asoka, mad times. Have you seen how willing the Jedi are. to lose a Jedi member

who a Jedi member more valuable than you they were about to lose Plokoon they didn't give a fuck they weren't going to go back for him true they didn't give a shit you were a Padawan there are a lot more what she should have said

is it would be really embarrassing for the Jedi order if some common criminal killed me that's the thing from Cassie's perspective she's a Jedi without a lightsaber who is easily outrun like get the fuck out of yeah

yeah well you remember Cassie's a trellie of jango jumper so she's especially

nimble she's in tune with the Jedi order all's well that ends well the lightsaber has been

recovered quick aside why is it so important to Osoka because Sunubi intuets that she feels

like if any harm comes to people because of her lightsaber that morally it's on her this is just

straight dog this is lifted from straight dog and none of the work is done to make it. Nope, because Stray Dog is about the real, and the gut punch of the end of Stray Dog is that this young cop begins developing empathy for the underclasses that he polices and oppresses

and starts to understand why people turn to cry. Stray Dog is a post-World War II film, noir film by Kurosawa that, as Rob said earlier, traces a rookie cop who loses his pistol to the underworld. And then it is used. That's the thing. Unlike in this where the lightsaber doesn't do any damage, so we don't really get that in stray dog, like someone gets held up, someone gets shot, like that stuff happens. So the cop has to sit with that.

And then also by being close to not only the, you know, the criminal in question ends up having ties to the military and being kind of this like post in this post-war funk as an occupied country at this point. And it was an imperial country that had its empire, you know, stopped its tracks. and so there's all these like complex emotions of loyalty that have been thrown on the sand and all that stuff is happening and like also you're just getting a picture of the quote unquote underbelly of these places and you're meeting the family members of the people who turn out to be criminals there's none of that here you know what I don't do any of that here and then yes the big tragedy cops like care less especially that's the message the message and that is to be a cop means to not care about people and this show could never could not imagine Especially when you get the setup of the first fucking one minute of this episode where Asoka shits on a fucking random person for coughing. Like if that's how you're setting it up to be like, oh yeah, Asoka's so out of touch with the people that she's supposed to protect. A hundred percent. Then you have the Palpatine announcement where Palpatine's like, listen, the Jedi are here to protect you. Jeddah are here to protect you, blah, blah, blah.

And then with the final heavy hitter of Cassie, her last word, her last line to Asoka is, I have nothing more to say to you Jedi. And she says it with venom. She's like, fuck you, Jedi. Like, obviously, people don't fuck with Jedi. You are not a, like, it's just like, the general sentiment, I'm not sure what the general general sentiment of, of, of, of, the croissant population is towards Jedi, but at the very least, the sentiment of this specific group, like this specific society or neighborhood that you're like running in and around is we don't, we don't associate with Jedi. We don't like them. We don't fuck with them. We don't work with them unless like they're basically holding a gun to our head, a lightsaber to our head. So it's, It's just, it, and never is there a lesson learned in this entire episode? Never. Because Sunmi's like, does all the learned.

Yeah, he's like, teach someone else the lesson because you're clearly not going to fucking get it, you idiot. And she's basically like, I'll pass on the lesson. Hey, kids, lightsaber is your life. But if it ever goes missing, bury the evidence. Yeah. She says, wait. What did she say to the little kid? She says,

your lightsaber is your life. And she says, it's also your responsibility. Oh, yeah. It's the same thing. That's not even new information. It's the same shit you already knew. That's the same shit everyone says.

Be patient. It's not even the lesson she was supposed to learn. It's not even the one word that was repeated like seven times in this episode. Yeah. Be quiet. Patience. Slow down. She should just look these kids learn how to fucking.

I'm a turtle. I'm fucking slow. These kids were busy practicing their circles And Asoka comes in here Talking about Ready to drop some big wisdom on these kids Also they marked out for her She shows up and they're like

Huge wide eyes Bitch like you're being trained by Yoda Who is the chief Jedi How come you think Asoka is hot shit Everybody in the Jedi Council Like oh Mr. Yoda or whatever Master Yoda Because they spend all their time with Jota

And they know that he's not shit Mr. Jota The ROC, between the two of us. This is like when an upperclassman comes to, like, middle school or something to be like, let me tell you how it is on the football team. And everyone's like, holy shit, you're on the football team? And it's like, yeah, I'm junior varsity. And everyone's like, yeah, 100%. This is absolutely the washed senior sitting down at the freshman kids table being like, let me tell you guys.

something about high school. And also, they cut out the part, I think, where Sanube immediately cuts Asoka off and is like, not the lesson we meant to teach Asoka. Instead, we're talking about being honest about our mistakes and patient. Nobody even is like, hey, your first instinct was to cover this shit up. Also, Jocosta tells, tells, fucking, I'm a scholar to pardon me, tells Asoka at the very,

when they first talk about this she's like go tell anakin he's not gonna care go tell him and she's like i can't i can't it's just it's it's there's thousands of jetti do you have any idea how many lights amers go missing it's it's it's so uh what's the word i'm looking for it's such a it's such a shallow like it it just it has no that whole like plot fucking thing just it makes no sense it makes no sense There's nothing behind it. There's nothing that makes that that entire motivation make any sense at all. Except for Asoka not wanting to like embarrass herself in front of Anakin, I guess. Like that's the only thing that explains why Asoko would trip so hard over losing her lightsaber.

She doesn't want to seem incompetent in front of Anakin. But also, you've done so much worse, dude. You've literally let entire fleets of clones die. And you, Anakin watched you do it. This is nothing compared to that. So just go tell him about the lightsaber. They'll make you a new one. That lightsaber will probably end up in grievous's hands eventually

or somebody, some other Jedi will find it. It's fine. It's going to be fine. I guess she knows that she's been taking a few Ls lately. And that's why she's like, this is a last straw. I can't tell him about this. I'm already, you know, they're going to take my badge. Yeah, I guess it is like the rookie quarterback thing where it's like, you know, once that sort of, once you're identified, it's like, oh, you're not, you're not living up to the tape that we saw when, when you were recruited, it does turn on you pretty fast.

But yeah, so it's, it's fine, like, hey, it's, we're going to the underworld of Corsan. No real new ground is trod here. And, like, the lesson doesn't make sense. I like the dragon horse, Jedi. Snoopy is cool. I would enjoy a murder-she-wrote-style series about him and Jocasta New, like, going out, solving crimes. Good news, that'd be fun.

He comes back, like, kind of a lot, apparently, which is not what I was expecting at all. I like his, like, forward ponytail situation. He has a thing where his hair is pulled out to the front of his face and then parted. he just fucked up doing the like columbo one more thing and it wasn't the last scene in the episode right the police would have showed up and she would have been like oh you got me and then it would have been over that would have been that would have been it yeah we just need to turn him loose on health me I said just be clear I say a lot I mean like six episodes or something which is a lot for aside an elder Jedi so yeah I'm I'm surprised that um I when we entered this episode just

given the way it looked and everything. First of all, I will say the episode looks good. Yeah, it looks great. All the new character designs, like all of these like the bounty hunt, quote unquote bounty hunters and the crime lore, like, all of them look sick and they like put work in. Both Cassie and Ionia have like distinct looks. Ionia has like the vertical eye effect happening. Her eyelids are the left and right. Yeah, that shit is cool.

Yeah. I was surprised, though, that we didn't see zero at all in this. I was, like, waiting for a player to somehow. He gets out. Didn't he get away? Yeah, but this is his spot. Yeah, true. Didn't he leave for someone, though?

Isn't that the point? That's what I'm saying. I think he probably went back to Hutspace, right? If only Zero could have been worked into this one, it would have. That's, I would have really been the ice thing on top. I think that's part of the disappointment of this episode. because, like, the opening sprawl is so cool where it's, like, on Corrassant, there's a CD underground of criminals, and we see all of the best criminals that we've seen so far.

Like, we see Cadbane, like, shooting someone behind him without even looking at it. And it's this fucking, like, well, my lightsaber's gone. Cadbane should have gotten that lightsaber. That's the other thing is, like, the setup for Sunubei is that he is the expert on the Correscent crime world. And everyone that we meet in this little adventure are irrelevant characters that we will probably never see again. I don't mind that if they're actually, the thing for me is less that they're not going to come back. It's more that they're just not interesting on the, like, they don't have time.

If this episode was about these two one-off characters who were sick, like to go to the Colombo model, you can have a standout actor in an episodic show or a stand-out character that you're like, oh, that character was sick. damn they got busted at the end like that's fine if they're if the road that they're on is good but like Ionia and and uh Cassie I keep forgetting their fucking names are just like they're like sketches of something that could have been great like it's clear the character designer loved them I really wanted to make them sing but like they just aren't in the episode enough instead we get a 22 minute episode with an eight minute chase scene like yeah you're right off the chase scene. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. This episode just had too much Asoka. That's the problem. Sometimes. Just pull the Asoka out of this

episode, put her in the 80 Gallia episode, and just let this whole thing be a Sanubei episode. We don't need a minute. We don't need a prince. Just let Sunubei rock. That would be awesome. Sanupea lost a lightsaber off camera. Anyway, Sunubei, could you track it down for us? You're the old Jedi on. Meanwhile across town, Nack Movers is like, sweet my lightsaber's here get in here with my dinner I have to show you my lightsaber and it's the two of them being like

we gotta get rid of this guy honey and be like don't worry I slipped a little something extra into his drink yeah oh that was another thing the whole thing that it was like poison and then she was like drinking the wine cup I was like okay so is she about to die like is she drinking the poison

I think she was gonna maybe try to poison Sanube, but he just called the cops before she could do it. Oh, sure. Maybe. There wasn't a second cup, though. Was there not? No? That's very funny then. I was just like, why she, like, the way that she, like, reached for the cup and was like shaking, it made this cup

of liquid as we're talking about poison feel like this really significant thing. And it was just, it was nothing. Yeah, I thought she was just fully spiraling where she was like, I'm going to drink from the cup. In that way, he'll know it's not poison. Hey, exactly. Mr. Snoopy, here's that, here's a glass of a sparkling water for you. Obviously, I drank from myself so you know it's not poisoned.

And he's like, what? Yeah. I thought she was, I thought she was, like, doing the thing of, like, of, of, you know, taking the poison herself so that she wouldn't give away any information on Cassie. Again, what a great episode that would have been. where she like poisons herself and it's like she's just got to hold out for 20 minutes so Cassie can make an escape and can he convince oh so many good directions but instead eight minute chasing things have sacrifices had to be made yeah true next time should be better i hope uh well i mean as long as there's more sinewes sinewba you know whenever snubay's not on screen the audience should be asking where's master sunubai True. I'm always saying this.

Yeah. So I think that will do it for this week's episode. I think there's one legitimately great episode here. Like, for me, it's an all-timer for the Clone Wars. And then it's your more boilerplate. I think, you know, one of them

was fine, and this one, you know, as harsh as we've been, it was still kind of fun. Even its shittiness, I've still kind of found fun. The animation is really good, and he carries it a long way. animation and the character design the vibe of it's one of the frustrating things

where the better it does a lot of that stuff the worse it is in evaluation because you have to be like why is this not a good episode I think it's an excellent episode to have on in the background while you're playing a video game you're like well I'm soaking in the vibes

of Khorasan this is not the underbelly but like if you have to watch it and then do a podcast about it like many things it falls apart at that point and yeah we sure did examine it because it's fun

it's fun to to just dunk on some underbaked writing sometimes we've all done some underbaked writing so we've all been there is the thing and part of getting on to the show like this

is sometimes you've got to love the low points as well you got to appreciate the work a day series that shows like this sometimes have to be yeah um listen easy isn't always simple yeah that's something what's that even mean in this episode what in this episode is easy isn't always simple this has nothing to do with this episode at all

that is also doesn't make sense what is that fucking well you think it's easy to kill this guy and run away with your girlfriend but it's not you think it's easy that you're just going to go walk around and find this guy and it's not you think it's easy that you're going to put a tracking device on this person but it's going to be loud as fuck so it's not simple but then at that point

it's not easy anymore now it's hard now it's complicated and hard well you know it's not complicated is our schedule we understand our schedule we know when things are going up and when they're being recorded

and when they're happening and all you have to do is just hit download and it will appear, and it's just as easy for us on the back end. Next week, Patreon backers will get a Q&A episode covering the end of the Geonosis Arc and Brain Invaders, as well as the trio of episodes we've discussed here. You'd like to hear that episode, and our other Q&A episodes, you can support the show at patreon.com slash civilized. They're already support the show.

We are so grateful for your support, and we hope you continue to enjoy what we're up to here. two weeks from now on the main feed we're going to learn about the Mandalorians where we're going to find something very different from what fans of the Mandalorian series would probably expect and we'll also get an admittedly

redundant answer to the question does Obi-Wan thought cannot fucking wait here we go baby sending your questions not about Obi-Wan fucking about the previous episodes there will be a later Q&A about Obi-Want's sex life hold on to those but have an appropriate time in the place remember to send your questions to our emails not through the Patreon please because

the Patreon messages are really hard to keep track of so please if you've sent a question to the Patreon messages please send it instead to our email which is a more civilized age at gmail.com. Please send it there it is. That's it. Until then, thanks for listening to a more civilized age. And remember, a Jedi's lightsaber is their life.

And a Jedi's life is cheap. Ah, yeah, okay. I don't know. We're going to be. I don't know. I'm going to be able to be. Weeer! ...heenna...

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