A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 18: Senate Murders, Cat and Mouse, and Bounty Hunters (Clone Wars 37-39)

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

After last episode's cohesive and sumptuous Mandalore Arc, today's follow up was going to have a high bar to clear. And, unfortunately, all three of today's episodes come up short. That's not to say there's nothing of note here: the opening "Senate Murders" gives us some back room politicking and a little extra insight into senatorial processes, but it raises more questions than it answers. The other two episodes of the bunch have their charms too--especially if you're a sucker for tense submarine duels or stylized bounty hunter designs. But all in all, it's just as Rob says in today's intro: They cannot all be winners. Thankfully, that won't stop us from having our own brand of incredibly punchy fun with what they offer us anyway. NEXT TIME: Episodes 40 & 41 ( "The Zillo Beast" & "The Zillo Beast Strikes Back") Show Notes Fallen Clones: None??? Fallen Senators: Onaconda Farr, Mee Deechi Fallen Bounty Hunters: Rumi Paramita Fallen Cool As Hell Separatist Officers: No one, because we believe Trench lived somehow. Tera Sinube vs Tan Divo Epic Rap Battle (Oh my god, I'm just realizing that this is just clips edited over a Bob Ross vs Pablo Picasso battle oh no.)   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 Zakeney, joined by Ali Akimpora, Austin, Austin, and Natalie Watson. And unlike my co-panelists, every episode of the show can't all be winners. So we come to a grab bag of stand-alones of. varying quality, uh, let's say. Uh, we'll start with, uh, Senate murders, but then we have a sort of military focused one, uh, once again, returning to Christophis, uh, yet another episode that feels wildly out of, uh, sequence. And then we'll finish it off with bounty hunters, which if you can't guess what it's doing, it will open with a, with a tribute to Akira Kurosawa,

and nothing will honor Akira Kurosawa more than bounty hunting. hunters, which has seven, seven? It feels like they're at seven. It's seven. Feels like less than. It's seven. It's exactly seven, and one of them barely does anything. So, seven, like, freelance defenders of this farm village who are trying to guard it

from bandits, one of whom we might recognize. But let's get into it. Well, I think what is probably the most substantive episode of this bunch, Senate murders, we're going to have to say goodbye to Uncle Ano. This episode covers two things. One, Padme is trying to pass a bill that will prevent the creation of basically a new draft class of clone soldiers. and, you know, by doing this, she'll stop the war and she'll get the Republic focused on diplomacy again. And then the other thing that's going to be running through this episode is the fact that a key member of Padme's coalition, Uncleano, is going to be poisoned in the first five minutes of this.

And they're going to have to have a very brief whodunit as they try to puzzle out which of the political factions in the Senate. killed him. Uh-huh. I love that at the end of our last episode, the conversation that we had had was specifically on the need to divest from Padmay. Uh-huh. And then this is the fucking episode we get immediately after that, was just the most bullshit Padme episode of all time.

I could not believe when I read the Slughey. Like for this episode, I was like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. But. I will say she comes across like more of a real one than literally anyone she surrounds yourself with, I guess except for Lolo. Low bar, low bar, but sure. But you know what I mean? Like Baylor Gana and Mon Mothma do not want the smoke in this episode.

They are extremely, let's let the police handle this. We don't need to go looking into anything. We didn't stay back here just in case. And Padmey looks like a. revolutionary next to them and like and that's not saying much like you said it's a low fucking bar well i wanted to uh just point out that at the very top of this episode the quote that we get searching for the truth is easy accepting the truth is hard i could not read this not in the adult swim theme song voice like when i first i was like searching for the truth

The zeezee, accepting the juice is hot, R. Searching for the truth is easy, accepting the truth is hot art. Like TikTok has just poisoned my brain with the adult swim theme song voice for this opening quote. I could not stop laughing at it. Extremely good. Yeah, so. Yeah, Rob, go ahead.

Like the stage setting is already, is it also kind of interesting? I'm not sure any episode in this is fully in sequence, but the idea here is that the war has been a bloodbath of late, which seems like is true of just about any moment in the Clone Wars you can pick out, but they have basically burned through

their initial orders of clones. Yikes. And given that some of the numbers we outlined early in the series, like, there are more droids than clones. There's a wild imbalance of numbers. They are running through clones, very, very

quickly as they fight this war and they are getting down to uh you know a being a depleted force having a weakened army and so the senate is pushing for basically expanding clode production uh it it sounds like it's a little ambiguous as to whether this is like expanding production entirely or is it straight up they're out of clones there will not be more unless they put in a new order um because i think those are two different prospects uh as well it's Also, presumably, it's also just a generic military spending budget increase, or she wants to cut the military spending budget. So we're also talking about hardware here. We're talking about more ships and weapons and everything else.

You're right. It isn't made clear that they're like, quote unquote, out of clones or there aren't anymore coming off the presses. But the thing that's strange about this is we know that the turnaround time on clones is pretty long. And so approving them now is sort of like saying, well, in 10 years we're still fighting this war because they have to grow up. I actually don't have an exact year count

for what that is or we don't on the top of our heads. I've seen that 10 year number floating around the last couple of weeks in some spaces I'm in and so I'm adopting that without doing any fact-checking on it. But like if you are voting for we need more clones at this point you're like

well we're going to be in this war for decades. Well I feel the show itself is is centering this, this entire conversation on specifically the losses of clones. Like it is, it is saying military, the bill to cut military spending and stop the creation of more clone troopers. But when the narration, the opening narration says, while losses add up, the thing that we see on screen are a bunch of clones on gurneys. like basically near death being brought into, you know, transport ships.

So I think that, yes, I think there probably is a larger military spending implication to it all. But really, the fact that it's about how many more lives are we going to create for war fodder is, a dark starting place for this entire episode. Yeah, it says outright stopped clone production, right? Yeah. So that's pretty, that's a big thing to be doing.

And what would that even mean for the clones, I mean, already in process? Like, a clone that... I probably finish them, I hope. I don't know if I hope. I don't know. Yeah. Because like ripping someone out of that system

seven years into it is probably also deeply traumatic. I don't know what the – I think you've got to get ready. I think you've got to pull them out of it. I think you have to just start trying to reintegrate them into society. Yeah, like, yeah, some sort of, yeah. Well, either way, though, this is – Padme is basically saying we should drive a line here, and we should, like, halt the production, the assembly line of this war machine. I will say really quick, part of the reason we might be stumbling over this

and not have clear details on what the vote is, quote-unquote, is because this episode goes back and forth about what is being voted on. There are moments when it's talking about Padme trying to introduce a bill to cut spending, and there are times when they talk about a military spending bill trying to get passed separately, and they just bounce between the two of those with wild abandon. Sometimes the fear is that a bill is going to get passed, and sometimes the goal is that a bill get passed. And, I mean, that's true that both of those things can happen,

but the episode plays fast and loose in terms of how they talk about this, which is frustrating. it also a running through line through this episode that I feel like we should set up before we get into it is the fact that Uncle Anno has this like marred political record like constantly throughout this episode people are referencing like Anno's mistakes and like the you know the poor choices he's made and how you know he's trying to uh uh uh move past that and like do kind of penance basically for, you know, the, the, uh, betrayal against the republic that he's enacted in the past. And I feel like it would be nice to have, right? Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. I feel like, I guess like what else would be? And I feel like it would be helpful just to kind of remind yourselves of what happened in that episode. No clones died in that, right? Like he, he betrayed them for long enough for Padme to get there and be like, dude, come on. And then,

for Jarja Binks to go like, Duda, come on, and that everything was fine. And no one died, as far as I recall. Some droids died. Yeah. But she didn't have any clones with it. Like, it wasn't like a military. He didn't betray.

He's, I don't, is he still the senator? I think so. Or is he just a diplomat? Because there's also Lolo, who is the senator from Rodeo also. They have two senators. But I think doesn't, isn't she like an intern or someone who works under him? She's a senator. But she does say that Uncle Ono is like a mentor to her, or she does refer to him as like somewhat of a superior, whether that's in actual rank or just in kind of, you know, their relationship.

Okay, she becomes, she's an aide who then becomes an acting senator when he dies. Convenient for her. Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, the way things are planned sometimes. Anyway, I also think it's worth mentioning in saying that people are putting down Ono's name person doing that the most Uncle Odo himself like every line that he has is like I fucked up I have to fix this like what did he fuck up he just jailed fucking Jar Jar basically or jailed

Padmey hold me yeah he sold out a friend and was like a was the quiz the quizling of Rodea now admittedly he immediately walked that back and no harm was done which I think net here's the weird thing was it a huge mistake could have been the way it worked out pretty big win

the food got delivered the invaders got chased off you patch things up with your pal yeah you got some really packages yeah what did he fuck up so this actually leads me

to the other thing which is like are we just to read Uncle Ano as like we're jumping ahead now but there's a sequence where they're he is two primary political opponents besides himself they are Senator Deitchie me Dici is it me Dici is that right

Is it really me Dici It 100% is it's me Dici Who is fucking ridiculous Evil and hot And then also They're also evil and also hot Hallie Bertino Me Dici's such a hater

She's such a hater Oh my God the energy The hater energy just Like heat Like looking at something like a hot road in the distance You can see the mirage waves coming off The hater waves are so strong on Hallie Bertino

But me Ditchie Bertoni what do they say Bertone Bertino That's a fake name That's nothing But they say later She specifically says like

Listen why would I ever kill this man Every word he says I put in my fundraising and he makes us money. He's our chief fundraiser, which, like, is he a gaffe machine? Are we supposed to read Uncle Ono, like Uncle Joe, like Uncle Joe Biden from this era of pop culture of, like, America? Do you know what I mean? I think so, because even Lolo, like, refers to him as, like, the most influential Rhodian, like, in Corrassant, I think, was the, the... Like, he's just been in politics for decades in that way. You know, he has friends. And I mean, we also get the friends on both sides. with Medici who's like, listen, me and Uncle O and, me and Anaconda, don't really get along with everything, but, you know, I respect him. You know, we've been in this long enough that I would

never kill him. They've shook, they've shook hands across the aisle a couple times. Well, yeah, so this is, there's a lot of things. Like, this feels like, on some level this badly wants to be like an intrigue, full, like style, but there's like West Wing DNA in here. and so it wants to be like a parliamentary procedural in some ways but it also wants to reference like things like the fundraising stuff that's like literally lifted from things that west wing characters say to each other oh uh like jed bartlett leaves a like right wing reactionary in place basically rather than running a credible opponent because this is his four-dimensional chess

justification uh i like the devil i got every time this guy opens his mouth we fundraise off it. And so they're trying to sort of inject that level of rail politic into this kind of like the domestic politics of the Republic. But those are so thinly sketched out that immediately, oh yeah, these guys are all fundraising off of stuff their opponents are saying. Fundraising from who? Like how does that? When do we ever see a senator do electioneering? That's what I was wondering. Like is, is, I forget. her name already, but like, is she going back to Comodians being like, Senator Al-Avada

wants you to lose your jobs because you're not going to be manufacturing clones anymore? Like, is this? Right. I mean, we do, that's a little crumb. That's a little juicy crumb. That is that the Caminoids have their Senate position. They have the Senate seats because of the clones. They spun

clone production in the Senate seats. That's just because they got deleted from the database with the planets. I'm convincing someone you're not dead. Yeah. We've been here. Can we get back in the Senate. But I love that. Because again, it raises the thing of like, so wait, at any point there are the Jedi could have come to, in fact, did come to Camino and be like, hey, we're Jedi. We're here to do business with the Republic, which you're part of even though you don't

have a say there, and do that successfully. But the Caminoons weren't in the Galactic Senate. They didn't have people. Were they never in the Galactic Senate or were they taken out? The implication that Anno gives here is that they want it in And they finally got a bargaining shit to get in Right Which is interesting Which is ridiculous to me Because there are fucking thousands of planets

Like what's one more? Let them in Let them in! How many people are doing shit? You got to fill out that fucking You got to fill out all those pods Those fucking Senate pods I'm sure there's an open season there

How many votes are there on the Senate floor. There has to be thousands. Yeah, there's got to be. Right? Look at all those little floating, each of those little floating platforms is a different delegation. When we see the wide shots of the Senate chamber, it's like constellation of stars of those little floating platforms. And does every pod get one, like, is every planet one vote? Or do multiple senators have, like, let's talk about voting.

This is what I'm trying to say. This is what I'm trying to say. This is what I'm trying to to say. The Senate was divided in numerous committees and subcommittees each to handle various issues, the anti-slavery committee, the Committee for Transportation of Construction Materials, the Delegation of 2000. I think that is, no, that's the loyalist. What the fuck? I don't know. I don't know. There have to be, I don't know. Someone write in for a question episode. Please, so we can do something. And let us know. Give me a link that breaks down canon and legends what the situation was here. The Legends Wikipedia says

The Galactic Senate was made up of over 2,000 congressmen. Governor delegates referred to as senators and representatives representing sector, systems, individual plans, or even corporations or guilds. That's so wild. It's wild. Anyway. Well, also, I do kind of wonder, are the Kamenowans

like they're so mysterious their planet was hidden we see so few of them I kind of wonder is it like are they like fucking like elves post gray havens

or something where it's like there's a handful of these like elder genius scientists just fucking around on the edge of space and if you really count it up you're talking about a planet

of like a few thousand beings or something like that but they have the cloning facilities and that i think that i could sort of see where it's like well look you're like an outpost of like a vestigial civilization but like you know you get a vote the senate yeah but you give it to them when they have the cloning facility right that yeah exactly otherwise they're they're rounding error within a rounding error but like it's unclear like maybe there are tons of caminoas but we see so few of them i would normally oppose

to that sort of characterization except it's a very caminoin category characterization. That's how the, that's how the Caminoans think about the world and the people in it as rounding errors. Oh, 100%. We've never seen a camera, you know, maybe there's someone from Camino who doesn't vibe with this stuff. We ain't, we never met him. I would love to meet the Kim and Owen who is like, this cloning war shit is not, not so cool. But instead they seem to have made it their whole life. That person is making a bio weapon to kill all the clones and want to go to solve the problem, unfortunately. It's like a very salarian, like the cause of

of and solution to all the problems the Caminoids create. So we've skipped two important, not important things early on. One, the Caminoin, okay, one, Senator Stonk is worried about public opinion. Stonk. You get a call early from an authoritarian named Stonk. And Pat Nickyms over and she's like, damn, I just heard back from Senator Stomp. He says he supports us, but he's so afraid of public opinion turning on him. He can't vote, you know, voice his support, unfortunately.

Which is wild. Like the fact that, like, I feel like we get so little, uh, so few examples of what the consequences of public opinion actually are. It makes me wonder, like, is the planet where Thorians are from or is it like a big manufacturing center or something where like, like Camino center to the war economy in some way that like voting against this would be like voting to lose jobs or something, right? Yeah. It's just like, when have we ever seen? seen public opinion actually have an impact. Like, it was gestured at in the Mandalorian episode that, like, oh, well, if you can sway public opinion, you can, like, get, like, a, you know, support for the resistance.

But we never actually saw that play out in either direction. We never saw public opinion having an effect on anything. But it's always, it's always reference. It's like, oh, public opinion, like, what are they going to say about us? And it's like, nothing, because they're off. Like, I don't know, just chilling and viving somewhere. Yeah. You getting replaced doesn't matter.

There's 2,000 other senators, and the wind is blowing towards war. You know, you getting replaced, they think don't fix it. The second very important thing is we got some incredible hand motions throughout the beginning of this. The Rhodians pop off the Wakanda salute, the arms crossed, the obfuscate in Vampire the Masquerade LARPing. Like, boom, hit them with the X. That's what both Lolo and Ano do in the hallway when Padme has to go in. And then Kin Robb's crew, I don't remember where Kin Rob is from, but Padmey does that speech. And Ken Rob's response is like within the realm of traditional positive visual responses.

I think she's like claps or she's like, yes, that was good, does a little nod or something. But her click is like punching the air, punching the air. I am synchronized punching the air. And it's so funny to me. Especially after that weak-ass speech. Like, that speech was fucking mid. That speech was ridiculous. All she said was, it was like the most...

If we do more war, we'll do more war. Yeah, she said, by adding more clones to the conflict, we are only escalating destruction, not winning the war, yada, yada, yada. We got to bring an end to the hatred or whatever. And it's like, hate... To promote... To promote, to promote, to promote more diplomacy and to put an end to this killing and hatred. Like, that's why we need to stop making more clones, which is like, Padme, what fucking planet are you on, man?

By the end of that speech, I was like, we need more clones and they need to be better on. You know what, I'm going to introduce a new bill. This is the, the, uh, the droid destroyer act of 2021. All right. Soled. We got to get some deactivate. We've seen the deactivate. You know what?

We've seen the senator from Andalore use the deactivator extremely well. We've seen firsthand evidence. Why do, this is the, this is what Palpatine says at the end of the episode. Why do we get defenses that the, that the clones don't get? Give them droid deactivators. Let's even the playing field. Let's make sure that the people who are defending us at home. Just turn me into a neocon.

Just make a huge one of those. Planet-sized, one could say. Just make a planet-sized one of those, deactivators, shoot it at a bunch of droids, and boom, war's over, bud. This is, the thing is, in a horrendous way, what Pam is saying really is what passed for, like, centrist anti-war rhetoric in this period. like again, I will never forget there was an entire election where the talking point was we need to get the U.S. out and the U.N. in.

And like that was it. It was like, well, we've invaded two countries. We only care about one of them right now. And our solution is to basically just wash our hands and like turn it over to this different militarized force, but the way less effective one. And then we're going to, we'll run like hell. And that's what passed for it.

Yeah. Well, this is, we've also hit the limits of what this metaphor can do, is a shame because this is the most they've leaned into a lot of this metaphor. We have, we have Dici explicitly saying you shouldn't make speeches like that. It's unpatriotic this episode, which is just like echoing so much of the kind of conservative movement in the mid-2000s around any criticism of the ongoing wars on terror, the ongoing war on terror, quote unquote. And it doesn't work when like we know too much of what this war is about.

Yeah. This war is not about hatred. this war is not a bag it's it's about a group of people who want a different a different political organization for themselves separate from the republic this is a war of secession this is not a war against a nebulous you know anti-republic and they're also not playing for a settlement like right in the defense of the republic here's the thing it is not clear to me that this is a war you can stop and the end of that war looks good for good for the least for the losing side. Like, it is not clear to me that, like, we just need to get diplomacy going. It's been clear there are some factions that you can, like, engage with people who haven't, like, yet chosen aside.

But the guys running the, like, merciless droid armies don't seem inclined to, like, turn those off. And so, like, this is the other part. He wants to kill the Jedi. That's what he wants. He does not want to establish a separatist, like, conclave. He wants to kill the Jedi. He ain't

going to stop that because Duku says, Oh, we're all... We've all been made... Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're all dukes now. Yeah. I've been upgraded from Count Dukua to Duke Duku.

So we see this dog shit speech and the video game, like, cutscene reactions in the background. The emotes. We get... We get sexy... Beach in Fortnight. Tabby's going to do her big speech in Fortnite. Right after Ariana Grande's next show. She's the opener.

People just start logging off. The tomatoes just break the game. Like the tomato physics just shut down Fortnite forever. So yeah, so Saturday Dice, it is very smooth medicine. Wait, what are we going to get like a, what are we going to get like a Joe Biden message like state of the union in Fortnite. How far out are we

from that? He had, I feel like maybe a year. He had the normal archie island, right? Yeah, he had the normal arkey island. He had like the player space in Fortnite. Yeah. Allie's looking at us like,

Ali after this episode's over, I have to find you some videos. He had like a player made a... No, he didn't make it. If he made it, it would be worth it. If he like longed into front for the first time with like the building tools and was like told to build some shit,

I would love it. I mean, fuck that guy, but I would watch that content. Yeah. The thing that we instead got was like a custom-built campaign headquarters in Fortnite as if it was Second Life circa 2006. Like, incredible. I thought we were in the era of people only doing that in Animal Crossing right now. But maybe.

I think he did. He did have the Biden Island in Animal Crossing. You could like download the fucking Biden. like QR code to like put a sign up on your fucking island just absolute depression depression hours anyway anyway sorry Dichi me Dici yeah shows up yeah yeah yeah he's like unpatriotic it's a bad it's bad to give speeches like that um and then we cut to and this is gonna be the key and i actually do like this they show us everything at the start we see them gathered on Terrace, toasting their amazing speech.

By the way, I love this vision of politics. You know what we should do? We give a fucking speech, and that's going to turn the tide of public opinion. You know what we need to do? It's the we, let's put on a show vision of politics. Well, we couldn't offer Senator Stonk anything to make him vote for us, so instead we're going to go tell people to vote for us, and that'll do it. Yeah.

So, we see them on the terrace. about like celebrating their rhetorical win and we see Lolo is serving everyone like champagne or something on a solver the glass is already poured but she tops up her she tops up Oano's glass everyone then drinks they continue to talk about the speech Anna was flashing doomed character vibes every scene he's like I have so many sins to make up for I can only hope I live long enough to put right shit like that he's basically like uh oh doesn't look good for Uncleano here in this episode called Senate murders

and then Ursula slash Senator Britone arrives actually more Cruella well it's it's Crella and it's also God I just I well Eartha Kit played her in the Emperor's New Groove.

Yes. Fuck. Kuzmo. What's her name? That's not Kuzmo. I'm pretty sure. I-E-M-E-M-A. Okay.

Wasn't that far off. Kusmo's her son. It's the same. These are the same character, as far as I can tell. 100%. And she arrives, she walks in, she handles the wine bottle, examines it. looks sort of dismissively at it.

Yeah, she places it back down as if it's dirtyed her hand to have touched it. It's incredible. And then she says, basically, you're all separate as stooges. And diplomacy failed the Republic a long time ago. Yeah. And she's right to say it. And she's fucking right. And that's when Otto fires back with the Kaminoids might have barter their creation of the clones in a seat in the Senate.

But that does not give you free reign. and he sort of shows her the door. Then he refills his glass, handling the bottle, and takes another sip. And immediately, he's like, my heart and just drops. Yeah. Uncle Ono's been done so dirty. They're, like, could have been different. Could have had a different, could have a different life.

I just feel like, you know, he didn't deserve this. I would just not go to Corrassant is the thing. If I were, like, involved in local policy, I wouldn't. I would opt out. Yeah. You could have a lot done locally, I bet. Yeah. I guess the thing is, though, you go to Corrason, it's sort of like East Coast bias, I guess, in media, where it's like, you just don't give a fuck.

Like, you're on Corrasson and nothing ever, like, the war is out there. Meanwhile, you're in a nice office building. You got all the luxuries of empire. What's going on in Rodeo? Probably nothing good. Probably nothing too bad. Anyway, I'm here. Hanging with my friends.

I'm even going to get a refill on that champagne with my friends because my friend, Padma, said a dope speech. Yeah. We're changing the world out here. It's like this. I remember this. Big, it's like big, it's big fucking, it's big like your first year interning on Capitol Hill energy. where you just feel like, yeah, we're fucking out here, we're doing it. Like, this is- Fucking to victories, man.

You know, I remember years ago I read this review of like the collected, like, after Ivan Schlesinger died, his diaries were published as like a collected set. He was a major speech writer in the Kennedy and LBJ era. But I remember a review of the collection was like, this guy was a liberal luminary. in his day but they're like you know if you look at what that diary showed his life and the life of his set being post like LBJ and really

not even post like during that period it all turns into like gala's and parties and like hanging out with other like-minded people in drawing rooms in D.C. and New York and the verdict was like if you want to see what happened to like classic

old line liberalism a lot of its champions just decided it was more fun to be part of the in-crowd than continue through the work. And that's kind of how the Galactic Senate seems to be with a lot of these folks. We get a little snapshot of a social event. We get Uncle Otto's like makeshift funeral. Brutal. Brutal. Brutal.

Devastating. Hater's anonymous. You know what? Not anonymous. We all know he was a flawed. Real sack of shit, really. Bro, when I die You have to stop people

From doing this to me You cannot let The priest get up there And be like Well, we all know Austin Was kind of a sack of shit No, no, he would have said so too He would have said so

Don't look at me like that Why are you booing? He would have agreed He would have agreed And also mad people are there In terms of, I mean, no one is there This is not like a big state funeral But also the people who are there

Are like Yoda is there The Palpatine's right hand dude With the big horns is there Me, Dici happened to show up to this. Satine is there. Yeah, Satine is there. Satine, what are you doing? What the fuck are you doing here?

Go back to Manor. That man was poisoned. You almost got killed last week. Get out of there. They've only got so many character models. Palpatine is actually there. Palpatine is there as well. Yeah, Palpatine's there.

Is he? Who's giving that speech? Arodian. Is that like the different? Senate Chaplain? Maybe. It's a brutal speech. It's like, this is, like, I hate this guy.

Like. Like, I hate himself. You know, you're just bleeding with... It's Salud. On the kind of fart. One of his other, uh, uh, AIDS. His guy named Salud.

Huh. Well, damn. Man, I feel bad for Uncle Ano. He had no hitters. He had straight, none. Straight fucking fake friends through and through to the very end. to the very end and they just disrespected him on his on his fucking funeral bed like that is just that is not okay

pad they should have gone up there and taken the mic that's yeah excuse me give us another one of those speeches pad may yeah so uh lolo is sort of uh you know whimpering he was my mentor i don't know how to carry on without him guiding me and then uh she and padmay are summoned by chance Palpatine to an urgent meeting. It's a media character who is introduced to we've not even

mentioned yet. Yeah, Detective Tenhead. Lieutenant Devo. Listen. What if Peter Lorry were Columbo? That is it. Is Peter Lorry doing

Columbo? I mean, it's not literally Peter Lurie. It's actually it's Spongebob Square Pants' voice actor. It's Tom Kinney.

Oh, wow. Doing a sort of Lord, like, doing a sort of Colombo by way of Joe Cairo by Lori, Lori's Joe Cairo. If y'all don't know Peter Laurie, just like Google Peter Laurie, and you'll see it like, oh, they just... The kids know Peter Laurie. They don't fucking know Peter, Larry. There are people on this call who don't know Peter Laurie. Don't say, I haven't said that yet.

People know Casablanca. Help me, Rick. This is not... Casablanca. Okay, there's a thing that I had no idea about, which is interesting, which is Peter Lorry did a series of detective serials pre-World War II in the 1930s, in which he played a character in Yellowface named Mr. Modo from a series of kind of detective and spy novels by John P. Marquand. I always want to say Marquand, even though it was a QU, which is a different type of

caricature than the traditional Peter. When I think of Peter Lurie, I think of someone who is playing deviant and dangerous most of the time. A weird guy. Sometimes weird guy, which is to say queer coded, but deeply human, often overcoming the performance often overcomes both the terrible, like archetypical stereotypes being used by rooting it in something deeply human. or literally overcoming the kind of film code at the time that said you couldn't put a gay person in anything and playing gay in a way that was readable to people even though it was like it was legible even though it was supposed to be illegal but he also played yellow face Japanese detective with I guess I'd say not quite not not quite Mickey Rooney Breakfast at Tiffany caricature not saying much but I am glad it's not saying much And in fact, well, Mr. Moto as a character is more of a different type of Japanese stereotype. It's the sort of like, uh, like subtle. So you see in the Charlie Chan neighborhood of like, I don't think so.

I mean, I don't know Charlie Chan as like a, as like a fictional. One of his tech was like speaking in Cone, right? Like, like give a like old Chinese saying thing to. No, this guy is like modern. This is like a Westerners vision of how Japan could join the big nations. This is like, oh, look, he's smart and subtle and is like, he's the best that Imperial Japan has to offer. And if Imperial Japan conquers China, then you know what? Maybe that's an improvement.

And when you go back and look at Peter Lorry as Mr. Motto, you get a little bit of that here, which is interesting. This like blend of competence, but like not the sort of competence that's. characterful or like, Colombo is just so much better than this dude. Colombo and our Colombo, Sunoubae, is, you know, he's a, he's a detective that knows people and knows how people work. This dude just does not. This dude is not. I literally, when this man appeared on screen, I stood up from my computer. I walked away. I took like five minutes to myself and just thought really long and hard about what I was doing here. It was just like, it just, it, sometimes, I mean, I get that there's a lot of room to experiment

within a show like this because it's essentially, you know, you almost have like this, the, the, the, the space of like a sitcom where you can, where you can do these one-off episodes that are completely like have nothing to do with the rest of the story have nothing to do with like any A plots, B plots, even C plots and you know it's a genre episode or it's a

it's a this or that and that's extremely what this felt like and we've seen other episodes like that before like the Cad Bain was like very noirie like had a lot of noir elements to it but this just felt so ham-fisted in a way that this character

just felt so out of place in the Star Wars universe it was like it was incredibly jarring and I could not take him seriously the entire episode I just was like this is he doesn't fit in

in a number of interesting ways one of them is that they talk about how he is I mean you're nailing it right the Faloni clip for this episode the Faloni zone thing is explicitly about you know we're gonna actually visit the Flonysone's own late this episode So please prep for that.

But he basically says that like Tandivo was a big swing and like they were willing to go weirder with him than they do with anybody else in terms of both performance because they wanted to give Tom Kinney a lot of space to just kind of like be kind of goofy and be a kind of, he's not a corrupt cop, but he's like and he's not inept. He's just so by the books that he's a little inept. Do you know what I mean? Like, he can't, he's kind of right in the end. He's not right in the end, but he's... It has the info that cracks the case. That's true. He does have the right info.

He has the vibe of like an insurance detective. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yes, 100%, which is like, that's like the little bit of this that does work for me. It's like, when this episode leading this to the noir trappings that are not about, like, him specifically, I think a lot of it kind of clicks into play. nicely for me, but it's too few. Anyway, the thing I was going to get to is, like, his proportions are different than anyone else's in the entire show. He's rounder than everybody else. His, his hair or his head is squared off, and it's asymmetrical. He's the only asymmetrical character,

Filoni said, that they've made in terms of like basic facial structure, because they wanted to make him bizarre looking, and they wanted to make him look like a slightly squatter version of the Keystone cop police robots, the police droids with their little hats have a squared off head and like a rounded shoulders. And when you, when he pointed that out, they like show a clip of him standing right in front of them. And it's like, oh, I can totally like, yeah, that I would have never ever said that myself. But seeing him next to them, they have the same weird head shape. Yeah. Where it comes like up and then out and then up and around and square it off at the top. And it's like, that's the weirdest decision in character design.

history. Anyway, Faloni suggests that he's like, we don't know whatever happened to Tandivo, this guy doesn't come back, but he does say, who knows about Tandivo?

Maybe he got it with Palpatine, and now he's some sort of civil administrator marshalling the clones. Who knows? But never underestimate Tandivo, that's for sure. Oh, my Lord. Never will.

I do like, and this is the thing, when we're talking about sort of the compressed format of this, where on the one hand, they can try out ideas. is on the other hand, they don't always have time to develop them. Because for me, the most intriguing part of this

is when he reveals there's been a murder. And he says, a murderer is on the loose. It's my job to find him. And then he sort of explains, it was poison, of course. The politician's preferred weapon. Politicians always have something to hide, and it always comes back to haunt them.

And he turns around, and his gaze sweeps over the room, and it falls on Lolo, Padmei, Chancellor Palpatine, Manmadma, Bail Organa. and the interesting thing there is that we're extending the Colombo metaphor is if this guy starts like hanging around and rooting into these characters every single one of them yeah has things to lose having a cop sniffing around their business yep and we it would have been so cool

if there was a race to like complete the case before this detective stays in your business because like you know hey what's what's chancellor palpathy yeah are you really You said you agreed with Anaconda's opposition on the bill. You didn't support this bill, but I hear you've been whipping votes for the, like, shit like that. Senator Padma, Senator Amadala, you sure spend a lot of time around the Jedi Temple for someone who doesn't have. You and the Jedi Knight, Anakin, Skywalker, sure have been seen together a lot. What's up with that? What's going on there?

And it's like, that would be great. I wish you could get into their shit. It's just like any time they bring in someone like this, they have to. to get rid of them immediately because it would foil the entire show because everything is so thinly fucking veiled that if anyone with any amount any degree of competency was around and observing the fuckery that goes on in this fucking show like it would just everything would fall apart immediately I also I have to correct myself apparently Tandivo does show up in one more episode I don't know how big he is he's listed

as being in this episode, but his name doesn't come up in any of the description of this episode. So who could say? Keep an eye out. We'll see. So then we're kind of back to the political angle of this.

Lolo is wondering who would poison? Mimov is asking who would poison Uncle Ano as they're walking through the Senate corridor and Lolo is nervously sort of scratching her arm. And then Padmae's like, we got to delay this vote Because we need to solve this crime ourselves

And Bail and Mbathema are like, what? And Padman is like, we got to solve this crime ourselves And Mimazma is like, my dear, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard And Padman is like, I'm going to solve this crime And they decide, you know who should watch her back, Bail or Ghana? I guess because he's the closest thing to like a Miami. Vice Detective on this thing. So he's got the sweet convertible.

That is true. They didn't book Anakin for this episode. So he is going to, he's going to go on this investigation with Padmay. And they start with who would want him dead? Senator Deitchie, of course. Senator Deitchie is in his noir palace.

His evil zone lair. His red room. You go across the Senate corridors, basically. other wing of the Senate, and, like, it's just all, like, light slanting through blinds. Just, yeah, just Venetian blinds on every fucking wall. Oh, I love it. It's incredible. And we get the best, we get just the most devastating shit from, from, uh, I want to call her Bertucci.

Hallie Bertone, what the fuck is her name? I said it earlier. Uh, yeah, Hallie Sparrow, uh, says that every time he opened his befuddled mouth, it gave us I have a quote to use in our fundraising. Why would we kill our best series of fundraising? Well, then we had the whole thing. The thing that I was actually thinking it was when me, Dici is like, you know, I, you know, I respected him greatly, even though we opposed each other. And then she is like, for the record, I had no respect for Anaconda whatsoever.

But incredible. Man's body isn't even cold yet. But then Dici's also like, yeah, he was a friend. Also I was having him followed because, like, he seemed to be in something weird. And so Dici just hints that he was having A guy was having meetings on the docks Which I feel like Anno probably should have looped anyone in his circle in on But he was meeting some people on the docks

So Pam is like, we got to go to the docks to get to the bottom of this I guess like She's thinking we're to find a longshoreman Who's like let me tell you what we're bringing into the docks by night And good news A Baylor Gana shows up in his sickest His tactical turtleneck. His tactical turtleneck.

And he's carrying. And he's got that thing on him. And we do get a six shot looking down into like the, the docks where there's all of the shipping containers lined up. And they're like going through the kind of alleyways cast in shadow. There are these overhead lamps that are just hovering in place casting these like cones of light down. This stuff looks really good to me. I'm glad we got this. This is another point in your Sunubei just should do Colombo on Corrasson

because you can have enough kind of geographical diversity inside of Corrassan argument. I respect it. And I also love – so they get ambushed, and somebody tries to drop a container on them, and then they're chasing this person along the containers. If you ever watch the TV show ever, you'll know they're not going to catch this person. You never catch the person that's a container like dock place. They always escape. This time they escape by pushing, like getting bail tossed to the edge of this huge...

Because the thing is, the docks are not terrestrial. The docks are a huge floating platform. And we do get this great shot of the villain tips these massive containers over the side and off this dock. And we get a long shot of just watching it fall and fall and fall, plummeting to a lower part of the city. And again, it drives home this place of course, this idea of Corson is just not even necessarily like a sinister stratified place, but just a megalopolis that is threatening just in its sheer scale that like, oh yeah, there's floating container like wharves, warehouses, just hovering thousands of feet above a neighborhood. And that's going to like hit something. That container is going to fall until it does, in fact, right? It hits, like, an overpass and, like, he knocks someone out or kills them.

Yeah. So the scale is just kind of dizzy, where it's like, yep, like everything here is built atop something else. Sorry, I'm not living in a different world in which we got the Sunubei Colombo show, but also Tandivo is in it as, like, a rival cop, a rival detective. Or it's even better if Sunoube is, like, a private eye instead of, like, an actual, like, he should just be the Jedi detective, and he keeps running. into the Corrassant detective

and they're coming at cases from different directions. Do you know what I mean? One of them is the Jedi detective and the other one is the Senate one. So they're like always working on the same shit because for some reason those crimes are always involved with each other. But they disagree in terms of like what their like processes are and like they always disagree on who the killer is or whatever. I love it. Great. Make it happen.

Different senses of justice. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Got to be great. Sunuba goes like a little softer on a certain type of criminal. Do you know what I mean? Like he lets certain people try to get away, whereas Devo is like very by the book. I love that. But then, of course, there's that episode where Devo's humanity is forced to the front.

And like, we see that side of him too. I'm sorry. I found something truly terrible. Truly terrible. What? All right. I have to derail this episode by making us suffer. Is that okay?

Can I do this? Yes, absolutely. I'm going to I am not going I'm not embedding it I'm just going to drop the link in without the embed we have to click it

and then I mean you're going to see the name try not to look at the name just hit pause immediately and tell me when you're ready I'm ready all right three two one go no no no

I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry. This is Tara Sanube versus Dan Devo epic rap battles. Oh my God. Why? Why? I.

What is this voice? What are they making you battalion? Damn, Sanube? Okay. Where's Sunoube's Vixame? Snoop? Snoop he's got bars. I'm like, okay.

All right, we're done. We're done, we're done, we're done. I'm out the booth. Done. I can't do any more. That was fucking incredible. And that right there is the theme song for the spin-off, the Jedi Detective series. Oh.

Incredible. People are so crazy. you're right humankind is so creative we're out here talking about oh it'd be cool if blah blah blah meanwhile angry Ewak production is doing it

holding a beer up to life that's right that's right so the chaos of the docks bring constable droids out Devo shows up you choose them out

for launching this investigation when it was already his case He says, you know, without rules, there's only chaos. So they go to confront Dici, because they suspect, wait, who would benefit from all this? And who knew where we would be? So they go to Dici. Dichy's dead. It's a good shot.

We get the close-up of his, you know, rigor-mortist corpse in his desk chair as the door opens behind him. Very Batman, the animated series. Actually, more Mask of the Fantasm vibes. You know, the way his corpse is unveiled. And Devo immediately realizes now this, we've got a murderer on the loose. He puts all the suspects in a locked room for their own protection. Lolo demands to leave. They think it's Bertone.

Devo goes to arrest her. She's gone. And then we get, in short order, bailergana gives, you know, gives props. to Padme for really taking a lot of Ano's lessons to heart. Not sure what that means, but sure. She's doing what she believes. Lolo stumbles in

saying Brutoni just attacked her. It's not a real... She's not selling it. Lolo's just like kind of holding her side, but like she's holding her side the way like a player who just completely misread

a play. It's like, oh damn, I was going to chase that play down. But, sorry, that guy's just running free now. And, oh, if I hadn't pulled this muscle. Padmey looks troubled as Lolo gives the spiel. Devo catches Bertone. Bertone is like, I wouldn't attack Lola. Lolo's and nobody.

Please. I love her. Like, who the fuck is Lolo? She comes back. She's great. I love her. Oh, she's back. She's in a bunch of episodes. Like five, but still.

Bertone? Bertone's in another few episodes. Thank God. But then Devo cracks the case. Here, right here. Who wants to take us through the chain of deduction that leads to the killer? They do a forensics test. They find out that Uncle Ono had poison in his system, but poison that only works against erodeon, and that it was developed by Commodians.

And because she's a commodian, obviously she has a key to the poisons vault. Like, I hated this part of it. Yeah. Are they commodians? No, I think it's Cameron. No. Oh, sure. Right?

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. You look at that word and it could be either way. Either way.

Yes, agreed. So he's like, yeah, you would access to the poison. You definitely didn't. And she's like, no, the fuck I didn't. And then Padmey is like, Like, well, wait a minute, if Lolo also drank the wine, she would have also died. And you drank the wine, right? Lola.

Right, Lolo? The Padme meme. She, like, does the Padmeame meme in this episode. And you drank it, right? It's got to recreate the meme with this and act while I'd be like, why don't you all recognize this? This is where it's from. This is the thing. Lolo does not know it's shut the fuck up Friday

Like just Just shut up I had a headache I drink it That's weird right Like that's all you gotta say Right Oh I had a water bottle with me

I was trying I had to drive home I didn't drink in martinis with y'all At 2 p.m. in the middle of a work day I didn't want to say this at the time But I didn't think it was a good speech habit I didn't feel like drinking to celebrate it Actually I thought it was kind of corny

I had to go back to work That was my one-hour lunch break. I'm not a senator. I have to actually do shit with my time. I'm not getting paid OT, bud. But Lolo doesn't say any of that. Instead, she says you're right. I should have pretended a drink.

And it's like you should have, but also you should have just said nothing here because they have nothing. They have no case on you. They have nothing. You could just stop talking and be like, like prove it. There's no fucking evidence.

She gave, she gave away a whole ass confession. They had nothing on her. And she just, she walked right into it. That was ridiculous. Obviously, she would never have fucking made it

as a senator in this, in this town. She would have been Dunzo in no time. In absolute no time. but her explanation is Otto brought war to my planet and Padmaid responds

it was a mistake and she says yeah a mistake which everyone seems to forget including you but I didn't did you honestly think he had the moral right to lead us after he betrayed us Padme he was sorry Lolo he was weak

we need someone with strength to stand against this war Now Again The degree of Anno's fuck up Not clear from this episode However here's what I do agree

Should he have been in charge of anything After that fuck up He should have been the senator He could be an aide To the senator He could stay home and deal with some shit He should go into consultant Like listen

It's time for you to move to the private sector of Alano You know what I mean It's time to step out of the way Let someone else run for Senate take that slot you know honestly I'm not sure what your endorsement is worth at this point maybe you endorse someone else to step up but like take the L you let you that you have you have got to resign after that shit

do you think that's part of why senators go to Corrassant because it's like oh I'll be off planet it'll take the heat off me a little bit I'll vote in some bills that people like and then when I go home people have a better opinion of me maybe yeah maybe yeah it's fun a car clone depot built on Rodea and people were like damn it really brought a lot of jobs and clones to Rodea

also no one forgot that shit he always brought it up he always brought it up if you hung out with them all the time he's probably always talking about this yes it is very funny

to hear Pabby to be like but he said he was sorry that fixes it like again I don't know that he fucked up given what we saw in Bomb Bad Jedi but also a sense of consequences. Right. Yeah, exactly.

But he's my friend. That's Uncle Ano. Anyway, Padmae knocks her the fuck out. Yeah. Yeah, that was the coolest thing Padmaid's done in a fucking minute. I was like, let's go. Okay, I'm back in. Not all the way.

She had the gun on her, right? Did she, did someone else? She knocks the gun away with her left hand and then knocks her the fuck out. That's, you know what? Anakin doing that training That's good I'm glad that they're working Through some steps you know

Yeah after he handed over the lightsaber They did a little gunplay You know Got it Anyway the bill passes Yep All for not Oh bad man you were doing so well

How can we justify reinforcements in the Senate If we aren't bolstering the front lines how in this day and age where senators are being murdered can we not also justify pumping out some more babies for the fucking army out there let's do it y'all it's incredible that's the thing because when palpatine delivers this line he's rolling with senate security like six deep there's three senators and like

they got the capes on now yeah they got the plumes they figured out how to add flowing textures this or this season So it's not just like the regular blue guards It's the blue guards with the whole Roman outfit It's great It made me think like Was Palpatine like Oh Uncle Ono got followed

And that's how they figure out the murder I can't be having people be followed around here I need six set of dudes on me all of the time Nobody can follow me around I wonder if Palpatine just has like His video chat room like that's just where he has like one room that's like just a black box

so you can't really tell where he's at and that's just his like he's like oh yeah that's my meditation spot like that's where I go for lunch or whatever but that's just where he takes all of his calls like all of his fucking emperor calling him Palpatine or his shee calls

his sleeve room starts Sidious we see in the scene where Devo's in his office when all this goes down actually I think the room that Lolo is working towards is that side room that has the fucking Sith murals in it and like nobody goes through that room and like says hey

what's behind these panels so like it's just it's all there he literally has his like conspiracy room like he is doing the Phil Hartman Ronald Reagan bit as he's like running around contra behind the scenes

and then doing like you know awshuck shit for the camera Well, and this is their thing. Padme is like, oh, damn, like, Chancellor Palpatine, we're so close. Oh, can you believe it? And he's like, I know, I can't believe it. I was so supportive of this. I'm so bummed. We didn't stop this army from being increased. But democracy must stand, my dear. I guess more troops for me. It's, it's so, another, these crumbs are good to me. Both the, like, oh, sometimes democracy does things you don't like, but you have to support democracy. And then the follow-up of, if, yeah, if we reinforce Senate security, we have to boost the military to, which is a line that was used during the war on terror constantly, but also is a line that we've heard this year after January 6th, the ways in which the kind

of trickle down of like, well, we have to increase police funding because things are so dangerous out there now. Yeah. You know? This thing, this bulwark that failed, we should give it more money so that it can be a better-funded poor bulwark. Yeah. And so that's where things kind of wrap up,

is Palpatine sort of giving Padman another lesson in how this democracy works and the importance of keeping up appearances in this context of conflict. So, speaking of that conflict, we're back to Christophis. Do you want the context that I mentioned up top here in terms of when this takes place? Yes.

What has to be before everything, right? This is, yeah, this is, if the people who want us, wanted us to watch this show chronologically, wanted us to start with this episode. This is the beginning of the Clone Wars, like continuity. You said absolutely or absolutely not, Rob? Make your argument. Oh, why this is a terrible idea? Yeah.

Okay, because the thing that is emerging with the Christophis arc is that it is a very long series of military sci-fi adventures that repeat certain beats. Like multiple battles in space seem to attend this. Then we have initial fighting on Christophis, and then we've got. the defense of Christophis that we've seen when the when the traitor clone pops up and then more defensive Christophis when we get to the Clone Wars movie film and Assoca shows up yeah

and it's all as like standalone like military sci-fi adventures is all passable there is no arc here that's interesting on a personal level Like none of these, they're just, so they're trying to make you Lauren into an interesting thing here, but he's been more interesting in every other episode. Well, because they're, they're writing him as he's never met Anakin before.

This is supposed to be them getting to know each other. And I get that in this, in this single box, but the idea of having to fucking watch all of the Christophsa stuff back to, this show wouldn't have made it. This podcast would not have made it off the landing pad if we did cat and mouse hidden enemy. Hidden enemy early would have been nice, maybe. Cat and Mouse, Hidden Enemy, Clone Wars Theatrical. I guess there's two episodes to come in Christophis we haven't seen yet that are the beginning of season three or towards the beginning of season three. And then all of the top of season one in a row would have been rough. Christophis is never an imagined place.

At no sense does it have any sense of stakes. They're like, oh, it's a key manufacturing planet. But we are still stuck with the kind of half-assed world building that was done in the Clone Wars movie. Like there's never a sense of... Who lives there? What's Organa doing down there? Oh, he's at the, he's at the base. Why?

Why is he there? Who are the Christophsons? Who are they? Never seen one. I think we call them the Christopher, I think. Yes. Are they human? Like, what is the, I'm guessing they're humans on this planet.

Yeah, they wouldn't be down there. They weren't humans. If Chrysostasins would have been gone long ago, long ago. We would not have a bucking arc on Christophis like this. If you asked me to draw Christophis, office or just like scenes from it it would be the one road that's really long remember the one that was really long I know I do I do remember it and then the two buildings yep remember when they were the two buildings and that's it and Assange was hot

yeah that's all I remember oh true true and then the trader blew up a bunch of like tanks forgot about that was cool yeah but that's about it yeah this planet like I yeah why do we give a shit about this planet other than the fact that we keep fucking coming back here and going back in time to talk about it? And doing these one-off episodes that are like, yeah, I guess,

yeah, it's described as the resource-rich planet of Christophis. That's how it's described in the intro to this episode. It's like a mining planet, basically, in the expanded universe. But all we see are office buildings. Yeah, you're right. We never go to the mines.

It's a resource-rich planet of content. Yeah, they're in the content mind They're in Midtown It's like the planet of Midtown Oh, God The Republic's strategic blogger reserve is in danger We must deploy the clone army They have to be his Instagram reels

God Anyway, this is submarine Okay, have you seen Star Trek Original series Balance of Terror? No. The submarine episode? I know zero. It's that, but it's worth.

It's that but worse. That's it. That's the episode. I know nothing about Star Trek. I'm trying to keep it that way. Damn. Wow. Wow.

Wow. You know when they're just... We got some real Hallie fucking Fettuccini energy over here. Unbelievable. Hallie Fettuccine. I kind of like this episode. I don't think it's... Actually, time out.

Here's what I like. Submarines. Yeah. I like submarines. I like Trent. trench. Trench fucking rules. I want him to come back. Justice for Trench. I want him to come back. Justice for Trench. I want him to come back. I want him to come back. I want him to somehow survive to this. You know what I mean? Well, Lauren is like, he should have been dead. 15 years ago when he was the head of a corporate fleet, which by the way, give me that backstory. What do you mean he was the head of a corporate fleet? Yeah, I want to know about that. I have. The thing I like, oh, go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to say, I have literally five lines of notes for this entire episode. And one of them is just separatist admiral trench, period. Nice. Yeah, he's great. You know what the thing I love the most about him is his voice. It's great. Which is, it's Dee Bradley Baker doing a insect-like, spider-like version of Darth Vader. He has the Darth Vader sonorous, melodic, impover.

closing voice and cadence. It's been so long since I had a worthy opponent. You have an impressive new vessel. But I warn you, I have dealt with its kind before. Your technology will not save you, and your friends on the planet below shall perish as a result of your failure. And it is in my brain now that five years hence,

when Anakin is coming out into the world as Darth Vader, he's pulling on Trench as his vision of what an imposing leader is supposed to look and sound like and an opposing figure who is immortal who keeps coming back from the dead. I mean, in fact, remember, the thing that happens is

Trench, wasn't he vaporized at the Battle of Malistair Narrows? Who else gets vaporized somewhere and yet comes back to life despite being burned alive? Darth Vader. And I, I, this is just my head canon. I guarantee this is not anywhere in the EU or anywhere.

But I just, I, the way Baker nails this voice that is like, it's like a beta test of the Darth Vader cadence mixed through insect voice stuff. Uh, I just love it so much. Also, I will say the separatists had a better bench of compelling minor commanders for the Christopsis arc that we do miss a little bit here. We open with this battle above Christophis. Anakin has run ahead of his reinforcements to try to engage a far superior blockade force. It's a really dumb move from Anakin. He is learning how to be an admiral. He's not doing great job right now.

We get some standard bickering between him and Obi-Wan, but they eventually, like, they're like, we're getting massacred here. We need to fall back behind the moon and basically hide from this fleet and figure out what our next move is. and while they are sort of regrouping Ularin gets on the Esper machine from Blade Runner and goes through the photos of today's engagement and your snap, step, step, step, step, step, step.

As he zooms in on the flagship, which, by the way, looks fucking awesome. Yeah, it looks sick. It's long, like, dreadnought with a bird, like a Corvid face on the front of it or like a shark. It's awesome And he sees a little spider face icon on it And he's like

And he's like, I got to talk to Anakin Yeah, it's Admiral Trench Who you know Everyone thought was vaporized at Malisterneros And he just You know he massacred the fleet Ularin was with Also I want to know more about like what was this fight Like wait so

Me too Yeah what was that Ularan is a career military man. Who was he serving? But to what military? Right. Yeah. Right.

Is there some sort of Senate fleet we didn't know about before this that was interceding? Is he part of a Jedi fleet that we didn't know about? Like what was it? Or were they passing the hat and like begging the few militaries that the Republic did have like to like say we need a combined command thing? Right. I want to know more. Do you? Okay.

I got, okay. So the thing is I, it looks like there. was a Republic Navy prior to the Clone Wars, but there wasn't a Republic Army prior that makes a lot of sense. That starts to click together in a way that makes a lot

of this sort of... Yeah, that makes some sense. They could police space lanes, but they couldn't impose like durable political power. Right, they couldn't, they could put boots on the ground for an extended period, right?

Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong about this, though. So, you learn, like, as long as Trenches up there, we're not getting supplies to that planet. Like, Bail Organa is hanging by a thread. Trench is not going to let anything through. And so it doesn't matter that they have a secret weapon, which is that Obi-Wan has brought a stealth chip with them. And he's going to use it, because it's never been tried before, he just wants Anakin, load it full of supplies. take down to bail or gunna. Fun fact, by the way,

this is basically what subs were used for throughout the Pacific War in World War II, particularly the Japanese as, like, once they had lost the carrier war, all their forces are basically being supplied by what few supplies submarines and destroyers

could get inland by night. So that's kind of what this is pointing towards, is like, can this turn the tide of battle? No, like, bail will still be utterly fucked, but he won't starve for a couple more days. So we can count that as a win. Eulerin's like, it doesn't matter. We're not getting, like, we're not getting through as long as Trench is there.

Somehow, I don't know how he's going to figure out that there's a stealth ship out there. Trench wants them to attack. He wants to force this fight because he does know he has it in the back. He rules. I love him. He rules. So he sends bombers to hit Bail's command post. And right on cue, Obi-Wan's like,

We got to go in. Send him in. I like Trench a lot. I think because he's such a competent opponent, like he is reactive, he's proactive, and he is actually engaging in legitimate battle strategies

that make a lot of fucking sense and give him a very strong upper hand. And it's not just that he's overpowering them. Like he doesn't just have more ships or more droids at his disposal or whatever, which is what we see often. It's just it's a numbers game. But in this, it's actually effective strategy

that he is just bossing Obi-Wan and the rest of the fleet around and it's just owning the airspace in a way that like we don't see very often. And it's really fun to watch. It reminds me of Mar-Mar-Took, the Nemoydian, who had like the dossiers on Anakin and Obi-Wan from the Ryloth arc, Storm Over Rylath. Very similar in terms of like, listen, like, I'm going to come at you all on the battlefield in a way that's competent and not goofy. And it's specifically the thing it's not is the, speaking of Star Trek, the Leonard Nimoy character in the Lerman episode.

I forget the name of that character, but you know who I'm talking about. the dude who's like, we're going to just burn everybody alive. And it's like, I'm just a goofy, or a Nouveauvindy. Like on the scale of villains inside of Clone Wars, the sort of like wacky, like, you know, serialized Pulp's Story, Mad Scientist, Villain of the Week sucks. And this is still in that space. The like competent enemy admiral is still pulled directly from that style of story. But I love it.

It's good instead of bad. that's my argument, is that it's good instead of bad. Well, I think part of it is it makes some of the separatist idea that we've talked about hang together a little bit. It's, it's, it makes no sense that the separatists are this, this, um, supposed individualist meritocratic state that's about getting out of, like a technocrat, kind of a technocracy where like the brightest minds are going to run this place. If no one there is competent. You know what I mean? Like, I don't need them all to be. In fact, they shouldn't all be because it should reveal that there is a, that there is a fatal flaw in what the separatists see.

But they should have a couple of fucking all-stars out there, and I think Trench seems like one. So, anyway, he figures it out. I like the submarine, too. I like the- Yeah, same. Everything aboard. It's got the red night lighting aboard the stealth ship, all the clones are wearing special, like, headset. Like, I love it. They need to have big headphones, because they're working, like,

space sonar and space coms, but, like, they're still wearing clone helmets, so they just put big, like, senheiser gas cans, like, on the, on the helmets. It's great. It's very funny. They do the thing where everyone, like, whispers when enemy ships are getting close. You know, their sensors only ping on, like, on intermittent basis. Yeah. I wish they don't go far enough with it, the fact that they can send as well as, received communications bugs me a little bit because they've very established

people track communications in this world but here he just hops on the phone and he's like yeah all right you know hey Obi-1 what's up also it's kind of goofy because it's 3D space

and they're like they happen to be right in the way of where the bombers I guess they'd both maybe be making the same general approach to the area maybe that makes some sense but space is just so big

but not Star Wars space Star Wars space is small it's small you're right You're right. Yeah, they could have literally just, like, moved down. Yeah, uh-huh, yes. And they're like, nope. We just have to wait to see if we get hit by your bombers.

Hopefully they don't crush into us or are coming for us specifically. It's like, well, if you moved, you would know if they were coming for you. And you would solve a lot. Like, then you could fly away if you saw that they were still coming for you. This episode also does the classic. trope of like, there's a newbie here. There's a new guy, and he's here, and he's learning the ropes. I'm like, we never see either

of these dudes again. I was like, are we going to get more blackout and Spark? No. This is it. They get a little arc here. It wraps up. Spark gets to be one of the team. He's like, you made it through Spark or whatever. I'm like, all right, I guess they're just going to go off continuing to do stealth shit. That's a great pair. It's a great

pair, and I think this is maybe the one redeeming thing about all of the Christophis setting stuff for me is it's a fun playground to give the timeline. I like that they can at any point drop back here and be like, we got an episode of the week's military story to tell.

The fandom probably can tell a billion different stories in the Battle of Christophis' time period in terms of fanfic and stuff. I'm sure there is more blackout and spark out there. If I check A.03, I'm sure we get some more submarine adventures for those two. And, like, that's the one thing I like about it, is that, like, I do like it when a serialized

fiction like thing has a sort of like lacunae space where you can kind of just like I don't know what else happened there I don't know like three scenes from now let's just go back in and drop in another episode fuck it it doesn't matter matter Christophis is their siege of Troy basically right exactly where like you go back at any time and create some dramatic arc where like Anakin maybe had a crisis of faith of the better battle of Christophis don't worry he got over it but it happens

so whatever he gets through they well he almost gets him obi one has launched this doomed attack and Atkins's like okay fuck the supply run let's launch a decapitation strike on trench

and everyone's like that's not orders and he's like I'm doing it yeah the other the other clone is like like spark the fucking newbie's like um excuse me but that's not what we were sent on this mission for. And the clone next time is like, dude,

we're on fucking Anakin's shit. We are... Buckle the fuck up. Yeah, buckle the fuck up. Here we go. You might have also heard Jedi aren't supposed to force chote people or to execute prisoners. Well, let me tell you how we roll

in the 500 first. Hey, look, there's a lot of things Jedi Council doesn't need to know about, okay? You get what I'm saying? Like, again, poor Spartan. he's in for a training day type experience aboard this ship oh god there's more the one there's more the one a way to understand radio silence all right spark yeah smoke it spark if a separatist if you know if a separatists has you to do this

they'll know immediately you're a clone all right so Anakin's like Gonna, gonna shoot trench with my stealth ship. Yeah. Which is actually a good idea. But then he's like, I'm gonna launch my homing missiles from a really far distance away. Bad idea. Just get close. Just get close and shoot them.

Yeah, it's like a mob hit, right? Like, you just, you don't leave it to chance. You walk up, you put the gun to their temple, and boom. And boom, and then you drop it and walk away. And you walk out. Like, it ain't nothing. Anakin's like, I'm gonna do a sniper shot. And it's like, I've been playing a lot of war zone lately.

I got this. I'm going to snipe this man from empty space where I'm the only visible object in the whole fucking, like, plane of visibility. I'm just going to take the shot. I got no cover, no hills, no mounds, no Fortnite Tower. I'm just going to take the shot from the middle of the field. And it's going to be fine, y'all. Don't worry about it. And Lauren is like, oh, by the way, Skywalker, Trench has already killed a stealth ship before.

He has a way of doing this. He has a way of detecting stealth shit, by the way. Which is like, what? Like, how? Like, he's just like, oh. It turns out a very regular way. It turns out, Rob, go ahead. Well, yeah, so this is the thing.

So he opens fire and the shields go up. missiles explode harmlessly. He fires back. We get a cool moment of like, I love watching the stealth ship pop flares, by the way. Yeah, that looks good. Yeah, that was great. Like, seeing him pop all those and then drop

into cloak. And so it's a standoff. And Trench being like fire a spread of lasers is like a cool way of thinking about because he's like, he knows he doesn't necessarily going to hit. It's not like dialed it and take a sniper shot back. He's like, just fucking put lasers out there. I bet some of them hit, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. again very naval in terms of the way you describe taking those shots also anyway go ahead right and they should they should hit like basically somewhere in that smoke they should they should find contact but they don't and he's like oh there's a Jedi out there but then then trench makes his mistake uh trench drops a tape uh he basically basically he basically gets on he he basically gets on the horn. And he's like, oh man, you're a schmuck for even trying this because I eat stealth ships for breakfast. I've done this shit before. And we were like, oh shit, he's done the ship

before? How? How do he do it? And so they learn that he had a method for dealing with this in the past. But in that tactic, there's the secret of how they will beat Trench. Um, how does it, so how does this little deception of war work? I mean, it's a video game. Unfortunately, it's his video game technique. Anakin, I think it's like, it doesn't even matter if it, if Anakin understands exactly how it works. All that Anakin needs to know is he's going to shoot missiles at me that are going to lock on to me. And he does that because what he's done is he's locked onto the magnetic signature of the ship,

which like, yeah, I guess every ship. ship probably has one of those space is empty except for these ships i guess lock onto the magnetic signature cloak thing should it also like yeah it's not like cloth hey no it's experimental cloaking right like this is this first this is this is this is this ship's first run out according to oregon so i have a whole thing about that rob do you know what that's a reference to well it reminds me of like oh yeah yeah yeah so empire strikes back when they lose contact with a falcon they're like No way a ship that size has a cloaking device. Yes.

There's two references in this fucking, okay, we're going to talk. I'm going to shelve my other. The other one is bad. The other one, we just say the other one right now. Do you want to say the other one right now? I don't remember the context, but like, I think it's Ylorin, reaching out to Obi-Wan and being like, help us, Obi-Wan, you're our only hope. And like, it's like, it sucked.

So this other reference is like different because it is Faloni trying to appease fans that he's afraid of. So yes, in Empire Strikes Back, the Monion Falcon, like, ducks around a Star Destroyer and kind of, like, hides up close to it as a way to duck out of its sensor range and not be seen. And one of the Imperial admirals or Imperial Officers is, like, no ship that small has a, you know, a cloaking device, right? So, Faloni went, so the way this episode was created is,

Philoni was hanging out with George Lucas and George Lucas was like, well, it's a little ship. It's like a little, it looks like a pencil, draw a little pencil. And that's a spaceship. And so Filoni draws the spaceship and he's like, well, how big is this, George? And George is like, that's pretty small. It's like 35 feet long, something like that. And Faluny is like, well, it can't, George, it can't be that long. Because in Empire Strikes Back, there's an imperial officer who says of the Millennium Falcon that no ship that small has a cloaking device. And quote, and George was like, well, this one has a cloaking device. and I was like Okay, that's fine George. George just doesn't give a fuck George just doesn't give a fuck George is zero fucks about Star Wars

He doesn't care He's like well for this episode We need one with a cloaking device So it has one okay What the fuck do you want for me? This is like You have to understand, Faloni I'm basing the shit off

of like 1930s movies That didn't give a fuck about that That's what this is Just roll with it We have to consult the holocrine and it's like no you need to check these bank statements because i own this thing and we can do where the fuck we want i think it was either george lucas or p ditty who said i don't write rhymes i write checks um the he uh the thing that felonians of doing is he says he like

it's like he has like a crisis of faith over this and then decides to have anikin say while no ship this size usually has a cloaking device that way he gets he's able to signal to the fans who would be upset with the ship this size having a cloaking device being mad at him that he already knows don't worry about it if you say no ship this small usually has a cloaking device

then everything will be fine and it's like dude you got to let it go it's okay it's okay if the fans hate it or make the ship bit Or make the shit bigger. Or make you ship bigger. I'm so mad about this because it's two really bad references in like two completely different directions of making this stuff precious where it's like, oh my God, there was a line in this movie fucking 20 years ago and we have to have this other line to make sure it all adds up. But like the movies are so precious that we have to be careful about when we invoke them.

We should always think about this, which is why in the literal first episode of this show we should reference like. like the big moment with Obi-Wan for no, like, who cares about any of this that's happening that like, this is the moment that you're going to say that. Yeah, it's so bad. Just like, yeah,

out of all the episodes that would make that reference to such a monumental moment in that film, like the plea of the fate of the entire galaxy to throw it into this fucking bullshit

little squabble with Admiral Trench is it does a disservice to the meaning to the weight of the of the of the of the original instance of it it's it is every time they make like a reference like this it's it just chips away at the integrity of the writing itself every single time right I just double checked it and it's it's bail or Ghana saying it they think they cute they think it's like oh bail or got to talk like this and then leo would hear it and internalize that that's a thing you say and then she would say it and that sucks that's like worse because it's like i understand why there's not someone in the writing room being like if we're going to do this we should wait for a good moment in this show right like you should care about the show that much the way they cared about the vader

theme right we're like the vader theme took a season and a half before it came out before they dropped it and it hit because it was him about to choke someone this is christopsis Drake? Like, Soldier Boy saying Christopsis. Dot GIF. I, I, yeah. Unbelievable. So, anyway.

I'll just add this. You can make the ship big because the thing is, so the reason it's small so that Anna can do his, like, fighter pilot shit. That's why. But if we're making a sub thing, the nature of the sub movies is that subs actually really vulnerable.

It's slow. It's slower than everything that It can't see very well. Like, you will get exterior shots of the submarine. Like, this is a classic shot in a movie. Navigating a minefield. You realize, like, oh, this thing is big. It's cumbersome.

It has inertia, and it could bump into things. Like, you can have that where it's, like, Anakin, having to maneuver a big, bulky, impractical ship through the separatist fleet. It could be really cool and dramatic, but instead they've got to set it up that it's going to be, like, handle like an X-wing. Yeah.

And so we get this. At which point? At which point, at which point, just make it an X-wing, actually. Because we do eventually, in the continuity, get fighters that can cloak. That ends up being a thing in extended universe shit. There are some, like, Thai, advanced Thai fighter shits that, like, will turn invisible. And just do that. If you're going to do it, just do it.

But I think you're right. Just make it a big bulky thing and rewrite the action sequences around that. You know what was cool, by the way? Timothy Zahn, in his series, the way he imagines the cloaking device, is it's too ways. Like, the cloaked ship can't see out of its own cloak. It is a, like, it is a hard veil between the cloak to the uncloked. And so the reason it never catches on is because nobody can use it offensively. Like, you are completely cut off just as the enemy is. Which I always thought was really cool, this idea of, like, incredibly powerful technology that has

no like applicable use unless someone figures out and the the cool thing in his trilogy is that someone does uh course yeah yeah um anyway so he he left the missiles lock on and he takes the missiles on a chase and he turns the power to engines yeah he starts racing toward trench's ship and trench realizes that he's in some trouble and he says raise the shields and And the tactical droid, who told him not to do this, the tactical droid is like, shields are recharging, man. We can't. And we get a great moment of, we zoom in, we saw all Trenches eyes widen as he realizes.

Trenches a big spider, by the way. I guess we didn't say that out loud. He's a big spider. And all his eyes widened as he realizes he fucked up. Yeah. And there's no escaping it. And we see him close his eyes as the missiles closed. to zero distance, Anakin's ship peels off, and the missiles hit the bridge, and his ship is

destroyed, and the blockade is broken. Yeah, the ship, like, the stealth ship literally drags its chassis against Trench's ship in a way that, like, creates sparks. It's really cool. I'm watching this clip, like, it's the fucking Zapruder film. I'm just, like, looking for any, any possibility that Trench survived this, but it's low. It's low. But the whole thing is, like, why are you setting it?

up as this a mortal character and then you're just going to immediately kill him. All right. No, I believe he comes back now. I believe it. I believe it. I'm choosing to believe he'll be back. Like, we didn't see him survive the battle of Malistar Narrows. I don't even know what the fuck happened there. I meant to look it up, but I didn't do it. None of us know. It doesn't exist. It's a thing you just say to sound cool, like sea beams glittering in the dark or whatever. Exactly. But why set him up as this incredibly elusive, like, villain if you're just going to murder him in the first time he appears? I believe he will come back. I'm not going to look it up, but I will believe. Yeah, I also didn't look it up. Normally I do, but I, but having

just sat down watches, I was like, I'm going to invest myself in this. And the point of why you set that up is to like let Anakin have this win right to be like wow he fucking they thought he died and they didn't get him this time but this time Anakin did shout out and then he'll be proven wrong when he comes back and he'll become and he'll become a humble he'll become a pupil of trench trying to take him under his wing this isn't going to happen wow he'll become like the military tutor of anna we meet again Skywalker let me give you some advice Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They play chess. Oh, great. Love it. Space chess. You know, you know, Anakin, sometimes in your moment of triumph, you want to evacuate.

Oh, interesting. How very counterintuitive. I do have, I do have some things. One is Trench, Trench was not his original name, and there was like a little echo of the truth of it in the episode. If you know how to look at the Arabash, the Arabash, which is the alphabet that is used in Star Wars, has him written as tarantch because he's a big tarantula. So, yeah, which is worse. It makes it so. It makes it a little worse. I thought about not saying this because I feel like an anti-hype man for trench the second I say tarantch. The second thing is the, when there's a point at which someone pulls up information on.

a data screen about one of the spaceships. All of the text on that screen is lifted from the Sith Dreadnought Cruiser article on Wikipedia that's been copied and pasted and turned into Aramesh.

And it's just all of the... And like that Wikipedia page has nothing to do with the ship in question, because it's about a ship from like 3,000 years prior or whatever, a thousand years prior. So it's just like someone in the production, the production crew was like, I just need some text about

a spaceship. Let me just copy and paste this in here. Well, this is about Trench's flagship? I think it is. Okay, so here's something funnier. Okay. They looked up the wrong... Somebody told them he's in a dreadnought and I can tell you the class.

Okay. Like, it is the dreadnought that appears in Tie Fighter. He has a modified version of that. The prow is different, but the rest of the ship's body is the like katana class dreadnought That's so funny

And yeah But someone grabbed the wrong text From the wrong article Rip That's my guess Anyway Because I was like I know that ship

I was like Decapreo name pointing I was like Yeah I thought that Anyway So That's the episode He gets there

Before we come off of this episode, I just have a request of the audience, because the only thing I can think of this entire time is, like, who's at home thinking to themselves, like, we're getting a fucking Ularid episode, like, woo. Well, that's got to be out there, right? Okay. Shout out to Rob. Okay. Can all of the other Ularit stands also sound off in the comments or tweeted us or whatever? Because, like, I even looked through, like, the Admiral Ularid tag on Tumblr for a little bit to see, like, the temperature of the. fandom because like

there's 227 Wolf Ylaran works on AOA3 I'm guessing he's a background character in a lot of them is my actual guess but you tag him because he's there but you tag him because he's there but I bet there's someone where he's main

I'm just you know I am enough of a David Niven or Robert Donnet fan that I'm like I find this I find this stereotypical British officer very appealing and I want to know more about his role on the quarter deck

of the Republic Fleet. When he was like, Anakin, we have to be on the ship together, you were like, let's fucking go. No, because by the time they're,

because by the time we're doing this, I'm like, I don't really wonder how they got to. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah. He's like, man, I wonder how these two met.

And it's like, because he was assigned. It's like, it's not some big mystery. It's just, the nature of their line of work. Yeah, sure. So that part doesn't really do it for me.

But that is all nothing compared to how much the next episode is not going to do it for me. We turn to the episode that I've got a dodgy Mac keyboard. We've all been waiting for. Bounty Hungers. Nope. My keyboard isn't good, Austin. The notes I took bad notes. I don't have a working E key.

That butterfly keyboard got me a good. Galaxy falling into chaos, nical stations being raided by saps. So those are my notes. You all seen seven samurai? No, I actually have not. Do you all know who Akira Kurosawa is? I was like, when did he die? Not recently.

I literally was about to ask the same question. I was literally like... In 1989. He died in 1999. In loving memory of a cure of Sarawa. Bro. May we present an homage. He's been dead.

He died before the first prequel movie came out. Bro. I guess don't dedicate episode one day because that would be an insult. Can't go see this. George, he ain't going to fuck you. George, the ultimate. fucking Kurosawa reply guy. Yes, that's accurate.

Yeah. You're as fucked up as Ron and Return of the Jedi came out the same year. Did it? That's wild. I think it's an 83 movie. That's wild. Ron is so good. Return of the Jedi is all right.

Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm wrong. Ron came out after. Oh, my God. Wow. Anyway. But like, the fact of thing about this dedication is that like this isn't the only Clone

Wars episode that's based of. No. It's doing the tree, right? Right. Right. We just came off of the one that's straight dog. So like, it's not like, that was two weeks ago for us. That was this season.

Also, then they just did this whole episode again in Mandalorian season one episode four. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, also, they had literally done Zucco alone in Avatar, which is also, and by the way, Zucco alone, great episode of television, a worthy tribute to Kurosawa, also doesn't like totally lampshade it, but this one's like, man, shout out to the great one, the seventh samurai himself, Akira Kurosawa. Does that get the ending right? I don't remember that episode from it.

I don't know if I got that far into Avatar, and I bet I did because I got pretty far into it, but does that end the right way? Does that understand what the ending of that movie is, or does that also? do the thing that this episode does where it's like... It's combination seven samurai. Sorry, actually, no. Wazuko alone is Yojimbo meets Shane. So I'm getting a little bit crossed there.

Okay, okay, different, okay. Anyway. Point is, the galaxy falling into chaos. The separatists have figured out, if you can't kill the clones, kill the places the clones are being patched up. Which, okay, so this intro is. I was like, oh, okay, interesting episode coming up, maybe. Like, planets are left to survive on their own.

A series of medical stations have been established as a lifeline for those in need, but the facilities are easy prey for separatist attacks. After losing contact with the medical station orbiting Felusha, Obelon, Anakin, and Osok are sent to investigate. Interesting setup. I'm like, okay, that's compelling. We're going to, you know, planets that are having to, operate their own medical bases

that have, like, are basically having to sustain themselves because they don't have Republic support. I was like, okay, I'm, I, you have my attention. And then the rest of the episode happened. And I was like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah.

I mean, it's true. These people do not have the support from the Republic, despite being what it seems to be, a primary supplier of a public medical supplies. Like, it is true that they've been left to fucking suffer under pirates under the fucking boot of

Honda motherfucking Honda Everyone's favorite pirate I can't wait to go to Galaxy's Edge and meet Hondo We have friends Rob I think you maybe know

some of these people but like Ali Natalie and I are independently in different group chats with multiple people who stand Hondo and Nava Wren stands

Renn for I'm talking to Red. Stay at this, Honda. Right now, right? I don't get it. I know we, and like, it's more than Rent. Like, it's more, like, we are in extended friend groups that love this motherfucker. I'm saying.

It just gets a world. Like, I was watching this episode. I was like, you know, Honda, whatever. I don't like him. He didn't have a good show me last time. Let's see what happens. And then the, I'm not going to jump ahead and spoil it here, but he's like final moment in the episode that's supposed to be triumphant. And, like, funny, I guess.

It's like, why did I do this? Why did I watch this 25 minutes of this fucking show with this fucking guy and his little bird monkey who could kill it? Control and take? And I want to be clear about something here. I want to like Honda. Sure. Yes. And this episode specifically.

Because Obi-Wan, the best thing that ever happened to Honda-on-Nakkah is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is Obi-Wan Kenobi being the worst version of himself? I wish the team could see. here. I wish she could because she'd be done with him tomorrow. That'd be over. That would be over. He would be she wouldn't even say his name

ever again. He would be you remember that one X. You remember that guy I used to see? She would never say Obi-Wan Kenobi again after the way he is in this. It'd be done. It'd be done. It'd be absolutely done, though. He, yeah. We'll get to it. The thing is, I'm like, I'm like tight.

for UbiW on in this episode. I have some notion. He is so worse. And then he's right. And then the episode says he's right. The end of the episode is he was right. I hate this episode and I think that it's short king defamation. All of the people.

It didn't need to be like this. Like, I don't know why they had this whole episode dragging those guys. It doesn't make sense. They're really cute. Okay. The droids shoot down Obi-Wan, Anakin, Osoca, they land on Felusha.

This is, of course, the planet where... Right. What's Her Face will get killed here during Order 66. This is where Soca would pull out and, like, got her detachment almost murdered skin. Yes, yes. That did happen here that time.

Oh. Forever ago. Forever, ever. They go to a town. Uh-oh. No one's... Okay, first of all, time out. I will say this, to this episode's credit. This episode, and the Lerman episode start the same way.

We've crashed on this planet. Uh-oh, is there anyone here. This episode smartly is like, yeah, there's smoke over there. That means there's people. They have fires where people need to eat food and shit. The Lurman episode spends like 20 minutes to get there. It's unbelievable. So, better by that on that, on that, on that front.

I will say I like the landing bubble pods. They are very funny to me. And they are. I just like the speed racer. That shit's good Who doesn't love an ejector bubble Yeah ejector bubbles are cool I like the ship that has like the weird

Like gyroscopic Wing situation that's cool Forerunner of the B-Wing We love to see it 100% You love to see it They crash they go into the town Oh it's spooky no one's here Like there's chairs and stuff set up

Like people are living a life here There's fresh crops Anakin's like I know this type of community And he again He connects with that level He's like, if you want to know what farmers are up to, you look in the barn. Look in the barn.

Oh, weird. They have a spaceship in there. That's not normally what's in a barn. Huh. And they're growing penicillin plants, basically. Yes. Cillin is literally in the word. Yeah.

The word. Yep. Or it's sylum. It's nisilum, but it's penicillin. I will say I like this environment. Like, the environment's cool. The lighting in this episode is really strong. it's like it

looks pretty good for all of its narrative faults yeah I like even the designs of the characters were about to meet all of them I think the Folutions

are cute as shit they open to go into a house they're like huh this is weird one of them notices there's like a there's like a secret door on the ground they open the door inside little Folutions little roundhead

motherfuckers I don't even know how to describe they're like little dynchrosse to turtle A little of the Muppets? Yeah, dynasty. Yeah, yeah, all of this is correct.

They're cute. I love them. Yeah. Their voices are like a little, their voices are like a little bit. They're like right on the line. One of them's real bad. One of them's cute as hell, though.

Oh, one of them's basically on Glyro. Yes. Yes. Yes. But then one of them is like one step away from someone being like, well, it's like,

I'm a small bean meets the East Asian. Yes. I'm a Japanese little. baby voice and it's like it's not good anyway they need help they're farmers

pirates are coming oh I guess actually the thing that happens is they see these little turtle guys and before they could do anything a gud gets pointed to the back of Asoka's head and the bounty hunters from the title are here and there's four of them I insist I know you said you couldn't count all

four before but there's four can we name them I know one I mean no I know two of their names Sugi is the Zabrach. She looks cool as hell. And Embo is the alien that doesn't speak

English. Like basic or whatever. I forget what it's called. He's got the big hat. He does all the cum laude shit. He does all sorts of sorts. He's like breaks next literally. Yeah, he's fucking sick. And I did not write down anyone else's name. I have something to add about Embo when we get to the end of this. Is the big robot.

dude okay is there a sniper with them yes there is a sniper with them who dies later I didn't think she did but she ain't there at the very end so I guess she's dead like a tank shot hits where she is and she flops off the roof to the ground but like Embo got shot with the tank and he was fine so but yes there's a sniper lady with them and her name is of course I actually have it right here is that Cassis I think it's Uh, is it roomy? Yeah, it's roomy. I think it's Roomy.

It's Roomy, Parameda, and, uh, yeah, that's it. She's a Frank. She's a female Frank. Kassus is, yeah, Cassus is the elder, um, dinosaur. Sorry, there's a quote. It's unsourced. Oh, it's not unsourced. It's from a, it's from a, it's from a, it's from a, it's from a, it's from a clone wars.

video. I'm going to have to save this and come back around to this at the end of this season. This is called Clone Wars Answers Rumi Paramita's Fate. And the episode or the description for this little featurette is as we count down to season three, supervising director Dave Filoni answers your questions about Star Wars the Clone Wars. And it's like a two minute long clip. It's a Flonie zone for like in between seasons. And in it he at some point behind the scenes, quote, Well, I hate to break it to you, but she's dead. She's dead. Series director Dave Filoni reveals Rumi Parameter's fate.

Incredible. Incredible. Wow. The disrespect. Anyway, so there's four bounty hunters. They each have a specialty, except for MBO's, whose specialty is beating the shit out of everybody at all ranges. Who's just specialty is being good at this. He's carrying the team.

A hundred percent. Hard carry. MVP. leveled to max level he's all he's got every class everyone else is like this is the starting party like everyone else is just like they're getting through heaven's word they're like maybe level 40 60 yeah yeah yeah somewhere around there and he's like that level 80 every class like in the fucking raid armor just showing up to the fucking to the fucking party finder 100%

There's a standoff There is They don't count Asoka as a Jedi Which is funny But then they drop this bit This isn't a bit that they continue with at all Yep She has Boba Fett's gun

By the way Sugi Her gun is Boba Fett's gun Is it actually Boba Fett's gun Or is it a gun? No, it's the same model Same model And the situation

gets made clear right pirates they're coming for the penicillin the villagers have hired these bounty hunters the bounty hunters are going to defend them yes the bounty hunters are taking a paycheck off this but it's less than what would what the the solutions would lose if the pirates came and took their whole harvest and there's a lot of debate over dinner I mean this is the actual shit this is we should slow down because I think this is actually where it starts to aniken straight up says why not just fight them yourselves and like dude I'm minute ago you were talking about

your priors as being a regular guy who grew up on farms and shit you know why they can't why you grew up as a slave like why didn't you fight your way out because like come on who yeah I hate the Jedi I hate the Jedi I hate these motherfuck

I mean there's a great there's a great line from I think it's in here I think it's in this in this dinner where uh Sugi says I think I think Anakin says that and then

Sugi says said the peacekeeper who fails to keep the peace and then the response is the rift in the galaxy is not our fault if more worlds would stand up for themselves against the separatists

this war had been over long ago What? Are you kidding me? What? It's an amazing line because it's like so character defining and Obi-1 I still stand

I'll still hit but like what is going on when I want in this funny season like what is happening listen he can get it still

but we'll have to have a conversation about some of the things that is like Austin has destroyed Austin it's just

you can't be like why don't these occupied people just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. You can't. If the Jedi had just loosened their restrictions, they could have infected the entire galaxy with that good dick disease,

then I think they would have had a base of support, and they would have been able to, like, have an answer to Palpatine, who I do not think was going to elicit the same response from my opinion. Not so much. Not so much. But I will say, like again this is also war on terror rhetoric where like well you can't blame us for what's going on these countries are occupying because of the people there would fight for their own countries

then we wouldn't have to and it's like well there wasn't any fighting going on until you rolled in uh so or or the fight or the fighting had was not at the intensity or it had wound down but you are like why aren't these people dying for us for our vision of what a peaceful settlement should be, instead of letting their country be turned to a battleground for, in this case, a battleground for the clone army and the droid army. Also, nigger, they have guns.

They have guns. You gave your boys rakes. There's the scene with the spear training, which is lifted from Seven Samaraj. I get it. You're trying to do that shit. The bandits in Seven Samarai did not have rifles. They did. The space pirates have spaceships.

They have guns. They have speeder bikes. I get it. They're going to win in the end because that's how it's booked. But the reason they didn't stand up to fight is because they don't have guns. The farming equipment thing makes me especially mad because like they need that to farm. Like they can't use that to fight people. They need to be farming medical supplies.

They can't be fucking up their rates for this. You have a medical station in orbit. Where do you think you're getting your shit from? From down there, you couldn't send three clones. It ain't that many pirates. Literally. That's the other thing. Literally, Obi-Want's entire justification for his decision to do nothing is that, oh,

better they get raided by some pirates than we bring General Grevis over here. I'm like, bro, you're talking. about cutting off your strongest sillin supply that's a republic issue that's your problem that's like if you go home they're about to send you back here in like 20 minutes because they're going to get a call that the sillet supply is down and they're going to send you back to deal with it what the fuck are you talking about the premise the premise of this episode really quick the premise of this episode is that there is a republic medical outpost already here Grievous has been known to go after

Republic medical outposts. They already have the red flag up. Rob. My suspicion is that these supplies are not for the Republic. Like, my suspicion is, it's one of those things where, like, like, it's procurement chains. The Republic runs on Bacta and, uh, Coltony, Caminoin.

It runs on Bacta. and Caminoe and medical know-how. So everywhere they go, they rely on these really long supply chains. That's where the fuck they are. Oh, wait, the locals have medical supplies of their own. We know they're useful. Sorry, that's not too spec.

We don't care about it. It doesn't exist. These guys are going to sell this medicine somewhere, but it's going to go to people who don't use Republic Bacta for, like, Battlefront Medicine. So that is, like, I suspect one reason the Republic doesn't give a shit about this is because, like, it's not,

their radar in terms of like a strategic supply because it is it's called one of the most valuable crops in the galaxy. That's the thing. That is the thing. I mean this is just deep inconsistency inside of an episode that's trying to just do too much

too quick. I just can't get it over. The fact that they're like we'd love to stay in hell but we got to pass this message long about this destroyed outpost. It's like you haven't reported back. The outposts has been silent for days. I think they know.

I think they fixed that after rookies in that episode where they were like, well, if you don't, even in that episode, the whole thing was like, if you don't say you're cool, we'll know you're not cool. They literally say that out loud.

It is in, in the... Anyway. So, that night, guess who shows up? Everyone's favorite rogue. Honda. A one-man den of villainy and scum himself.

A scoundrel It's incredible because Hondo It's incredible because he doesn't even show up at first He has like a different dude Step up and And like try to shake him down Before he shows up

I guess he just like over here That Obi-Wan is there And he's like Is that what happens? Is that my guy? Is that my dude? Obi? We go way back.

Let me come out of the car. Let me get out of the car. Well, and again the funny thing here is we ran into a classic problem of there also appears to be no way to conduct legal transactions out in

parts of this world. Because like basically Honda shows up and all he's expecting are the bounty hunters who took this contract to defend this village. And he's like, whatever they're offering, I will double it. I don't even care. And the bounty hunters are like, that's not how we do business.

We are not going to take that deal. Obi-Wan, though, is like, Honda, what if we just pay you to go away and you give us a ride back to a public space so we report this in? Can you imagine trusting him to give you a ride after last time? But Honda is like... Obi-Wan is out of his fucking mind.

Honda's like, how would you pay me? I'm interested. How would you pay me? And Obi-Wan's like, do you take electronic funds transfers? And Honda's like, no! Oh, Obama's basically like, I got these marked die-packed bills right here. Do you want those carefully numbered? I do want to zoom in on this, though, because I'm sitting down and I'm watching this episode, right?

And 25 minutes ago, I spent 25 minutes dealing with Padme being so upset about military funding that there was murderers happening. And then we flash forward to Obi-Wod being like, listen. I'll give you twice what you would make off of the most expensive crop in the neighborhood to give me a ride like an hour away. Like, how, what Republic black card does he

have to give to pirates? Jedi Council's never getting audited and everyone knows it. I was upset. I was, I was sitting on my couch and I was bad about it. It was ridiculous. I mean, the Jedi Council prints its own money. Yeah. That's the impasse.

The Honda's like, we're going to come back and we're coming for that Nyacillin whatever he's coming for the medical plant um Obi-Wan is like

okay here's the layout he lays out the map of the village he's like here's how the attack's going to work here's where you have to defend good luck I will not be here because I got to pass this message along I need to take a ship somewhere I need to take your ship

and Anakin is like we're just going to leave these people to be killed and this is where they have the exchange of like hey the Jedi failed peacekeepers Obi-Wan blames it on the peasants not having the grit to stand up for themselves which is again this is the heart of Seven Samurai

and the Magnificent Seven of like bad things are allowed to happen to the common folk of the world because they do not stand up for themselves and they fall prey to cruel, violent people because they are unwilling to take it upon themselves to be capable of violence, the type of violence that is visited upon them. What both of these movies also argue, though, is that the people who will most violently espouse that are doing it mostly out of class resentment for their own kind. That it is the frustrations of, like, it is how

angry, young, farmers, laborers regard their own class in the world. Why are we like this? We are so numerous. We control the means of production. Why are we kicked around all the time? And both these movies are kind of fatalistic about, one, it is the nature of the world that this is how it is. And two, in the end, our class survives. It endures. Violent men like pass, they're like a storm, and they fizzle out and they die.

And that goes for the good and the bad. all the stuff. And if we're good, if we're smart about it, we can set them against each other and cause them to self-destruct and we will make it through. Yep. And at the end of the seven, not seven samurai, sorry, not the end of the magnificent seven, but seven samurai is actually a much more bittersweet movie. Seven samurai, it is a, not in a hollow victory, but it is an ambiguous one. The samurai who defend the village leave heavily depleted, having many, most of them have died. live maybe three I think make it out of the from the seven and the rest is like graves and at the end of the movie life is returning to normal they get a small amount of money and the village is moving on and the village is going to prosper because of what they did and this is their argument is like it is the lot of these places to prosper once the people they have paid for their protection have moved on and blood in their defense anyway that's what this movie's quoting but when you translate it the it doesn't translate to what Obi-Wan is laying out here about the clone wars. It just doesn't, it doesn't work. It falls apart because of exactly what

you said, Austin. Like, none of this works. These are people in the path of two modern war, like, militaries. This is not bandits. This is, Hondo has a tank and a big flying saucer. Right. Right. Yep.

And it's, it's, the fact that there are so few casualties on the side of our samurai and also that there's no one we care about and that it's a peaceable and like uh you know all of the named characters who matter live and are celebrating the victory at the end together there's not like uh any sort of repudiation of the status quo that's led people to be to die in the fields here um there's no like this is our lot in life because it isn't because it isn't because it isn't. They're not like the seventh samurai. The seven samurai in that film are members of an outdated warrior class who are caught outside of the sort of hierarchy that once gave people like them a great deal of power and are now selling their services to the highest bidder as sort of remnants of a previous age. The only thing that they have left is their willingness and skill at doing, willingness to commit and skill at doing violence. That's not who the Jedi are.

Not yet, certainly. Maybe Obi-Wan becomes this in 10 years, 20 years. But right now, they are the high warrior class. Like, they are the powerful warrior caste and also the religious cast. Like, that's the other element of this that's, like, completely missing from this. It's like, the Jedi are at the top of two different sort of food chains in the galaxy. And so, and they get to go back to that. They'll be on Coruscant tomorrow, sip and tea.

You know, they are not itinerate warriors who have to, who are doing this to get by. They don't want to do it at all. I mean, and to this degree, it's why, like, Embo is cooler than any of them. It's why Sugie is cooler than the Jedi here. Like, they do at least, I do at least leave this being like, yeah, you know what? The bounty hunters are all right. You know, they're doing what they can do to get by. They honor the contract.

They honor the contract. And they're filling in gaps that the Republic fails to account for, you know? so and yeah and and obi wanted to be like fuck these people let's go and even Anakin being like how can like this is monstrous this is and again a better episode would also return us to this is how the Jedi would have treated this is how they did treat people like Anakin before he was valuable to them like oh sorry about the slavery sorry about the bandits but we have bigger fish to fry and there will always be bigger fish like there's always we'll get to your injustice at some point down the road. Oh, damn, it just, you know. Eventually, we just had to clear the inbox. Sorry. So, Anneken

does the hall, like, train them in the ways of war. He's training them to wage combat with spears against the tank. Not going to go well. We cut to Osama immediately after dealing with the child soldiers, because you have Soka, the child soldier,

training all the children to do it. Awesome slings. Also, she wrote, She realizes giant, big, imposing armor dude. It's just a little guy. She's a little bug. He's a bug, right? He's pretty buggy, yeah. Wait, we have to, one second.

Trench, bug, or insect? Oh, good question. Is it? You think there's anything buggy about him? Yes, he's fuzzy. He's big, he's round and furry. He's round? This is the tarantula dilemma.

The tarantula dilemma. Rachel, yes. It really breaks the line between bug and insect. It really complicates the categories. This is why science as categorization is flawed. Right?

Like we... She's smart. She's smart. We as as, you know, as in history have strived have striven, have strived, have strived, have strove. She's smart.

To categorize the world. And yet you come upon something like Admiral Trench, the tarantula. And you have to decide where does he fall? Is he a bug or is he an insect? And unfortunately, actually, I think it's fortunate because it shows us, it's almost a moment of humility of our entire concept of of the world of our of our living frameworks you could say and so i would say that admiral trench and tarantulas in general live outside the categorization of bug and insect they they are an other an other thing that does not belong

to one or the other You're doing some Derridian deconstruction here, right? Absolutely. I feel like they took Heinz Gadarian, turned him into a fuzzy spider, and we're all like, he's pretty cute, though. He cute. That's bugging. I'm the same. Tarantulas fall outside. I do not like spiders. I don't mind tarantulas. Tarantulas, like, don't bug me like that. Tarantulas feel like mammals to me. Yes, I would like, okay, if you saw a spider on the ground, oh my God, I'm going to step on it. Like, it's scary.

Yeah. I saw a tarantula, I'd be like, that's an animal. I'm not like, what? That's an animal. I was just saying this to someone. If I saw a tarantula, I would leave. That's his house now. Yeah, this is your spot.

Yeah, exactly. It ain't spindling. This is the thing. It's like a black widow spider is like spindly and inky and yeah. And tarantulas are like furry and big and like rounded and like they got meat. Yeah. They got meat. They got meat.

Tarantulas. They got me. Anyway, sorry for this diversion. I know we still hot. I know it's 10 p.m. For y'all, I'm just getting my night started. I'm about to be thinking about bugs and insects for the next couple hours until I go to bed. Sick.

Anyway, the pirates show up, right? This is the thing. I guess we get the reveal that the one in the armor suit is actually also a little guy. Yeah, that's where we're just saying. Yeah, we're just saying he's a little guy. There's too many little guys in this episode. And Assoc has got to build them. Yeah.

Asoka's got to tell him it's okay to be a short king. Embrace it, live it, love it. And she's an ally to us all. Here's the problem. I thought that armor was so much more expressive and cuter than the guy inside of it. That I'm like, oh, no, you ruined it. Like, he was a cute, friendly little, like, armor and robot thing. And I was like, I love this guy.

And then they open it, and it's the standard, like, just phoned it. in Star Wars character design long neck big eyes like kind of wrinkly all right we're done yeah yeah I just didn't know I don't know if that character

needed to have like that insecurity crisis in like in a in a five second moment yeah it never comes back around no it's just like a weird

like oh let's have a moment for Asoka to feel like look at this pathetic creature I guess I will like empathize and build them back like it's just it's so it's so unnecessary

also I will say Hondo is such a different Hondo to the last Hondo we saw like the last time we saw Hondo was was it the Hondo arc like when

it was right that wasn't even a whole arc He was like a drunk... Or was it just one episode? It was two episodes. It was two episodes where they were in the planet, right? Yeah, because I remember the drinks at the end of the first one, and they're clearly drugged. Yeah.

Right, exactly. He starts off that arc being like this very capable, like, imposing guy, and then he's just drunk for two episodes, and then he gets bamboozled by his number two and whatever. And then in this one, he's like on his shit. He's like, yeah. I'm not going to take your Amex bud Like you can do So can I tell you why the guy has a robot suit And it just hit me

And it's fucking, it's upsetting Because I think this is the first time It's really felt like this What? It's because they wanted to sell an action figure For this motherfucker Oh really? Which is $100 now

It probably was not $100 for a fucking hour Probably like $12.99 or something But like 100% Okay, why is there a second? Oh, because we can I'll have a little guy in there And then da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da You know what I mean?

You put the little man in it exactly I don't mind this I mean I don't mind Listen I'm a Gundam fan So like this is like my bread and butter But like I hate it when I can see it in Gundam when it's like Oh you just made a suit to sell the toy

Especially if the suit is kind of corny Do you know what I mean? Sure But when it's Yeah This guy's a character he's around He's doing something he's memorable It's not the thing of like

Oh Rex is wearing a different shoulder piece today So now we have the new Rex figure also it looks like this guy will be back in two more episodes so I mean we'll see I'll see I just I just think that having a moment like that in such a in such a fleeting like having it be such a fleeting thing is it's like okay then why are we doing this I don't know well

I think the episode ends on that note because we get the whole battle um battle rages for sure Embo breaks some necks, does some jump kicks What are the highlights of this fight The spinny helmet It's spinning hat is good It's silly but it's good I think is it

It's time for me to I'm going to link y'all to the Filoni zone Yeah Filoni zone Alright All right here we go I'll drop the audio in as always Cue it up

great thumbnail great thumbnail great I love I love we're in Cowboy Faloni zone I know it's gonna be a good I know it's gonna be a good one all all right all right okay I'm ready three two one go drop your weapons Jedi take it easy Snips we don't want any trouble the secret and bounty hunters I've been very tight-lipped about surrounds the character of Embo I needed a way to come up with a language for Embo. My editor, Nick Anastasio, who is French, he had some of his Smurf books, all written in French. His son Alex comes in and reads them sometimes.

Oh my fucking God. I just picked one of these up and I cannot speak French. And I opened up and I intentionally pronounced these French words very poorly. So is to grant to Christa, Christopold. Let's something what, blah. That's smurfy. You know, Nick liked it and Stu, the director liked it. director liked it so in the end uh-huh uh-huh i am embo wait back up is he wearing a three wolf

shirt yes he says wait okay sorry most of the crew doesn't know that and i have been incredibly resistant to ever playing a character in the show oh yeah oh i bet bud you picked the coolest one in the original story he died everybody was watching it and everybody's like oh it's embo we really likes him not not because of the voice but because the action was cool suddenly people think, we shouldn't kill him. Then we had to reshoot it. And Embo then was alive. So Embo's out there.

Who knows what Enbo's future is going to be? But he's got a cool hat. Maybe Enbo likes wolves too. We'll have to see. Oh my God. Maybe Enbo likes wolves too. Allie, good catch. Unbelievable that you caught the three wolves shirt in this clip.

Incredible. Fucking scoped. You can't get an outfit past me. You can't. can't do shit so yeah he's Embo he's Embo

he happens the one character Philoni happens to play is the badass bounty hunter who's perfect and everything he does and has a cool hat and lived by the way

he was written to die but then in the end he lived don't worry about it's just because everyone loved him so much everyone on the shoot everyone on the show like Philoni was like I think the artistic integrity

demands Embo die And everyone was just like, Embo is just too compelling. Everyone's like, Dave, do the Embo voice. Do the Embo voice. Please, I hate doing the Enbo voice. Please, don't make me be Embo some more. He's in six more episodes. Oh, wow.

Wow, wow, wow. Seven. Seven and dimension, it looks like, maybe. Seven, seven more. Unbelievable. People, you know, when Embo's not on screen, people should be asking. Where is Embo? anyway the fight happens you're welcome thank you for sharing that they win there's a duel on top of a tank that's being controlled by a monkey it's bad it's it's it's Anakin and

Honda having like their own moment right and Honda falls off of the ledge I don't remember how he gets there and then Anakin is debating whether or not he's going to save him. What are we going to do? Anakin, what are you going to do? We know about you, Anakin. And Anakin does save him. But while this is happening, the bird monkey is setting up the shot. Who could believe it? Yeah. And then Honda just like pushes him a little closer to the tank. Like, yeah. That shot's going through both of y'all. Like, what's, who do you think is happening there? It's a tank. Also, the fact that this was such an even fight, like, what the fuck is going on. This is Anakin

Skywalker and Hondo. Yeah, something happened last night. We didn't see something. Something happened last night to throw Anakin off his game. Yeah, maybe he had a bad call with Padmay. He like, something happened. He was checking Twitter and found out about the Senate murders. It was like, yo, there's murders at the

Senate. Oh, no. No. No. I loved him. My girl's going to be so mad when I get home from this deployment. She's going to be so upset and emotional over her uncle. Oh, her uncle. This is going to be bad.

There is a moment where Anakin takes the little monkey and throws it up in the air and he's going to cut through it. He's going to toss it up and then lightsaber it. So did it. Split second, Honda stops it. Oh, that should have done it.

Anyway, the episode ends. They know how to fight now. They were right. Thank you, Jai. Everyone's happy for the first time ever. Like this venture is no longer profitable and gets on his big spinny flying saucer and takes off. Who's leaving this episode being like, Hondo? You got it. Red.

Our friends. I feel bad because I'm putting this on Wren, but Ren is one of men. I'm in a discord with like 12 people who were just like stay in Honda. We got Honda emotive there. I can just drop a Honda in here right now. Y'all can see. You got me? He's sick.

It's triumphantly in the spaceship wind, this is no longer profitable. Uh-huh. It's corny. It's not enjoyable. It's corny. Like, is it a joke? Is it a punchline in this show? Am I laughing?

I think Condo comes back in a big way in the future and must turn a corner. I believe in Honda's future. I, listen, these are people. No, you believe in your friends. You believe in your friends and their tape. Which is very good of you. I don't. Fair.

I think that they've been conned by this despicable Honda convinced that there is something where there is nothing. Oh my God. I'm still holding out. I believe. I have to believe. Because I have, if I can't believe, if. Fair.

They want Honda to be their cue is the thing. They want Honda to be this. chaotic, a moral frenemy who is a foil to Obi-Wan specifically. Yeah. But they never build it out because he's too much of a schlap.

He's just like, I don't know. Right, he's been in the show for an hour and he was drug for 40 minutes of them. Like, what is happening? None of the schemes are ever good. You've had been right there. You've Cadbane right there. You have Cadbane right there.

He's right there. And you didn't have to do Hondo like that also. Right. Didn't have to be this way for him. They're scared of using Cadban because all those kids he was going to kill. He can't be a fun foil for Anakin. And it's like for... Anakin killed kids too.

Right. That's the film more... Even better. There's chemistry there. They have something in common. That's common ground right there. That's sort of... I miss Cadbane.

I miss Cadbane. feel like shit just want to back like condo could have said anything he could have been like my monkey almost killed you I don't care about this shit anymore he could have been like I'm coming back

he could have been like I'm going to go make more money elsewhere but like why is he talking like a CEO on the fucking lift edge no longer profitable spaceship time he's on like entrepreneur

YouTube you know what I mean Just watching a really good solid TED talk He's making the tweets that are like I'm going to plant five apple trees And still twas Would you rather Hondo's out here talking about

Would you rather a million Republic credits Or one apple tree? Yeah 100% One nice silly No Most people would tell you I'll take a million credits But no that's the trap

That's the chap You know you can't spend that out here anyway. First of all, Republic credits are centrally controlled bureaucratic currency, but apples. You know Honda try to get on that NFT shit.

Oh, my God, the Honda NFT. It would be a little gift of his guy. Fuck a Honda coin launches this September. It's going to be just the monkey, the monkey's little face. On a coin. Get on the line.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Ridiculous. Well. And, and, and, what's frustrating about that is the line pre, the line just before that, let me call off my men. Okay. Okay. We're working with that.

Let me call off my men. Let me call off my men is like, okay, Hondo, like, this is a little moment right here. Maybe let me call off my men, I'll be back, like, whatever. but then it just it doesn't hit like you think it does hondo like that's not the bar you think it is also do you remember last time when his men that he was trying to call off like tried to kill him i tried to murk him so yeah is this a new crew what's the it must be it must be new faces i didn't even i mean yeah i guess yeah they they cycle it's like he's too incompetent to be a real villain and I think that makes him compelling, but it doesn't.

He's not, like, I'm not charmed. I am not, like, engaged by his, like, scheming and plotting because it's always futile. Like, either Hondo needs to, like, Hondo needs to figure out, is he for real or not? Like, is Hondo in this for the win? Is he going to actually have a scheme that's worth scheming up? Or is he going to be, like, fun comic relief who's fundamentally harmless and it's just there to, like, poke holes in the Jedi Idiot? But what he can't do is keep being like, I'm going to kill all these farmers. Whoops, just kidding.

Yeah. The only real boss moment he's had is like when he demanded like X amount of dollars and spice from the Republic. Like where's that energy? Yeah, I want that back. I mean, I want that energy back. That's what I feel like I'm clinging on to is that first Honda moment where I was like, damn, okay, this like this is. Like, this is, yeah, who is this guy? Tell me more about yourself.

And then he opened and then he did. And I was like, nope, never mind. Good, yeah, yeah. But we know where he ends up. And it's a theme park. He ends up being inoffensive theme park host, Hondo Anaka. I think he's going to be like a lovable scoundrel type

who, like, is always running game, but like, you know what I mean? Like, he's a bit of a scammer, but like he loves the crew. I think that's where it's going to end up going. And that's fine That can be fun Can you imagine?

That could be fun Yeah So maybe they'll get there Maybe they'll find the right lane for him But right now they don't have it Yeah They don't have it He's destined for that Jar Jar Jar Lane

He's a pathetic greeter Just Yeah they both end up as clowns Speaking up we haven't seen Jargarden This episode Oh yeah we've not seen Jar Jar Jar Jar in a minute You're right I was going to say

Can you imagine making this episode Finishing it And then being like, that's for you, Kurosawa. I'm dedicating it to Akira. The big guy's going to be so happy. This effort is no longer profitable. Mike drops. He's doing the Sammy Sos uncloth.

Dedicating his masterpiece to the great one. He would love how we change the ending. Big ups. Big ups to my man in the sky. Big ups. He would love how we almost killed that guy but then didn't because my staff liked him. Hey, who can forget? The sheer number of times Akir Kurosawa worked his way in the scenes.

Akir Kurosawa loved playing at his own pictures. Always doing this. I think his voice is cool even though it's weird French smurf language. It's still fucking rules. Yeah, because they fucking did like a billion voice modifiers on it. Yeah, that sounds fucking cool stuff. It ain't philoni. Wow.

no credit given no are you kidding he didn't do that shit off off top like no hell no he did not absolutely not show me the tape give me the raw give me the raw file now i'd like to hear it let me let me see let me see let me see felonies uh uh uh voice acting prowess i'd like to see it well mandolarian goes on long enough we're going to see more than we're going to hear more than just his voice He's going to be like a fucking little bounty hunter somewhere. We'll see him eventually. He'll come, he'll be there. I'm surprised he hasn't already.

I'm surprised that we haven't already gotten him. We might have just not noticed. We should maybe take another pass at that at some point. Faluny's lurking. It turns out of an incredible Herzog impression. It's just uncanny. Oh, he was in two episodes. He's in fact a major, he's in fact a major.

He's not a major. Oh, he's the star, he's the X-Wing pilot. He's the X-Fing pilot. The one who doesn't speak much. Oh, my God, that is... He's doing it twice. He's the state trooper. He's the state trooper.

Yeah, exactly. The frog episode in the ice caves who shows up and saves the day, and then one of the later ones. You know why we stopped you, Mando? Right. Ridiculous. Anyway. So anyway. Speaking of cave monsters.

Mm-hmm. Next time. Are we the cave monsters? Oh. We are the Zillow Beast. Talk about the Zillow Beast. Yeah. I can't wait to get to the bottom of the Zillow Beast situation.

So we are now caught up on where I'm at. Oh, really? Oh, sure. Oh, nice. So you haven't seen Zillow Beast? You were like. I was enjoying the Zillow Beast so much. I'm going to save with the Zillow Beast.

I'm going to stop in the middle of the Zillow Beast arc. Uh-huh. And we'll do a podcast. Then we're like, we're going to start this podcast. And I was like, I guess I'll stop watching. It was in Honda being like, wow, that was, he said it wasn't profitable that I got to talk about this to do a microphone. No. That was the inception point.

It's your co-worker. Rob, you know that podcast you've been looking for? Well, listen to this. This venture is no longer profitable. I do have a piece of, there is something cool about this next one. Apparently the Zillow Beast is on Malastair, which is where Trench got beat that, or won that time. Oh, shit. We'll be back already.

Malister and Arrow. I guess he died, but he didn't actually die. That was the thing. So, yeah. So, maybe Trench will show up next week. I bet not, but that was sick. Well, we'll find out the next time when we, when we tackle the Zillow. Beast arc.

Our Patreon backers, thank you so much for supporting the show, will hear us discuss the Mandelor Ark and all this on a Q&A

episode next week, and we'll be back two weeks from now to take care of the Zillow Beast. As always, if you want to support us on Patreon and get access to the Patreon episodes, just head over to

Patreon.com slash civilized we always appreciate the sport and I think we have pretty good Q&A episodes that get even further afield than this one did and Austin didn't you say that there's a side chat we had during this that might

yeah we had a little time in this episode during downtime we ended up wandering into some Wikipedia stuff about the extended love life of one Lando Calrizian among other diversions. Luke, we talked about Luke and

perhaps a lover of his who is not the one you're thinking of, I promise. So look forward to that. Wow. You might want to listen to this Q&A episode. Honestly, like stay tuned. And just to be clear, Rob, so the next

episodes are Zillow Beast and Zillow Beasts Back, right? That's the next full episode. Okay. Yeah. And there's only one more set of episodes after that. We're done season two. Woo. And then we're probably on break unless events force us to take a break prior to that.

Which is possible because we're in some, we're deep in some schedule hell right now here at the midpoint, to the end point of the summer. So we might end up having to flex schedule somewhere in there. If we do, we'll probably post a notice on Twitter and on Patreon and let you know what's up. Thanks for bearing with us. um but until then uh if you've been enjoying the show please rate review us check us out on patreon once again patreon.com slash civilized and uh remember this show is no longer profitable it is profitable but us recording no longer would be we've got it's 10 30s you know in terms of content we saw that village full of podcast fodder

We raided it. And now we're off to the next planet. Here we go. Our UFO and we're flying away. Yep, that's it. That was us leaving. Zoom. I don't know.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. You know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. We're going to be. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't know.