A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 22: Supply Lines & Sphere of Influence (Clone Wars 47- 48)

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Sometimes on this show, we (Natalie especially) will talk about the "morsels" of world building that are delivered to us. Deep inside an episode about an evil Hutt lord or a lost lightsaber, maybe there's a brief mention of some aspect of the socio-political reality of the Star Wars world. And, things being what they are, we have found ourselves content with these morsels. But today? Today we feast. Neither of these episodes is a stone cold classic, don't get us wrong. But both shine lights into the realities of the Trade Federation, the Separatist movement, and the entropic nature of the Republic's internal situation. So, do you like blockades? Are you hungry for embargoes? You wanna hear a bureaucrat spin a tale of broken neutrality so outlandish that it'll make your head spin? Then buckle up, baby, because it's time for a war in the shipping lanes. Show Notes Fallen Clones: Keeli Fallen Jedi: Ima-Gun Di (*groan*) Dinner in the Sky Greedo Attacks First - Episode 1 Deleted Scene

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. So it's time for another disorienting U-turn in the chronology of the Clone Wars. This time, we are time skipping back before the pilot episode and then skipping forward to after, I guess the Ryloth Arc now is in connection with the pilot episode in a way I never understood before. It's not. It's not. It simply isn't.

There's a gap between these two episodes we watch that is the Ryloth Arc still happened when it happened. Don't worry about it. All right. So it's even more confusing than you might think these two episodes in terms of the chronology. Are we post Ryloth Ark? No.

We're still pre- Well, except for the first one, the first one has to be, right? because Champsendul is there fighting alongside the Republic That is before the Rylalthark Are you fucking kidding me? That is before the Ryle Althar Well, either way

That is why he is skeptical of the Republic Right So I thought the Republic could just like shit the bed twice basically And I was like damn you're never Like sham is never coming down from the mountains at this point Like he's just up there now full time Uh huh Uh anyway so the thread tying these episodes together

is the fact that the Republic has no solution to the fact that it is shot through with bad faith actors and seditionists. In this case, we're talking about the still somehow member in good standing trade federation, which is sabotaging both the Republic's war effort and effectively waging economic warfare on member states while the Senate looks on utterly helpless. We begin with supply lines in which I guess it's not a, I guess now Riloff has not been liberated, This is the original fall of Ryloth. It is being overrun in a separatist defensive, and Champsendola and Jedi Master Die are cornered

and out of supplies in the mountains. The Republic Fleet is destroyed above Ryloth, while Admiral Dow pleads for help from the Jedi Council. They send bail or Ghana, and you're getting the A-Team today, Jar Jar Binks. They are going to the Toydarians to beg them to allow the Republic to use their planet as a staging area for blockade runners. But Toydari is neutral, and so the diplomatic mission ends up turning into a cat and mouse

between the Republic's representatives and the Trade Federation's Lot Dodd to see whether they can send aid to Ryloth up breaching that neutrality. Naturally, the whole thing ends up hinging on a slapstick piece of performance art by Jarjar, and the supplies are dispatched to Ryloth. They arrive in time to keep the Twilic resistance alive, but not before. Master Die is killed in a last stand against the separatists. So, yeah, this is a, as you might be able to tell, I was apparently confused. Because I'm watching this is like, damn, they just lost Rilof immediately.

I can't believe they let this happen. This is a prequel to ambush the one where Yoda meets the king. Yes, that part I got. And that truly is one of the first episodes of, like, the very first, the earliest thing that happens in the Clone Wars chronology is Cat and Mouse the separatist Christophis Admiral Trench, tarantch

the big tarantula Then it's Christophis So that's hidden enemy That's the Clone Wars movie And then it's clone cadets And then it's this And then it's ambush And then we kind of go forward from there

Into like the malevolence arc And Begrievous with like the sick Big ship So ambush comes after this Ryloth comes 20 episodes after this So there is like an in-canon gap between this moment, the end of this episode, and when we see Champsendula again, 20 episodes later or whatever, in which he's been pissed that the Republic failed to protect them, didn't give them an ongoing, the promised ongoing support of supplies and troops, and just left and didn't come back, I guess, like, for the rest until the Ryloth Arc, right? So I think that does speak to why Cham is so, like, yeah, for a word, you're going to help us again? You're going to help us?

For real? So. So I would say, I guess to start at the opening, it is, once again, a case of the war does not seem to be going well, and manned of the Jedi seem like indifferent warlords. Well, it's a land of contrast, right? On the one hand, you've got, we see here at the beginning, Jedi Master Die and his force defending Rilov are like literally making a last stand. Like they are basically now like getting themselves into a siege from which they can't escape. Admiral Dow is there being overrun above the planet. But it's very clear as they realize like they no longer have enough power to supply heavy weapons.

meaning they're not going to be able to fend off anything that the separatists can send against them, that they do need supplies, and it's very clear they have been making this request for quite some time. They have been begging the Jedi Council for aid for a while. And I don't know, the vibe I got when we saw them get the little holonet call from Admiral Dow, as his ships are being blown out of the sky, they seemed kind of detached and maybe even a little put upon. I don't know. Did anyone else just feel like...

They were just like, you really can't get this shit done. Like, you really need help. Like, they... Fucking Obi-Wan didn't give a fuck. He was, like... He was annoyed. He was...

He didn't want to be receiving this call. He had his phone on Dune on the serve, and somehow it came through. He's upset. It seems like it's news to them in a way that I don't quite understand where, like, Yoda is like, oh, Admiral Dyer or a General...

master dies in a bad position he's trapped there like yeah like was this not the case two days ago because it seems like you didn't they didn't have supplies for a minute you know what i mean it takes a while to run out of food this is what i'm saying the the sense of like you know i've never run a government or a military but i have a refrigerator and i know i there are state like listen you can stumble into like oh shit i don't have anything in here but like but that's because you forgot to go to the grocery store right right right And in your heart of hearts, you knew you were supposed to go to the grocery store. You knew.

And you just kind of like let it slip. And you're like, I'll just get pizza again or I'll just order Chinese, whatever. It's fine. Don't worry about it. And then it's like, oh, people are coming over and you like, you want to be able to offer something. You're like, oh, shit, I can offer ketchup. I can offer ketchup and minute made lemonade. Like, that ain't it.

So my point is they should have known. They should have known. And it's wild to me that their immediate response is, I mean, their immediate response is, hey, we're not. close enough to send real supplies. We can't create a like a supply line to the front line of Ryloth because we don't have a refueling station basically. What if you went and talked to the king about it of Tudaria? That would that would be a cool place to refuel all of our ships and send them to Ryloth. But it's like again, this is one of those things where I know they're just hand-waving long distance travel and I know that like there's hyperspace lanes that

makes some sort of travel take longer than others. I'm reading a book where I'm reading the Ronin, the Star Wars, like, that is based off of the dualist or the dual visions short. And in that, there's a bit where they're like, oh, yeah, it takes, and obviously this is its own canonicity, so it does not actually matter. But it was like, that's going to take us like, you know, five days to get there in space. I'm like, that's good. I want it to take that long, but it's hard to, it's hard to be like, some things take five

days and other things, other times R2 can get there in 20 minutes, you know what I mean? But I do like the idea that like, oh, they do need somewhere to stop and resupply, but it does also feel like Obi-Wan and co are just kind of like, oh, yeah, dies out there. I guess we could try to get some food. I don't know. I'm shocked that they're not more engaged. Yeah, especially because there's a Jedi on the planet. Right.

And a master. Yeah. But he's not, I guess he's not a member of the council. not in the VIP club maybe the one defense you can offer here is that if so we're so early in the actual chronology right we're still very much in that phase where they are still like trying to figure out what this war even looks like it makes sense they're being getting rolled up like in some ways you're talking about um god i'm thinking about like the entire uh early part of nineteen forty two after the u.s like was was attacked at pearl harbor like the entire first few months of that are just like Japanese troops overrunning everything in their path because nobody was actually really prepared to fight this

and so there was a lot of like yep we know you need reinforcements we will be working on getting them to you as quickly as we can knowing full well that like there's just no way reinforcements can go out there right this is how you end up with the Batan death march where like entire garrisons are just for like to hold out for as long as you possibly can

and are basically there to buy time for the rest of the war machine to come online. So I guess you could defend them on the grounds of like this is probably happening and that's always the case with the Clone Wars. You can always like put a multiplier next to anything you are seeing and suspect that it's probably happening in like eight other places at once.

Well, we even get a sort of, there's a mirror to this episode in the next episode where we learn Pantora also under blockade, not from the separatists, I guess, but by the trade federation, which will have to unpack all of this in today's episode. But they explicitly say at the start of that episode, that Pantora is not close to the center of the core worlds. And that, like, means that it does not have a literal proximity or a metaphorical proximity to, like, the power center of the Republic. And so it's easy for people to ignore it. I imagine Ryloth is the same.

You know, we get Orn-Free Ta here as a hologram briefly from the safety of Corrassant, you know, getting beamed in. And it goes back to what we thought about him. Like, he was who we thought he was. You know what I mean? He's like, oh, damn, I can't get home. I'm going to have to stay on Corrissan, I guess, while my people suffer. Damn. You will get an urgent email.

Yeah, we'll have an upgrade. Yes, exactly. Will you stand with the people of Ryloph? God. So, yeah, that is. that is that is an interesting thing it all of this makes me i've been very you know me i'm very happy to have things not be particular and not be uh in a chronology for instance but this episode made me wish not for a chronology but for a map i really would love a world map i would really love

to know how far away ryloth is or not even how far away but like indicate to me just show me the vision of Toydaria as a good middle point between the Republic Corps and Rilof out on the edges or something so that I can better conceptualize the way these things work. And I know that I could introduce new problems

but be abstract enough. You don't have to give me direct distances. I don't even necessarily need it in the whole map. Just give me key points and draw lines for me so that I can like, it's an episode called supply lines. You need detail. You know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

or just like communicate that the journey at some point right in the fucking up like communicate the the loss of time as we're like moving from corsont to toy darya or going between like the whole supply drop to from toy darya to ryloth it like was like right if it's so close if it's so close yes yes If it's so close that like Jar Jar can do this fucking buffoon's jig in front of everyone and distract and that buys enough time to get everything out and like to Ryloth, then I don't know. I just need to feel like I think we need to be in a spaceship more like on the way somewhere and just feeling that passage of time because it just every time it's like transition. like hyperspace, you know, uh, uh, uh, cut and then boom, we're there. And it's like, okay. Just say a week later also. It would be fine if you were like a week later the supplies got there. But they can't do that because they want us to feel that the champ stuff is happening

concurrently with the meeting on Toydaria, right? Because they want us to be tense about both of those things at once. And so they can't. But that would even work more because then you get the, then, then in that, in that, in that world, you could have had Chom and Master Die talking about like, listen, we got one week left to supplies. We got one week left of supplies. This is, we have, this has to happen. Like, how do we make this happen? And then you can move concurrently. Like, you can move between. And then there's still the jump at the end where they allow the supplies to get there. We're getting very ahead of ourselves

here. But like, yeah, I think it's worth saying that we're, that this is an episode. I like these episodes a lot. But I think there's value in saying this is the most, as we get into. As we get into the muck of what is really happening here. It's going to raise questions like this in a way that's like not about inconsistency. I can make it consistent in my mind. It's fine, but it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to clarify, to really lean on some of this stuff. If Toydaria really is this important middle space where you can refuel and resupply ships,

which is the point of ambush, right, that first episode where Yoda is like, hey, join the Republic or let us at least use this as a refueling base as a as a place to station our troops like for that to feel like a big win this was a great opportunity to illustrate how that win really matters and so when you when you fail to put the to illustrate what the distance really feels like it's hard to feel the big win at the end you know yeah anyway we should slow down Ellie did you have something not yet no right So, as it happens, Baylorgana is going to be the lead negotiator on this. And sometimes, by the way, I do feel like they delayed introducing Baylorgana as a character for a while, and that contributes to why some of these episodes are out of sync because he's becoming a bigger part of these stories more consistently. But the entire first season, he's basically, you don't see him until, like, the very end, really. And I wonder, like, either if they weren't happy with just, like, casting available,

or whether they were really leery of just overwhelming a audience of kids with just too many characters rotating through. But either way, Bail is going to be lead negotiator on this. And because Padme is busy, Jar Jar is going to be the secondary negotiator. And they have to go to Toydaria to sell this idea of using the planet as a staging ground. And at this point, the Toydarian Rehabilitation Project is fully underway. The guy who owned Anakin, he is not representative of Toyarians. Toyarians are in honorable and generous people.

Their constitution says be nice. One could say he was not a true Toydarian, in fact. So they feel they've got a good in here. with Toydarians by playing on this sense of obligation to charity. Now, this leads us to cabinet battle number one. Well, wait, wait, wait, we should set up that there's like a dramatic arrival that I think is worth shout. That I think just rules like bail and Jarjar land there. Or does bail land there by himself and Jar Jar Jar has just landed also because they meet each other on the-

Yeah, he's like, oh, fuck, here we go. And both of them... That's what I said upon seeing Jar Jarz, though. Bail proves that anybody can do the Jedi mind trick and just walks past some guards by, like, be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I'm not allowed in the castle. I'm going to talk to the king, though, BRB, you can wait out here. And then goes in and does his initial, they do their initial spiel. And then is it, is it lot dot?

Who shows up from... It's Lot Dodd? Okay. It's Lotte. Dodd shows up from the Trade Federation to be like, uh-uh, uh, they are deceiving you. Um, and then we get the thing you just set up, which was like, the, the capital D debate. Yeah, it rules. Yeah, when Lott showed up, I was like, yes, like, get fucked.

You really did, you really did think. You really did think you would come in here and not mention that, that, uh, Riloft is under blockade right now. Like, you didn't, you were going to get this guy involved in a way he did not understand. Yeah. I think you should be reading the news. You should know that that's on him if he doesn't know it. He agrees to this stuff.

But I don't even know. He's off Twitter. Is he even in the news? Is he even in the news? Like, is anyone even writing about Ryloth's invasion? Is Orn Free time out there actually go into the newspapers to be like, hey, my people need help. Or is he too busy scarfing down martinis? You know what I mean?

Like, I don't know. He's sending out fundraising emails. It's like Ryloth is starving. Give me $20. For orange Get some orange bucks I'm with him A generous donor will match

For this weekend only Your donations to the Twilac Resistance Yeah Yeah God Yeah I love that Jarger was like What's Ahisa doing here And King Katinka was like

We're neutral like what didn't you get about we're not in the republic like we are not like the toy daris is explicitly not a part of the republic right and there's of course they're going to hear here both both sides out like the blockade is the fact that the trade federation is specifically involved in prohibiting like the passage of food and supplies and things like that like it just The fact that Organa thought he could, like, walk in there and just be like, yeah, like, we're just going to stop on our way over. It's totally fine. Nothing's happening there.

They just, like, ran out of food, you know, fridge is empty. We're just, I'm dominoes. We're dominoes. We're coming over. We're just going to drop up some pizzas. It's going to be good. It's, so the thing is, like, they both have really terrible cases, which is this is really indicative of. like if you're toy darya or anyone who's just trying to like be like navigate this as an independent

state in this world your options are really terrible because the two things are like like on the one hand you have the republic who are like baldfacedly lying about their intentions here which is we need your help to run these supplies through on a humanitarian basis only um by the way the humanitarian supplies are going to be going to a belligerent uh so like even if you say say well nothing for military use like and this and this is an old like yeah this comes up in every war it came up more in in uh like full scale industrial wars of like the uh you know 20th century the 19th um now the stuff all just gets carried out through embargoes uh but like this is a familiar thing where it's like on the one hand uh like there's a lot of international

regulations and say like you should be able to get humanitarian supplies and civilian supplies to a country, just not military supplies. But the nature of warfare is that all of this stuff is fungible. And so, like, you can't, like, oh, we're just feeding this resistance army. Well, okay, but that's allowing them to continue to wage war. So is it really humanitarian?

On the other hand, though, the Trade Federation don't even go here. Like, their whole deal is that because we have a trade deal with Toydaria, If Toydaria allows this, Toydaria will be reaching neutrality. And if that happens, our deal with Toydaria means we'll get

pulled into this because the separatists can say the trade federation is not being neutral. And so now we will be at war. So what we would do is just cut our contract with Toydaria. And the implication is that will fuck Toydaria. Which suggests to me

is one of the real crises of the republic that they allowed shipping to be consolidated just... Like, it sounds like the trade Federation is the only one with hulls. It speaks to... It speaks to our classic, um, the problem on, uh, Uncle Ono's planet, uh, Rodea, right? Where the same, this was part of the same problems, like Rodea was starving. And, and what, what he blamed it on was pirates, which, like, maybe there was pirates.

Maybe there were pirates in the shipping lanes. Maybe that's true. But also, the fact that the trade federation seems to have such a, uh, a grasp on, uh, Galactic trade, the idea that they could single-handedly, like, tank a planet's economy or worse, lead to the starvation of its people because they're just, like, not shipping key supplies is like, that does shift a lot of, I mean, I don't know how you win that war at a certain point. You know what I mean? Like, and the other weird thing is, I didn't expect that this would become resonant at this stage in the world, but like, one of the major causes

of like the global supply chain crunch right now is that like shipping is consolidated into people who are like you know that the ship we got stuck in the Suez Canal right everyone just wants to run fewer and fewer ships but bigger ones and so

it's like hyper consolidated and now there's a lot of ports that don't even get like freight running into them because all the freight ships are too big to use those ports so to a degree like the trade federation is just this like shipping monopolist that sort of sprung into existence,

but they are wielding that absolutely as a cudgel within the Republic. And it is wild that Lottad can be there doing this, completely like sabotaging this, like, key moment in the Republic's late nascent war effort. And he does it without ever jeopardizing his position in the Senate or how like the, how the trade federation stands in relation to, the Senate. As he says, you know, when they point out that, well, hey, hold on, nude gunnery's hardly fucking neutral.

His response is, well, Newt Gunnay's an extremist. He doesn't have anything to do with us. Yep. And you do not reflect those of the trade federation. And it's like, a word. Okay. But he's in the trade federation. Well, black dynamite. Yeah. I kept thinking,

like, are there a bunch of like, hashtag never new trade federationists who were like, well, I don't agree with that guy, but I stand. with the trade. Right. Yeah, 100%. Like, and just like the never Trump is,

or you dig even a little bit into policies, they're the same. Pretzels is the same. Like, it's, it's, you have to, the specific,

like, flip that's happening here that's so good is, them being like, oh, but if, if you decide to side with the republic and we continue to try to ship stuff to you, the separatists will attack us as,

they'll, they'll like come after our supply lines to you and it's it's it's so clean it's so crisp it's such an inescapable like bail or gana knows it's bullshit and he says as much he says like y'all are too chummy um but you can't it's all in the system it's all in the game you know what i mean like there's no one no one's coloring outside the lines here and and the trade federation has gotten very good at manipulating the slowness and the, you know, unresponsiveness of the, the Senate to do what they want here. Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, I think that Baylor-Oragana is, is mirroring Lot Dodd in saying that, oh, I'm just here as a friend. Like, I'm just here as, like, you know, someone like Alderon and, and Nebu have had this history of like humanitarian aid of like delivering humanitarian aid and everything like that but at the end of at the end of the episode the thing that we're left with is kinketunku saying oh the republic has heart you know it's it's the republic that like you know i need to consider my position on it's like so so all this is just like all thinly veiled oh we aren't the the political you know institutions that we represent we're doing this like on purely uh like this is a purely localized humanitarian issue and everyone is just is just lying through their teeth everyone it's just it's like

classic it's it's great political bullshit because everyone is just posturing as if they're not representing these like the two political factions of this world and just saying oh no this just one issue. This is just Ryloth. This is just their people are starving. This is just, you know, a trade federation what's it called? The Trade Federation is the one

enacting the blockade, right? No. No. This is a separatist blockade. Yeah. Separatist blockade, but the Trade Federation has instilled like an embargo. They linked it through their own neutrality. So that was how they're using this maneuver. Oh, no. That's

the next episode. This is the thing. They mirror it. They flip it in the next episode to show that they're doing both of these things. Sometimes the separatists do a blockade in the trade federation. Well, that means we can't get involved because then the separatists will attack us. And we, and ruin our contracts with them, which is we have freedom of trade. And then the other thing that they do is the trade federation will do a blockade on, on civilian grounds, quote, unquote, and use that as an opportunity to choke someone out until they join the separatists, basically.

which is like, it is, it is so fun to find. We've talked about this on the other side of the military side of the separatists for so long, that like, it sucks to see someone just get rolled by the Jedi and the clones over and over again and be like, oh, like, don't, you're booking them bad. Like, you make them, if you make them look weak, it makes the whole show worse. And so it's good when Grievous gets wins. It's cool when there's a tactical droid who gets one up, you know, on somebody else, or you get a multiple episode arc with a villain who's able to, like, really show their stuff. And it's nice to finally see some of that on the political sphere, you know, and like see like, oh, here is what their technique is. Here is how they are absolutely, like, scamming you, you know, like, this is it.

So. Yeah. And, and the, and the, the, the exact flip that you were talking about earlier of, you know, them saying that, like, the, the whole thing of how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we. How do we present ourselves as a part of the republic or as a part of the trade federation in the eyes of the republic while not being associated with separatists? Like, that gets finally, like, used against them in the end of the next. They are very interesting mirrors, and I think maybe not as consistent, like, the whole time, but, yeah. It's interesting stuff. And I think it also speaks to, you can look at this as also evidence of, like, the Republic does need, like, to a degree, it does need someone occupying what they think they're getting in Palpatine.

Like, the letter of their laws is basically dead at this point, right? Because if you can have Lock Dodd running around being like, oh, sorry, we can't let you send those supplies, the Ryloth, which is being invaded by the separatists, you're, you're never going to be able to pull this thing out of terminal decline, but the Republic doesn't have the capacity to just say the rules are rules, but we can't have this guy in the Senate. Like, sorry, we're just stripping you a membership, which is what they need to be able to do. They just can't until maybe to catch them red-handed doing something they shouldn't. Which again, does point back to maybe the um the liberal fantasy a lot of if we can just get the case uh we'll be able to finally do

something about these bad bad faith actors uh but we just need to make sure the cases the case is tight enough uh but so we have we have the entire debate unfold as to whether this is going to be uh like whether this is going to be kosher with uh the trade federation and the toodarian council basically decides that they don't really want a part of this. But Katunko, showing what the, like, showing what probably the Republic should be doing more as a matter of course, he immediately goes around behind their back and says, like, look, we can't just help you send these supplies. On the other hand, you know, I can tell the difference between a hawk and a hand saw.

And I'm telling you, like, I am going to let you, like, I will look the other way as you stage these supplies. We should be able to help Rilov. So do what you've got to do. I just like can't formally know about it and the Trade Federation can't find out. The urgency of that is underlined. There's another specific thing here, which is he's not saying, go ahead and do this indefinitely. He's saying, what do you have on you right now you can take? But like, we are not, what was being asked for was, can we keep doing this? Can we set up an ongoing thing to continue to support this this liberation right or this this um internal effort right and his answer to that is like I can't like he sticks by his answer of no to that I mean what he actually says at the end is let's

let's talk about it send me send me a Yoda please um but the the immediate answer is not send all the republics you know aid ships through it's just what do you have three ships worth of food all right you know if you can sneak them out of here um which we'll get to you, I guess. Yeah. So the urgency of all this is underlined by the fact that we can see now the clone trooper defenses are collapsing on Rilof. And we get a great sequence where you start to sympathize for how much it must suck to be a Jedi who's just out there doing your job and you don't really have control over what the council is doing. because as they are starting to,

like, as they're trying to figure out how they're going to salvage the situation, Sindhula is just seething. And Dai keeps saying, you know, the Republic is going to send help. We're, like, we've got the aid request out. And Sindula just says, I've heard enough of your promises, Jedi.

And unfortunately, though, even though the Twylex are ready to cut bait on this defense and abandon and the clone troopers to their fate, they can't get out. They've sort of retreated into a mountain stronghold, and at this point, with the lines collapsing, they can't actually get out

before the separatist troops overrun them and turn the evacuation into a massacre. So everyone is basically stuck here. And die arranges to have a, like, he will make a last stand with his clone troopers. And you can tell, like, his aide to camp, his Rex, basically, knows that when Die makes the decision that they are going to hold while the Twylex escape through sort of a pass,

they know that that's a death sentence for all of them. So, Die and the clone troopers, everyone is going to go down swinging while Sindula and his resistance. flee, flee to a different range of hills. And Cham's aide is apologetic for how shitty Sundula is being at this moment. Because Sundula doesn't even seem to care. That like these guys are all basically going to, you know, perish defending his retreat. And his aid sort of apologizes to master Die.

And Dai's actually really sympathetic. He says, Sundula counted on Republic assistance, and it didn't come. War turns promises into hopes. I wish it wasn't so. And I think this, like, again, Dai puts his finger on something, which is that too often Republic promises are not good. Jedi promises are not good. And so there is a real lack of justified lack of confidence in the ability of the Jedi

to sort of follow through on any of their obligations, and that seems like it will be a real problem for this war effort if, you know, when the clone trooper detachment shows up with the Jedi master at their head, if that's all you get, and there's not going to be like the full weight of an effective Republican military behind it, those guys are probably going to put you in more risk than you were before.

And so, you know, Jedi Master die seems to have an important insight on one of the disconnects of Republic's strategy. But by the end of this episode, his name kind of indicates what's going to happen. I mean, that insight is going to perish with him. Do you know what his full name is? Oh. Oh, boy. Do you want to know?

Do you really? I do. Die hard. No, die is his last name. His first name is Amah. hyphen gun God damn it

I'm a gun die uh huh I'm a gun die wow uh huh wow makes you think names on 5 p.m.

on a Friday I got to set the stock out the admiral the star wars dot com trivia section notes the admiral is named Admiral Dow which is intentionally an

anagram of DOA dead on arrival they're just like oh yeah we just get these guys just die all these people just are going to die So fuck him.

That is the admiral who has like the sick mutton chops at the top of the episode. He's great. It's the most they've looked like Star Wars and New Hope era, like imperial officers. He looks sick. I love him. It looks like he was cast in the terror. Yeah, 100%. Speaking of appearances in this episode, how hot is General Dye's clone dude?

He's like clone number one. Keeley? Yeah, he's maybe the hottest of our clone commanders so far, I think. The three-day chin strap is doing it for everyone. It's all of it, yeah. I got to get a picture. I'll set a picture. We can do a little review of the whole look here.

Here's Keely. I wish his name wasn't Keely, but yeah, it's the chin strap. It's, you know, I know they're all clones, but there's a look in his eyes. You know what I mean? He knows. He knows what's happening out there. He's hit indifferent. The lineup is good.

Yeah. The lineup is good, yes. Also, there is just something good about, like, die and Keeley, like, doing the damn work and, like, sticking it out and dying here instead of being, like, well, we can get out with the refugees. We'll just leave our dudes behind to die for us. Nothing is hotter than a pair of men who are willing to die for the cause, you know? It is what it is. I love to see it. So, meanwhile, back in Toydaria,

Ahmad Best is back at the helm. He is bringing that Jar Jar Bank's A game. He is. You know what? I didn't even put it together. Thank God. Well, and funnel, you know, it's actually good because it actually frees Phil Lamar up to be Baylorgana.

Baylorana is Phil Lamar, who previously had been doing Jar Jar, and he says a much better bailorgana than he does a job. Jar Jar Binks. So here's the thing. I thought it was kind of funny. I enjoy Jar Jar Jar's turn as Messier Hulot. Like, I am... Like, the fact that he even calls it, he's like,

I will treat you to some performance on it. And the fact that everyone, like, is unsure whether this is, like, blatant, like, trickery or just some truly fucked up art is genuinely enjoyable. I enjoy this entire bit. I enjoy that, like, they have the wherewithal to be like, we're going to animate a little jar-jar magic show. And, yeah, while we do a bunch of background sight gags. Yeah, of the ships taking off without the Trade Federation guys noticing.

Also, they're all sitting on, like, a big floating, like, dining room table. I don't know how it's good. I guess it's good for Tudarian, because you fly. Is that better? Why is that better than being on the grass? Like, do they feel more comfortable? Yeah, I don't know. I guess they, I don't, I've never sat on a floating dining room table.

For people who haven't seen this episode, there's a big yellow long dining room table that have like stools around it. And all of that independently floats up into the air like 10 feet. And they're all seated 10 feet in the air, which is like, which also brings a little extra skill, I think, to Jar Jar Jar's bit. She's not only as he's standing on a table, he's standing on a floating table in the air. You know what you're right. Yeah. Do you want to know what Faloni said about that?

Go ahead, Natalie. I feel like this is a win for Jar Jar, because he gets to lean on people's ignorance of Gungians to be like, this is a cultural art of my people. I'm going to juggle for a little bit. Only Gungan's do this. It's like a Gungan only thing. It's also a nice preview. of when Jarger will grow up to become a clown 20 years later or whatever. Now we know he has the skill set.

Jar Jar, he's doing his best. And as it turns out, without Jar Jar there, they would have failed. It's his innocence and it's his ability to be kind and to see a lot of good in a lot of things that really leads to good solutions to some of these problems.

His innocence doing this little dance of stacking his plates. Is it innocent? is he that foolish to be that ridiculous or is Jarjar finally using his ability to be perceived as a goofball as a political advantage here? It's a really bold move by him

and it really shows, I must say, some amazing plate stacking scales. Jar Jar's entertaining, I got to say, and he's a lot more clever than you might think. Okay. Faloni, this is real. The energy was. right for me to clip it, but the answer is a very felonie at 5 p.m. on a Friday. Like,

what's our last, oh, this one? Yeah, Jar Jar Jar is really innocent and also clever. I do, it does make me wonder if he's a Darth Jar Jar Proponent, Rob. I know you as a long-term one. Did you feel here that this is some Darth Jar Jar Jar stuff? I mean, I am loath to get rid of, to see ground on Darth Jar Jar Jar, but it does feel like, I think the force is with him. I see. I think there's some. inspired moments with him that I don't think can be explained by his own natural resources.

I think he's mid-chlorian count higher than people think. Right, no one's given him the blood test. No one thought to give him the test. You know? Maybe there's some questions the Jedi feel are best not answered. Right. Yeah.

The one thing that this scene made me really curious about was like, do you think that Bail and Jar Jar Jar like went over the particulars of this plan? Or was he just like, you distractive, Or you figure it out? Or was it like a 45-minute, like, tabletop RPG? Like, well, I have the distraction skill.

I don't want you to do the plate thing, but it's, you know, the best thing I'm best at. Like, does Bail know about this? I think he knows that Jar Jar will find a way and he trusts his boy to be distracting and entertaining in some way. I don't know he knows of particulars. What was the quote at the top of those? Where there's a will, there's a way? That was about Jar Jar Jar. Jar Jar, found the will.

He found the will to juggle some plates and talk about Gungan concept art. It's so funny. Also, the, so again, animation continues to improve in this season, lighting. So what we begin to get, the reason the scene works at all also is because there's a lot of expressions flashing across people's faces of, like, you have the mix of, like, you have the mix of, like, like confusion, suspicion, and deep discomfort sort of flickering across the phases of the Trade Federation delegation where it's like, what are we, like, how am I supposed to react to this? And like, Dodds like growing like, this is bullshit.

Like, what are they doing? So I think the scene ends up working also in part because, like, there are, you know, they're getting more payoffs from the gags because now you're getting the reaction shots that they couldn't really do in the past. It's hard to do reaction shots on the alien faces, you know? But I will say my favorite face in this entire thing is when the one trade federation guy, not Dodd, but Dodd's attache or whatever, is like, yeah, this fucking rules. And Dodd is like, bro, this is clearly some bullshit, stop clapping for the enemy.

His grin is so funny. Shout out to that guy. Yeah. He appreciates Gungan, Gungon performance art. Yeah. He was like, wow. My favorite is, there's the security guard for whom this is happening behind him. And he, like, can't look over his shoulder because he's security, but, like, they keep cutting to him, like, shaking his head, disapprovingly.

Shout out to him. He was having a long night. Yeah. It's a long night for him. How many fucking, how many times do you think someone's gotten up on that floating table? and done a little thing. It's just like, oh, am I going to have one of these nights, huh? Okay, great.

It's just like the most normal thing in the world to a Toydarian, but everyone who comes through is like, holy shit, this table's floating. Hey, check this out. I can get up here. I can walk underneath this shit. I just remember you can pay to do this, by the way. On an episode of BTS point voyage on the finale,

They had dinner at like a table that got raised into the sky For some reason I don't know why but if you Like lifted like with by cables And you have to like strap into like a little chair They all seem terrified I wouldn't do it But if you wanted to look into it Wait so how high in the sky

Very What do you mean? It's like the sky Or like are you still inside or like a park? No you're like outside and you're raised like No Probably above street How do you get the food delivered? It's already on that?

I think they had like a middle. It was like a hibachi restaurant situation, I think, where it was like all in the middle. So the guy is just in the middle. The food wasn't being impaired in the sky, wasn't? That is tight. Hold on. Imagine Benny Hana. Imagine Benny Hana in the sky.

What the fuck is doing doing onion volcano in the sky? That sounds lit as fuck. I would be. hammered. It would be great. I'd have to be hammered. If I wasn't, I couldn't do this. Yeah. I got it. I think it's this dinner in the sky.

I don't know if this is, this is not the BTS thing, but this does look like, oh my God. No, I'm not doing this. It's up there. Damn. This is didn't, this is up there. That's more substantial than I thought. This is up there. Oh, okay.

This is high. 164 feet And it is They're strapped in Like a gamer chair I don't trust those Worse the happen Is you get radicalized

Okay sorry to say But yeah the The dudes are in the like chefs Are in there in the middle They have the safest spot IMO I guess they're not as strapped in But like Oh this guy is fucking

I hate this This is wild I don't want to do this. Celebrity chefs prepare the dinners. Imagine like your agent, you're a celebrity chef, your agent calls you. They're like, listen. I got a gig.

It's been a while. It's been a couple months. Iron chef didn't call you back this season. You're like, okay, let me hear it. What is it? Is it Vegas? Is it something in Vegas? Yeah, it's in Vegas. Oh, okay. I like Vegas. Yeah. You might say it's above Vegas.

Above Vegas. Oh, we go like, yeah. Reno. Ooh, we got Reno? And you can, I love that one of the, I love that one of the fucking features of this shit is you can recline your chair. No, absolutely not. Fucking put your chair back up. Assume a seated position, please.

Hands and arm inside the vehicle at all times. At all times. I am just imagining, though, how. Like, ice cold your food gets within seconds. Oh, yeah. It does not man. Salads only. Yeah, this is a wise.

Yeah. Uh-huh. There's other, because it's not going to work. Like, you're too, it's night. You're too high up in the air. You're just going to be like, you're just going to get a headache up there. Yeah. You're going to get, oh, my God, the altitude, you're going to get drunk and dehydrated so much faster.

This is a recipe for disaster. Also, what would do it? raining. Or it gets windy. Yeah, if it gets windy. I'm not doing this. Oh, God, can you imagine being stuck on dinner in the sky? Like, the conditions are too bad to safely lower you, so they just, like, pull it up as high as they can. So it can't, like, swing freely, and you're stuck.

Also, I have to go to the bathroom. Oh, yeah, no, you know, you don't. No. Actually, you know what, just go for it. That's why you reclined. That's why the... That's the real appeal is that you can just like... Piss off.

Yeah, I'm just pissing. Just the plebs below. Like, we will literalize the reality of class. This is trickle-down economics. Jesus. Anyway. I consider myself a risk-averse person. I probably would not do this.

All these people are taking their phones out to, like, snapshot. I don't know. I'm going to lose my phone if I do. that i know that that's just falling and breaking yeah for sure i found bt s up there because i know you want to see this wait fuck yes i need to see this um by the way star wars cosplayers this is available to you which is why i bring it up uh right star wars cosplayers could go do this in cosplay and and then like

CG in a toy darian later for some reason you only get Honda you're like I wanted a toy Darian sorry if you told me a Honda ran one of these I'd be like yeah of course he does that makes

the most sense yeah a Honda covering up a series of deaths at his dinner in the sky restaurant he had to take out that small business load it didn't know what else to do So, he took it out of the scam, but then he was like, I actually kind of like doing this.

So speaking of things trickling down, the supplies are dispatched to Ryloth. It's not going to be enough to really turn the tide here. Jedi Master die and his men do, in fact, perish in a glorious last stand against the waves of clone troopers. Sindula, you see the paltry amount of supplies arriving. The episode tries to end on sort of a happiest note. You can tell from Zendola's expression, this isn't enough. Like, this is, it's three minivans full of food, basically. And, like, you see all, like, the Rilov, like, the Twylax being, yay, like, we got food.

And Sundula just has this expression of, like, he knows exactly how fuck they are. Yeah, yeah. Which is, like, this food's going to have to last them a while. and in the meantime they're being hunted by droids right they're going to need to use that and presumably they do to fuel their ability to get somewhere dig in and become a little more self-sufficient which is what we see them as by the time we see uh we'll come back to riloff i guess later in the first season right yeah because like by then and by then he's hardened he's like even more he does not trust it's interesting because i think there's ways you could leave this episode feeling

like, why doesn't Champson Dula trust the Jedi more when he shows up, when they show up? And I actually now, you know, not with this context, because obviously this was written and animated after that. But it's interesting to think about like, maybe in fact only Jedi could have brought him around to this, that like if just a clone trooper would have come, he would be like, nah, you know what I mean? Or if, or maybe even the clones could have done it because they died here with him, but, or, you know, with his people. But that, that. like a representative of the Republic like Orne certainly could not have done it

again this also helps like contextualize his distaste for Orrin Free Ta like dude you are not even here when this shit was happening. You left so I think all that stuff is pretty interesting

and I hope we get more Cham in the future yeah I think it also points out it's true when you see them like they're fleeing their homes but it's clearly like they live in a mountain settlement that's pretty established. The next time we see them, they are living in caves,

that they are a stealth guerrilla army that has made long-term bases and stuff that looks a lot like the stuff that the Rebel Alliance will end up using. And yeah, I mean, it's also true that like Sundula's whole dynamic is the last thing

an insurgent force wants to do is be taken out of the shadows until this thing is wrapped up, right? Like, got this great movie, the Battle of Algiers, which is shot like documentary style about the Algerian resistance to French post-war, French colonialism. And at a key point in the film, like, one of the most hardcore resistance leaders is trying to warn his bosses from being like, hey, if we go to the negotiating table and

as a precondition, we have to sort of come out of the shadows, if we do not close this out at the negotiation table, we're going to be rolled up. Like, all the things we built over these years will be destroyed. And so, yeah, you can see why Sindola, having gone through the arc of losing their permanent settlements, seeing the Republic abandon them,

when they show back up, like, he sees nothing but downside for coming out of the caves and rejoining, like, a conventional army. And hard to argue with them. However, the Republic did make an ally here. King Katunko, and it's interesting, he's making a bit of a romantic gesture here. He says, I don't think the Republic has the strength to prevail, but I want to talk. Like, send me a Jedi master and we'll maybe hammer out an alliance.

And this is what the pilot episode, or the televised pilot of the Clone Wars ends up being about that we watched all those many episodes ago. But it's just interesting that, like, Ketunka is kind of the quintessential example of the type of leader, the republic needs, and the type of member state, the republic needs, which is, you know, aligned values, like, pretty functional government, courageous leadership. And he's saying, he's going in eyes open, thinking, your house does not seem in order. This seems pretty dysfunctional. And yet, that's the game in town. Neutrality is also not necessarily a winning play, as we will say. Any final thoughts on supply lines before we turn to sphere of influence? Mesa creating and sharing.

True. That's it. Jar Jar says something like. Jar Jar's Patreon. For a minute, I was not sure, are you, like, about to drop another, like, creation on us? You're like, I'm clipping something. No, no, he just, there's a line where he's like, Misa Creating and Sharing the, you know, the art of my people, but the subtitle is just Misa Creating and Sharing, and it's the funniest thing in the world, that's all. I hope you have that screencast.

Oh, I could, I can grab it. There's one small note, which is, like, you know, real nerds only, the ship, the Baylor God is ship. is the Tana 5, the Tana 4, which is Laya's ship in a new hope. At the opening of a new hope, the ship that we see, like, coming down from the top of the screen being chased by the Star Destroyer is the ship that Bail has here. So that's fun. It's fun that they, like, went in. And there's like some more stuff there around like, Bail has a ship in the prequels that people thought was the TANF 4, but it was like, wait, this is wrong. They didn't do it right. And so here, it's, they have retroactively made that not the Tantif 4. That's a, different ship now because it was different in these keyways and now this is the Tantif 4 and they've like we got it right this time so holocron certified holocron certified exactly exactly all right so with that we move on to sphere of influence uh and things have gotten even more screwed up uh regarding the trade federation so there's a lot of threads uh to this one but basically in so many words pantora remember pantora the

ice planet where the blue people were like the blue militarist was like this is my people's moon and how dare these intelligent gentle yetis be here already and it all got sorted out and Senator Chucci ended up like sort of rising in political prominence while the militarist like literally died on that moon. So now this is after the Pandtoreans. are aligned with the Senate, and they're paying the price for that because they're currently, now they're under a direct trade federation blockade. This, however, is a different sort of blockade than a separist blockade because this one ostensibly is because they have not been paying their debts to the trade federation.

And so the trade federation basically has created a repo blockade around Pantora. Which is nuts because how are you supposed to make money to pay off your debts if they're telling you you can't make money because you can't trade? So this seems a little a little fishy to me because how are you supposed to get out of this if you're already in it? How are you supposed to get to work when they repo your car though? You know, this is just how they'd be doing. Trade Federation is means testing the Pandorans. Just being like, we can't let you trade while you owe us for trade. I think it is probably worth reading just the intro because it sets up the state of things really well.

I have it here. You want to read it in the voice? No. Pantora in peril. Pantora in peril. There it is. The newly elected chairman of the president. of Pantora, Baron Papanoida, who I am notes on, is caught in a deadly political game.

The Trade Federation has blockaded Pantora and suspended all commerce with the system. Isolated from the rest of the republic, the people of Pantora are beginning to rally against the Senate, who has seemed unsympathetic to their plight. To make matters worse, Count Duku has come forward, offering aid if Pantora joins the separatist alliance. Chairman Papanoida has dispatched Senator Chuchy to Corrassant with the hope that she can motivate the Senate to act in favor of Pantora before Lot Dodd can legitimize the blockade. Legitimize the blockade. I love it because it is, I mean, and Padmae says as much, it is an echo of episode one, right, where you realize that the blockade, the Senate knows about

the blockade. This is not an illegal act. It's an act maybe. yet to be legitimized, but it's not like the Senate doesn't know that this is happening or doesn't think that like, doesn't know that the people in Mantora are like not getting supplies or not able to do trade. They're just kind of like shrugging at it in a real way. Apparently it's, it's, it's, it's, this act is protected. Yep. Under a, a treaty of 1647. Yes, the commerce treaty. The commerce treaty. The commerce treaty. Which according to wukipedia, Sorry, I'm on Star Wars.Fandem.com.

Don't trust it. Oh, no, that still is Wikipedia. Never mind, sorry. Okay. Alias, alias. The Commerce Treaty of 1647 was a legal covenant that assured the neutrality of the Trade Federation, which controlled most of the interstellar shipping passing through the galaxy's rim territories. During the Clone Wars, it was often invoked by Senator Lott Dodd of the Trade Federation

to counter-accusations that it was in league with the Confederacy. of independent systems because they did business with them. Yep. So it was just a treaty that was like, y'all, we're going to be neutral. Yeah. Trust, trust, trust, trust. Like, we're neutral about this. Like, when we, when we sell guns to the separatists, it's out of neutral.

It's like there's no vibes, neutral vibes. Like, it's all good. 1647 truly is an impossible to make sense of year. in this world because we don't have a calendar. The calendar that we have access to as fans is about a battle that hasn't happened yet.

It's like our zero AD is the Battle of Yavin. It's zero B-B-B-Y or A-B-Y. And that hasn't happened yet. And that certainly isn't the calendar people in the universe are using. So it doesn't really... Who could say when it was from? But it's easy to imagine

that a law like this gets put into being so that you can get the trade federation into the republic and convince those groups like, hey, you don't have to stop trading with the huts. You don't have to stop trading with the outer rim planets that aren't technically part of the republic yet or don't have senators. You don't have to stop doing that even if we happen to go to war against them or whatever. And I have to imagine that this is like the classic. Like we found like this law was established 400 years ago to allow for one thing. And here we are using it like shoving it in your face to do it kind of much more ignoble thing out in the open, or at least that is my suspicion.

Like, I don't, I doubt the Republic going to war against the separatists signed a thing saying, and you can keep trading with them, you know? Right. Yeah. Anyway. The rest of the promise of his episode is, yeah, the current head of the Penthoran state, Chairman Papanoida has come to Corrassant to try to sort this all out. His kids are immediately kidnapped to derail this.

They're kidnapped by bounty hunters operating on behalf of a trade federation official. Please, a separatist member, not a trade federation, could never. I guess actually he is, even by the end, they do admit that the dude is part of the trade federation, right? Yeah. Like it's right. but then the head of the head of the Trade Federation's mission is like I'm shocked

shocked you discover the separatist activity aboard my delegation It was a new name It was a name I didn't recognize I'd never heard of this particular Trade Federation guy before I don't even remember what his name is but it wasn't Newt Gunnray

because he's been technically pushed out of the Trade Federation at this point Oh, Sib Kinay His name is Sib Knai which sure I have not yet figured out if that's another political reference like most of the Nemoidean names are, but I'll sit with it.

Either way, this sets the stage for a little detective episode, starring Senator Chucci and Asoka, as they sort of Nancy drew Hardy Boy's mystery their way to the bottom of this kidnapping, which proves to be shockingly easy to solve. We discover that all the Pantorans are hard as hell and ready to throw down at the drop of a dime. And then they will catch the Trade Federation official or they'll catch Sib Kenei red-handed in the middle of this kidnapping plot and sort of reveal the entire plot, which will cause the Trade Federation to dissolve the blockade and sort of look the other way on the Pantora situation, which is an incredibly good deal for the Trade Federation.

So, again, you know, this is going to end with the Republic not really being able to bring bad actors to heal properly. Because this should be, one suspects, this should be dunzo. Are you kidding me? How does the rest of the Senate not get heated about this and not be like, you know what, no, we're done with you? Like, how? Also, we have a fleet now. So unless you're a little trade federation freighters, like are armored up like the Death Star, there are ships now.

The thing that really fucks me up to is that, like, the only way that Pantor gets saved in this situation is that they uncover, they uncover this kidnapping plot. But, like, say the kidnapping doesn't happen or they just don't figure out what happens, like, then the Senate goes to vote. Who knows if that blockade gets dissolved otherwise?

Who knows? Who knows? They could have, they should have made the, a little more clear, maybe, up top that Choochee's appeal, like, was reaching people in a real way. You know what I mean? Because then maybe I get it. Otherwise, this is Watergate, right? A completely needless.

Like, what are you doing? Yeah. Just shut the fuck up. The only thing that we get is Pan May being like, you have a lot of support with people. By the way, don't join the separatist, which is not a, you know, manipulative or like a tactic that she's pulling. Let's get lunch.

You can talk about the separatists, yeah. Yeah. Not like soon though. Like some, one day, we'll get lunch. One day. We'll get lunch. There's a lot of guests like gatekeep in Padma's repertoire here that we see. Because her job does seem to be like, I believe in the Senate. I can't help you, but I am so sorry that is happening to you. Wish there was something we could do, but you shouldn't lose faith in the Senate. Senate's great. The Republic's great. But we just have this little rule about the trade. Federation being allowed to starve your people to death.

Anyways, I'm off for drinks with Pocetian, so. Anyway, this is why Asoka and Anakin are the best. We get the best versions of them this episode, where Asoka is like, Master, let me go do this. Let me go fuck them up. Let me go figure this out. You have to trust me. I can do this. And Aniken is like, yeah, totally, you can go do that.

I'm going to go make sure the Jedi don't know that you're doing that. That's all you this time. I believe in you. It's great. I couldn't help but wonder also, as all this unfolds, as we draw the connections between who Anakin is now and what he's doing as Vader, to a degree also, you can see from Anakin's perspective, it's the same war. It never ends.

Right. It never ended. The sides flip, but the reason, like, you can read into when Leia tries to argue that he's overstepped himself by boarding the Tantofor, and he gives the, like, famous, this is no mission of mercy. like he has been hearing the shit for 30 years about like oh here's the here's the little rule by which you can't like you can't call us out on what is clearly happening here he's now flipped to the wrong side uh but at the same time like the tactic is very familiar and in fact again the republic desperately needs someone to be like you know what this is bullshit like i don't like i do not care what the what the law says here this isn't illegal block And we're coming through. But that's not where the Republic is at. Right. Well, this is, this is, to be as like, to be as clear as possible what you're referencing here in a new hope at the beginning, Vader boards lay a ship and basically accuses her of a thing that we see happening in the previous episode here, which is you're always talking about how you're off doing refugee aid, basically.

You're doing humanitarian aid. You're not. You're a fucking rebel. you're part of the insurgency. And how does he know this? Because he did that shit 30 years ago all the time. He was part of the Republic doing that shit in the war. He knows that technique.

And he is the one who's going to be like, no, I'm going to go deal with it myself now, doing what he's telling Asoka to kind of do now, but also doing it, like you said, from the other side. And so I think that's a, that is like a really good point to think about him as a contiguous being and not just one day he's Anakin and then later he's a different person. I think it gets to also this notion of tactics are morally neutral for the most part. Like it all matters what is the end of it is serving. And so to an extent like the things like, you know, a lot of what the separatists do is underhanded and evil because the separatists are underhanded and evil in a lot of cases.

But like when you see the rebel alliance will end up using a lot of similar tactics to derail the empire. which is unequivocally evil and maligned. So the notion that you can tell good guys from bad based on which tactic they're employing as to, like, if you can tell who is, like, good and bad versus who is being deceitful, who is using, like, lateral moves to get around, it can't really be done.

I think this is something the Clone Wars kind of does effectively here, which is that you're going to see these moves done, and it's going to be frustrated because it's bad guys who are doing them, bad guys abusing the systems or bad guys abusing trust. But, like, arguably, like, the greatest hero of Star Wars, Leah, is somebody who, from the very beginning is absolutely, like, abusing her position to make sure that she can help this, like, rebel group get off the ground. Well, and yet, Star Wars is a world in which they, the sort of moral truth of the universe

is not one worthy ends. there are clear things that are not and to justify the means and it can force choke someone that is coded in so many ways inside of the lore but also inside of the way it's framed the way it's scored as being the thing that crosses the line

right like to use the force to hurt someone is a fundamentally evil thing and the thing that's so juicy and like one of the greatest kind of catalyst of like the brain the frisson of just like oh yeah this is is good is that there's a lot of gray area. There's so much gray area where it's like, yeah,

when Anakin does it, it's sick. When Anakin stabs that dude in the, in the Mandalorian at the end of the Mandalorian arc and just stabs him in the gut from the back and everyone cheers, like, you know what? Fuck that guy. You know what? Fuck that guy. Like, it's, we're good. Um, but when he marches down the hallway to force choke the guy and interrogate him, when the Jedi decide to go back into Cadbane's mind the second time or try to, that stuff like feels like it crosses an important. The Zillow Beast feels like it crosses a line. And so figuring out why is it that feels like it's crossing a line, whereas other stuff isn't. And then debating where that line ends up being, I think, is really productive for where we're going. Again, I'm so excited for

Saul Guerrero to get introduced to the show so we could be mad at how they frame him as like a too, an overly radical terrorist or whatever and decide to become whatever the equivalent of Saul Guerrera's plows bros are uh saw's dogs that doesn't really work but saw's teeth that's us yeah like the teeth of a saw that's sick yeah anyway um I'm with you except it's Star Wars so probably they probably wouldn't even like what the hell is saw yeah the one is the saw do you mean a plasma cutter my name saw's lazy yeah it's just the sound yes yeah there must be a saw in in like an actual hand saw somewhere in star wars right there's just a motor on it it's like a chainsaw situation yeah a chainsaw yeah anyway where are we at the kidnapping so the kidnapping yeah the kidnapping yeah the kidnapping unfolds and then it turns out one of the one of the chairman's daughters we're going to find this out later did a surprising amount to leave a trail of breadcrumbs

that later detectives were able to find. But let me tell you what the... No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. No, yeah. No. Detectives did not find that. It was... Because we see detectives. I know detectives, and detectives don't do that shit.

Detectives shrug their shoulders and leave. Like the one we get here, our old friend. This motherfucker, when he rounded that corner, I was like, oh, hell no, is this motherfucker back? I'm so glad he was in so little of this episode. I was like, when he showed up, I was like, I'm not here to do this again. Andivo, he's back, baby. And I love that, yeah, he is like a punchline.

He's effectively a punchline, right? But I definitely thought we were going to get another, you know, well, don't worry. I will find your daughter. Your daughter is in good hands. Like, I thought that was going to be the whole fucking episode. And it wasn't. Instead, Papa Papanoidia was a fucking G. And is a fucking...

It's unbelievable. He ruled. I want him... Where's his time? So, I think it might be time to go to the flow. to talk about Papa Papa Noidia. Yep. Because, Rob, do you know what's happening here?

Does anyone here know all the top of their heads who this character is? Like, who he's supposed to represent? Or, like, literally who he's going to turn out to be in Star Wars. Don't worry about it. No, just who he's meant to. Because we've seen him once before as a background character in a previous Star Wars thing.

So let me send you a link here. Filoni's own. Oh, is this? Okay. We're so close. We're so close to no one knowing. but if you know it, you know it. All right, count me in on this,

or let me know when to count in on this. Oh, my God. Cowboy Hat-Faloney. I'm ready. Cowboy Hat Filoni. All right, three, two, one. No? No, don't go.

Ready? Yes, now I'm ready. Three, two, one, go. Master Skywalker. What is it, Asokov? Someone has kidnapped Chairman Papanoid's daughters. My daughter's lives are in your hands, Inspector. You have nothing to worry about, Your Honor.

We are in complete control of the situation. In sphere of influence, there are a lot of crazy things going on. Not the least of which is that my boss, George Lucas, is running around shooting up the canteen. Oh my god. Hopanoida and his whole family, those are the Lucases? You know, there are several things that you never think you're going to see or do in your career.

Yeah, I never thought of work on Star Wars. I never thought I'd release a Star Wars film. I certainly never thought that I'd be responsible for animating George Lucas. There he is! It's him! But rather than get into that, I'm going to get into the canteen.

Let's go. We were tasked with creating a very classic set. And the first thing you realize about a lot of new hope sets is how sparse they really are. So for our show, which is skyline. How poorly designed. You can make it look very empty. Go get the prisoner.

So it's a challenge, and you know, we had to make the stools. There's the booth where Hans Sol is with Grito later. You know, obviously, Grito's a regular there in his youth. Grito, what are you? I love this guy. I love this goat guy so much. And also we rationalize that, you know, the same owner probably didn't have it. We don't serve their kind here.

What? So we created a bartender. bartender for our canteen. And I think that this guy was so traumatized by the shootout with Baron Papanoida that he put the canteena up for sale. George Lucas came in that canteen and fucked it up so good that the guy who owned the canteen had to flip it to the guy we know in in Star Wars, New Hope. That is an incredible funny done.

Do you think that's the first shootout that's been in that canchita? I know. Are you fucking kidding? hitting me? This full duck behind the bar. He was like, all right. Just don't hit the fucking 12 year old. Yeah, exactly.

I'm going to grab this. I'm going to sit down here. When y'all done, just, you know, let me know. That's a move that speaks to experience. You've got to know to take the bottle off of the bar. Listen, Papa Papa Puppanoida came in with the dual fisting, like the wild guns of kimbo shit. The bartender had never seen anything like it. before and he was like I gotta get out of the game I in my day everyone just had one gun

but this guy who's the president of a planet came in just ready to drop fools so him and his son Seth Green is that Seth Green oh god if Ion is Seth Green this is a nightmare so so so the whole Papanoida family are the Lucases they showed up in Revenge of the Sith in the background Yeah. There's an image. You may remember his daughter also played, Katie Lucas also played like a Twilak at the club in episode two. He or she plays Papanoida's daughter, Chea Neckway. And an important final Lucas note with this episode.

Rob, did you notice this one? Lead writer on this episode, Katie Lucas. I did notice that. Che E. Quay, or Chi Iquay, who is the character that Katie Lucas played, is the character Katie Lucas played, and then Katie Lucas goes on to write this episode in which her own character gets kidnapped. I love this for you, Katie. I'm so proud that you were like, I have an O.C. already. I'm just going to write an episode about her. That's incredible. Here's something funny, though. It's not. voiced by George Lucas in this No. It's not. It's Tom Kenny. No, it's

Cory Burton. Oh, it is Corey Burton. Corey Burton specifically is drawing on Orson Wells. Orson Wells. It's Orson Wells. That's who it is. It's Orson Wells. God. Draw from the best. Yeah, exactly. That is fucking great. Why Seth Green?

Oh, because he's in tons of Star Wars stuff. In honor of his robot chicken. Yeah. work yeah i think he's just like one of those people who was like a super fan in an era where being a star was super fan and a celebrity meant

you could just make it happen he's also toto 360 which is the thing i think we did we know that do we mention that at the time so okay that's the little that's the little droid i mean the thing is like he's not bad bad being's a little droid he's good i think he's good as toto i don't know that he's good as i am because

they're the the pantorans in this in this episode anyway are going for like a South African dialect of English and he can't hold it he can't it slips away from him and I'm terrible at accents so I'm sympathetic um the first I if they'd ask me to do it I'd be like yeah sure I can do it and I could not do it so yeah the first time he started talking I was like mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm I don't like it well you get you get this silky this silky Papa Papanoida it's like ooh it hits it's nice it hits it just it just dances on the ears and then fucking Seth Green opens his mouth is like what what what and it's terrible terrible I do appreciate that so Star Wars Small Universe Grito always been doing this stuff

but I do appreciate that they've gotten us away from the incredibly pathetic story of Grito in the tales from the bounty hunters which turns a new hope into one of the saddest dameau's life that you can imagine basically like in the original tales from the no it's the most size of the canteen besides the canteen it's most size of the canina yeah yeah yeah Grito is just a hardworking

Rhodian boy who's trying to like feed his family and he's like you know who's not a chump in this world bounty hunters bounty hunters are the only people

who live more than the subsistence existence I'm to become a bounty hunter and the entire short story is like people warning him like hey you may not be you may not have the speed or the moves or the mind to be a bounty hunter like this is not this work is not for you

and it's just him being blown off by Han Solo again and again as he tries to collect this debt and Han is just like brutally cutting him down to size at every turn mocking him and so when Grito finally gets good and pissed off

the end of that story is him forcing Han at gunpoint back into the canteena to have their famous confrontation where Han is just going to fry him in the booth. And I'm so glad that that is no longer canon because I didn't like feeling sad for Grito. Yeah, but you have to, but you have to imagine Grito, I don't know, Grito's, like, if, let's imagine Grito grew up on Rodea, right?

Abandoned by the Republic. Uncle Ono's in charge. He can't get shit down. Like, no, Republic's not hearing him. Grito probably saw the fallacy of Republic aid and what it meant to be a member of the Republic. It was like, there's nothing for me here. I will never, I will never be more than a, like, a citizen of a planet asking for help

from an institution that doesn't give a fuck about us because we don't have oil. And then he, and then you have to imagine he, he, he, some. Somebody stops by Rodea and they're a bounty hunter or something. And it's like, damn, where are you going? He's like, I'm leaving. I'm going anywhere else. I can go anywhere I want. And you have to imagine Grito sees that.

And it's like the most amazing thing to him that he could, that one could just go and leave and be wherever they want to be. And so he becomes a bounty hunter. He joins. He leaves with him when he comes. He goes with him. That guy comes through. they maybe maybe grido's like working as a bus boy in a roadie in restaurant somewhere and they get to chatting it's late at night you know it's 24 hour diner vibe and grito's like take me with you he takes off his apron he sets on the ground puts the dishes to the side he's like I'm ready to leave this place so now he's the guy in heat yeah uh-huh there is unfortunate well you know I we've had talks about how we interpret deleted scenes I know that I tend to not accept them as canon.

Natalie, I know that you like them and think like we should think about them in terms of what the story is. There is a deleted scene where Grito shows up in Phantom Menace as a little boy who beats the shit out of Anakin Skywalker. That's amazing. That's so good. I mean, it's terrible, but So I'll link this here So we should We're having Grito Day

Here's Grito Day Okay, I'm loving this for Grito though Because in this timeline now Grito beat the shit out of Anakin And then was starving on Rodian In his young adult years escaped This is assuming everything Natalie said is true

I see you're making it compatible as a young adult with his bounty hunter friend and then he's rolling dice and has a really hot girlfriend when we see him in sphere of influence yeah before sphere of influence with his hot girlfriend let's pause let's watch this let's watch this dial it back Natalie we're gonna go into this hold up all right all right ready ready let's zero it in we're ready to count in on this three two one go Okay, yeah, uh-huh. Okay.

I had read it the other way. Uh-huh. What's this all about? He said I cheated. Did you? No. You still think he cheated? I bet he cheated.

Yeah, Grito's right. Grito said yes. Yes, he did. You'll just have to tolerate his opinion. What? What? That's what Quaghan has for Grito Starting trouble again Grito Everyone knows that you shouldn't attack someone first

See that's where he learned the lesson That's what he learned the lesson Not to shoot first Yeah it sucks That sucks But okay so now we have a downtrodden Grito Who's been Who as a child was

bullied relentlessly I'm not going to accept that last part because that's some Star Wars bullshit. I don't go to talk about that. Wait, you can't, you cannot take some of it and not all of it. You're really, I mean, you can. It's just a reference. It shouldn't even be there. Here we go.

It shouldn't. I'm going to accept it. I'm going to write it in. But I don't want to. A boring academic. So, yeah. This source is unreliable on this point. But let me tell you why we should listen to it for this other point.

I don't, I don't want to get rid of it because Grito's friend who says this to him, the second later jumps down and then does like a really awkward run across the street and I don't want to lose that aspect. Okay, yeah, we don't have to lose that. But, but, okay, maybe maybe Anakin has been cheating Grito at, at children's games.

And Grito find, oh, they're rolling dice. Okay, they, you know. Okay, at fucking, at craps or some shit. Crapes, yeah, uh-huh. And, uh, you know, Grito's had it up. He's lost all of his allowance from working, you know, as probably a fellow child laborer as Anakin. Anakin, maybe Grito did punch first, but Anakin is beating the shit out of him.

Grito's getting embarrassed in front of all of his friends. Maybe, maybe from there, somebody calls him up as like, listen, you got family on Rodea, like, you need to leave. Like, that, that was, that was not okay. Oh, this is like a fresh prince situation. This is a fresh prince situation. Yeah. You've concocted in a fresh prince of rodeo situation. But.

Except that he goes back to the life. That, but yeah. So he thinks, he's like, oh, I'm going to fucking Beverly Hills. I'm going to Uncle Ono's palace. He's like, no, no, not Uncle Ono. Uncle Bono. Uncle Bono. Uncle Bono.

Bono's here. And Uncle Bono is not, doesn't have it like Uncle Ono. And Uncle Ono doesn't have it either. Okay, let's say, let's say, let's say, Uncle Ono might be dead by now, so. I don't think Uncle Ono is dead. I don't think Uncle O'N is not as a kid, not as a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's say Uncle Ono is also Grito's uncle. So Grito shows up. He thinks he's about it, like, live the life of luxury. To be clear, Uncle Ono is not literally Padmay's uncle. It's a, it's a colloquial uncle. it's an unc that's an unc situation not a literal uncle right of course you know what I mean I mean okay I saw I mean Grito yeah you know Grito got it like that so Grito shows up Uncle Odo is falling apart he's the the planet is starving everything's bad

Grito is was trying to escape hardship And thought that this was his chance and realized, no, he's got a, it just follows him. Hardship will follow him forever unless he makes a change. Unless he decides something for himself. He didn't choose to go to Rodea. He was forced upon him. And so. And if it wasn't for that pesky kid hitting him over the head with a little stash you at.

With a pizza cutter. I'm sorry. I've, I just, I got to go. Yeah, uh-huh. Go ahead, Alex. I just got to the mental place of how fucking angry I would be if I was sitting down watching the phantom menace. And for like two minutes, I had to see Grito getting the shit beat out of him by Anakin, fucking Quigod trying to do this father act. And then hearing, hey, Grito, you can't hear people first.

Like, I was like, why are you doing this to me? I already watched Star Wars Like I don't need to Also it's like If you're going to give that advice Like No You got to

If you're going to be hitting people first It's got to be the last hit Like that's Yeah It's got to start and end At the same moment Grito This is the thing It's not an invitation of conversation

That's the thing It's such a tortured line Because no one would say Don't hit people first Do you know what I mean? You might say, like, don't start fights. You might say, like, you know, hey, violence doesn't solve problems. But don't hit first is literally a thing you get to backwards from Grito shot first or Han shot first.

100%. All is a joke about his shitty, like, retroactive edit of that scene. Yeah, you're right. Yes, that he's then responding to because by then the special editions had come out. That change had happened and people were mad about it. So, who. Well, anyway, back in the future, Grito was a child kidnapper, I guess a kidnapper, and gets hit in the head with a statuette, which Tandivo does not notice, is neither out of place nor covered in blood. Truly the worst detective.

Papa Papapapedina. What's his name? Papanoidia. Papa Pappanoidia. Papa Pappanoidia. Papa Pappanoidia. notices it immediately he's like this should be up where the rest of our shrine statues are this is an icon of the moon goddess or whatever that goes up there also yo this has blood all

over it and then and this is where the Grito situation maybe gets a little more complex and we don't necessarily need to fill in the gap but this guy who I get it he's like the chairman of a planet but he has on his like on his T-Mobile sidekick just access to like the federal blood database and he's like let me just tap this this on my phone do do do do oh it's greedo that's grito's blood how many people are walking around with blood scanners in this universe too many because if there are if there are thousands and thousands of planets and just in the republic and each leader of those and it's not even the senator like he's not even he's the leader from the planet yeah do you know what i mean he's like the governor

of the planet not the senator who who normally talks he doesn't even talk to the Republic like that. But they already got the post 9-11. They already got the post 9-11. All the different agencies talk to one another and share the same database shit going on. And so he's like, boo-bo-bo-bo-bo-beep. Oh, that's Grito. I know where he's like. Like nothing. How did Tandivo not get this? He's not, he's not on the app. Well, it doesn't serve anyone's interest to have the Corrassant police to actually be good. That's the thing. The last thing you want is some like random local homicide dick stumbling on to your Sith plot.

But, but imagine he was great. Like, imagine imagine he was our Columbo. Oh, I've got that spec script. Like, I don't have to imagine that. Like, I know exactly. But instead we have,

what's his name? Old, old, never-ending story man. Oh, Sunube. Sanube. I mean, I still fuck. Sunube is good with me.

I'm good. I still fuck with Sunubi. But, yeah, we get Tandivo here saying there's no evidence of foul play, and then moving on, and then it becomes clear, like, okay, everybody who asks, if we're going to get this solved, it's going to have to be all of us just doing it ourselves. I guess independently, we have the Asoka-Cucci thing, and we have the Papa Papa Dima. I keep saying Papa Dima, which is just wrong. Papa Noida and his son, Seth Green, independently going off to do their own investigations. I love that the only way to figure out what Grito's up to and, like, how to get in touch them, we're on Corrassan, got to leave Corrason, got to go to Java's Palace.

Yeah. Which now reimagines Jabba's Palace as more just a hiring hall than a Crime Lord's Den, which I feel Java comes out of this looking weaker than I thought, where it's like, he's just hanging loose and people are just coming through there not to pay respects to Java but basically just to like craigslist some crime you know what it is Rob it's like playing crusader kings and someone rolls into your court you know what I mean you don't like yeah maybe you notice if it's someone who is like particularly high skills or they're interesting or something but a lot of people move in and out of the court all day every day your job of the hut you're busy

being a single dad trying to raise your little boy uh uh uh uh know Agua, no La Fla, or whatever the thing was I just saw on the screen, looking at dancers, doing their little dance. And then, like, that's just your day for the day. And whoever comes and goes, if they don't make a mess, you don't take any notice, you know? Yeah. Or you have other people to take notice for you. That's kind of it, right? Yeah.

I would guess. I do love, by the way, Baby Hut, joining and pointing the accusing finger. and hear some bullshit we've got some great people's court Judge Judy type stuff where like imagine Judge Judy had an accusatory baby

who was also like sort of mimicking like I don't believe what you're selling that's that's perfect but yeah they very easily smoke out Grito and basically get him

to betray the plot so Grito still bad at this I would say Yeah. Why did we need to get Grito lore? If the Grito lore is just going to get him easily overpowered by George Lucas. But, but we did get Trela Berra.

We sure did. His fucking baddy girlfriend. Yeah. They kiss on screen. They kiss on screen. I was losing my shit. I was like, get it, Grito. And like, one of the best kiss.

that we've seen in the series. Like, Padma and Anakin don't kiss like that. I'm going to say. It was hot. God. It's real. You know what I mean? Yeah.

They're not, there's no pretences. Yeah. It's a, sorry. They don't put them in Hollywood. Hollywood doesn't show kisses like this anymore. They don't do it like this no more. They don't do it like this anymore. Not since the 1990s erotic thriller.

I need the Grito erotic thriller. Make it happen. Please. Disney, are you listening? Faloni getting the previs back and just be like keep the scene going. I'll tell you when it got. I don't care what costs. We need all this.

We need all this. I want full commitment from the animators. While we're talking about relationships, we did skip over this. We did. Such bad Anakin Padme vibes in this episode. We get them for like two minutes and they're walking together and they're having a conversation. Conversation is awful. It's miserable

Rancid vibes The end It's two feet away from Rex Rex is right there And again This goes back to my theory That Rex knows Because like

Anakin You know Padmae is like This whole situation fucking sucks This reminds me so much The Naboo situation And Anakin's like That wasn't so bad You know

It's how I met you The blockade was not that bad Is exactly what he said I know a lot of people starve to death, but what we met. And Rex was genuinely three feet behind them, and Assoca is like 10 feet in front of them. And Anakin is not hiding it well at all. It's just, Anakin just thinks he's got bars. He thinks that he's got just lines.

And he delivers them with full confidence, like full, like full, like, she's going to love it when I say this. It's going to turn her mood all the way around. And it just, he's constantly missing. But also, Padme's like, okay. So, I mean, I guess it's fine. There was a scene, though, where it seemed like she didn't even like him anymore. Because he, like, he says the placate thing, and she's like, ha, ha, you have such funny opinions or whatever.

Like, what a unique take? That's something you say to someone you're married. to now. Like, you've got, you've got a legal contract binding you somewhere and you can't just say what you want to say because you've got

taxes to pay together now and it just, it's different. Dude, they pay taxes together on Nabu? They file separately. They're married. They must. But they are married legally on Nabu, right? Yeah. I think so. I mean,

Tandivo's got to get into this. Tandme is definitely Googling secret marriage, secret divorce. We also, while the Grito stuff is happening and they're going to get Grito and lead Grito to tell them all what's happening, the other half of this

is Choochie Asoka, right? Being detectives. Chucci is new hair, it's worth saying. Chuchy's like eight. like gone through puberty since season one, I guess, and like grew her hair out and has a crown now. Her glow up is great. Yeah.

We also, we kind of slid past it, but the design of Papanoidia and his son, Ion, where they have these, like, you can see the brushstrokes in their, like, face markings is cool as hell. It's really good. Yeah. I've always loved the Pantorans as, like, a species that mostly lives here in Clone Wars, and like they this is a really good example this this episode i think is a really good example of the thing we've talked about a lot lately which is like give us stakes that we can care about

because they're contained to the clone wars because we don't need to like what happens to pantora is a pretty good question because i don't know what happens to pantora long term maybe it ends up being important in future stuff who could say but i like that we get a return of these characters we get an expansion of of pantoran diplomats and stuff and i like all of these characters enough that if they continue to come back, I'd be happy, you know. Agreed. Sick robes, sick, sick, sick uniforms. Sick shootouts.

Sick shootouts. Yeah. Papa, Papa Noidia is a shooter. He just, he... Shooter shoot? That knife is huge. That knife that he has on him is huge. It's a fucking big knife.

Rob, how do we get back on track? Where are we at on this episode? I feel like we're very punchy today. cleaning house at the canteena. They clean house in the canteenia, but that's like the end of the episode, right? Right, right. There's a shootout in the canina.

Right. Grito, not good at playing it cool, but here does get away so you can rendezvous it with destiny in a new hope. 20 years later. Yeah. So the rescue, also, it makes zero sense to me that they would split up the kids. By the way, I do not understand. It is just to make the other plot also relevant for, like,

like rescuing the kids, but like, it makes no sense to me that they would have one of the kids here in the canteen on Tatooine and the other would be aboard a trade federation ship. Doesn't track? I mean, I guess then if you lose one, you still got one. You still got another. But the plot still falls apart. That's kind of the thing is like. And why have the paper trail to the Trade Republic when like the trade federation not working with a. separatists is like the thing that they're on right now yeah that was not smart that right why put them on a trade federation ship yeah kidnapped the kids and then don't put them near the trade federation yeah right you're good right put them on on de facto separatist ships that jelike aren't legally allowed to just land on and be like hey we want to check some shit out yeah

or hire other bounty hunters who have a ship right that are just like floating outside course on or whatever like what I don't know the thing that really fuck me up public storage unit somewhere yeah honestly keep them on chorus on yeah on the go down a couple levels yeah nobody goes down there in the last detective episode we found out that like there was an entire like five floors or whatever that was all that storage shit just put them there yeah put them there you have papanoida going off to tattooing you're in a java's palace talking about where's grito and they're like uh He ain't been here in a minute.

And that's the end of that arc for him. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, yeah, I think he hangs out in L.A. And it's like, well, the kidnapping was in New York, so we should probably check New York first. So we also get the detective team up. It feels like a re-rack of Phantom Menace in a lot of ways. They even go to the same conference room. Like, same stuff happening.

We see. we do get a taste of like Asoka is increasingly powerful like she is able to do the whole mission impossible like not only for herself sort of spidering up in the corner of the room but she

is also holding Chuchi in the same position out of sight to keep them safe so Asoka at least in terms of just raw power like fully able to do that Jedi shit like pretty much on command now

They tee up two things where she could fail, and she succeeds at both of them. She does that thing where, like, oh, not only does she have to hide herself, she has to lift Chucci, and then also does the Jedi mind trick, not just for herself, but has to come back and re-administer it to get them past a guard. That's so funny. It's so funny. She does the, like, you know, what's the exact line, but it's like, you know, I'm allowed in here, basically.

And she goes through, and then the guard stops Choochie from going through. She used to come back and be like, I end my friend. are allowed in here. She has a little eye roll where she realized, oh, no, you've got to swipe the card twice. Sorry, you've got to do this. But she does it, and it's nice to see them. This feels like a signal to me.

It feels like them being like, Season three, Asoka is coming into her own. She knows what she's doing. She's getting better at this. She takes this mission by herself. She doesn't ever say, I wish Annie was here. She wouldn't say Anakin. I wish Master Anakin was here.

Like, none of that ever happens. And she just gets to, like, kick it and do a good job. I mean, they get caught at the end, quote, unquote, but, like, talks her way out of it, I guess, because they've, I don't really understand how that. I don't know why they don't just get shot, to be honest, but. I mean, they stop, like, she has him at, at Sabre Point and is, like, ready to, ready to pull. And then she just lets his guys, like, come in. through and roll through and just surround them and I guess is it because they're not droids and their trade federation soldiers maybe maybe maybe maybe pull the fucking

that detention center hallway should have been a charnel house basically by the end of this because like it is in everyone's best interest just to start killing and and see who's left but I guess the the thing is um fundamental the Trade Federation are check and sheds, right? Like, ultimately, what they will do is, like, they will come at you the way a lawyer will come at you, but they won't, like, go for the throat, right? So, like, when it comes down to, hey, we just caught you,

like, involved in a kidnapping plot, the guy who was part of it is, like, well, shit, we should just, like, you know, no turning back now. But the guy in charge of the overall diplomatic mission is, you know, he basically does get backed off here by, chucci and ends up like doing a deal just to like look the other way on all of this which it doesn't make a lot of sense like from my from my standpoint like that guys all that guys's incentives are kill these two disappear everybody just roll this entire deal up um instead

they come to the deal of the trade federation is going to let pantora off the hook and it seems like there's no repercussions. Like, Sib Kinney's in trouble. Yeah. He wants his litigator, which is my favorite line of this episode. Yeah. He was like, I want my litigator. I want my lawyer. I love it. Fantastic. But that's it. And we do know that Gun Ray was, like, it was dealing with legal fallout for ages, but like it didn't stop him from doing more new gunray shit. Yeah. So yeah, they get off everybody, I mean, the, again, the episode ends with with the Zoom in on the Pantorra. our family and everyone's happy and like Papa Papa Noido is like surrounded by his loving children and stuff and like that's great but you're right that like this doesn't stop this tactic

from continuing to be used in the future right there is not like the Senate didn't have to like didn't did not chose not to pass any sort of resolution against this technique being used there was no fine issued to Pantora or to the Trade Federation. Everybody stays friends, everybody gets paid, and everybody's got a fucking future. Uh-huh. Also, like, they, the episode literally, these two episodes are about the Trade Federation's neutrality and their ability to move between the separatists and the Republic. But in this, in this specific episode, a trade federation ship was holding a hostage orchestrate, a hostage situation orchestrated by separatists.

So like, how, how is everyone cool with that? Like, I guess there. Well, because not everyone sees what we see. Right? We see. We get a complete. picture of everybody involved, right? No, but, but, but the, the, the, the, the, the, what's public knowledge is what this

dude admits to is that new gun raise influence has extended further within the trade federation. And that's how, like, this entire plot come, like, came to be or whatever. But, like, that's one of those things where it's like, uh, a, if a terrorist is part of a foreign nation, Saudi Arabia, it turns out, we still do deals with them, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia trained the, or, you know, housed the, the terrorists who pulled off 9-11. Do you know what I mean? Like, um, uh, that shit is always happening.

Um, you don't, you, you, you, you, when you have a strong economic partner and they get infiltrated by, uh, an enemy to your state, you don't often cut off your relationship with that strong economic partner. And it's about leverage. It's about what we said before, right? Which is that like the trade federation for the republic to be like, to, to, if, the republic said no more trade federation shit like we're not going to work with you anymore the republic would need to have an uh an option available for all of the nations and planets

and moons that need the trade federation like they just have a sort of you know power as this huge corporate entity around which the the galactic economy flows or through which the galactic economy flows that give them a lot of power to do shit like this and get away with it right yeah yeah and that's why the that's why the that's why the that's why the Republic needs to learn about a little concept called expropriation. Because you get this story out right quick if you just start seizing their ships and turning their databases into Republic, public goods. But sadly they're... But also, you probably end up getting a bunch of additional separatists the second that happens.

Because, one, any remaining trade federation people will just immediately swing into the separate... And there's a lot of people who have similar deals. who have similar deals and who go like, hey, wait a second, can the Republic just seize our shit whenever we want, whenever they want to? We don't want that to happen. And Duku is out here talking about, well, we would never do that. You can come hang with us and everything. And hey, look, we still have the remaining trade federation supplies. You know that we'll be able to get you supplies whenever you need. So it's like, I do like the ways in which these episodes have illustrated how tricky. You're right, Natalie, even to the degree that it is in the open,

that almost makes the situation that much more tangled and interesting because what are you going to do? And that is the kind of like the big dare that it feels like the Trade Federation members in these episodes are making is that like it doesn't matter what the truth is because it doesn't matter what we're doing because the truth is you are you are handcuffed to us. You cannot unhandcuff yourself from what the services that we are providing. And that's really interesting. Like they can be, they can be publicly infiltrated by separatists and be like, yeah, don't know how that happened. Anyways, you need a ship. You got to pay, like, you got to pay us. You need to fucking ride this hyperspace highway.

Like, you got to pay the toll or whatever. Like, it's just, yeah. There's no not doing business with the. trade federation it's the i'm not touching you rebellion yeah

exactly we didn't mention the like really quick duku scene here which is we need more ducu by the way what's going on with this show but i'm trying to keep track of it

because we get a moment where like a droid comes to him and it's like hey we got this a transmission between oh that was supply line to where it was like they're sending bill Organa to

Toidardia To do this deal or whatever And then who does he say that he's going to contact? Is that Lott Dodd? He orders him up Like a pizza That's my favorite thing about these episodes Is that we see Lottad

Like throughout the entire thing being like We're not separatist, what are you talking about? and he's literally taking DMs from Count Duku. Yep. Like, there's no, like, there's, it's not, let's call up Newt, who will call a lot. It's no. There's no middle band. Direct.

Yeah. So, yeah, the Republic, at least waging war this way and trying to shore up the Republic this way, seems like it's, you know, it's trying to fill up a, a leeching, bucket in a lot of ways and it doesn't seem to be going well but I think a fun pair of episodes like I thought these were both enjoyable and they do both in their way shed light on an interesting political backdrop here which is really highlighting how dysfunctional this instantiation of the republic is and how helpless despite everyone involved all the protagonists saying pretty clearly what is happening, how helpless

everybody is in the face of the structure of the Republic and the deals they've inherited. Unless there's any final points, we will tie off those two episodes. I think so. Again, I just want to know that there's the goat guy in the canteena, and I love

his voice. Why did they make him sound like a goat? Because he's a goat guy. But like, there's so many different types of guys in Star Wars, or they're not doing that? I was watching And I was like, do we need this? Yes, because he sounds good. I like how he sounds.

That's a good thing. I would like to hear that more. Really quick, other cameo, there is another little cameo in this, which is at Jabba's Palace in the background, are, I don't see if I could just find the shot and see if you notice them. Yeah, here we go. You might not, you might only see one of them because only one of them really has that screen presence in the way that that, that, that, that, that, uh, you know. that you want, but dead center in the back to the right.

Our boy, Embo, Y, Mbo and Sugi from the bounty hunters protect the penicillin episode, are both in Java's Palace. So, on a break, yeah. Congrats to them for being in the background as cool bounty hunters. Fuck yeah.

That's evidence. Embo lives. I have no idea where this takes place in the chronology. Don't tell me if it's wrong. He probably doesn't. But yeah, we live. And I'll hope.

Wishing them all well. Okay. Uh-huh. Okay. So that will do it for these two episodes. Our next episode, if you are a Patreon subscriber, is going to be next week. It is going to be a Q&A on season three thus far. I'm pretty sure I have this right.

I could be wrong. Yeah, I think that you're right. I think that you're right. Sixth. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. And then the next episode that we're going to tackle.

it's going to be I think we're going to be doing a trio and then yeah we're into arcs uh oh there's an episode called night sisters that can only mean one thing this is yes my ship is coming in your ship is coming in it's true it's true so very excited all right all right so next time just again to reiterate next time is corruption and the academy the fifth and sixth episodes of the season and for patreon backers our next episode is going to be a Q&A.

If you would like to listen to that episode, you can learn more at patreon.com slash civilized. We do Q&As there. If you want to hear us continue to come up with bullshit AUs, the Patreon is truly the place for it. That's where it really threats. I cannot stop thinking about Boba Organa as a concept that we came up with in the last Q&A.

If you want to hear us come up with that, please. it's it's not what you think it is it's something well you'll I don't know what you're I don't know what you're I don't know what you're so Allie's like don't open that can of words please anything to re-contextualize the relationship they actually have um is great to me but I guess yeah wait but who's relationship uh Boba Fett and Leah yeah I'm just always thinking about him screaming at her about how drugs and premarital sex are not good if from Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Right. Well, he could do that now as her older brother

in a way that's even cornyer. Oh, wow. Oh, that's right. Like, in Tales from the Bounty Hunters, Boba Fad is like a fundamentalist Christian. It's a fucking nightmare. It's a nightmare. And that was, dude, I was so bummed. I read that book.

And it's like, all right, here comes the boba story. Here comes the boba story. It's the last chapter. And it's so fucked up. It's a novella. It's a long story about Boba Fath. It kicks off an entire book series after that that I read all of. I have never understood the Boba Fett love, and then I read that.

And I was like, what the fuck am I reading? What is happening here? That's deeply, deeply fucked. What Boba needed to be was like a Pentecostal preacher with a gun. See, the thing that is good is Dengar. Boba. Yes. Like that whole thing where he's like, fucking Boba Feta, hate that guy.

And that hauls him out of the Sarlack. And he's like, oh, God, this guy's... After getting betrayed by him. It's so good. Like an hour early... And then, Manner is like, you can be better than this. This doesn't have to be the same trauma repeated again and again. And Dengar's like, shit.

It doesn't have to be the same trauma repeated again and again. And then they become bros. And they go on adventures again. That's good shit. That's... Anyway, the point is, seeing, these flights of fancy, there's nothing to stop us on the Q&A. It's like dissolving the Galactic Senate.

We can just follow these trains of thought all the way to the end of the line. Then Austin wants to cut it together some way in a way that makes sense and it's satisfying. And if you want to see, if you have feelings about the job he's been doing that we've been doing, you can raid and review us on your podcast platform of choice.

And we'll be back next time with those two episodes, the Academy, corruption but I flipped the order uh look forward to seeing you there until then we got to get these trade federation guys out of here I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to be.

I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know. Oh!