A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 32: The Umbara Arc (Clone Wars 73 - 76)

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Finally we have escaped the desert that was the beginning of Season 4, and we arrive at what is one of the best arcs of the show to date. The Republic sees the seceded world of Umbara as a strategic stepping stone to the Mid Rim, but for the clones assigned under the ruthless (and seemingly inept) Jedi General Pong Krell, it's a more like one big gravestone.  Join us as we gleefully talk about clone feelings, Jedi indifference, our headcanon bonus episodes, and, admittedly, the arc's small handful of missteps and missed opportunities. NEXT TIME: Episodes 77 - 79 ("Kidnapped," "Slaves of the Republic," "Escape from Kadavo") You can support the show and gain access to a monthly Q&A cast by going to patreon.com/civilized Show Notes Deaths: Oz, Ringo, Hardcase, Waxer, Pong Krell, more unnamed clones than we can count Walter Murch - 'Clone Wars' and learning Maya Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Alicia Acampora Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)    

Let us return once more to a more civilized age at Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zackney, joined by Ali Akampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. After a run of what we probably have to admit were some of the weakest episodes in series history, season four has finally given us maybe one of the strongest arcs, if not the strongest arc in the series. and probably something it would add up to being one of the better Star Wars movies if you sort of chain these four episodes together. We've got a lot to get into here, so let's just get into the broad brush description of what happens in these four episodes across the Umbara arc. Darkness on Umbara opens with a Republic assault on a really creepy world that has gone over to the separatists. Crucially, this invasion is not another battle against droids, but isn't it.

a full-on war with sentient biologicals. The invasion has hardly gotten underway before Anakin is called back to Choruson by Palpatine and is replaced by a menacing, forearmed, towed, frog-looking Jedi named General Crowell. Austin, I were talking before the show that various points, he will be convinced that General

Crowell has to be played by Clancy Brown. He is, in fact, played by star voice actor Dave Fanoi. the rest of the half day finoy and more things that's our official position the rest of the leading roles so the rest of the arc is seen

through the eyes of the clones as they come to grips with Krell's harsh leadership cruelty and indifference to casualties in darkness and umbara he immediately begins referring to them

by their numbers instead of their names he shitkans anikin's assault plan and orders them to make a direct assault up the main road to the umbaran capital and when it predictably goes wrong he berates rex for pulling his men out of an ambush this beat is repeated a bit in the next episode uh the general in which now that

the assault on the capital has like gone poorly and they are unable to support obiwan's troops they are given a different mission which is knock out an airbase that is making it impossible for obiwan's forces to take the city once again Krell orders a direct assault and refuses all of Rex's suggestions about a wiser approach. And the result is a bunch of clones being fed into a really unfair fight against a bizarre menagerie of droids that the Embarrants have been holding in reserve. Crucially, though, in the midst of this assault, we also got our first inkling of the clones being unwilling to carry out unreasonable orders. the reticence is dealt with fives and wrecks managed to convince the clones to forge on

which leads them into yet another ambush but they do eventually manage to launch a sneak attack on the airbase that succeeds in spite of Krell's direct orders not to do this and they hijack a couple and barren aircraft and knock out all these tanks that they've been unable to come to grips with the third episode plan of descent picks up this thread which is that Crowell now refuses to let them use the aircraft that they've gained access to to knock out the orbital supply station

that is once again sort of fueling Umbarin resistance and is instead ordering the men to make a direct assault joining Anakin's direct assault on the city the men realized that literally the plan would have them marching into what sounds like a field of like tactical nukes and so once again behind Krell's back

Rex and a number of the clones authorize a carry out a sneak attack on this orbital mini death star that is supplying the Umbarin forces the attack succeeds in a

pretty spectacular sequence and Krell rewards them by immediately bringing up the surviving members of the raid up on charges for mutiny. This all comes to a head in

carnage of Crowell in which he decides... They short name that episode that and it's not wrong. In which Crowell decides, you know what? The hell with the court martial. Let's do a summary execution of Fives

and who's the other one who goes on the attack? Jesse. Jesse. It's five's Jesse and not heavy, but the heavy replacement, hard case. Who I kept wondering, does Hardcase remind fives of heavy? In my fick, he totally would. All the. They're like, very alike.

Well, they are. He's a bit, he's a bit dumber than heavy. No, heavy was always doing the same shit, jumping out, grabbing the thing. Oh, but I don't know, man, hard case, I don't know. Hardcase had it when it last or when he needed it. Hard case pulled out all the stops and understood the architecture of this supply ship in a way I certainly didn't. And also how alien munitions happened to work and they can move them around freely.

And yeah, I don't know. So this proves to be sort of the beginning of the end of his command as he orders this execution. The clones tasked with carrying it out flinch at the last moment and intentionally miss, at which point we do have what amounts to a mutiny, but it is preempted by the fact that they get word that there is an Ambaran raiding force headed right at them in stolen clone uniforms with stolen clone equipment. predictably when they go up to meet this enemy in the battle it turns out that they're just straight up fighting another detachment of clones from Obi-Wan's army and we catch up briefly with her old friend Waxer who's still on the helmet has the picture of the tweet we let girl

it's literally her it's meant to literally be her the one from Ryloth whatever name was he and a number of other clones are killed in the fighting but before he dies, Waxor reveals that they received the exact same communique from General Krell about their being like disguised

umbarans in the area. With that information, they realized Krell has been working against them and arranged this entire friendly fire incident. And so Rex leads a detachment of clones to in the words of

Apocalypse now terminate General Krell's command to go arrest him. Who then in the words of Palpatine in return of, or Revenge of the Sits, just straight up says it's treason men. It's so good. I was hoping for a little more

Order 66 competence from the clones. It doesn't go that way. General Krell kills a lot of clones. So many clones die in like the most brutal ways. For quite a while. You're being like

Boy, are they going to manage, is there another episode of this arc? Because it seems like he's been murdering clones for like 20 minutes. He is eventually brought down and stunned and imprisoned when interrogated. He reveals that he is foreseen the Jedi are doomed, that they're going to lose this war. And all that he has been doing is preparing the ground for his own defection. When the separatists retake the world, he will turn his coat. crossover to be Duke who's new apprentice.

The clones... Not that Duke who knows who he is. It's such a great... It's such a great plan. The whole, like, I hope he... I hope he sees this, bro. So, at that point,

Rex decides that the general has to be killed in his cell rather than be allowed to live, can't bring himself to pull the trigger. However, the little bootlicker, who's been lurking around the margins of this episode the entire time, appropriately named Dogma, at this point, having had his loyalty shattered, pulls a pistol and kills General Crowell, and the episode ends on quite the down note as the clones conclude what appears to be maybe a victorious campaign, maybe a pyric victory on umbara but either way as the reinforcements arrive uh we see rex

and fives and jesse contemplating two things what is the point of all this and then what is going to become of us when all this is over great questions guys yeah i'm glad something's finally raised that to y'all i have like a couple of quibbles with this arc but I think it's definitely the best arc that we've had in 12 episodes. Like, I think it's probably, it's better than the Savage Opresso one. And that was the last one that was really like good, good. Yeah. So I don't even know the last time I was like, damn, Clone Wars is killing it.

But these are just such well-made episodes. Um, it comes like, it, it begins with a bang. The, the work that is done in building Umbara is, and, and figuring out how to make it feel distinct from every other, even every other sci-fi, like, war story that they've done in this show is just substantial. There's an entire, like, minute-long sequence where there is no music playing during one of these long running, kind of the main attack out of the gate right away. And it's just so well done. The deployment of all sorts of new sounds is so important in this arc. The sound that the umbaran, uh, kind of missiles, he kind of like large

energy balls makes, this kind of ringing sound, uh, is so good. Uh, all, all of the original, uh, like, strange alien jungle stuff is great. Um, you know, obviously they are very much playing into certain notions of like the, the, the classic dark continent type shit, uh, but we don't see enough. I mean, also the umbarans are often, represented largely by a sort of impossible to understand whaling of voices that's and also we absolutely get an arc about IEDs in the middle of all of this. It's like it is very much playing in certain spaces that I think if it had leaned firmer into would have been off-putting.

But we end up just seeing so much of the humanity of the clones here and the action is so unique compared to most of the Clone Wars action we've seen. We've seen these clones fighting, like, entrenched difficult fights since the Clone Wars movie, and it's never been as well rendered as this. Yeah. You really feel how bleak this entire strategy is, this entire mission. It feels doomed from the start. And the Embarins feel like this formidable, just like non-stop attack after attack,

assault after assault force, like, they do not let up. Their weapons are, like, some of the wildest things that we've seen so far, like, the fucking energy catapult, long-range missiles, nuts. Apparently, they're, like, more technologically advanced than the average galactic. Like, that's part of what is supposed to be being communicated with that from some of the behind-the-scenes stuff I've read, is that Umbara is ahead of everybody else in So, for instance, their fighters can switch between modes, but not in the way like an Xwing does, or whether it's mechanical.

It's almost as if the, whatever the material, they're weird oblong, not oblong. They're kind of like, they're almost like, they look like joints or like musculature in the way that they bend, right? The Embarrans, I think, owe a lot to the Eldar from 40K. This is a 40K-S battle, but like the way all their stuff is like contoured metal. in some ways and like lots of frames and the idea that like a lot of their stuff doesn't have substance until like some sort of energy field materializes to give it uh structure and form yeah they specifically shouted out inside of um inside of their one of the behind the scene things

on on star wars dot com dune um and uh and there's entrotti from robotech for the for their like fashion and stuff um and And so they're definitely, at this point, like, pulling from a wide, they're like, we cannot just reference Star Wars here. We want to go further than that. We want to, like, pull in other stuff that feels like it doesn't fit inside of the galaxy that we've seen so far, you know, which is interesting. And I think the thing that really gets me about this arc is even though, even as the Embarrans feel so unrelenting and just, like terrifying and punitive they never feel scarier than General Krell like General Krell main because like we never have like a close encounter with an

Mbaran like it's all very you've barely even see one of their faces like as one of the clones like kills an umbaran they like crack a helmet and you can kind of make out their face a little bit yeah if people are wondering they're they're like bald and very pale uh the uh me dichi from the uh banking arc uh or the maybe that was the maybe it was not the banking arc it was the some other politics arc from early on and then of course uh sly sly more the uh palpatine's aide the bald headed uh woman who who hangs with him all the time and just looks kind of disaffected and distant uh is those are umbarance uh so this is our first non-named umbarans that we get um and yeah you're right we never like none of them

ever never we don't get dialogue they don't have a we don't meet their leader you know no and we we go ahead well i was going to say i think but i think that also contributes to some of the like the really one of the things that makes it such an effective like war movie arc in some ways is so the opening landing certainly like is reminiscent of like band of brothers the like flight over normandy with aircraft blowing up and everything but really the the thing that keeps occurring to me throughout this is the thin red line. A war movie where famously you'd never

see, like, no Japanese soldiers, I think, appear in that movie at all. It's just like, it is a movie about the horror of what's called, like, the empty battlefield, where, like, you can have the most intense combat, but you don't know who is shooting at, you never being shot at. And that comes through, I think, in the opening,

every other battle here tends to be, like, in this series, you tend to have a really pretty good idea of, like, where the two sides are lined up, and you see them like trading fire. From the moment, like everyone's landing aboard the ship, landing aboard like the landing craft, the scale of this thing is incredible.

My partner actually, when, you know, was Anakin's disembarking from his transport. You know, she sort of said, like, this is the first time a Jedi seemed really small in this in this combat, where it's like you have the sweeping shot. Yeah. And like before it's always been sort of showing,

look how cool the Jedi are and able to catch beam bolts on their blades and such. It doesn't matter here. The amount of fire is incredible. He's such a small part of this. And you've got a taste for what this battle looks like with a, they do a couple, I think, POV shots of like what the clones are seeing.

And all it is is like tracer fire, basically whipping overhead into darkness. And this entire thing has this feeling of the planet is hostile. But also your enemy is, for the most part, like quite literally invisible to you. It's so. from anything we've seen before. It's such a different mode for Star Wars to be in.

Yeah, for people who have not seen these episodes and just listen to us, Umbara is just permanently dark. Obviously, um, barra is coming from umbra, uh, the kind of the word umbra, uh, which is like the shadow of the, what's, I don't, I never remember the exact definition of it. Uh, I just remember it like poetically being a thing that we can refer to when it's like dark time, you know, it's like, it's something about like the, the, the, the, the shadow. of the eclipse of the sun or something, right? Is that close to being right? The fully shaded inner region

of a shadow cast by an opaque object, especially the area of the earth or mood, experience the total phase of an eclipse. Okay, yeah, I got it exactly right. So it's just completely shaded, very misty and foggy, and then only lit by these, this kind of large red flora

that has an almost phosphorescent glow. And that's the entire arc is like this. The day does not break on Umbara. There is not a, there is not like a, we did it and we came up over the, you know, they get into space at one point. And it's like, it's not like, oh, the sun is up here above the clouds on the way up. It's just dark all the way around constantly. Quick question, by the way. Uh-huh.

What do we make of the fact that, like, the Jedi are able to breathe in this planet? It looks like clones aren't using special equipment. The Embarons themselves exist on this planet like a, like it is a hostile, colonized land, which I think is an interesting note. Now you see it like there's a low-hanging measma all over this planet, which is, again, adds to a sort of eerieness and just general, like, feeling of, wow, this place is like basically hell. But the fact that people who, like, live here and are defending with their lives are suited up as if they're going into, like, a hazmat zone every time they're stepping outside their vehicles and such kind of does leave me wondering, too, like, I didn't even mention this is like, this is like the outer rim's outer rim almost. It's not. This is not what that means. Yes, so I have to look this up.

This is the expansion zone. I mean, so this is a thing that we need to get straight right away. The other thing that marks this is this is the first time that we have seen very clearly. The Galactic Republic is just trying to take a world that seceded from them and joined the separatists. That is their home planet. This is Ryloth to the Embarrants. This is the way that Ryloth is to the Twylex. This is where they live.

live, this is where they're from, and they want it because it's in the expansion region. And the expansion region is what connects the inner rim to the mid-rim. It is, this is the territory that is between, for instance, you know, Corellia and Nalhuda or between what you think of as like the close stuff of Corrassant and then the stuff that's like Naboo is even out in the mid-rim, right? And so it's an in-between space between worlds that are held that are being kind of like filled in from both sides, I guess, is one way to think about it. And it is, it is completely strategic, right? Like there is not, there is no, we never get anything in any of these episodes.

It's like, it's important that we take Umbarra to stop a, a dreaded super weapon from being built or because to save the embarrants from the local. Yeah. Not at all. No. The Umbarans fucking left. The Imbarans are over the Republic. They're good. Exactly.

I mean, the exact thing, the exact text scroll up top is war in the expansion reasons. As separatists tighten their grip over vital but isolated supply routes, the Republic launches a lightning strike into a remote ghost nebula to control a strategic system of Umbara. Republic forces smashed through a separatist blockade in an effort to claim the shadowy world. And so I think that that is super important to, especially for these clones who I think by the end of this when they're like what are we even doing here it's very easy when you're a waxer to be like oh we saved that little girl that's why we're here and like there's none of that here the thing that happened on this planet is mostly you got killed

and then I guess you got a refueling station in the end of the day for the republic you know forces who want to move past umbar and and you know drop some supplies off here or use as a midpoint you know the end of this is they get to occupy this this planet yeah perfect permanently, you know? Even before Krell shows up, even just in the landing sequence, so many clones die. An entire ship gets shot down as they're coming in. As they land, you just hear like tons of clone dying sound effects. It's like, it's as they're like first navigating through the jungle, there's like,

Big monster time, big monster drop. They, you know, get into some fights, people die. And then dogma and, is it Anakin and Rex that have this exchange where dogma is like very excited or like very, like, dedicated to the mission? I don't need rest. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So they're, like, walking along.

Anakin's, like, encouraging, you know, if your troops need to take a rest, like, let's take a rest, which is obviously setting up sort of him in opposition to the type of general that General Krell will end up being. And Rex has this kind of tired response to Anakin. Anakin says about dogma or about Rex that like dogma kind of reminds him of Rex back in the day or whatever or that's what you used to be like and Rex responds well maybe back in the day which is like little inkling morsel tiny little crummy bite of just the toll that the war is taking on this. captain like this this commander like he is not he is not the the bright eye bushy tailed uh uh clone of his youth he's also it's just also super important because it's situation dogma and what dogma does later as not aberrant necessarily are like hero clone the most powerful most heroic most you know obviously i think fives really shows up in these episodes to be our

to be our dude, but Rex is Rex. You know what I mean? Rex is always going to be Rex. And to have, to draw that line between dogma and Rex is super important because it means that when dogma decides to be like Krell's boy, that's, it could be any clone. Any clone could have wound up like that. And if dogma had been a little further on in his career, could he have convinced more people to follow him on that route? You know, possibly. I really appreciate that that they wanted to connect those to. Yeah, there's something with, like, the writing is good in this arc, but there's something that's also, like, so efficient about it that it's like,

is it allowed to be this efficient, especially with Dogwa, where it's like these characters are in a tense room, like talking about their commander and how they don't trust him, and then it's like, everybody quiet dog was going to walk into the road. It's like, you don't have to say anymore. I understand what's happening. Yep. Also, I think it is so important that,

At first I was like, it almost feels like Anakin doesn't need to be in these episodes. But I think he serves a crucial function, which is one, we're shown up front, hey, it doesn't matter who's in charge of this. This is going to be an ugly fight. Like, Anakin doesn't have any secret sauce for this where it's like we're going to, they do refer to you like Anakin's plans are better. But we're kind of shown like no matter what happens, they are in for it. But then the other thing is, it isn't just important that we see.

like Anakin is competent, uh, in a way like Krell will not be, but we also see demonstrated he basically is letting Rex and all his commanders like make suggestions and what he is doing as commanders basically being like, yeah, it sounds good, let's do that or like let's not do. Like he is basically very consultative at this point. Uh, general Skywalker is largely choosing from among the things being put forward by his like expert subordinates, right? and that's the real contrast we need to make because that's that's kind of the thing that we're going to get at with why is why does kraal feel so immediately out of out of pocket it is because

like he is different even we talk a lot on the show about like do the how do the jedi see clones and it varies from general to general but we see that like aniken has arrived at the the five of first with real like almost like peer relationship yep in a lot of ways and Krell is representing maybe like every single dark suspicion we've had about like the way the Jedi treat clones and the way they regard them. And Krell is very much like not just here as a martinet, but also treats them the way tactical droids we'll see later, treat the battle droids. Yeah.

And he straight up says, I mean, when, when Rex is like, it's an honor to serve you, Krell is like, oh, it's interesting. I find it interesting that you're able to recognize the value of honor for a clone, which is like they use this for a clone construction twice. in it and it's not right always weird it's always it's not how you should say that for like you should say you're honorable for a clone but i find it interesting the exact quote is i find a very interesting captain that you are able to recognize the value of honor for a clone he means as a clone right um uh but but it's really fucking rude it's incredible it's just like so out of pocket

to immediately i mean along with this he's also calling them by their numbers and not by their names. He's insistent that there are, that the, any cost that, any casualties that they rack up is like, that's just the cost of war. And it's time you learn that. All of this stuff is, I think, again, is what we have been saying for a long time is like, there are a Jedi out there who are like this, right? I will say one of my qualms with this episode or with this arc is that, of course, he has to be like, damn, Mina. Meena. Meena said, that's right. She is heated.

She is. I will say that one of my qualms with this episode, probably this arc, my biggest problem with this arc is that because he is so dark side-pilled, it will be very easy to say, well, of course he did all that stuff. He's the one exception to the Jedi rule. The Jedi are good guys and he's a bad guy. And that means, and I don't, you know we don't think that's true. We think that I would say that, I think it's very important that our two examples of Jedi in this, in this arc that we see in leadership roles are Anakin Skywalker and General Krell

and they're both going to be evil they're both they're neither one of them are good at the end of the day Anakin happens to have embraced the part of the dark side that is about passionate relationship and is about like leaning into attachment and wanting things and wanting to

protect and and protecting this almost possessive way and that or definitely in a possessive way by the time we get to Revenge of the Sith but neither of them are like good people and I think that both of their qualities we see scattered across the rest

of the range of Jedi commanders that we see. We know that Plocoon is protective of like Filoni protective of Wolf and the Wolfpack and like Krell we have seen other members of the Jedi Council

be indifferent to clone death certainly indifferent to like droids. You can think back to how everybody talked about R2D2. I think was it Plow and Mace about R2D2 back a few last season? Where they're like, why don't you wipe his fucking memory more often? Like, they have that coldness that Krell shows, just not to this degree. I do just want to say, like, on the point of being like, does Anakin need to be in this arc? What is his place in it? I think like one of the things that felt so satisfying while watching it was the like realization when you get to the turn in that third episode that like we are so far

from like the orbit of the Skywalker's and like this is now turned into like the clones are trapped in a house with a monster that like re-contextualizes the first three episodes it's like this is good this is good shit so this is I mean the other thing this episode is about is it is a bad boss story right it is like you've ever been to company where it's like You have someone who is completely, both, like, bad at their job and also, like, completely inappropriate as, like, a peer and manager. This is, like, this is kind of the experience. And, like, the clones, to that point about being trapped with a monster, they can't, Obi-Wan, it's just over there. Theoretically, he has a phone call away.

They don't, yeah, they don't feel like they can make that call. They don't, like, they are completely alone with him. Well, and it takes it a, you know, again, we will get there, but it requires him to do what is the ultimate sin, which is make them hurt another clone before they can actually decide to take the step to relieve him of duty in a real way. The first time that they decide to dissent is about saving other clones. The second time they decide to dissent is about saving other clones and themselves. And then the final dissension is around, you've made us do the one cardinal sin we've sworn to our same. to never do, which is to hurt our brothers. And that is the thing that pushes it over the edge for everybody, even dogma, is like, I would do anything for duty, but I won't do that, right? Like,

that is the one thing I cannot bring myself to do. And I think that it's interesting that that ends up being the mechanism on which he falls apart, right? Because he could have gotten away, like, he could have gotten away with it, too. All he'd do is not go as hard as he did, you know? I think that that is super important because even people like Rex are willing to follow his plans. And again, Rob, it speaks to what you're saying, which is like, when you have a bad boss, there's a lot of, all right, well, how do I make it? Especially if you're in a position, I've been in the Rex position, not in war, obviously, but I used to work with y'all advice. And under a different leadership in a different era, sometimes some shit would come down that was like, all right, we have to do this. but, like, how do you make it?

I don't want to do this, so it's just a fight I can have and win. Okay, I can't, I did, I tried my best to have that fight. I didn't win that fight. So this is still going to come now. What, you know, what can I trade? How can I cover for my people? How can I give my people a little bit more leeway or a little bit more freedom to, like, ignore the rule from, from up top and provide cover for them or, or give them some excuse for

why they did it and I'll take the blame. And we see Rex doing all of that, but we don't see into the very end really, putting his foot down and saying, no, these are my brothers. I'm going to betray you. I'm going to turn against you because you've turned against us. And I think it's super important again to see that that is how leadership functions inside of a hierarchy like this. Whoever is in that middle position is going to defer in the wrong way over and over again because that is what they're in that position to do. They're in that position to produce kind of buy-in from the folks below them and to ease whatever pain they have so that they don't betray leadership, right?

Part of the thing Rex is there to do is to find escape valves so that everybody basically listens to Krell, even if they disagree with it. And that's like what middle managers are there to do, you know? And we see Rex do it nobly for four fucking episodes until the very end. It's incredible seeing Rex move in that way. like the like when I think maybe it's the first or second time that we really see the clones like really having it out about uh krell and I think also the first time that they mentioned like this was like a big morsel for me like what is the clone whisper network like because it's the first time

that they're like yeah we've heard have you looked into krell's like lost record because he kills clones he does not care about us we should not do this um but like is that when rex says he gets wins or that dogma who says that. I think that's Rex because what Rex does after Fives is the one who stands up to him, he's like, hey, Fives, can you talk to me over here for a second? Oh! And it's like, and I was like,

Rex, no. And it's like so effective and it like just feels so fucked up and like that Fives like it's also so well acted because we, I don't know that we get like the camera that close on clones often, but like

when the camera goes to Fives his face and he's leaning over to Rex and is like, is that what you believe or is that what you're engineered to believe? And to like, see that, like, see that language, like, use clone to clone instead of from Crell to the clones. And then also this moment of tension is like, uh, thank you, Star Wars. That's so good. Shoutouts, I wish to say to Dee Bradley Baker, who, you know, I think the fact that they did this, and they didn't do the thing that they did in the Citadel, or not the Citadel training,

the opener arc for season three, where I was like, we're going to make him do a bunch of funny voices to try to differentiate the different clones a little bit. This one's going to always be talking about Dayton, and this one's going to have a slight Irish accent for some reason. He doesn't do that at all. He still finds a way to characterize fives differently than Rex

and both of them differently from dogma. And it's mostly him talking to him in these episodes. Like, the cast in some of these episodes is like four people. And the credit list is long with his... It's just him. Just him, yeah. So shout-outs to him. He was in...

I did not... I captured the Filoni Zone, but I didn't re-upload it for us because it's not... It feels promotional. It feels like a thing that you would watch before watching this, but it includes Dee Bradley Baker being like, you know, I think the thing that's interesting about this arc that people will see is you might wonder what is it that the Republic needs from clones.

and this arc puts that out there very clearly. It's their flexibility. It's their willingness to put themselves in harm's way. It's da-da-da-da-da. And it's like that's all stuff that we've known for a minute, so I didn't feel like we needed to put that up. But it was really interesting to hear him talk about. And he does kind of say that, like, he's really proud of this.

And he tried really hard to figure out a way to, like, get that closeness of who they are through his performance. And I think he does just does a great job. One point I did want to make is that that exchange that happens between Fives and Rex, where, you know, I think it's dogma or Rex, like Ali said, you know, commenting on Krell's, like high victory rate, like very high win rate. And then Fives makes the point, like, have you seen his casualty numbers, though, they're the highest of any general like he doesn't care about us um and uh that something that really stuck with me throughout these arcs and especially in this moment is it immediately follows a message from general canobi um where he's calling kraal to be like where are you this mission is writing on

you i like we need you here and like every it was excruciating to listen to that because it is truly like it felt like they reach it like hope or or rescue was within arm's reach but could not be farther away um like if if rex and obiwan were able to like exchange i don't know like there it's such a difficult thing because obviously Rex is trying to uphold his commitment and loyalty to the Republic to Krell and in the face of Obi-Wan maintained consistency between, you know, the way that he would command his troops and interact with the general if it was Anakin or if it was Krell, there should be no difference.

But that was like one of the most haunting things about this arc was like these consistent calls from Obi-Wan in enforcing this need for their support. And yet Krell's response to that just being the absolute worst response ever and just putting so many clones lives on the line. It was just so hard to watch. I think it also gets it another part of this sort of bad actor, bad boss type dynamic is, for one, yes, you wish they could just be like, hey, can we call you back General Kenobi in like five minutes on a private channel? We need to just go over something real quick. And they don't feel they can do that.

but two, it is the fact like, Krell is fucking up. Like, these calls from Obi-Wan are like, you are blowing this mission. Like, you have had multiple assignments that are not done, and this entire attack is falling apart

and we're paying the price. And so, like, yeah, the second episode follows on the heels of, like, that disastrous run straight up the gut at the Embarron defenses where they walk into a literal, like, minefield and like a complete 360-degree ambush site on this road. The next episode is, well, Obi-Wan saying, like,

okay, so you can't take the city? Great. Can you take out the air base, please? Okay, you can't do the other important thing, but like, take the air base then. Try to fucking help. And then he deploys that as leverage to make them do the bad thing, right? Yeah.

Because now he, it's like he, knows that even for some of them his word is not enough but he can just say general canobi and then you know he doesn't say this part but the person you actually like needs us to go do this and being able to leverage that love that other loved one or that other person who you do respect in order to to push your people into doing terrible shit is again just like a rampant thing in any sort of hierarchical leadership like this this is yeah go for it oh i was just good this is part of the reason And I don't like the fact that he just went evil dark side mode because his, he, I wish they would have allowed him to be a bad general.

Yes. Because there are plenty of Jedi who are not fit to be generals of armies and in battle. And I think this entire arc was working for me so well up until that turn in the later half of the third or early fourth episode because it's he was saying to me Krell is everything a Jedi is he's just saying it with his chest like he is just saying it out loud um he wants clones he's happy for the clones to die for him instead of pretending to like not like it so much or something yeah i mean he he he uh is calling them by how he values them there are numbers to him he uh you know is like openly

threatening clones with his lightsabers intimidating people like he is he is the fucking cops like he is literally just like the fucking uh just like power perversion like just no regard for the cost or Or just the cost is, I don't even think it's like a situation which the cost is quote unquote justified because I think for something to be justified, you have to see some like value in the thing that you're sacrificing and there has to be some sort of like. Well, and we actually see him push against those sorts of sacrifices because twice the plan that goes up to him is we can send two or three people on a really risky potentially

sacrificial maneuver where they get in and do some damage. They get us the ships that we need or we destroy the supply ship. And yeah, we might lose those two or three guys. But it's going to be useful in the end. It's better than letting us walk through this fucking meat grinder. And he rejects those plans multiple times. And again, like this is just the frustration of this is I believe there are Jedi out there who would also reject those plans because they don't trust their clone troopers. So they're clone commanders. And so it sucks that. it's frustrating that instead of that being the case, this provides a reading for us to say he was throwing it. He was choosing to send his people into the meat grinder so that they would

fail to take Embara and he could get into because that's literally the plan that he that's what he reveals at the very end is like he was like this is I was sabotaging this from the start and it's like. And but that doesn't for me like it makes these episodes remain really compelling watches. But when I know, and this is the thing I remember from having watched these before. So going back into it, it was an interesting experience of being like, I remember the first time I watched these now and being like, holy shit, look at this terrible Jedi. And going into it now, being like, I bet I'm not going to like these as much because I know where it goes. I still wound up really liking them because they're just well-made episodes. But yeah, Rob.

So I think, though, like, one thing that does, like, again, I don't dislike it as much as I initially did, because, like, when he shows up, your reputation precedes you, everyone's a little intimidated, but they're also kind of overawed by his presence. The implication I get from this is he has a very good reputation, like, as a, like, this is a hard fighting commander, but, like, a good one. and the clones, when they go to like pro clone wars talk.com or whatever to pull up the game stats and the advanced metrics on his performance as a general. Oh, the saber metrics? Yeah, the one's saber metrics. They pull up the fact that like, yo, this guy's casualties are completely like, it sounds like a standard deviation from what's happening with the rest of the time.

Yeah, it seems really bad. He's been able, who knows when he turned, but he has been able to do this under the radar and is still getting these assignments from the Jedi Council without any alarm bells haven't been raised because the evidence of his treason is him getting tons of clone armies killed, which we know casualties are an issue. It's still not enough for them to like cashier this guy. Yoda has not done an investigation or if he has, he's come up, he's come through clearly. Maybe your job now is to go work in the archives. Congratulations. Right, right. You know, we've got so many sacred Jedi texts that need, like, updating and indexing.

But instead, he's allowed to continue doing this. I do want to call out, like, in terms of things that are really strong in this, I think the animation, well, I mean, it's all spectacular in this, like the way shots are framed, the camera movement, all of this. But something that really jumped out of me so often is the subtle body language cues of the clones. Like as they are marching and he won't let them rest, they look like a beaten army. They're walking slumped and slow in a way we're not used to seeing them. And like as they get more and more discontent with Crowell, there is a menacing stillness to a lot of their reactions to him in a way that is like they start to really look like stormtroopers in some ways where it's like they're just complete like impassive blanks.

when he's around them and you get a sense of how dangerous that can be when they have that confrontation, he orders them just again run straight at this airfield and this time the clones do protest and say like this is a shit plan we can't just do this and you see it from Rex's point of view

which is all these clones are standing up and like this is a unit on the cusp of a mutiny and this hasn't happened before that we know of. And yes, his, like, but so much of it is coming through,

the fact that, like, this time they're not playing. Like, like, this time they're, they're actually, like,

furious and it feels like, go either way. Rex is there, to your point, Austin, which is, like, to diffuse this. He takes fives aside

and is like, hey, you know, you're the, in this situation now, you are the person everyone's looking to because I'm, I'm management now.

But, like, everyone's going to take their cues from you, so can you help me out here? And it's the last time that card's going to work. Because after all that's coming, Rex is not going to go to the mat for chain of command again. No. And he doesn't even, like, earn any... I think there's a point at which, at the very end of the first episode, after the first failed front assault, where they have to retreat and lose, not that they ever had it,

but they lose the main entry point, the main road. They get run off that road, basically. Yeah, yeah. There's a point at which, after the failed mission, General Krell is like, feeble-minded clones. Do you have a malfunction? Like, his language towards the clones

is just like constantly berating and just like so derogatory and awful but he's like do you have a malfunction in your design like why did you retreat essentially and Rex stands up to him and is like that was a plan that cost us men not clones

you know I will like I'll stand by my clones whatever and General Krell is like okay like I see your loyalty and there's like this little tease of like at this point when I was watching I was like oh is this going to be like

because like Rex stood up to him like now he'll have respect for him and now it'll be like they're both tough commanders but like they have like neutral yeah whatever which I think it was a good it's like head fake

yeah very good like oh we've seen that we saw that in their training episode with that one bounty hunter commander But at the end of the day, just wanted to see them. Remember, like, he's literally shoot out. Sometimes your abuser just wants you to be tougher. Yeah, exactly.

Yes. Whatever, whatever clown face, what was his name? Joke, joke man? What was his joky clone's nickname? Oh, God. Punchline. What the fuck was his name? Tat.

How do we remember? Uh, fuck. This is so sad. Why do we know J-Bo Hood, but we don't know this. I don't know. Was it the one who was named after like the basement or whatever because he had to go be a janitor or like you know what i mean it was like it's the one who is it's the one who is like a comedian oh cut up cut up cut up cut up my name's cut up sir etc oh right right right so our example

macnacan basement clown up it was like a location of the you know basement guy basement was what they call their their hunchbacked clone that's what they're said you to basically uh god well i think what the other thing that Krell does here that like rings so true and it's so sinister is that he realizes that if he pushes this guy hard enough, maybe he will tell someone or maybe this guy will, like, react in a way that like some irrevocable things will happen. And so Krell like makes the show of backing off here and being like, hey, you know, I respect what you did here. And it's like the minute I saw that I'm like, oh, Rex, you're going to be made to eat so much shit in the wake of this. Like I was

like he is going to try to he's going to ruin your life um and but but the other part of it is i also feel like dudes like kraal they know the screaming can't get too loud right like part of their ammo they will sit like the minute they sense like real pushback that like shit might be about to like go nuclear essentially they will tend to back off because they realize, like, in the dust up that will, like, result from that, way too many questions get asked, way too much a scene. And so he does this thing, he does this move, which is like, you know, I see, yes, to Natalie's point, I see your loyalty. I respect it. Way to go, Rex. And then, you know, literally 20 minutes later, it's back to, no, no flank attacks, just run

into the jungle and die. That's war. To Allie, sorry, go ahead, Allie. Well, I was just going to say, I think it's interesting that Krell gets to be a successful character in both of these ways where like the minute he gets off of the ship, he says something so disrespectful that it's like, I can't believe we have a character who's saying this out loud and like what's going on. But then over the course of the four arcs, you have this sort of slow burn where like in the first one and like the first half of the second one, he can fall back on the justification of being like, well, the Republic needs you. This is what we have to do. We can't take a rest.

And, like, he falls back on this, like, corporate talk almost where he's able to say, you know, our actions are justified by, yeah, by Obi-Wan and, like, the, you know, that were needed and all of this. But then, like, by the time you get to the third episode, and they're, like, in this base stuck together. And he's, like, you can tell from the voice acting, he's, like, taking this, like, delight in, like, having to say each of the syllables of their numbers. And it's like, okay, yeah, I'm sure. This is getting worse, and, like, it's getting worse because what Rob keeps saying of, like, the clones, like, why don't they just call Obi-Wan? But once we get to that point, they've been so far isolated from their mutual support structures that, like, there isn't any way for them to help each other except for, like, themselves, like, the men who are there. Yeah. He literally gas-lit, girl boss gate used all of his clones.

but like one of the one of the points one of the like biggest red flags for me in in the introduction to into krell was the fact that he only um he only uh stayed with the very back of the squad like never was in the front lines you never see him fighting people the only time he like fights anyone is the little fucking flying things that spook the clones and actually not just

beat the shit out of that thing in a way that's gross. He does but like literally the animals are like picking up clones and like eating them and he's like are you guys he like fucking annihilates both of the flying bats rips the wings off It's like he's so gruesome.

And then he's like, are you done playing with your animals now? And it's like, time to march on or whatever. But the fact that he was from then on out entirely absent from battle, I think was such a like he flagged to me that like this is not, this is someone in that stays in the observation deck, like is clearly a ridiculously skilled fighter. But as far as commanding clones and interacting with a, like, a clone squad, he's not in the action himself. He's like, he's commanding from afar.

He's cleaning up from the back lines. And Fives called that out. Yeah. Like, Vives points out that, like, when Rex is like, hey, we don't always, like, know what Anakin is thinking. And Fives is like, Anikin's always leading those missions. Like, however, like, however hairbrained those plans seem to be, Anakin will be at the center of them, whereas this is a guy who's asking people to run the same,

like, sort of extraordinary risks, even more so, but, like, refuses to run them himself and refuses to even, like, witness the conditions to see what he's asking. Which they then kind of metaphorize or kind of build out a sort of physical allegory for with when they do finally take this this airport uh they put him up in the kind of air control tower that's above the entire the entire kind of supply station uh looking down at everybody constantly peering out with with uh the kind of binoculars um you know he's always at the top of a cliff

looking down always like even in the previous episodes before they get there they use that sort of height as a way of community also he's big he is just big and looks down on everybody um and looks He's big. He's big. He's big. Many arms. And that is, that distance is, and he keeps his own, like, two or three clones with him at all times. And he has four arms, which I don't know if we've mentioned this before. But he's four arms, and two of them are always, like, out in front of him and two of them are always behind him, like, clasped as he walks around. Like museum walk. Peace. Yeah, 100%. He's good. He's good.

I also do want to, like, so the assault on the airport, we actually get two, like, horror sequences. of like fighting marmored robots first these fucking like giant centipede cat like things were caterpillars yeah and this like okay

I think clone wars to date has never created a sense of scale that exists in this episode these things when they come out of the ground when you see them from the ground level POV of the clones it is like an elderish god rising these things are enormous

and once they burrow their way out they just start running in, like, circuits through the battlefield, just unstoppable. And when they finally knock those out with, like, bazookas, basically, we get a vehicle design that I've always thought sucked, which is the little, like, droid tank walker things that come out with a little, they got a little, like, turbo-laser on top that's like a bit of, like, a stinger. But they're a big, goofy-looking, bulbous, like, walkers. And they've even got little, like, smiles with the front lights, like, in front of the dome cockpit. And here, the whimsicality that, like, was there, because these things popped up in Attack of the Clones.

Like, this is a design we've seen before. They actually reminded me of, in the original berserk anime, the demons you see in Day of the Black Sun. Yeah, horrifying, not David Lexington, you know, the eclipse, the thing that happens for the end. Rob, I recently also called it that in my head. I'm like, no, that's Avatar. That's a different. But we all know, we all know Griffith's heel turn. Although, really, there is no heel turn.

He's just the same. Anyway, point is. You should read that manga, Rob, because the places it goes with that is, whew. Anyway. But the thing is, all like the demons in there are horrifying, in part because, many of them have this like kind of goofy whimsical sense to them that's utterly inhumane and monstrous that like they're kind of they're kind of funny looking even as they slaughter without remorse or even like awareness or pity and that's kind of how these robots feel just

from the way they the way they move the scale the way you glimpse them through the shadows all of it's like okay yes this is the same aesthetic we've seen a lot of like the separatist army but also just the way they're lit and what they represent and they're just invincible in a way that lets them be bouncy without feeling weak do you know what I mean

which is like you just saw the so again like you have that scene between fives and and Rex in which in which I just to reiterate I think Ali you were talking about the closeness between the physical closeness that scene is just like so good

if people want to like who've watched it already should go back and watch that it's like five minutes into the general where they're like get in each other's faces, Rex stands up to, like, look down on him to try to reassert his position. All of the blocking on that is so good. But then we get the fight with the big caterpillar mecks, and that fight is incredible. And we see them succeed with this bazooka,

which even the bazookas have never felt this good. We've seen them use a bazooka so many times in this show. But the rocket launcher that they use blows, you know, through the kind of shielded front of this caterpillar meck. And that's this whole. five minute fight that feels impossible for them to win and they pull it off and then for that to then immediately pivot into these big tanks that the rocket launcher does not work on and that the tanks now have the this I just again want to reemphasize how cool the terrible lightning ball like jingling sound is as a Gundam person I thought a lot about Fuala Griffin from Victory Gundam, who has a mech, it's a sniper with a sniper rifle.

And whenever she comes around, everybody on the battlefield, here is the bells chiming as she prepares to shoot down from them from the lower atmosphere. But it's like that same sort of like, sling, sound that is just, it's so scary because it's so out of place. I think that speaks again, Rob, to you, the way that these things are almost happy and inquisitive and curious, these tanks like come and look down around a corner. And they're piloted, but they're so. personified because they have this almost facial structure on their front.

It's so good and it feels, it feels like an impossible thing to win against, which is the thing you have to sell if you're going to then push your characters to say, okay, we're going to disobey orders and figure out a way to sneak around and get something else happening here, which is what they do. They feel like, like, like, force mex. Like, if, if, if, if all of the, like, machines. and everything had like if there was like a force powered or like force like they're like this hybrid sentient being slash mech I mean even the way that they control them yeah the way

that you control them is you're like sticking you're sitting in like a cockpit of like this orb like this translucent glowing um phosphorescent type of material and inside you have your hands like in these little orbs also like glowing kind of just gelatin, I don't know it's like you're just... Is it even physical? I don't even know.

It feels like it must it's like dense air or something like it's like it's a contained like dense air space and and the way that you control them is like it's sort of like push and pull

it's all controlled by your hands and it feels very forcey feels very forcey to me. It's giving force vibes. Which is very cool. I mean, I don't know if there is. It allows for an organic

type of movement that we don't often see from big machines in Star Wars. And by that what I mean is there's like an analog flexibility. There's joints that don't just do, like the ATATs basically walk in a straight line and it's like clunk, clank, clunk, clank.

And this is like so much more articulated in than that. And so it allows for a type of, like, lumbering movement that is nevertheless very organic. And I think that that puts the, again, there's so much being done for the imbarans to feel like a different fight. My other big quibble with this is I wish we got a little more of what is what the umbarans are and what their perspective was. And like, you know, I will say that the, again and again, the great sin being committed is the clones get killed and the clones are being sent to die. Not, no question about whether or not the umbarans.

Barons deserve to be occupied. Do you know what I mean? There is no. The only sin that Clone Wars can bring out of this series of episodes is, I can't believe this guy is making clones kill clones. It's not, at the end of the day, success means occupying a sovereign nation and cutting them off. And like, that's just Clone Wars. Like, I'm not surprised by that. But I would have loved to have seen, and maybe we will in the future some Moran Barans and like see what their, what their perspective is on all of this. Yeah. This arc was so laser focused on making General Krell, the main enemy number one, that there is no room to, you know, have some sort of, like, clone to Embarran, like, one-on-one moment or even... But it's like such a dense series of four episodes already that I can't even hold it against them too much because, like, what are you cutting? Yeah, exactly.

anything from this art? Yeah. I might give it another episode and that would be a problem. You can't do that. I would have just done a fifth episode where it's the umbaran's response. I want the next step. I want to know what happens after this arc. Same.

Anyway. It is such like a specific style choice though. Because like think of how often in clone wars we've like seen the funny commander droid and what they're saying in their other command center. Like that we never even get like like a separatist person like talking to a an unbarren commander even just like off screen to like call out an order is like feels really significant in this arc and what they're trying to achieve yeah and I'm happy to give them that you know what I mean they know what their focus point is here and it's the

relationships between clones and the relationship between a clone clones and their commander and like I think that that's a it's totally acceptable to be like that's what the story is that we're also getting at like we are so locked in in the clones P.O. view we like the show does remark on like they're increasing animosity toward the um barns themselves like there's that moment they crack open one of the caterpillars that's wounded and the pilot falls out and they may like they're like they're like uh they say they say about the caterpillar like it's still got a little juice in it uh and they hit it and then the pilot falls out and they're like he hasn't he doesn't got any juice in him either and they put like two two in him uh as he crawls out wounded from this craft

Like, it is hit that level where it's like the clones. No prisoners. Yeah, are just now in a fight for their lives. And they hate the, they hate Crowell and hate the Ambarns. Those are the two enemies. So we've talked about that before in previous arcs where I don't think that, Rob, you've talked about the ways in which they deploy the notion of like, you have a group of enlisting. soldiers who have been deployed for so long, have been so caught between different boots, even as they are one, even as they are part of an occupying force, that they grow a great

deal of resentment for the people who are in the place that they are, where they are, which we got a lot of with Waxer and Boyle back in the Ryloth Ark. I think it's done better here because you get a much greater sense of how many of these clones have been lost and like what the and and a much better sense that they are starting to understand that it's for nothing you know so uh anyway they take that base uh who who steals it fives and uh fives and hard case and hard case steal those ships yeah i really love them trying to pilot these things and having a good time uh they don't know how to control it it's the same setup as the tank that natalie just talked about with like your connect controller

hands. You're doing your minority report. Yeah. What's really cool is the orb that the commanding cockpit is separated from the aircraft itself and then they get in the orb and the orb like lifts itself

into the aircraft and then they you know take off or whatever that shit's so cool. Like the Barons are like killing it on the on the fucking technology game. Like they're shit is just so fucking cool.

There's, um, so I, like I said, I didn't put the Floney zone in, uh, but there is a 25 minute long watch along for the first of these episodes where Faloni and a bunch of other key staff on this show, uh, talk through the creation of this arc, uh, that we should watch together at some point and record maybe our live watchalong for a Patreon bonus. I think that's an easy Patreon bonus. and in it someone jokes about how I guess the umbarans have like developed beyond ladders because every other ship just has ladders attached to it in this entire and then they they note they go through the tall they don't go through them but they note a couple of the tallest ladders

or ship walkways and they specifically call out how big hondo's ship's walkway is and they show it it's something we did not notice but hondo's weird UFO ship has a staircase that runs up to it that must be six stories tall it makes no sense it's very funny so we should watch that at some point because they absolutely just get distracted constantly

I did not watch the whole thing I watched like the first six minutes and it was like I have to stop watching this because we have to watch this together but they do specifically call out hey it's weird the environments have no ladders they just float up to things and they're little floaty orbs

they don't bother having regular boarding measures and it does it does sort of get it like the umbarns are so advanced that like so we like we run up against the limits of gestural controls all the time because our brains just don't work without that sort of tactile feedback right like that sort of stuff never like the minority report interface doesn't work because we don't really work without a feeling of like there being an object or a thing the response in some intuitive way and all the all the embarned tech has this feeling of like they are so comfortable with this level of abstraction from like hands-on controls that all like they are so like used to a machine that

you mostly guide by intent and gesture rather than like control surfaces uh that again it like highlights the degree to which like their gear feels elegant and advanced in a way that like all the clone stuff feels ancient by comparison their little their little cavalry on their little mini walkers and such, like comparing that to literally any of the hardware that the Embarons come out. It's just night and day, but the, but hey, you know what?

The clones are all little fats, and they really show that when the chips are down, they've got that, like, wild intuition and resourcefulness and capacity to, like, get it done because, yep, they go, they

pradfall their way into carrying out a deadly airstrike. and laying waste to the Embarion Air Force and taking that base. And then, not long in the next episode, they cracked their codes and are pretty much ready to do the Independence Day thing of, we will just fly up there to the mothership and wreck it. And once again, Krell is, you know, refuses to even consider the idea and instead wants to do another frontal attack through, as the clones point out. an area that is under active missile bombardment by, like, massive super missiles. Everyone calls in, also I just want to shout out the incredible holog, the unique Umbara hologram technology, which is that it is, instead of being the kind of crisp, or not crisp, I would say that, like,

the traditional hologram technology feels like a VHS player in some ways. Interlaced. There's weird tracking, it's interlaced, et cetera. Here, the Umbarian hologram technology, which is at the top of this kind of, air traffic station at the air base is like made up of thousands of little squares that cohere into the general shape of of whoever you're talking to so we're really we got like voxel obiwan Kenobi calls in like Minecraft Obi-Wan calls in it's so good it's so good and he's like yeah we really it's great that you have you have you're here to to grad's on getting the

air base yeah but they still have supports and supplies coming in to the city, to the capital city, because they have a ship in orbit. And also, by the way, these long-range missions or long-range missiles have prevented us from keeping our attack up. And it's not long before we see those long-range missiles. And it's just like huge explosions in the not that distance. You're kind of like penning in everybody, huge kind of green, bright explosions in the across the jungle that you can see down from where Krell is standing. Also, you see it all in the, you see like the projections of them landing in the holograph or in the blocky holographic map, and that's also incredibly sick.

And it's just like, this is what Krell wants them to walk into. Yeah. He's just walk right into these green fire missile that seems like it might also have a chemical component because it releases this like green gas, which maybe that's part of why the Umbarans are all masked up. Maybe there is a potential chemical weapon moment coming up. What was weird is when the one on Barnes helmet got cracked, what released was like a gas, like a green gas from within the chamber.

It like made me think that they had some sort like that this, and this is like pure conjecture, this is pure like, but it made you feel like there was like they had some like like military like fucking like g-fuel gas like military they're g-fueled up they are this is true I've just canonically they're just they are canonically G-fueled up I had a feeling because it felt it I don't know why does it say this it just it seemed like for some reason when I saw the gas it was like this is like military enhancement gas that they're just like fucking roided out like going on, I don't know, like... I'm trying to find the...

Oh, yeah, here we go. Okay. Inspiration for the pressure... This is the one I was reading before. I didn't read deep enough in. Inspiration for the pressure-suited Umbaran soldiers, include the Zentrati from Robotech and the Sardikar from David Lynch's dune. The helmets feed the umbarans a potent gas mixture

that keeps them amped up for combat, increasing their reflexes and aggression. From a production point of view, such a helmet allowed a single animation model to be created for the military, while keeping the soldiers a living, breathing, non-droid opponent for the clones. Wow.

So, that's fun. That's fun. That's so fucked up. They're the ultimate gamers. They're the ultimate gamers. Oh, wow. Incredible. But yeah, Krell sees, you know,

these just absolutely terrifying, giant missiles exploding, you know, several hundred yards away from him probably farther like a mile let's say um sure I don't know distance so distance is fake I don't know distances somebody says about a hundred megaton warheads

which if that's true that's the one is the worst nuke's ever dropped and that's just not so like a Star Wars megaton is not a human megaton no it's got to be different they're both different

conveniently obviously, Obi-Wan's hologram voxel appearance disintegrates right before Krell can make the decision that they're going

to lead a full forward assault into missile fire which we later understand that it was Krell himself jamming all of the connection or like all of the communications and stuff.

And you can tell Rex is just, like, standing there, like, oh, my fucking God. Like, it seems like Rex is just almost resigned to, like, I'm going to die on this planet, probably. Like, there's, I am, I'm operating under a commander with, that doesn't give a fuck about me and probably wants to see me die in some sort of six. sadistic way um and it's it's like so painful to like see that type of resignation for himself but when it comes the thing that keeps him i mean that's go ahead no i was just going to say the thing that keeps him like fighting back against general krell is the lives of his fellow clones is like protecting his his unit protecting his um supportinence But he himself is like he's kind of just, it feels like he's like resigned to his fate of like, we're soldiers, this is, this.

I mean, this is the next scene is he, so he pitches to Crowell, hey, we have these planes, we've been talking. What if we use these fighters to go up into space, we can get past the blockade because they'll think that we're on their side because they're barring ships, we can go blow up the supply ship. And that'll stop both the supplies that hit the Capitol and these orbital bombardments of missiles. And that'll allow us to then march to the Capitol and back up Obi-Wan. And he's like, well, you're not pilots. So no, absolutely not. We don't have, I don't see any pilots around, do you? And it's like, I guess not.

And so he then goes downstairs to the barracks to talk to the rest of the, or his like the core crew of clones that we stick with for these episodes. And he just comes in and he's like, the assault in the Capitol will go to Mars. And that's where Jesse is like, uh, we're just going to just march into the missiles. And we start to see that real pushback about what the consequences will be. And Fives is the one who is like, we should just do it. We should just do it anyway. And Rex continues to be the person who is like, well, you know, I would say we should do it, but you'll get court martial. It's out of my hands. And like they try really hard to, to convince him otherwise. And I think dogma is the one who ends up walking in here. here and they have to like... The room falls, awkwardly silent. Yeah. It's K-Fabe, you know. Who's the one that says, uh, he's not like other Jedi?

Was that? Oh, I don't remember. Did I get that down? Let's see. I'm trying to find this point. It's either Jesse or Fives, right? I think... That makes sense.

I think so. It's like, I'm trying to find. I'm meant to... Doesn't feel like hard case. Mm-hmm. I can't love thinking about Jesse is. Jesse's such a fun. I'm glad we got a clone name Jesse.

It's your rule alley of Star Wars. People just have dude names sometimes. I know. And how did he get that for himself? And like, I don't know. I feel like I don't want to talk about this until we get to, like, the Jesse Dogma scene. But, like, the perspective that I was, like, distracted by watching these episodes. and like the like impulse to like come out of the writer's room and like come out of like the

critic of me and try to be a clone and like not only think about like the sort of relationship that you would have with a friend who's like yeah guys I'll go get eye tattoos with you but also that you call dogma like you don't call them like hall monitor or like that was like what is what is happening with this relationship and then like for Jesse to be like living through this experience, while you have the fucking Republic symbol tattooed on your face, what is your internal thought as you're thinking, like, can I trust the republic? Does my commander have my best interest in mind?

Watching this, I also felt like it was actually a pretty good story about how class consciousness forms. Because, like, the thing is, and it sort of indicates why often the realization there's a problem is when it is too late, in fact, to address the grievances, is because to get the clones over all

the conditioning and socialization that prevents them from recognizing their predicament, and like seeing how, like, seeing their, seeing and calling by name their unjust treatment, when they start just openly saying, I think he likes watching clones die.

Yeah. Like, the way, like, there are so many off-ramps for this. The clones desperately want someone to not, like, give them an alternative to reaching the conclusions that they are, like, sliding towards in this episode. And Krell can't stop pushing because, you know, and this is, this is where I really do wish that, uh, that like, we didn't get that, like, twist where he's, it turns out that he's, he's in the process of defecting, uh, because the thing I kind of love here is that, is their refusal to grant them their individuality, their humanity, to validate their perspective and their concerns, that means that, like, this situation, whether or not he turns out to be

evil in the end, has hit a point of no return because all the things that would have allowed them to de-escalate it. It's like, once you cross all, like, once you cross a ton of, like, personal rubicons, you can't uncross them as someone says, like, oh, you know, I want to compromise now like you're right you make some good points no no no no that like that was yesterday's problem that moment's past yeah now now like something's got a profoundly change and the heads have to roll and i think this is this is this episode gets at that which is like and this is what rex sees happening which is the first clone mutiny in the army taking shape and it scares the shit out of them as as well it should but at the same time krell refuses to give any help like he is pushing this unit

into mutiny and once the clones start like putting into words the fact that like hey we're just being sent out here to die and nobody cares uh you see that like they are not going to once they like take some irrevocable steps they aren't going to come down from that um that it is it it will be at a certain point a one-way ticket well and he in a real way you have to write you have it's not simply that Krell has to be an evil, an evil mustache twirling villain so that we don't have to denigrate the, the Jedi. Rex structurally needs him to be that, because otherwise Rex doesn't have a way out of this. We need Krell to do the unthinkable and force Rex, Rex, Rex's own people to kill other clones, so that Rex finally has enough to turn on him

completely because otherwise I mean we have this conversation between rex and fives here right this is each of these back three episodes is like completely anchored by the rex fives relationship and and where each of them are on this on this kind of journey together uh five says uh you know this is this is before he he kind of steps away he looks like he's this is after dogma shows up fives kind of walks out to the other room uh and rec is like you know where are you going uh five's like This is about more than this following orders. It is. It is about honor. Where is the honor in marching blindly to our deaths?

It is not our call. We are part of something larger. We are not independent of one another. I'm sorry. I cannot just follow orders when I know they're wrong. Especially when lives are at stake. You will if you support the system we fight for. I do support it. I do.

But I am not just a just another number. None of us are. Fives. Where are you going? To round up some pilots. And you get the impression here that Rex has moved into a phase where he's like, all right, I'm going to let this dissent happen and I'm going to do my best to cover for them, but I'm not turning on Krell yet. And even through the fallout of this, which we'll get to, he tries to protect them, but he will not raise arms against Krell. Krell and he will not, but at this point, you know, kind of be the, the leader that the clones need him to be in this moment until Krell goes too far. And it turns out too far is not putting his own

people on a firing line. Too far is not stopping them from or ordering them into walking into missile fire or preventing them from taking the measures that would keep them safe. Too far is literally only when it's clear deception and betrayal. Anything up, any sort of, uh, uh, you know, kind of malign indifference to their lives or any sort of, sort of, you know, otherworldly amount of cruelty in the way he treats them is acceptable because it's for the system and for the mission. And so in a real way, like, it's, it's, I, the thing that I like about, about how far they do have to push him to make him completely evil is that it reveals that at this point, there is little you could, a commander could say to Rex that would not make him say yes, okay, to it.

And maybe that, maybe he changes from this after this. Maybe this is a turning point for who Rex is, but I don't fucking know, you know. Yeah. We will find out when we get to Order 66, I'm guessing. One thing I will say is Order 66 has never made more sense to me than after this arc of episodes. Right. I mean, totally. That's the other half of this, right? It's like, if you're the clones who've lived through this and Order 66 comes down,

And the War 66 is like, oh, the Jedi turned out to be evil. Like, yeah, no shit. I met Crowell. Yeah. Oh, what? Seven other Jedi had bad dreams and now they decided to betray us? Yeah, I believe it. I think that there's a brief conversation that happens right before the one that you just read out to us, Austin, is also five's, you know, this is when they're all in the room together and they're like, something just doesn't seem right.

like it seems like he really just doesn't care about us whatever and five says he is not acting like the other Jedi and to the point that you're making earlier of like Rex being able to to go with as much as

he possibly can of just absolute like detached commanders you know putting him and his squad's lives on the line for the sake of victory, how far he's willing to go with that. You have to imagine that this isn't the only time that they've had a general or a commander that has been shitty or has been careless with casualties or, you know, only will refer to them

by their numbers. Like, I'm sure that's not the first time that this has happened. But it, like, this line frustrates me because I think it's I mean its main function is to set up the fact that oh he's not like other Jedi because he's darksided like that's why he's not like other Jedi but

I don't like this line because it's the thing that I was saying before is he is like other Jedi he's just saying it all like he's just saying it with his chest like he just isn't holding back his disdain for or his disregard for

the individuality and the value of the life of a clone like you to him he literally calls them creatures bred in a lab at a certain point which is a thing that is true the Jedi decided that they were good with breeding a group of people who they would then send into war to die right like that is it is it's the saying with his chest

thing, right? It's like, how many times have we talked about how the Jedi strategy again and again is that they are the star athletes and that they build a circle of bodies around them to protect themselves while they get the home run or the touchdown, right? That, like, that is the strategy. The difference is he's not out there in the way that Anakin is. He's not the star athlete. He's the coach. He's the abusive coach. And then the, I mean, the second part is he's just saying it outright instead of kind of being hidden in his enigma and his kind of mastery. of the battlefield, right? Well, and he's breaking the deal, too.

Right. I could easily imagine in the various, like, moments we get a glimpse of, like, Mace relating to humans. I can easily imagine him being a Martinette in the same fashion, right? But what you get with Mace is that guy is racking up the kill count. Like, Mace will be like, hey, clones hang back. I got to kill a million people. And then they'll be, all right, go to it.

sir and like he will go do it and you get you get the dub but like this guy is like all the things that like you sort of could believe like Jedi don't respect you or guard you in that way but also it's combined with yeah and also he just fucking sucks at this

like you know it's like I'm thinking about Urban Meyer honestly where it's like this this horrible college football coach who had a very good reputation because he won a lot

shitty organizations throughout his career, had a reputation for being a colossal asshole and having very poor control over his emotions in the world of NCAA football that didn't matter because he got results. Mind you, he was in programs where results were pretty well, like, guaranteed, but nevertheless, all that was forgiven. He goes into the pros, and he's completely exposed. He's revealed as a guy who's a shit football coach when coaching against, like, real teams full of professional athletes, not exploited students. And he's revealed completely unfit to manage an organization of, like, professionals. And that's kind of like the, all of all these ticks can, can and often are, for given or overlooked, provided at least the results show up, right?

And I feel like that's kind of what's, like, running in the background of, like, how the clones see all this, is, like, Anakin has his flaws, but he runs the risks with you. Plow does a lot of the, like, personal touch and, like, trying to, like, be there in the trenches with you. Yodo, we see in the opening episode, we'll do the same thing. Mace will be far and away the deadliest guy you've ever seen in the galaxy. All of them have their way. This guy is, like, all the indifference and coldness of, like, your worst Jedi. none of the personal, like, courage and none of the, like, care and none of the victories.

And so it's like, what are we doing here? Well, he has the victories. We just don't see them here. And this is the thing. This is the hard thing about this arc is because of the turn at the end, you, like, I wish I wish I could take everything he had done thus far as his traditional. strategy like as his historical strategy like no he is a full frontal assault uh leaning commander um he you know the casualty thing is fact and is known or whatever he is someone that hangs back and does not get engaged in the fight unless absolutely necessary like i

wish we could understand those as i wish we could understand how he operates historically because I think that the turn at the end kind of corrupts his role as a commander in the first three episodes because you can just write it off a sabotage. He's clearly an incredibly capable. That's true. Warrior. Because he... Yeah, when it's go time, he goes.

He's the Republic's General Grievous. Yeah, 100%. Why hasn't this guy, like, jumped General Grievous at this point, right? Because he wants to be the homie. Yeah, because he wants to be a home. He's much a grievous fan videos at home and, like, practicing fucking lightsaber maneuvers. He's, like, how are they going out with them? His lightsabers fold up.

I don't know if y'all notice this. He has two dual-bladed lightsabers because he has forearms, which is already, like, wild. They, like, fold in on each other. They close, like, a clamshell phone so that he can put them on his belt, like, tight instead of long. That's so sick. also Anyway His lightsaber seems to have more of a sword point

Than other lightsaber Like when he holds it on Rex For instance I'm like that looks an awful lot Like just the point of a dagger Being held with his throat Um But

The Anyway Yeah the strike against the supply ship Goes Has a There's a thing that I'm going to call a punchline That isn't really a punchline Which is they

I mean we skipped like there's other comedy bits in this episode of them being like trying to pilot the ship poorly and getting called in my crowd. Everything's flying down here, sir. Yeah, it's the Star Wars.com literally says that it's a shout out to that moment, but they don't use any direct quotes, so it's okay. And, you know, there's other stuff that happens, but basically they decide, fuck it,

we're going to take these ships, we're going to go destroy the supply ship. And there's an incredible beat where they lift off into the sky and they're like, all right, you know, here we go. like, I'm just having a good time flying these ships. We're going to go save the day. And they breech through the clouds and get into the upper atmosphere and can see what's happening up there. And the thing that's happening is a gigantic space battle.

And it's like, ah, shit. Ah, fuck. That's huge. We even see the space battle like this size in so long. And it's just a maelstrom. Like, again, it's just a mess. It's not even the focal point of this. We aren't here to like see like, ooh, look at the space battle.

Look at it. It's the, no, you have to fly into it. It's like flying into her. Star Taurus. This is like, all right, we're going to fly in the middle of a bunch of ships you recognize. We're not going to care about, like, we're not going to have time to talk about what's happening in this battle, really. We're not going to meet any other clones or Umbarins. There are like space dirigible up here. I don't know if you noticed this, but like the Umbarans have this sort of ship that is one of my favorite designs I think we've seen yet, which is just this kind of, I guess it's a separatist ship and it's based on what was. originally an abandoned episode three design that is just one of the coolest. I'll send you a screenshot of it. It has that sort of like metallic, like ribbed airship style design, basically. Boom.

This thing. Yo. It's so sick. I don't know what it's even called. I guess I should have looked that up. And that's just background stuff. They're, like, deploying wild design elements in these episodes that aren't even the focal point because they don't have the time to make them the focal point. And then, again, like the supply ship, which, Allie, you described earlier as being a micro death star, right?

Was that you? Was it Rob? Maybe it was Rob, yeah. Not an original observation. No, but, I mean, it is a death star looking thing that's been like, it's as if you, like, cut it in half and then slid the two halves apart and drew. put a little bridge between the two halves, it's a very cool design. And this is the battle, by the way, that I looked up, you know, eight months ago when I was trying to figure out trade federation and separatist alignment stuff, where Filoni talks about how

there are no trade federation ships in this battle. George made them remove that kind of traditional orb with the donut around, the kind of Taurus around it design. That was originally in this shot. And George was like, no, no, no, no, no. These are separatists. The Trade Federation is technically its own thing, and they would not let their ships be involved in this battle because it's so clearly a separatist versus Republic thing.

So you have to get rid of those, which is probably why there are so many new types of vessels here, because they wanted to, like, really emphasize that this is a different vibe. So shout outs Yeah it's an incredible sequence And also we do get a little taste of like The way in which The clones now the show is finally pointing it out Hey

The clone situation is a mirror to that of the droids Because we see we get like very couple We got a couple like droid moments One is a little middle management droid Yelling at the other droids to like stop resting continue unloading these crates. Then the next thing that happens is the droids immediately look up and they're like, there's clones flying those ships.

And they tell the tactile droid, there are clones aboard the ship. And the tactical droid is like, well, that's statistically improbable. So no, I don't believe you. And he misses the critical window in which they probably could have gotten ahead of this thing. And the droids are like, yeah, sir, we confirmed

there are clones aboard the spaceship. they're in our ships. That's how they got aboard. At that point, the Tath Droid sort of springs in action, but it's like kind of too little too late. But it's like, those are the same dynamics.

Like the way the droids get smacked around by tactical droids, shit rolls down in the separatist army. Like here, it's done as a couple like sort of jokey sequences, but it's also pretty clear, like, these are reflections of the same

dynamics that the clones have been caught up in, from the first episode of this arc. Yeah. And they get in there and they do the damn thing. They fly in through the kind of hangar that becomes the big kind of supply depot and they knock a droid over and then they almost get to the engine, which by the way, for some reason, or the reactor,

is just like the Trade Federation ship. I wouldn't design a ship this way, Rob. I wouldn't. I would put it far away where you can't fly to it. Yeah, you have to walk there in my version of the ship. You have to land your ship. Ladders. There'd be ladders.

There'd be ladders involved. There'd be hallways. You have to take a slide, shoots, and ladders. But what if you're, like, installing extra engine poles and the doorway is too small? You need to be open space. I would do, like, a Titanic situation where, you know how that Titanic? I think they did a Titanic situation. The little scene

Titanic Cross Hindenburg configuration I mean you put up black shields They had a fucking Ray shield or whatever But they also just had a little door You could walk through And walk right up to the reactor

But not so little Big enough for you to carry a missile through it Yeah Yeah Oh my God Maybe you need a lot of airflow in there I imagine it's hot, yeah But you're a spaceship

And it's filled with droids There's always like a fence next to a reactor Yeah Like an open hole Maybe just so that the droids can go And like just like check it out And like look at them on their breaks You know like

This is what it's all about folks I'm just gonna go vibe in the main reactor room Yeah This is what we're defending. We've been over this We've been over this Some previous episode, we learned that the droids look at big engines and fire as mother. That's kind of where they come from. And so maybe there's sort of like an almost spiritual relationship here between the reactor and the droids.

I still would not put it one forklift accident away, though, from destroying the entire ship. 100%, which is how it feels, is like you take a call while, like, driving a stack of pallets, like, through the corridor and you kill everyone. He launches a... Okay, so Hardcase hops out of his fighter. He kind of like lowers this missile pod to the ground. It's hovering. Then grabs it and moves it like a pallet. Like if you've ever moved around like a big pallet of something with wheels or something like that.

Or you've just go wheelbarrow. Like it moves around in that sort of like loosey, goosey, I'm carrying a heavy thing that's on a couple of wheels mode. And then he kind of just kind of flings it across the reactor floor into one of these big engines. things, and he doesn't, it's not like, it doesn't have rocket boosts on it. He just throws it, you know, it kind of hovers over. It's moving fast, but I wouldn't say it's moving more than 20 miles an hour. You know what I mean? To me, it felt really slow. It felt like, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. He could have outrun it. He threw it. I bet if he on a long enough, he could have caught up to it if you want, do you know what I mean? You're going to throw it and then run.

No, no, no, no, no. I don't mean he could have gotten away. I mean, on. I mean, on a flat surface, he could not throw it fast enough that he couldn't run faster than what he threw it. I'm saying that's how slow it was going. Oh, yes, yes. I was like, you know what I'm saying? That shit blew the fuck up. I don't think that's not running that. If he threw it and it was like, I'm going to try to race next to it, he would outrun it. That's how slow it was going. And nevertheless, it pierces the side of the engine as it blows up. And I guess it's just like that's the type of explosive it is or whatever, but. Well, also, I think it just finally occurred to that in Star Wars land

all giant reactors are just oversized spark plugs every single one of them is like what would have been at the heart of the last time George Lucas interacted with a car which is the American graffiti era

which we know he loves yeah and so he's like what makes what makes car go spark plug because I had to replace this so spark plug not good car not good and that is carried forward in everything spark plug at the heart of the second death star

We have to fly in the middle of the fire torpedo at the center of the spark plug where it arcs. That is, that is Lucas's vision of fusion. Uh-huh. We have American Graffiti crossover on this arc, by the way. He's the second episode, which we already talked about, was directed by Walter Merch. Walter Merch, M-U-R-C-H is like a legendary film editor and sound designer in Hollywood. Merch is, he's only directed one movie, but that movie was returned to Oz, which if you seen return to Oz, you know, is like incredibly fucked up and wild in great ways.

But as an editor, he has edited. He's in a lot of editing and sound work going back to THX 1138 for Lucas. He did the sound editing for that. He did sound work on Godfather, Godfather 2, and Godfather 3. He edited the conversation, which is an all-timer. Damn. He edited Apocalypse Now and did the sound work on Apocalypse now. he edited and did the sound work on Ghost and on the English patient for which he won an Academy Award.

Holy shit. He's like a for real, for real, like, Hollywood dude. Do you know what I mean? If you go look at what his, and then he has gone back and done, like he did a Touch of Evil re-edit in 1998 that a lot of people think is better than the original version of Touch of Evil. That's the one to watch. That's his, Rob. And he's the one who picked that up and re-editit. edited that in the late 90s. I think it would have been like flawless, but you know.

Yeah, 100% that. It is one of this. And so like to get him to come on and there's a video of him, Walter Merch, Clone Wars and Learning Maya, it's a four and a half minute video in which he talks about his experience of coming onto this, learning how to shoot in 3D. And it does have some revealing stuff about how Lucas thinks about 3D filmmaking versus other animation studios. And the big takeaway here is, and we know this already because this is, because this is the thing that they finally started doing better at the end of last season. And it's instead of shooting, instead of storyboarding everything out and then animating everything to the storyboards, they build out the 3D space and tell their directors, treat this like

it's a set and shoot this for multiple perspectives and we'll build the show in the edit, which is what, which is, look, it goes back to what we talked about with Lucas all the way back to Phantom Menace. He likes to make shit in the edit. And so it's not surprising that, the technological stuff that they developed for Clone Wars once they're able to do that which is what they started doing at the end of the last season

with the Asoka Hunt arc stuff where they're building sets and then going in and scouting sets and then going in and shooting in those sets from multiple angles instead of storyboarding everything from nothing and building out the storyboards it's so it's so on point

that it only took three arcs since then for that to become the way they make things is shoot as much as you can shoot more than you can, even though it's expensive, and then put it together in the edit. So go look up that story, Walter Merch, Clone Wars, and Learning Maya, 247 of 320. I think it's 247 of 320 because there's 320 little five-minute clips of Walter Merch talking about his, like, history in filmmaking, which is a very...

Oh, okay, I was going to say, about this Clone Wars. No, that's fucking nuts. No, no, because, like, the first one is about, like, you know, it's like, it's him talking with the history of television, the history of film, and stuff like that. What is music concrete? If you want to hear him talk about, you know, contemporary music, you can go do that. Anyway. Oh, shoutouts.

That's like, how, how did that happen? Like, how was he a Star Wars fan that? Well, he worked on Lucas's, he worked on American graffiti. He worked on T.HX. So I imagine there's a conversation where it's like, Hey, I'm doing this show. You think they're like having like drinks one night. I do.

And then like. But he's not like he was like, hey, it would be funny if I did one of those. And Lucas was like, I would love if you did one of those. Well, you can even, you'd even see the make the connection of like, hey, we're basically making like our apocalypse now. Right. Like that shot where they call in the danger close air strike on that ridge is the opening. Like that is the way like the napalm strikes look in apocalypse now where like every time they, light up a tree line up a tree line, it's that

shot. But it is weird, yeah, he's not, he's not like a, he's not like an ILM, like, lifeer it doesn't seem like. No. But remember, he worked with Lucas when Lucas was supposed to be doing Apocalypse Now. Yeah. Apocalypse Now was going to be

a George Lucas movie. What? Then it became a Coppola movie. We were robbed of the stupidest Vietnam movie. I would pay so much money to have that movie, to have that... What does it look like? I don't know. I just laughed so hard it hurt a little bit inside.

I, like, pulled something. Oh. I have to wonder if the Embara arc was, like, co-developed with merch then, or if it was, like, a sign. Yeah. I have to imagine it was, like, like, like, a sign. I don't imagine it was like code about. Yeah, because... I try to think of what the, the George Lucas

Apogos now, I think there'd be some fucked up little guys. That's all I can come up with. There would be some, yeah, uh-huh. God. Anyway. So, yeah, it does, like, we have an arc like that. It is tough to say, like, every... The writer and director credits keeping different,

but, like, the arc has a thematic and stylistic whole, so to what degree is, like... You know what I mean? Like, to what degree can you individualize? that kind of authorship, but either way, we can individualize this. Hard case gets it done.

And the rest of them have the cool fly out of the explosion moment. By the way, not to knock it. It looks incredible. That ship blows up spectacularly, and then they add a little grace note, which is as they descend through the cloud, and that explosion from the destroyed supply ship is still bright enough

that it is like a second sun like trying to break through the clouds. It's incredible. Yeah. It shows never looked as good as this. I really, I think maybe some of the jungle in the, in the Trent Ocean Hunt stuff, like, for density and atmosphere might look better. But in terms of quality of shots, composition, character blocking and animation, all that stuff is just all the way top, all the way through this arc, which for me, like, weighs so heavily in terms of how. much I liked it even despite

again a handful of like narrative quibbles, which we're getting to now finally. I think if this, if, I've often thought about like what would be the episodes of Star of Clone Wars I would show to someone to get them into it and I feel like this is up there.

This is up there now. This is maybe the go-to. I think for a lot of reasons watching this, it calls to mine different like different films, but it does like this arc also is a reminder that like

it is not inevitable that like process heavy CG filmmaking results in being so uninspired and kind of like at a remove from the action you can make stuff that like stands alongside

like we just covered Michael Mann on the like manhunting podcast on uh last Mohicans on the podcast series we're doing on Waypoint And, like, you know, that's a movie where Michael Mann, like, has a 50-acre set, I think he's working with, basically, and, like, thousands of extras, but he's trying to, like, create these kind of, like, tremendous tabloes. And you can still do that. It just requires, like, a similar attention to detail, but in a different mode. You can make the paths of glory of Star Wars.

You just have to, like, see the film in that way, in that way. And spend the money, right? Because again, the thing that Merch is talking about in that clip is Lucas is willing to spend the money to do all of this rendering instead of being so conservative with your budget that you have to stay locked to your storyboards. You can only render your storyboards and you can't ever experiment in the space the way a real production works. and once they open that up to say, hey, we're going to render this out, we're going to work in Maya in such a way that we're going to, it's fine, we're going to spend the money to be able to render this stuff out quick enough for you to be able to do some experimentation with, and we're going to shoot it and render it at full resolution from all these different angles so we can fuck around with the edit to make things more compelling. That opens up the door to such a wider range of expressivity. You know, there's just like small things. The next episode, which, you know, which is the final episode in this arc, which basically opens with fives and Jesse being arrested, and then, like you said earlier, Rob, lined up for execution,

includes all of the stuff around, like, there's this great shot of the firing line, kind of getting into place that's backlit in this really beautiful way and scary way. Everyone's helmets are off. All of this stuff that, you know, maybe that lived in the storyboard because it's so distinct. But it's very easy to imagine.

imagine the way that you produce a show like this where you find things as you're exploring the 3D space because it's it's you know there's a dynamic thing happening here and we can and you can futz with the light in order to create different sets or different uh uh sort of kind of affective uh feelings for different moments and like all of that stuff you lose if you're if you're constrained by low budget um and the reason that a lot of things go cg is because it's lower budget you know like it's not i don't know, I watch anime, and anime has not done well by CG in a lot of its uses over the last decade. It's getting there. Things are getting better with it. Um, but there's, there has been a lot of rough integration of CG shit that feels like, well, we're just going to do what we want

to do in, in, it's not just anime, right? Western animation just as bad with this stuff. Uh, and so it is like, I hope we get show, I'm excited to see rebels because I hope rebels has as good of a budget and just as much of a commitment to finding the shot in the space, if that makes sense. So, anyway, execution time. Yeah, so, Crell congratulates them on having done something very brave,

but also very illegal. We skipped one thing that I think is kind of important in terms of like talking about Rex and his authority and like his maneuvering here is that during this assault there are two clones that wake up and see that hard case and the other two are missing

and go to report it to Krell and Rex is this person who like, like Natalie was saying before is like resign to not be able to act against Krell can only enact his own authority in support of the other clones by being like, hey,

why do you want to talk to the commander? Why don't you tell me what you were going to tell him at all decide if the commander should know it and like their planet is like immediately deflated and like I feel like it's really interesting to see that like the like how narrow the maneuverability that Rex like the actions that he's willing to take and the actions that he feels like he can take and that like the only way that he can like have authorities over other clones instead of trying to go above

Krell's head in defense of them. Like he can only And it's, it is kind of like an almost learned thing because even when Anakin introduces him, we passed over this, but he says this is my first in command which is very pointed language. That's not even a turn to phrase. Second in command is the phrase.

The fact Anakin thinks of him that way introduces that is like Rex doesn't seem to grasp that like it's pretty well connected and respected. But instead, here he's basically being like a PA to a bad person and that's the only that's all he can do probably he does have the power and authorities where probably does carry

enough weight even though he doesn't know it to get on the radio and go above Krell's head and like that might be a showstopper if that report goes in but yeah instead all it is is like I'll take a message and I'll make sure he gets it what do you think the personal matter was do you think they were going to kill him no i think they were going to snitch on the other three they're going to snitch yeah that was dogma and somebody else yeah this is what i mean why it's like it's important that dogma is just that like if things go a little bit differently dogma comes out of this with a promotion and becomes krell's number two and that could be any clone oh my god okay totally misread that yeah yeah also like so there was

Well, actually, I'll tell you what I was thinking might happen in a minute here. So, yes, Crowell, when Rex makes the mistake of at the start of the final of these episodes, the carnage of Crowell, in case there's any doubt what you're getting into, as Austin pointed out, when he goes to plead for mercy and to get them out of the court martial, like, beef that they're in, he's like, you're right, we should just kill them. And, yes, he orders the execution party formed, and we have a, exchange in the in the prison where you know fives is very resigned to it jesse is pissed and they keep uh i think five says something like jesse you've still got your sense of humor and jesse's like who says

i was joking uh and it's about like uh you know basically like defying orders or or or uh that they certainly didn't sign up to be like executed by an asshole like kraal um The execution party is led by dogma, and yeah, critically, Rex can't actually bring himself to stop this. It is, it is, uh, fives pleading from the, from the firing, uh, from the firing squad, uh, you know, to not kill him. That he's like, we all know this is wrong. We, we all know that this is not how a clone should go out. Um, dogma gives the order and turns out all the clones have intentionally missed. and then they throw it on the rifles. And here, and here, I think, here's the thing.

I think this is where the episodes, the series starts, the arc starts whiffing. Because, I think in a lot of ways, this is probably the best climax you could have, which is like, oh, the clones are now refusing orders. Like, this is, we are now in it that, like, the clones have had to cross this line, and now we're going to deal with the revocations of that. Instead, we go to, back to the, to the tower where Crowell's like, I thought those clones are supposed to be killed. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. A new report just came in. And the report, and here's what my initial thought was

and what was hoping was going to happen. It's about the whole, like, doing Barnes have our weapons and armor. I was hoping that the clones had filed that report themselves so that when the report went out about a Jedi getting fucking murked by a detachment of clones, that there would be plausible than iability and that part of the cost of this was going to be that they were going to have to frag dogma too like it was going to be one of those things where like we all know this has to happen but also like the bootlicker can't survive this because he will rat us all out and like get the whole unit decimated so like that's that my hope was like okay like i don't know when this plan would have been hatched but like that seemed like i was like that's a fascinating

That would be a fascinating play. And instead, it is, it is not mustache twirling, but whatever his little, like, towed throat sack thing, like sort of playing with that, whatever the equivalent is, him being like, hmm, yes, I will destroy the clones this way now. And that's disappointing, because I think the most interesting thing that happens here is that the clones reach the point of defiance.

But the thing is, do we actually think that they're not, you're right it is they reach the point of defiance but it's five clones have reached the point of defiance and one was still gonna pull the trigger dogma right dogma would have

dogma should have just shot these these people if I was dogma you would just pull the trigger I don't know I feel like if I'm dogma I'm looking bad at this moment if I can't now turn around and just shoot them because that's what that's what kraal ordered

yeah dogma is like is like the tactical droid equivalent talking directly to... That's tactical droid slander. But the thing that... My point being that like

it seems as if they want to indicate that the clones at this point are defiant but only to a point. They're willing to dissent to not kill other clones and it's not like those other clones go free. They don't free them.

They just lead them back to prison. They put them back the brig, right? So it's not like they're on their side. They just think, well, this isn't the way a clone should die. There should be a court martial. There should be whatever the process, whatever the system that we've decided the defense says versus Krell's emotional, you know, response here or whatever. So I think that you're right, Rob, but I feel like they felt that they wrote themselves into a corner by needing Krell to be a capital V villain at this point. And like, how do we get him there, you know? And because obviously the more competent version of this is that he just keeps making bad mistakes. He keeps sending them to die and, you know, bit by bit. He figures out a way

to contact the umbarans and gives away positions. He fails to tell them what Obi-Wan needs. Like, there's another version of this where he just succeeds by slowly winnowing them down. Um, and by, you know, he puts dogma in charge and, and, you know, D, you know, makes Rex, you know, put Rex in the brig or give us Rex some bullshit mission just to get him away from everybody else. You know, there's, like, other things you can do there that we don't see because they just, like, need to jump him to villain status and get him to get those lightsabers out and get to work. Mm-hmm. And, yeah, I really think it comes down to this is the great sin that they, this is the greatest

sin that they could imagine in terms of betraying a clone is making a clone kill another clone, you know? Yep. But I'm with you. And that they can't, instead of this being a story about the clones having a limit to their obedience, which in itself is, like, a movie that I think touches on some of this, like, a movie that I think is basically perfect that I revisit again and again because it's so much fun, is Crimson Tide, ironically. Like, it is just a really good, like, popcorn flick in a lot of ways. But it is about the fact that, like, Denzel Washington's character does commit a mutiny and does, like, ignore multiple, like, lawful orders that are also completely incorrect.

And the end of the movie is basically, like, when they're brought before to Board of Inquiry, everyone's like, uh, we, like, there's no clear, like, what are the lessons here? What are the clear takeaways? Like, obviously the lawful orders shouldn't have been given, but also we can't have officers, like, going rogue whenever they disagree. There's no easy solution to that. This is sort of one of the paradox of like a hierarchical structure is the hierarchy is important, but more important than that is making the right calls.

Instead of getting us to that point where, like, hey, the clones have a limit where they will assert themselves for their own, like, rights, but also exercise their own judgment and making, like, that's the focal point of the story, it turns into the clones expose it all, you know? And that, it, it kills me. But, yes, to. Because what is the point, that's the thing is, what we don't learn is the, we don't learn where the point of, of no return is for, negligence. We know that, you know, again, if he orders them to go kill their clones and that's a clear deception, that's too far for them because that's treasonous. And that fits neatly into their worldview, which is like there are people who want to kill us. They're separatists. They're the Dark Jedi. They're the Sith. We need to stop them from, we need to stop

them. They're our enemy. And so we can, now we can put Krell into the enemy slot. What's, what we don't learn is where is that breaking point when it comes to just pull. command, you know, negligence in terms of protecting their lives, you know, putting personal cruelty and, you know, kind of arbitrary and arbitrary sense of justice and command above the safety of their brothers, et cetera. We don't get the answer to where that breaking point is because it isn't ordering them to kill them because they continue to follow commands after that. It's somewhere between, it's somewhere after that.

And I just do, I think that you're right. It would be cool to have known that it would have been cool for him to turn to him from just a command being one step too far, you know, instead of, because this isn't a command that's one step too far. This is, they reveal a deception. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, it also just like, because the, like, the, like, turn in that episode happens so quickly where it's like, I guess you could think of it.

If you wanted to be, like, generous, you could think of it as, like, Krell making, like, a very specific de-escalation and not letting the clone sit with, like, you know. that they weren't killed and now there has to be a conversation about that because it happened like immediately right away yeah oh you didn't kill those guys but just put them in the jail because now we have to go find another battle or whatever and like i to like spend three and a half episodes building to this peak of like the the argument between the clones like instead to like immediately push all of those chips off the board to be like well krell's gonna fight them on this thing that's like the the introduction of the idea that they're fighting against other clones, like happens right there.

Like, I watched it again to be like, did I miss something? But it's like, they're in the elevator. And he's like, by the way, you're going to be fighting clones. And it's like, we don't have any setup of like Krell doing some of that stuff in other episodes. We don't see like Obi-Wan ever be or like talking to Krell and being like, oh, why do you want to send these people there? Or like something like, there's no setup in that.

And then like I, the scene where that happens is successful where like the clones are fighting each other. But like, it's so much despite what the tension of the other episodes were that it's like, why couldn't you let that moment live? Why couldn't you let this storyline live with the drama sting between the clones in this moment? Yeah. And they don't even, it's as if it, they don't even, they don't even talk about what just happened. They're just like, oh, the enemy has our, has our armor and our weapons. Let's be careful. No one talks about the, to some degree it makes me feel like they got so, they fell so in love with the beauty of the metaphor of clones fighting clones here.

They're like, oh, we just got, oh, that's such a cool image. They've been tricked into fighting each other, which I don't know if we've said it out loud, but what Krell tells them is Umbarans have stolen, I guess you did it at the very top rob, umbarans have stolen clone armor and cloned weapons to pose as clones. So you're going to go to this point, and what you're going to find there are people who look like clones, but they're not clones, comma, they are, they are clones. They're just other clones. But yeah, there's no setup to it, and they don't even, they don't even reference the other

scene that just happened which is so important yeah i think that my expectation for this bit was that when uh it was revealed that they i kind of thought they were probably clones and not in barns but um i had figured that krell had ordered them to kill his unit because his unit was like defunct was like malfunctioning. About the turn on him or whatever. Yeah. And so I had thought that basically he was like sending them out. He was like, okay, if you guys aren't going to execute each other, then I'm going to call another squad to come in and execute you all, which also would not make sense. But I think, I think everything. I mean, that would be more interesting because then you'd have that bit of like, like imagine if he ran over and found Waxer or whatever. And Waxer was like,

you know we were told that you all but that you all committed treason we were here to you know to bring you back or to arrest you or to kill you to stop to stop the the mutiny that you were doing and obiwan signed off on that like that to me would be so much more interesting if he had straight up said my people are rebelling and they've turned separatist or whatever they've turned treasonist i need back up to put them in their place or whatever and then through official channels that had happened you know um All of that said, I still think the scene fundamentally works as, like, storytelling. The Rex putting it together, running out into the mix, waving his hands around, ripping his helmet off and telling everybody to take their helmets off so you could see that it's clones on both sides. All that stuff is... Clones sharpshooters, like, waving each other off. Yeah, that stuff is good. Yeah. I was just saying, I think it's really successful because, like, you have this music score that, like, they aren't playing the Darth Vader scene, right?

but it's like a very specific like Star Wars familiar like something as bad as happening the violins are going but like feel so unique that it feels significant without having to be like well remember Anakin you know what I mean yeah which is the heart of why this arc is so good is like oh right clone wars the clones are a key part of the war and we don't spend enough time with them and it's nice to just do that and to have so much differentiation between them even the ones who are on the same side of this internal conflict end up being characterized differently with the way that they respond to, you know, difficulty or to challenge or to the situation

at hand. They all have their different perspectives and takes. And that just makes all of these scenes basically work as long as we're getting the characters being cool, you know? Yeah. This was the scene where it really like sunk in for me that like for the last three a half episodes. I've been thinking like, I wonder what Anakin the Chancellor are talking about. And then we get to this and it's like, none of it fucking matters. Like, who cares

about Anakin Skywalker? Because something else is happening here that is so much more significant. Yeah. I am surprised we didn't get a wrap around on the Anakin stuff. I agree. I kept thinking like, did Krell lie to him? Like, did Anakin get back? And he was like, oh, yeah, so I hear I have

a meeting. And they're like, I don't know what you're fucking talking about. Boy, like, we don't have anything scheduled. And he'd be like, well, that's weird, because Krell told me I had to come back to base. I figured that I want, well, I kind of thought, oh, maybe Krell and Palpatine are already working together. And Palpatine called Anakin back to give Krell the opening. And maybe he did that anyway because he sensed that Krell was getting all fucked up. But no one else did, I guess, even though this dude was.

fucking evil as shit yeah the Jedi stay losing at recognizing that a person near them is evil is like it's unbelievable like just unbelievable just lack of fucking force awareness

but but then Krell makes his whole statement about like I want Duku to notice me like once I give him umbara like he will he will

be mine. He will want me to be his apprentice and together we're going to rule the new galaxy will then rule the new order. Also it's like dude is 40 or whatever the equivalent for a frogman is. Yeah, you groan. It's incredible how pathetic he becomes immediately and like how he's just like giving himself this verbal L by being like, because like Rex is even like you're working with Duku and he's like not yet. Like don't tell them that. Cringe, cringe plus L plus ratio. Maidenless behavior. I have hopes that soon I will be in his employer.

I'm giving my notice on spec. Yeah. I'm gonna, you know, I'll be freelance in between, frankly. I'm surprised you were able to figure it out for a clone. Shut up. You suck. Just went from being like evil and scary and intimidating to just being a fucking loser. just a little

little frog just loser man hate him so I do like again in the wake of like them realizing what has been done the whole like the speech where it's like we are in uncharted territory

like they're never done before again I'm like they're gonna bring this guy up on charges even here I was still like if this goes before a Jedi board of inquiry that the clones mutiny and room of the command I'm still like this episode still rules and like they go to like do the mirror of the arrest of palp

Like all this stuff is cool. It's lit like awesomely. Yeah. The fight is terrifying in a way that like again, the Palpatine fight just isn't. Like yeah. Like the Palpatine fight sucks. Whereas this one is like, oh, that's right. These guys are incredibly dangerous. Like they're like these fights are terrifying. He kills like dozens of clones by himself. Yeah. Pretty easily. Particularly fucked up ways. Yeah. There's a one that he just grabs by the. the leg and then he uses as a thrown weapon against other clones. He like bends one over his knee and it Oh yeah, he does do that. He bainesed him. That was fucking nuts. I was like

That thing at the start where they run into those like Venus flytrap things. Yeah. And we see one of them toss a grenade into like one of his little suckers and immediately like tracks it blows up. Good like setting the stage for like oh these things don't know what they're feeding

on they're still like reflexive and so they will just like sort of slurp up anything they get hold of and that kind of becomes part of the key to how they're going to get Crowell here was that in this episode where they tease it or they tease it earlier in the art? No it's the very first episode

of the arc where the first time they wandering like the little the little plant minefield yeah that's that's interesting because they don't do that often no they set it up very early yeah they don't they they tend not

to do multi-episode callbacks like that. They re-set it up in this one where they're like, oh, I saw this thing attack Hardcase. Yeah. Be careful. But you're right. They first show it in like the first episode of this arc. And that's interesting because, like I said, they don't think of arcs that way normally. Their arcs have often been, here are three standalone stories that are connected by location, but you could theoretically watch any one of them without feeling like you're missing anything. And I don't think that that's true here. I think, that you really benefit a lot by watching them all in a single group. I mean, I will re-say here at the end of this, I'm very glad we decided to do this as one big

episode because you talk about posting L's. If we had two episodes into this, been like, this is what we're saying. The Jedi suck. They all suck. And we'd had gotten hit by the Krellas actually just sabotage self-sabotting. It would have sucked so bad. I would have felt so bad. Yeah, I would have felt very.

And again, I'd vaguely remembered that that was what. happened here. Again, I had remembered Krell as having already been a separatist, which is not, this is more interesting than that to me. If he had already made contact with Duku and had secretly been like a plant, that would have sucked way more than this, which is at least, I mean, the thing that's so fun about it is, he is right. His vision of the future is correct. There is going to be a new order. The Jedi are going to all get killed. The Republic is about to fall to a dark force. And if he wants to live specifically, he has to join that dark force.

If he just remains being a Jedi, he's going to get Order 66th. The end of his life is going to be a clone kills him one way or the other. So, you know. Makes you think. Makes you think. Thematically also, I do enjoy that they get Crowell because the planet is now their ally. I will say that here at the very end,

that, like, they haven't conquered Ambarra. It's still like an eerie, spooky place. But, like, it's sort of like, you know how, like, Rambo comes back as the deadliest, like, person who ever lived, uh, in, in first blood. It's kind of that where like, okay, they can't actually beat this Jedi, but they, because he's always been hanging back, he doesn't actually know very much about that's what it is. That's what it is. They can, they can fucking pull a trick on him.

Yeah. If he had been a lead from the front person, he would have seen how this shit works and he is not. So he fell forward immediately. is it dogma who is it that is like it's it's five it's dogma so that's this is dogma earning a little bit yeah yeah Rex isn't able to do it and from the back Oh no no I didn't mean the kill I know that I meant

Oh that's a Tup who the fuck is Tup Oh Tup is Tup is Tup single tear drop tattoo I think so because Tup and dogma are the two I know The two who go are who wake up up to go tell Krell about the, the, yeah. Oh, so, yeah. So he was, like, kind of borderline on which side was he on, you know what I mean? Is it short for Tupperware?

Like, what is it happening? What is it short for? Why is his name Tuft? Maybe we're into that Elizabethan swang, and he's, Elizabethan swang. That's swang. You know, he loves to be Tupping. maybe he was the one that was swangin from the from the plant in the first episode and that's why it was like his idea he was like

that'll leave that something a moment ago oh I was just going to say that I can't decide how I feel I think I don't like it about the fact that Krell dies on this planet minute without any Jedi Council reckoning like I don't we're not going to get an episode where the Jedi Council is like yo fucking master Krell is was evil what the hell like what happened there and I think I don't like it I think it makes me mad this is where I like I really wish they just gone all the way and ripped off paths of glory which is like paths of glory is about a failed assault in World War I leading to a court marshal

over that assault leading to an execution and so the three acts are very much like all the combat stuff happens in the first third of the movie and the rest of it is the fallout from like what transpired

I kind of wish there was this version of like they do arrest him and then boom the action shifts back to Corrassan as like the Jedi Council and Palpatine everyone's reckoning with like the series of what the fuck things just happened.

Here, yeah, here it is. Okay, let me tell you, they can have their cake and eat it too. Fifth episode of this arc, they bring him back, we get through half of the court martial, we get a lot of the Jedi going back and forth about what they feel about it.

We get clones talking about how it isn't just Krell who does this and that they need to be treated better and they need to always have a, you know, a stake in their orders, the orders that get passed down. How are they supposed to protect their brothers? they're being set off to war, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the climax of this episode is that dogma jack rubies him.

Dogma comes out of the crowd while he's being transported from point A to point B and shoots him and kills him. So you still get that dogma does the thing that the Jedi won't do and that the clones won't do. You get dogma compelled by this guilt about having been part of this and having been bought in. And you get the, and it's still like, it's not the version of this that I want, which is just the deep, you know, and philosophical conversation for 30 minutes. But if you got to have dogma have this guilt, you know, driven response to kill him,

that's what I want. I want it to happen on Khorasat. I want there to be the photos taken. I want, you know, I want him to be in some sort of like makeup or some sort of like disguise and it like passes through the crowd and he has like a hat on and you see it's,

you see the V-shaped tattoo underneath the shadow of the head. Like, oh my God, that's dogma. And he produces a little blaster pistol and just shoots him. we need that too because you need the like 10 minutes of that episode where it looks like the Jedi are just going to close rank right right yes like there's no like it's not like what we were saying before it's not like the Jedi are going to like start doing internal investigations and like it's not going to be like every master is going to sit in a little room or they do let Asoka

be the one who does the investigation well no because it would be Yoda sitting in his little room with the little blinds where he was talking to Anakin about it. Totally. I'm sorry. What I mean is they wouldn't do it and then let someone inside independently. Let Anakin or Asoka be like, I've got to check this out. Anakin is like, Rex wouldn't lie about this.

I know Rex. I'm going to go do my own investigations, knocking on doors to talk to clones who've been reassigned who survived his battles and had been traumatized from what his orders were and like getting the story from them. No, I mean, the courtroom drama version of his rules.

It would somehow just end up pushing Anakin closer to becoming Dark Side. Yes. Good. That's fine. Because imagine, like, so Anakin, like, the Jedi are closing ranks, and Anakin is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, Rex is my second.

Like, there is no way that Rex did anything wrong. Like, like, and it further drives a wedge between him and the council, where he's like, oh, no, y'all are a clique. Y'all are a ruling click that, like, the rest of us are out there fighting your fucking war and anytime one of you fucks up you close ranks and don't let any criticism like penetrate and like it further and

then and then palpatine being like you know I have had misgivings about the Jedi have been operating without chance like chancellor oversight yeah I'm kind of I think because like the other ball that's dropped here, which I was like, when the Rex thing happened, I was like, oh my God, please somebody talk about this. Of course, no one did. But like the behavior that we saw from Rex being like, like doing like interference on the, the report to drill thing was what Placoon just did for Asoka. And like when they go to the room and Rex is like, I give them the orders to do that. And if I was like, no, it was my idea. And, you know, whatever. Like that we're, we're seeing the same like power structure.

play out between these characters and like when is I always want I'm we did this last time with Rex where he found that family and I want so much more for Rex but like what is Rex going to fucking talk to Asoka like when is the point at which the two of them are going to be like so we're going to talk about Anakin and the Jedi Council right like when is the where's the payoff on that's going to be I know that we get a lot more Rex over the course of this show I don't know I I don't, Rex is a, like, I, Austin, don't know where Rex turns up long term. It's a mystery to me. I don't know where he sits in Order 66.

That might already be in the movies to where, like, does he pull the trigger on somebody? I don't know. Because he's in a unique position. No, we only see Cody, right? Yeah, we see Cody and Rex, like, talk to each other at some point. But Rex is on the side of someone who's not getting Order 66, which puts him in a unique position. Right, right. Right? All the other, like, second commands to the Jedi have to turn on their Jedi, but

Anakin isn't turned on by the Stormtroot or by the clones. He leads clones. This is the 501st. This is them. And so, Rex is in a unique position here. So I really hope that what we're seeing is, what we'd always hoped, a very slow burn for Rex becoming class conscious and becoming radicalized. I want it. I want it. So fucking bad. He should be in rebels. Like, I hope he's in rebels. Like, he probably is. I'd assume so. I think he's in Bad Batch, but I don't know what the, I don't know, I don't know, I don't

know where in Bad Batch he is. Like, yeah, I don't, he could be a villain in Bad Batch. That would be fun. It would be fun if he was a bad guy in Bad Batch, but it's very easy to imagine him being the Bad Batch, like, commanding officer instead or something, you know. And I don't even really understand Bad Batch yet. Like, I don't, I have, like, I haven't conceptually in my mind that they're goodies, but I don't know what that means.

I have the thumbnail on Disney Plus in my head, and that's about it. That's about it. Exactly. Exactly. We'll get there. So here's one thing that I will offer in defense of Krell here as he takes these L's, but I do like that he's a dark Jedi who's not a Siff, which I kind of do. He's not crossed that boundary.

He is a, and this is the thing, Jedi are more political than they let on. And he has made a political calculation about which way the galaxy is headed. And as he puts it, you know, I'm not naive enough to still be a Jedi. Whatever he is, he's not Sith and he's not Jedi. He is something else. But like it does kind of, it puts, it sort of reminds us, it sets up this notion, which is something I kind of always am hoping Star Wars will do a bit more, which is that like a lot of force powers are kind of morally neutral when you come down to it.

Like, there's nothing inherently like virtuous about what these guys do or what they can do or heroic. It's just they've got powers and then people don't. And it's all like administered through this like religious order. But like push comes a shove. It can exist independent of that order. And he is happy to still like have nothing but what we call like light side powers. And he can still. He's never lightning anybody.

He's never. Right. And yet he still is like utterly malignant. I like that that is like kind of left open. I also, again, like, I do like the notion that he is able to do this for who knows how long and the Jedi don't pick up on it because, again, I wish there were that trial episode,

I wish that it was addressed, the fact that, like, this guy posted such outrageous casualty figures that, like, it should have raised alarms and the Jedi didn't act on it. But it does kind of work for me that, like, he has been able to, undermine the war effort, you know, for who knows how long, just by being, like, unusually bloody-minded and a bit less effective than all the other Jedi, and they've had no further questions.

And, like, if there's anything more palpating, by the way, than not looping this guy in on the plan, but just, again, putting bets down on new numbers as they appear next to your giant galactic roulette table, just being like, wow, I'm not sure what Krell's deal is. but I do feel like putting him in command of the Embara operation could really do some things and just like letting that ride it all kind of works for me

that they don't get him to a point where he has been recruited by the separatists that he's been a double agent this entire time where he stands and all this is left just ambiguous enough to implicitly even though the show doesn't call it out point a finger back more at the Jedi than at the separatists

that like he did all of this one of the really telling the separatists that he was crossing sides. I think that that's true, but I don't, but I think that the vast majority of readers or viewers of this would just leave thinking, this is one bad Jedi. And I think that, like, the show could just do a little bit more. I mean, this is why we want to try a little episode. This is why we want to know, what do we want to say when he learns about this? What's the response?

How quick are they to say no, not Krell versus, oh, that adds up. You know what I mean? I just give us what the response looks like. Not clone killer Krell. exactly right um so you know it's it's the same thing we just said this on a q and a episode someone was talking about how duku throws fights ducu is specifically someone wrote it to basically why does ducu take somebody else the answer is because ducu isn't trying to win win and it's like it on screen you have to put it on screen for me to to you know to really feel that perspective

i think that you're right that that is implicit in all of this but i'd like to see it explicit sometimes I'd like to see, and maybe we'll get there as we get deeper into the war and we start getting other characters. Maybe as Rex continues to develop this perspective and Fives continues to be outside of the lines. Like, I can imagine a world where Fives doesn't even stay a soldier by the end of this show. You know what I mean?

Fives could be off found in the fucking rebellion. Like at this point, Fives came up. I'm going to tell you, yesterday's price is not today's price. Call that nigger tens from now on. He doubled in value. Asked me if I knew who Fives was a week ago. No, absolutely not.

But Fives, I will ride or die for Fives now. Like, Fives is the goat. It is amazing how well the Rookies episode has paid off, right? Yes. From Rookies, like the development of Fives, I miss Echo. I am so mad that, like, this does just make me mad about how they did Echo still. But this is justice for the crew in giving Fives four episodes. to just like be your dude is it's good that's investment i appreciate it yeah i want more of him um i have

one last thing here for you rob because i know rob you're on uh helmet watch 2022 all the time you're like what's up with the helmets so we got two more gimmick helmets in this episode besides the twilight one the one the waxers with the little twilight girl on it we have this one uh from sergeant appo Apo, whose name is, of course, based on Apa, the flying bison, whatever, what is that thing called? What is it? Skybison, air bison, whatever it is, from last air bison. And this helmet just straight up has the last airbender arrow on it. The second one is five's helmet, which I didn't put together, and I don't think I'm happy with, which is in rookies, his crew gets eaten by this thing called a Rishi eel.

And so he just rocks the Rishi Eel on his helmet, which I feel like is the opposite of the, like, put your crew up there, put something. Okay, but that is not coping. No, because, like, no, because Fives' characterization is wild, then, because it's like, he's not only the clone who's like has an identity, but is also, like, tied to his number and a weird way. True, true, true, because he's five, five, five, five. Yeah, like, shout out to Fives, but also, are you okay, Fives? and like this helmet is really like a shout out to your loyalty those guys but like also are you okay like we have to do a check in five yeah yeah five homie check in immediately don't get tattoos of your ops and then finally um this is we get a new helmet here that bridges the previous old rex

helmet with the eventual episode three helmet it still has like the antenna thing that the that they original episode two Helmet has, but it's gained the little vent things underneath the nose. It's started to pick up the different, or underneath the mouth. It has like the different angled thing that, you know, it's getting some of those things. So we're getting a helmet updates in that 25 minute conversation as they watched the episode I talked about. Everybody gives Filoni shit for the note that is Commander Wolf gets the most helmet changes in all of Clone Wars because he's Faloni's favorite. And so that means he gets all of them.

So that's more reason for us to watch that 25-minute thing together. I really want that. We should do some time in the next month or so. We still have to do Duku Lost also, which is still good. Oh, I think I was looking at the season episode, and I'm really looking forward to actually doing that post-season four, because the shoe was going to drop on some of the Venturous Duku stuff that I think it's going to be a good time for us to read. I see.

Okay. Yeah. Based on these episode descriptions on Disney Plus. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. I see them. Yeah.

okay sure so you think but you think after those versus before right it's gonna be like our season four tap off of like that's fine now we're gonna read about too too i think okay okay i'm good with that i'm nearly done i've been like listening and i'll probably re-listen to it because it's been two months since i listened to it now yeah but it's fine i do listen it's good sorry i want to say that like if if because I if the structure of Clone Wars is changing to these four episode arcs and like

this is the first example that we see of that like let's fucking go Clone Wars yeah I'm ready you found your footing let's fucking do it let's we've reached so many turns with the show where we've been like you know they're really bringing it and then it's like let's check in

on Mancala hey I wonder what them wacky Gungans are up to huh? Like I'm like Like, I'm, like, fully prepared. Next week's episodes are about Zagarian slavers. Club Wars, taking on slavery. Now, I don't think the slavery stuff is going to be good. I think it's going to be bad.

However, if I remember right, there is a, I keep saying this. There's a cat girl queen, a cat woman queen. You know what's going to be great that never happens. And everyone is just like, we just know that Austin, where no cat girl queen exists, Austin's imagination will dream one off. No, her name is queen. No, this is just the carrot in front of the stick, getting us to finish this. That's exactly it.

I don't remember what her name is. She's a queen of some sort, I want to say. She's queenie, she's queenie cat. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I remember her being extremely flirty with either Anakin or Obi-Wan, and I can't remember who. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just wrong about that.

but I'm pretty sure I'm right. Last four or two years from now, we got to do the Obi-Wan series. So I'm pretty sure that Cat Girl Queen is like a major character. It's like, awesome. We watched that last month. The second season just ended. There's no Cat Girl.

They're like, mm-hmm. No, okay, she's real, and her name is Mirage Sintel, which is a great name. So hopefully it's good. Wait, you're potentially a losery cat girl's name Marage. Awesome. I think you're subconscious as being a little, on the nose. It's real. It's giving my

girlfriend from Canada, though. I know. It is. It is. It is. But she's not from Canada. She's from Zygaria. The planet of cat slavers. Oh, my God. Man, finally, finally the Kilrathy have entered

the chat. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So we'll be tackling the Zagarian arc. It's three episodes. We're tackling it on the next episode of a more civilized age. We don't have a Patreon before that goes up, right?

That's... I don't think so. We just didn't see it. The beginning of the month, yeah. Yeah, the next Patreon episode will be on this and then the Sigurian. Damn. I hope that arc's good. Yeah, that'll be a hitter.

It's tough because we have these three episodes, and then we have one standalone, and I'm not sure which direction we want to put that on. What's after that? Another four episode arc, and then the final four episode arc. Dang. I know. Clone Horse is like... So we might end up doing that fourth on this next one?

I feel like put it at the front of whatever the next arc is because it's easier to dispense with a one-off. It is easier to attack a one-off thing into an arc. But then we're doing a five-episode episode? Well, hopefully the standalone is extremely mid. And we're just like, let's acknowledge it. Right. It happened.

You hit it with the top three and then move up. Oh, no, we're not going to be Because I just read the description for it Okay And it's a, it's a Okay, it might be mid It's gonna be mid But I will say it includes a character

From a previous arc So that's gonna throw us all off For now Let's just plan on doing this Igaria arc next And not worry about a friend in need All right, so that means Next time we're going to be doing kidnapped slaves of the

Republic and escape from Cadavo as our three episodes and then yes toward the end of this month we will be doing the Patreon Q&A on the Ambarra arc

and the Zagarian arc if you'd like to hear that or just want to support the show you can do so at patreon.com slash civilized until then please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice

but you know especially Apple we love Apple I'm just bonkers for Apple reviews I love them I crave them I love Apple reviews Apple reviews like Crowell loves dead clones so let's throw them in there you don't even have an Apple phone anymore

no but it does but those are the reviews you value I mean I like all reviews they're all good when they're all good and nice that's right Um, Kral said booby. Did Krauze say booby?

Peace. I don't know. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. I don't know. Oh!