A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 48: "Narkina 5" (Andor 08)

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

If you made fun of us for going long on a previous Andor episode, well the joke is on you, because you should've waited for this week. In what can only be described as (minute-for-minute and pound-for-pound) our MOST five star runtime episode yet, we delve into all manner of bleak material. There's prison labor. There's a bitter-yet-functional marriage. There's a snare slowly tightening around a rebellion so nascent that even two of its most important leaders can't come to terms about working together. And there's a little terrible man who is, one bad day at a time, learning that the world doesn't work in the the facile, cartoonish way he dreamt it did. NEXT TIME: Andor Episode 09 Show Notes Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Austin Walker Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)  

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Ali Akpura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. Right now we are continuing with our weekly coverage of Andor before we resume our analysis of the Clone Wars, supported as always by our listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. Hey, gang, I am hard-pressed to name the bleakest thing I saw in Narkina 5, and I'm just curious, what was your biggest gut punch? What was the biggest gut punch? I, there's a lot, there's, I, okay, here it is, it's actually,

and this is like a small thing, because it's not a, it's not a, there's so many real material things that are brutal about this episode and what we learn about the world, but Andor is so lost. He's so alienated. He's so confused. He's quiet. He doesn't even feel like he can talk his way into or out of anything. He's not running a game.

He's not running a scam. He has no angle. This is all new to him. And it's hard to see this character who has always been, he's not like a brilliant thief. Do you know what I mean? Like this is not Lupin the third. You know what I mean? He's not like a wise cracking, you know, anti-hero like.

He's incredibly observant. and competent at being looking like he can find the way out or through he always looks like he is he's found the exit he has his eyes on the door right and there ain't no door and he it shows on his face and in these scenes he seems awkward and confused

and I fear for my boy I do I do too I mean we know he gets out actually because of one but he could be there for six years thank God like we You don't have the fear of and or dying. It was before that, but.

Yeah, we just have the calm certainty. Right. The, I think for me, I will just say this. When Brasso and Bix are talking about Marva privately. Oh. What you, and the discussion about she's an elderly relative, but technically she's not a relative, what are we supposed to do here? It's real shit.

And the bit that, like, her fixation on the rebellion is just reading as an old person's, like, not necessarily delusion, but a completely, like, false hope for what's going to happen, and nobody can break that to her. Like, there is no rebellion on Ferrex, as far as anyone knows. But just that whole sequence of, we are both doing her best to try to take care of her. She is not our job to take care of, but somebody has to. to do something. So hard. That was a really, really hard one. We need two more.

One of the two other most harrowing, terrible. Allie, you messaged me last night and you said. Yeah, I don't have a single one because I famously message you, this episode made my tummy hurt. Like, I realized, like, it had to be, it had to be at the center in Valley. scene that I realized that I was tense the entire time that I was watching this like I was lurched over my shoulders were all tight like I was wounded by this episode of Andor that scene is rough because it's like oh she's right she's right to be cold and distant and to focus on the struggle first brutal but sometimes you need a little reassurance like a little a little a little handhold or a little hand there is a little handhold yeah for what it's worth I'm saying the that that scene was like a moment of brevity in this episode. That was

like our relief moment to have to have some like fraught lesbianism which is like oh okay and then like come from up here. Natalie? Most harrowing changes it to me. One of the biggest stressful most

darkest. I was a good deputy inspector I was a good deputy inspector. Our boy, our little boy our pathetic tiny little man pro are so small man the fascists don't care how many how many you know uh uh boy scout badges you have for being a little baby fash they don't care the fact that he fully commits to looking like he's about to burst into tears in every scene every single moment of every single scene my eyes begin to hurt because i can feel like the pressure of like those tears

is building up behind them that he just lives with that's just his life you've done five bad things I've done six bad things and you should and you should be proud of me for doing those like I want your I want you so badly to tell me you're because he's he doesn't have his mom's horrible he doesn't have a father so he brings his projects to the empire and like it is it's like a little mug with a red string caseboard on it that he made in class and it's like, see, I connected

all the pieces and or is the key and everyone's like shatter it on the ground. We don't care. This is a fucking episode. Uh-huh. Sorry, go ahead, Natalie. It's, it's, it, I do have to say my number two place would be

one forgets to savor the familiar of Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm increasingly convinced we get into this. I'm increasingly convinced the Austin Heatherite read on what this

the engine driving that relationship. But that's all for our breakdown. Let's hit the broad overview. In this episode, Andor is being sent from Namos to the prison

factories of Narkina 5. But while that is happening, Cyril Karn is brought before Dead Ramiro as she begins her investigation of Andor and what happened on Ferricks. As she explains to her ISB superiors, she is convinced that the man on Ferricks who helped Andor escape is a key figure in the nascent rebellion she is tracking. Cyril mistakenly thinks that Miro might rescue him from his dead-end job, but he is abandoned as soon as he gives her what little info he possesses and warned against continuing to play cop. Miro sets up a massive surveillance net on pharynx to see if anyone connected to Andor does anything unusual. That net quickly catches Bix, but the Imperials are not the only ones keeping tabs. Sinta and Vell had also been monitoring Marva and Bix. And Sinta stayed behind on the planet to see if anything connected to Andor turns up so that presumably they can find and kill him.

Meanwhile, Luton is pushed by Clea to seal off his ties to Ferrix and Andor, and instead, turns his attention to trying to persuade Saw Guerrera to use his fully armed and operational paramilitary organization to collaborate with other members of Luthan's Loose Web of Alliances. Meanwhile, his own sponsor,

Manmavamah is continuing to work with Toll to explain her... Is that I get the name? Right. I always forget if it's... It's T-Colma. T-A-C-L-A-L-Y. Yeah, T-A-Y. It's going to stick one of these days.

Colma, like, uh, Colma beer. It's not anything. That's not anything. but she's continued to work with that guy to establish their money laundering operation as she and Perrin come close to speaking openly about the state of their marriage. Finally, on Narcina 5,

we see that amidst the despair of the prison and there is a lot of it in this episode, by the end, Andor seems to have settled into some kind of life in a forced labor company trying to help his squads to head of the routine torture that we see the empire using to spur its prisoners to work harder and faster.

this episode. So, where do we start in our... I have a place to start that's not even in the episode yet. Okay. The music. The intro music to this episode. Somebody pointed out, I think, last week I saw in her mention somewhere, that the music, I had tweeted, like, the fact that Andor's intro sequence is so low, key is honestly such a flex of the show to just be like listen it's and or and i hadn't really

thought about more more about it than that um but somebody pointed out that actually the music changes from episode to episode uh it's the same you know melody but the the treatment of it kind of changes a bit um so i went back and i listened to the music of announcement the last episode and it had this un like this unmistakable swelling feeling like the swelling of hope this like ooh we're like we're kind of building and like bubbling up and it's and it felt very like warm and like this big swell um and then that And then I listened to, on my second rewatch, I listened back to the intro music for this episode and say melody, but it felt like almost like this subverted version of like this like

anti version. It felt really unsure of itself. It feels it has, it's a lot more scinty, almost like somewhat distorted of the previous week. And I just thought that was such a neat detail. tale to set up this episode coming from, we did it, we robbed the garrison, you know, here's the aftermath of that, that's sort of immediate aftermath of that, everyone's initial reactions. And then here's the reality of it. Here's the reality of living in that world. Right.

Well, we also switched genre modes, right? We were in, you know, crime and military sci-fi, and we have shifted into dystopic, you know, sci-fi standards, right? This is, we're in cyberpunk mode now. We're in, you know, Blade Runner 1984, T-HX 1138, which we'll come back to, I'm sure, at some point. But we're in that mode now. We're in the mode of synths. We're in the mode of that sort of rhythmic. You're caught up in the rhythm. The rhythm is chasing. The rhythm is a dancer, but in this case, rhythm is a killer. And it is pushing you to do a little bit better, to get better results, to hue closer to what the kind of, what management wants, et cetera. And I think that was like, it's such a big shift in terms of how the show feels to come to that, to have that score change.

I would say with that the pacing of this episode also felt really fast. whereas I think we've gotten sort of accustomed to these long silences long pauses, long sort of slow scenes where the dialogue and editing

the amount of time we're spending kind of in each of these little vignettes is very quick. It's short like the dialogue is shorter people are more curt with each other like we're in a more desperate moment like things are

time is of the essence from all from all perspectives do we know we know this is a different creative team at the script writing direction level do we know if these arcs are also being edited by a different person good question um i'm really curious i have no idea and we might take a second to look up but yeah uh while we looked that up i will just say one thing that the departure from Namos is just, again, it's so disorienting. It's, you know, what funny is Niamos, like, looking back at it closer, actually, like, even though it, like, has sort of the Space Miami vibe, it also has that, like, Fallen and Disrepair British Seaside Resort Town.

Right? Yeah, it's like, yeah, like, Brightner or Blackpool or something like that. Or also, like, a disused, like, Soviet resort. Which all started, like, fall into decay at some point. Or so did Catskill resorts. But, like, it all has that vibe of, like, it, like, you go to that, that scene on the beach at the end of the last episode, it occurred to me that, you know, the jaunty music aside, ever on that beach, the vibe is Dunkirk, really. It is, it's like everyone just sitting there waiting. There's not even really a beach at parts of the beach, right?

It's a seawall. It's a seawall. Exactly. It's like a lot of people like turning, you know, what would best be described as civil infrastructure into a place to relax because that's all they got. Yeah. And like that sort of is fully revealed here where like it's striking how much the almost every bit of it kind of looks like this horrible landing pad where he is being divvied up from the other prisoners and sort of sent off. you know other planets are named Balsavas

little shouts out to places that mean something in the you know old expanded you A lot of old universe stuff in this episode yeah but it also seemed familiar to Cassian like the in a way that's a good point

when Cassian asks you know where or when Cassian finds out where he's going Narcina 5 he looks he's very confused he's like what's not it's something he hasn't heard of before and he and scheme both had this knowledge of all all these facilities. That's great. This is why he's so confused. This is what I mean when I say

that was the most striking thing and the most terrifying thing for me is he knows what it's like on those other facilities. He knows what's up with Del Sava's. He knows how to move in those spaces. But this place is different. Exactly. That was a big, big note I had was that this. You can feel that this isn't the first time he's been arrested. Like he has somewhat of a, he falls into the rhythm of this up until the point where Narcina 5 is mentioned. And then from then on everything is different this time like this time around everything is unfamiliar um so i think that that continues to come up as he sort of each detail of sort of what his life is going to be like for the next two thousand six hundred whatever days uh is is is what that

reality will be um scary and uh And, uh, and, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to move on to the serial scene next. Yeah. And, and then we move. Are we still going to break things up by, uh, arc or do we want to go linear? I think so I just wanted to cover, I just wanted it in the animals, but I want to stay with Cyril and, uh, Dedra for here, um, stopping short of everything happens on Farron. Gotcha.

Cool. Uh, but yeah, like, I think, you know, when the next thing we do see, of course, is, is Cyril kind of hoping for a form of parole. as two Imperial Guards just like stride down the long row of they're not cubes, they're more hexes that they're all sitting in with their little terminal pods that they work in.

Hexicles. What? Hexicles. Hexicles. I love it. Hexicles. Thank you. But there is a mix of like

kind of hope that something's going to change for them that like different means like different means different that like maybe it's not going to be a day like all the others. he's been sort of expecting something like this. But also, he is keenly aware. He's got that, I have been a bad boy vibe. He has been caught and he is being reprimanded.

And so there's that little mix of fear too. It's like nobody's coming here with a ribbon to be like, hey, buddy, good job on like not giving up and like sticking to, good stick to it in this, son. You're really trying to correct this Andor case. Nobody fucking wants him looking at the Andor case. And Mero, yeah. He's so, it's a mix because he's making all these submissions, and it's almost like their calls for attention.

But in the same, so he never knows if the person that's approaching him is going to reprimand him or be this fantasy version of a superior that he has that is going to be like, I saw what you were doing, and I want to applaud you for that. Like, I, I see, I see exactly what you're, what you're doing and, and we need people. He wants what, what happened to Miro. He wants, you know what, we need people going above and beyond. We need people like, uh, breaking, sort of bending the rules to, to get what they want. We need motivated officers like you.

Um, he grew up on Clone Wars cartoons. He grew up on Commander Cody being like, that's the right thing to do, soldier, you know? Loyalty to the Republic, not to da-da-da-da-da. God, you know he heard about the Pongrel stuff and was like, that's how the Jedi can't be trusted. You've got to trust your brothers in arms. One other thing, too, since his mother made such a point of his costume, so now he's wearing a really high, like really high collar.

It's basically a turtleneck. But also, this is the worst suit I've ever seen. this is like the fact that the little skinny tie comes out of a little mouth on his dress shirt. I think this is the official uniform. I think everyone there is wearing that uniform. It's true.

It's so funny. Send me the Narcina 5. I won't wear it. Rob, Zach, the arrested for sectoral rebellion refuses to adhere to imperial standards of fashion. His boss

has the same sort of tie, in fact. Like, like you said, it's like a little slot on his, on his dress shirt. I don't like it. I don't like it. Under the collar. The collar is above it. Unbelievable. I love it.

It's so bad. It's really bad. Clothing is super important in this episode. It's worth saying, right? The cut from, so you see Cyril wearing that tie. And it's, it's, you know, the composition of the shot where you first see Cyril, like, truly. in that pod, it is impossible not to make the see the tie.

He's in the center of the frame. The tie is just above his solar plexus. It's right there. And then the next shot, the next scene is take off your shoes. Come on, bare feet. In the transport, the prison transport, which ends up being

100% about vulnerability and control and violence. And similarly, the fashion that ends up that we end up seeing in the prison, the, you know, all the uniforms, both from what the prisoners are wearing and what the prison guards are wearing. And then, and then, you know, even getting to return back to pharix and seeing the arrival of the stormtroopers, once again, seeing some of the shades of the oranges and whites that we know will eventually define the rebellion

long term. Like all of, I really hope costuming gets a nod when Emmy season comes around because there's a lot of storytelling happening with it. I didn't even mention Saul's outfit. I didn't even mention the, again, the dinner party scenes which like consistently just have had stellar world building and characterization through the costuming.

It's great. So impressive. Anyway, Cyril's about to get yelled at. Cyril's about to get bullied. And the fact that he's been, like the other thing is annoying everybody,

is that, again, he works in basically the weights and measures bureau. And so he's been trying to look up Andor stuff by tagging it as related to inquiries about fuel purity, fuel engineering. There's a missing engineer named Cassie and Andor. I really got to just keep everything out of Cassie and Andor. He's definitely an edge. Oh, he's a, sorry, I got a follow up. He's an engineer. He's a mechanic and he hasn't checked in for his afternoon check-in.

Can you give me info on? the mechanic Cassian Andor. It's like a child's understanding of how this would work. I am obsessed with him in the scene because, like, the way that he speaks, it seems like he thinks that he's in a different show. Like, he thinks that he's the protagonist of Cyril Card. And his little outburst is going to move minds, and he's doing the right thing.

And it's just pathetic every single time. I wrote down here, what does it say? Serra's little outburst is like glee to me. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe just because he's a dweeb. That's such a good way of framing it because you really do think that he does feel like he's the protagonist.

Like he's the one who's going to get the redemption. He's the one who's going to get his name cleared. He, you know, is going to prove himself and people will thank him and admire him for what he's done. and he is just the he's so unimportant he's so not crucial

to anything and and that's that was one of one of the bleakest bleak moment alert of this episode is just how I was like of course he has to be valuable somehow like he's got to be useful

and Deidre just being like so first she gives him the report we should say she gives him the report from ferrics because she asks him, you know, is there anything in this report that I need to know that, that, you know, isn't here? And he's like, well, I don't know what's in the report. She's like, what do you mean you don't know what's in the report? You signed it.

I never got to read it. They didn't let me read it. I just signed it. And it's like, damn, they really didn't want you fucking this up anymore. Anymore. Another bleak moment alert is. is that immediately after he reads it, he's still wrong about shit.

He says, there's so much stuff missing here, the total lack of imperial authority, the fact that Andor obviously had organized accomplices. No, he didn't. It's just a town who fucks with each other. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And then, and, and, and, and, and Dajor presses him as like, okay, what, what else can you tell me then? And he's like, uh, about, about Axis. Axis who we will. we will get another scene is the code name that Dedra has assigned for Luton because he is the actus on which the rebellion seems to turn he is the supplier of which also I mean I'll just say this bit now we have a we have a better understanding what her understanding of the situation is and it's true yeah he is he has been getting stuff stolen from the empire and putting it

into the hands of localized rebel movements they are not a unified movement but they do have a single supplier he is or they they all share this one supplier maybe they've other suppliers too but he is supplying a number of local organized groups at the point of the show he is access that part of it is correct um and so yeah what natalie you're going to say what's the one thing he almost says he has as to offer he talks about the color of his cloak he's like I believe it was like a gray And he can't even commit to one color It was something

And she's like are you fucking kidding me Like this is all you have Dark boots he adds Yeah dark boots He's like well I can recognize his voice I'm surely that makes me useful I can recognize his voice Here's my prediction

Oh this is the prediction Mm hmm I was talking with a friend last night I was talking with a friend the show, Jake Rodkin, uh, and Jake and I were talking about how in a, in a different show, this might, in a different show, this might become, you know, okay, Karn has to, Karn is one who cracks the case and gets brought in and becomes the, the great, we, the version that we kind of thought it was going on to. And then we kind of were like, right, the version that he thinks it is.

And then we both kind of stumbled into this like, what if it's more like deadwood? What if it's more like he's going to be walking around Corrassant and he hears the voice and he recognizes Luthan and he kills him in the street. He's like, you're the guy and he kills him in the street. Luthen kills him?

No. Karn kills Luton in the street and because he's just like driven again you have to be in this other mode. You can be thinking about I think it's a more pathetic version of that. No right. And then what happens? He just gets shot. He just gets killed by a

cop for having killed somebody and all over the news they say oh a another rebel sympathizer someone who had had clearly been working on the inside and ruined this situation on affairs his mother turns on the news and they're talking about cyril karn rebel collaborator oh my god that's really good messy it's messy and he dies in a gutter or maybe they don't kill him but they send him to jail for for having assaulted a a high you know someone who was in the upper echelons. You can't just mess with a patrician if you're Cyril. Like, yeah.

Right, right, right, exactly. So I'm ready for it to go as bad. Like, I couldn't, before this conversation, before he introduced it, he would recognize Luton's voice, I couldn't imagine the version of the story that ends with him not being elevated to the higher tier. And now I can finally imagine that version of it. I can imagine the final episode of the season, he gets locked in jail or he gets shot by, by a stormtrooper.

Mm-hmm. I think you're right. Because the end of the scene is not that he gets brought in. We should be very clear about. No, no. Not at all. Yeah, she leaves him on ice to read the report. And that's actually one thing.

So she realizes he never read the report. And I do wonder, in her ongoing war with Blevon, is the fact that he forced Cyril to sign a false report that he never read, is Blevyn now backfooted in all this? Because, like, I feel like the internal, like, court politics. of the ISB never stopped they never sleep their first enemy is each other their next enemy is the enemies of the empire

I think it would have helped if he had given her any active intel yeah because then she could say we would have had this intel three weeks ago but Blevin didn't actually do a good job interrogating the debriefing this guy but Blevin sized it up

and saw that like this guy this guy and his whole crew are dipsets but this is the funniest thing right is like in a different world Deadra and Blavon can be like that Cyril Caird guy, what a weirdo and totally agree. And one of the note is

again like just almost feeling bad for Cyril the degree of contempt that Dedra's lackeys also show for him because these are the people that he could at best aspire to be. Right? To be the guy who's like, I'll stay late and help you work on these treason reports.

He would kill to like have a job like that. And everyone looks at him with that like revulsion that like is reserved for people that like uh you know they're for the grace of god but all these imperials are like but here's the difference that i can spot because people narrative narrativize about like why is this guy over there and why am i you know here and it's because like even they look at him and they're like but this guy's a little worm this guy's pathetic in some way and incompetent and uh just being around him uh gives these Imperial lackeys bad vibes

because what's worse than being a little Imperial lackey is being a wannabe lackey and that is bleak and he gives the big final pitch right she starts to leave he stands up from his chair in the interrogation room and spins around like again

like you know like a character in Michael Clayton in a Tony Gilroy style institutional drama this is his big scene yeah exactly he's ready to turn it all around and he says I was very good I saw the double murder and found the killer in two days. It was overly ambitious, yes, but time was slipping away,

and the opportunity was real. Service to the empire. You just said it. Can one ever be too aggressive in preserving order? I didn't deserve what happened. I wish you luck. I'm running late. It's clear you need and or in order to find his partner.

It's also clear that whatever this is is more important. than the death of two corporate security guards. It could be a valuable asset going forward. I use the alarm one more time, and it won't be me you're speaking to. Forget this happened. We don't see him again this episode. You would think that in the response

to can one ever be too aggressive in preserving order, that you would turn around and be like, huh, maybe this. guy does have a little right thing about him. She does believe that. That's the other thing is the wrong pitch because in the last episode we saw her being like we're being too aggressive in defense of the empire. He's so, I just, his face as the, as he's left behind, he does, there's no place for this

in his worldview because he has seen someone who takes it as seriously as he does, dismiss him. This is not his old boss in Prymore or whatever the name of the place was. Yeah, this is not someone that. doesn't have that this this person is the epitome of someone who has the empire's best interests in mind and

number one priority. This is goals goals. I said it before her whole arc is what he wishes his whole arc would be. Yeah, absolutely. Meanwhile, like she is now she's got the juice at the ISB. So Yularen is still, so she's

doing that briefing. thing. And Eularen, as we sort of got an inkling over the last episode, like, Ularin isn't like part of guess at all. He's very like, show me an enemy, we can smash, let's smash them. And so he is sort of hand-wringing a bit about the fact that she's requested for Farrex, basically a full, like, counterintelligence suite of tools. She, you know, he's noting that she has, she has asked for a full, like, a, uh, Planetary Coms Array, a full garrison tech setup, a series 9 spectrum surveillance, local agent funding, a code droid. A code droid.

Very expensive code droid. Yeah, it's like, but all the shit is going to be there basically to do like signals intelligence on ferrics. And even the fact there's like local agent funding, she's going to start building an informant network. They're not leaving any time soon as long as there's a chance that like Andor is in the wind and will eventually. And the funny thing is, again, she's right. She missed him by a week. She missed him by, like, a matter of days. You know, when he came back, Blevyn missed him,

because Blevyn didn't care enough to look. And if Dedra had been there, and or would already be in jail. And we do see, like, part of gas... Different jail. That's true. He isn't in jail, but a different jail. For the real thing.

For the actual thing they wanted for. Not for being a tourist in the wrong place, yeah. So, you know, and we see Partigaz actually now investing his own capital behind Mirren. He sees Yularen isn't sure about this. He tips it and he says, you know, what little we know about this, this character acts us, what little we know about the trouble he's caused is troubling. The fact that like Partigaz now has become a believer in the fact that like a real tsunami is approaching somehow. and they've got limited time to get out of it.

There's a very interesting dynamic here between Yalarin, Partagaz, and Miro. Yularen is like, is almost like not checked out but not, but also not revealing anything really about how he feels towards Miro's findings. Not like the way, Partigast was always editorializing on everything, anybody in the room. said in terms of like what's the underscoring lesson of what you just said. How can I correct

you in your general viewpoint? Even if you're wrong, he's engaging with you. Yes, Yelaren is extremely just the facts like Rob said. And I think it's really fun given that we know he does have a Navy background, right? Like he was a captain or an admiral in the Clone Wars. That's a fun difference between the two of them. Well, also, sorry, I was just to that point, I think one thing that is also in the background there is like all this is so newly established that eularns loyal and he ends up handed the ISB but like we watched the whole cartoon he never did intelligence shit like ever like but he's helming this thing like it's a like it's a military operation i wonder if he i wonder if stuff like just working with anakin and obiwan is as close as the navy the galactic navy got

to doing intelligence shit doing stuff like running ops on the cloaked uh ship mission against Admiral Trench, stuff like, you know, I don't know if he helped move. No, I guess we know he didn't because Hondo moved them. But maybe he helped move the Stinger missile launchers from Hondo to Hondo. So Hondo can move them into Afghanistan, Anderan. And that, you know, maybe he was involved in that situation, you know. So that all counts. Yeah.

Then the moment in which Miro, you know, Yularen pushes back against Mero and is like, this is an expensive investment if you want to really hone in on this Cassian and or person. And Mero responds and is like, well, it's the fraction of the price of lost technology. and her voice wavers here a little bit and you feel her. It's also it waivers but only after she like

she snaps back yeah yeah she catches herself wake up and this is the point about this is the point in which Part of Guest comes in to back her up

and is like listen I I actually agree with her it's a very fascinating dynamic because you're not sure how much Part of Guest is backing up Miro as a show of like

also wanting to look strong and confident in front of Ularin? Like how much is Partigaz performing to Ularin now that there's like another supervisor here, another figure of authority? I think you hit it, right? Part of what could be happening here is part of gas doesn't want to get lapped, right? Partigas doesn't want like, I don't think he's in under, he's technically in under any threat. but what was the analogy that Rob has been using for Partagas this whole time is the like grads the grad school lecturer think about I don't know how into grad school stuff you all have gotten in terms of just cultural knowledge but how many papers get published that have some tenured professor's name on it and then like also three or four you know research assistants who did the work on those right this is this is what's happening to some degree I think he is like Part of Gas sees. the wave. Part of gas is going to be the wave, right? And he's not going to get left behind

because he knows that if it comes out that this was something that if it is, if it becomes real, real, and it becomes clear that he moved slow on it, Dejra is going to get into a higher position than he is, because that is how this shit goes. I think that's part of this dynamic. Is it backing someone that he thinks is, you know, has a lot of, you know, guts and a lot of talent yes absolutely and also it's self-serving at the same time he gets to claim it as a win for his crew you know right look at look at what i've produced look at the type of officer i've produced like this is i very much see it as a like backing her and her method as uh in front of you lauren as like a vote of confidence like this is the future of the isb and this is the future i'm

creating and I'm I'm investing in her and we should invest in her and you should invest in me because I'm creating it also we have so much money what are you talking about like I know the fact that he was like seems expensive I'm like bro you're literally making the death star which as we found out from the Patreon a Q&A last month if you don't listen to that then you should go to patreon.com slash civilize is worth like a quindsay Quintillian credits. Uh-huh. Was it Quintillian or was it like Quintabillion?

It was Quintabillion, yeah. It was, it was Quintillian. It was like 17 zeros, I think. It was unbelievable. Yeah. Well, Target is sending out the emails to all his officials saying, like, we got to clean up the budgets. We have this big project that's eating a lot of it.

So, you know, pull your belts where you can. I really, really, really thought that you were going to, going to go a different place with that, which was sending around the Blue No Matter Who, Pelosi email. Oh, my God. Maybe you've seen the news. There was an attack on Aldani. In order to respond to that attack, we need, can you promise to donate $7? There's a fundraiser.

The Death Star fundraising deadline is coming up. I got one of those that was just like, I'm sorry And it was like, I'm sorry we didn't make our Our budget or whatever Please give us money And I was like, I've not a part of this Don't email me Don't make me pay for your L bro

Have you all been getting texts from Martin Sheen? Wait for real? Not real real, but his name's on it I think I've been getting emails from Jane Fonda what is happening I got a voicemail from like a retired soap soap actor once it's not as close Jane Fonda

but she was campaigning for someone right we're not getting to be clear Ali and are not getting real messages from these people no no it's like here's my grace and whoever fundraiser for the DNC yeah they're just DNC fundraising messages that are like I'm it's me famous actor

and it's not really famous actor dumb motherfucker just said yeah you can use my name put it in the call center database yeah so anyway so as Miris star

is apparently rising and she's setting up this like drag net over on Farrex we do now see we see we get a taste of what life is like on Narcina 5 and here's what's interesting

I'm with you Austin that and or is confused there's no way you can there's nothing it's not there's no one he can talk to to begin talking his way out of this

it is he's ended up in the prison from face off effectively except inverted in important ways right this is like the two big ones so I have with the same note

I'm like this is face off and I was like ah it's reverse face off because of who's wearing the what the floor does and who is wearing the shoes that interact with it 100% so yeah the face face off

which we've talked about on this show before because of how we had the arc of Clone Wars that was face off where Obi-Wan goes undercover and wears somebody else's face yeah he takes his face off here in the face-off

prison the it's a it's a you know a prison in the middle of the ocean and while there everybody has to wear these heavy heavy heavy metal boots that are magnetized and they can turn on magnets on the floor at any point locking you in place here you do not get to wear shoes you are dehumanized you take those shoes off you have your feet on the cold floor and at any point we can collectively punish anybody who's on the floor that is such an important and distinct difference because in in face off individual shoes could be turned on and off and that was used effectively to target individuals here the the prison populace is is

collectivized, the punishment would be collectivized, you know, because of the way we should say, they run a current through the metal of the floor. The entire facility has this metal running through it and they run the current through it and everything from the work floors through the cells or the cell block where the prisoners live is covered in this metal. And so they'll say like, okay, in seven seconds, we're running the current. Get in your cell. where we won't be running the current, for instance. And they make a big show when they first show up. And the warden or whoever is welcoming these prisoners there make the claim.

What is the, I haven't written here somewhere. I'm sure some, if not all of you, are wondering how we risk standing before you without weapons. It's a potent question. And hopefully, one you won't need to have answered very often. but and then explains the floors being made with a special metal, which is so funny to me because the next scene with Andor is him waiting to be processed and put in his new work group,

his new prison labor camp group, surrounded by people with guns and electristics and batons. It's like instantly revealed to be like, yes, the floors are electrified, but they do carry weapons. They didn't carry weapons in this one hall, way that's air locked to the rest of the facility and behind them is just water for many reasons most of which is it's incredibly safe to not carry the weapons in that spot but it's long they don't have weapons there it's more security theater so the other thing leaped out with me there

though i do think like andor's kind of broken at the moment he's disoriented uh he's he's like everything's been sort of taken away from it it's not clear the things he knows how to do it's unclear how any of that's going to like lead him out of this but he doesn't see from the first one like the shot uh you know looking at his uh left side of his face past him is the rack of boots on the wall the reverse shot from the other side we see where they keep the stun sticks and the weapons also the guard rotation is messed up and it seems like this is routine uh we see them know there's supposed to be two guards here for the drop off why is there only one oh because uh there's there was an incident at one of the other levels and rooms uh guard the guard points out that's

not procedure he's like two people come for the delivery and what are you going to do all these things the camera's taking in the draw the show draws attention to the entire handoff process here the layout of the room where everything is and or is noting it too by the end of the scene you see his eyebrows up as he's like giving side eye to the guards they finish this little squabble over where the fuck is the relief where's the guy totally what in fact I think part of the thing that's So interesting about Arcina 5 is this is where he's at his strongest because he can start scheming. Once he's on a floor with 40 other guards, including a, sorry, 40 other prisoners, including a prisoner who is the chief guard of his unit, that's a more confusing place to be because it doesn't have the mechanisms that you can start pulling and pushing on to find your way out, you know? also his

I'm looking over at Mina and I am getting such a bad vibe from the energy she is giving her off like I am looking like there's there's nights where I'm like she's going to make a little noise and she's going to like fuck off and then there's nights where I'm like

this dog is this dog's got some real some real issues okay she's barking at MK and MK is going to take her out of the room so sorry about that but like sometimes you dog just gets a dangerous energy and you're like that's not that's not good okay sorry apologies so yeah

i i did want to note that in the uh sort of intro sequence when when cassian lands on um firkinga five uh or narquin a five not forkingna narcina five um that there's this brief moment i i think yes a lot of it is theater um for sure but when the commanding officer uses the electricity there's this like flicker of joy in his eye that is so like harrowing um bleak moment alert um of and and that's the thing that i think i don't know if that wakes and or back up like from the sort of days like he he continues to move from through the rest of this like first day basically in this very sort of very observant but also incredibly uncomfortable state where he he doesn't recognize everything is unfamiliar everything

is unrecognizable even the way that the well especially the way perhaps that the prisoners interact with each other like it seems very bizarre to him at first and I think all of this is is small observations that and or is taking in the sort of chaos of the moment before entering the floor the work floor is is really unsettling because I think there's this front like we have the the landing sequence is like this very organized place we are not going to we are going to take care of you you will be clean you will be fed and here is this you know underlying threat mechanic that we have that we can deploy on you at any time that we want anytime we want to torture you

it's like at the click of a button and then there's like the human behind it the human in behind the power and that's what's slightly disorganized it's chaotic it's tense

you get the sense that even the officers don't really trust each other or are like, get disappointed or frustrated with each other if they're not, you know, performing to their own standards and there's like maybe some competition or you just imagine that a lot of the dynamics that are in the sort of ISB room, the board room, kind of come home to these other, you know, imperial facilities and stuff.

Yeah, facilities. Which I think my favorite little thing that stands out here are the boots, which are like snowboarding boots or ski boots or something. But they do just look dripped out as fuck. They just look like high tops. They look like cyber high tops. They got the pump on the front.

Like it's... This does feel like a new facility. Like this is the new facility. New funding. And they have equipment, but they don't have enough people. Right? Like this is a classic thing with...

We're going to talk about for-profit prisons here. Right? It was like, what is happening here? This is a state prison where prisoners are building something for the state, which is, of course... Something covered in Imperial Logos. 100%. We can theorize when we get to those scenes what it is that they're building. This is a real thing.

This happens in the United States all over the place. U.S. prisoners have helped build missiles. U.S. prisoners have helped build body armor. U.S. prisoners during COVID were re-bodeling hand sanitizer from branded hand sanitizer from branded hand. sanitizer bottles into New York, uh, branded hand sanitizer bottles as a recent example of this, uh, not being paid or being paid something like two cents a day or 20 cents a day, depending on what state you're in. Um, uh, you know, this is the, this is the famous 13th amendment that says slavery is illegal except for, uh, uh, felons while they're imprisoned. Um, this is,

this is, you know, one of the biggest ongoing. I would call it a scandal, but no one cares about enough to get anything done. No one in power cares about it enough to get anything done. And it's one of many ways in which people caught up in the prison and jail systems in this country are taking advantage of, you know, monetized in many different ways, both as producers and as consumers and as consumers and their families get turned into consumers, all that shit. And dehumanized. Generally dehumanized, yes, absolutely. And on top of all that, the other half of this is not only are you exploiting prisoners. Prisons are also often have high high-tech surveillance systems

and also not enough people to for instance make good clean food for people or not enough exterminators to keep these spaces safe not enough good beds for people these are businesses that are run to cut corners even in terms of

running it as a clean safe facility where people get to humanized and so like you and all by the way is wildly expensive like it costs more to house prisoners in places like this, then it would to put them under house arrest in, like, a studio. A hundred percent. Like

frequently. A hundred percent. Let alone to actually fix the problems that lead to incarceration, et cetera. But I think that was an interesting moment of like, oh, they're understaffed. This fucking high-tech brand-new facility with

the magic electricity floor doesn't have enough guards. Well, that's why you have to imagine. That's maybe one of the reasons why they're employing prisoners as guards, essentially. You sort of note they don't go on the floor. So when he is, he comes down from the transfer room where the guards are sort of in their central Panopticon like tower, he comes down from that onto like a catwalk and

then it like a gantry that lowers down onto the factory floor. The guard doesn't come with. He is sent down there alone. and he meets the foreman of this of this room. Kino Loy, played by Andy Circus. The names. Shout the fuck out. Shots the fuckouts to Andy Circus, though, for just, when he popped up, I was like,

holy shit, okay. In full Andy Circus, just crackling with menacing energy and intensity, and gives the full breakdown of like, here's what this facility is. Here is how it works. Uh, he explains that they never come down, uh, except to like pick up, uh, like, pick up someone who's dead or like, I think, get one of their own. Um, yeah. There's two circumstances he'd list. And I can't remember what they were. It's, it's new people showing up, right? And then it's, yeah, new people showing up or are taking away. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, can I just, don't con, can I, can I continue to fight with screen rant.com? Yes. Please. Is Andy Circus actually playing Snoke in Andor? Snoke actor Andy Circus made a surprise appearance in Andrew episode 8 but is he really playing the supreme leader again is this his origin story

Jesus Christ Oh How He's not even The article of course says Probably not They probably just needed a scary Not until paragraph 5

God He just ranked out to a little bit and it was a turtle. Patrick getting out of prison. What are we talking about? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Andy Serkis is a character actor. He's a character actor. He's a creature actor. And he's a regular. Are all those people on law and order? The same person? Traveling through time. So.

SpongeBob and Patrick are the same person. Actually, they think they're a very different people. there are two sides of the same individual but he gives he gives the speech of how all this works and explains so one explains that yes it's a prison factory two the way they make beyond their quota the way they maintain high output and this is the way he puts it this room plays against all the other rooms and that's and that's what quino handles The tables in the room play against each other. Immediately and or notes the word. Bleak moment, bleak moment, play, use of play here. So haunting. Uh-huh.

Pretty bad. Pretty bad. You know, the thing that obviously came to mind for me immediately was with names like Mission Racer, Picks in Space, Dragon, Duel, and Castle Crafter, the games at Amazon have simple graphics akin to early Nintendo games like Super Mario Brothers workers say the Seattle based company declined to provide images of the games

and laborers are forbidden from bringing cameras into warehouses We are in the We are so past Gameification being the cool new thing that it doesn't even get talked about anymore, it just continues to get implemented And it just pops up at Andor as a thing

where it's like, yep, this is the obviously fucked up way I conceive of the relationships here that sort of the empire's handed to us but I will say I will also say this like Keino makes very clear at the end he's like if you take one thing we're from this conversation

this is part where he felt some sympathy for him he's like I have 249 days left to my sentence and at that point I'm like yeah I get that like you're this close to getting out and his shit just got doubled and his shit got doubled he doesn't know that yeah

yeah they find that out no they do know that don't they They find out that night, it's a rumor, but I don't think they officially, I don't think it's officially happened, but they all, I think they're, no, because it's been a month since, I think so, yeah. It's been a month since port has been implemented. So it's all, it's happened to everyone.

And that's why he says, when he introduces the tab, he's like, at least there will be no surprises, like, you know your number. Whereas everyone else thought they had one number. And within the past few weeks, that number doubled. going back to the thing here right like this is just classic gamification there's a lot of gamification happening here there's a lot of that competitive one side versus the other side thing that predates contemporary gamification in some ways i mean i i rewatched a lot of tchx 1138 to compare it to these sequences and it is mentioned even there at the beginning

of that movie that like a tchx 1138 is a is a georgex 1138 is a george Lucasfilm, it's an extension of a short film he made, or it's a remake of a short film he made that turns it into a full feature. I want to say it's distributed by, or is not distributed by, but is produced by Coppola's

studio at the time, and is a dystopian science fiction story. It's very different in many key ways. You know, THX has a much greater focus on emotional and religious and medicalized methods of control. You know, there are

are, you know, focus on pills, a focus on, there's these confessionals that people go to. There's like brainwave analysis management is like managing the emotional and psychological state of workers versus deploying other workers to other prisoners in the case of Andor to manage them. But it's also very similar in other key ways, a largely aesthetic ones, all of the whites, all of the empty spaces, the sense of managing. lives and stuff like that. A lot of that was developed in T.HX1138. Lucas made that film before he did American Graffiti and well before he did Star Wars,

I guess a few years, even further back before Star Wars. And in that, at the very beginning, one of the first things that happens is someone tells a group of workers that they're falling behind another competing group. And I was like, ah, yeah, here we go, same shit. And it obviously predates even that, going back to, you know, the birth of modern capitalism and especially Fordist and Taylorist capitalism, the move towards what's called scientific management, the careful study of every physical motion a worker makes in an attempt to eliminate any redundancy or inefficiency towards the exact, you know, identifying the exact

perfect motions and mastering what that is. And I think you saw that, you see that a lot in early critiques of capitalism in film, looking at things like Metropolis, where capitalism is rendered as a big machine that, or even in things like the Charlie Chaplin films where he's consumed by the machines he's working on, even stuff like the I Love Lucy working at the, on the chocolate, yeah, the candy, the candy assembly line, the way that like the machine breaks the person. I think something so fascinating that happens with the depiction of labor in this is, and I think this is just like really, really, really a smart, keen way of observing how labor has changed. You just throw more bodies in, and it's cheaper and more effective to let them organically

try to compete with each other than to give them a playbook that they have to hit exactly right and maximize individual output on. They will find their own efficiencies, they'll find their own speeds, and when they die, you replace them because you have a huge pull of workers. And that is the Amazon playbook, right? The Amazon playbook, I mean, does also have a lot of things around here is the best way to do X, Y, Z. But as long as you're hitting your numbers, and as long as you're not taking too many bathroom breaks, as long as you're not collaborating with your workers to leverage your power against them, what's important is you hit your quota, not to move your arm 80 degrees or

70 degrees, which is the Taylorist version of it. I don't know if you all have seen. like flex videos of of like how fast you can assemble a Amazon shipping box things like that it's a nightmare everybody might have their own little trick right when you read interviews you with people who've worked in these Amazon warehouses there is almost and this is another classic thing about working in these labor conditions a key text for me that also kind of reveals my biases as a as an academic is labor and monopoly capitalism or sorry labor and monopoly capital by Harry Braverman, which has incredible deep dives into what the process of working on the floor of a pig iron facility was, literally just moving huge

big chunks of iron from one part of a processing plant to another. And one of the things that Braverman identifies is that you often find people, one of the things that he, the reason that I came to this that was very important for me as a scholar was like Braverman identifies that gamification in the lowercase sense is a thing we all already do. We're always making games of our work. We're always counting how many things can I, how many widgets can I make in the next 30 minutes? And if you're, many workers will even, especially if they are part of a quota system, we'll say, okay, I could make 50, but if I make 50 this week, they're going to ask her 55 next week. So I'm going to make 45 so they only ask me for 50 next week

so I don't get crushed because I know next week is busy. I know I'm going to come in tired. It's my kid's birthday. So I'm going to lower my own thing by gaming the system in this way. So this sort of stuff is always happening, always already happening when it comes to people who do work. If you're doing work, you're already counting your hours. You're already counting how many things you can do. It's always happening.

What's different about the situation and what's changed in contemporary labor conditions is we've moved into systems that are that take advantage of that and try to make you feel good. with extrinsic motivators and not just the intrinsic ones but you get in this episode this great image of like it feels good to do good at a thing it does feel good to knock it out of the fucking park

it feels good to put the thing together and to get you and to not be in last place and we do get the extrinsic motivators also things like taste yeah so after after Andor's first day

first day on the floor he returns to the sleeping quarters for the first time. First he goes through this the like the moving sequence like just people moving moving moving from and this is such a

yeah this is such a wild moment so you have all of the prisoners lined up in a single file line going you know opposite like two lanes of traffic essentially and you have their prisoner supervisors walking between them and there's some chatter amongst you know

it's interesting that there is chatter amongst the prison like the prisoners are kind of talking to each other even though the prison guards are saying like you can imagine this being just completely silent like no no collaboration we're all just in this you know mode of production and then recovery we go home we sleep we do not we are do not interact with each other we do not have camaraderie we only have productivity and that's it um but there is some chatter um and And it's not immediately, like, punished. You know, the prison, prisoner guards aren't, you know, like, tasing people for talking to their neighbor. So that's all very interesting, that that's kind of permitted in this indirect way. But one of the prisoners, I can't, does anybody have the list of name prisoners? I don't remember the guy's name. I know ham and that's it.

I also only know him. I only know I am. I can't believe they named him. He looks like John Hamm. Do you think that's why? It's not Melchie, right? Because Melchie... Melchie's a different guy.

Melchie's a different guy and... Melchie's in Rogue One. Easter egg alert. Oh. Easter egg alert. Melchie's in the squad. Melchie is in Rogue One. The group Rogue One that goes to Scariff.

no she's so starting to converge they saw those easter eggs you love yeah uh-huh finally near in goes the Andor I don't know yeah I don't know this guy's name

but the material point Natalie just like close off the thought like what's he doing? He's so there so he's making signs at and and he's first of all, he's looking away. He's not looking straightforward with everyone else in the

single-file line. He's looking out the window. They're kind of in these like hallways, windowed hallways. He's looking out the window across like a giant vat of space to another hallway across the way. And he's basically doing a like a sign language and communicating with someone who's also signing back at him. And and or tracks this. And it's a really interesting, sequence because Andor sees him, sees the person he's signing to, and then you follow his eyes, he looks at all the other levels and nobody else is looking. So there's a moment where you think as we're kind of getting these peaks into, we know that there are seven levels. There's this emphasis on the number seven in terms of, there's like seven workers at seven tables, seven

levels, seven floors, seven rooms on each floor. And so you see him like his eye following to all the other levels below and above them and nobody else is looking out the window as far as I rewatch this sequence a couple of times because it was like oh shit is there like a fucking rebelled like little movement across like all the levels that people are communicating like maybe there's some sort of concerted effort no it's just these two people from what I could see so it's a mix of okay some of the rooms are able to communicate with each other and found a way of doing that but also this place is huge and there's so many people here and most of them are standing in line face forward like waiting to go back to the sleeping quarters um but it does

like with what we know like one yes is the evidence that there is a communication network that exists in this prison that is independent of the imperials uh they don't know about or don't know enough to care like to stop it uh and part of the table setting we did with like the exchange with the guards where disruption one room causes issues somewhere else, the realization that you can coordinate between rooms and between floors

and you immediately see and or like sort of come alive at this information the realization that like the isolation that seemed complete at the start of this now it is clear they haven't successfully and they're not monitoring the prisoners closely enough to ensure

that this kind of stuff like can't happen um that the guy who's doing the sign language through the window is Taga. Yeah. He's not Zol. He's not L. He's not Jambach.

He's not Jambach. Jambach is such a good name. Are you kidding me? Killed to be named something like Jambach. Also, like, I'm really curious, does a rebellion-like organization already exist within the prison? Or is it a criminal gang? Or is it just something that's emerged ad hoc among the prisoners?

We don't know, but I'm so curious what the social organization. is around the semaphore system. It felt they were like siblings or something. That's what I thought there was like a relationship between the two of them. I felt that too, that they were like either friends or had a relationship before getting in. Maybe they got sentenced together and were separated. And already have this.

So you think that might be just be off each other. Yeah. It felt like because especially as Natalie points out, it's only the two of them. feels like it's this sort of like coded language, this like relationship that they're trying to maintain and not like a business effort or like a. Yeah. They also have like a similar look in terms of complexion and hair and stuff, right? I can imagine brothers, siblings in some sort that are like they maybe the other maybe the other one's deaf and no sign language. You know what I mean? They just communicate with sign language already their whole lives and are using that

as a way to continue staying in touch. Well, at some point in this arc, I think a lot of people are in no sign language in that prison. Maybe, but it might not be. It might be as simple as we need to create one disruption. Or just, I need to tell us how many guards are over there. Yeah. Send the signal that X, Y, Z, or maybe not a signal,

but like, I need updates from across the facility so that we can then do X, Y, Z, you know? It's interesting. Also, it's just, it's nonstop, right? It's worth saying that the words that Kino tells Keef Kino and Keef Kino tells

Andor Keefe Keefe Keefe Grigo Grigo Gergo I'm going to say it here now When we learned his name was Keith Gurgo I could not stop also thinking about Grief Karga from Mandalorian And being like these are the same This is the same grief or Keith

This is the same to me But what Kino tells him is productivity is encouraged, evaluation is constant. And the difference between surveillance is constant. Evaluation is constant. We're always checking on your productivity status. We're always seeing if your numbers are good. But the stuff that they're not watching are things like, how much food do you consume? They're happy to have you consume as much food as you want.

They're happy to not have literal bars on the door, right, of the cells because the floor is electrified. It feels or like heat, superheated or whatever. And electrified to a one hit, K.O. Yeah. Uh-huh. The, there feels like there is something about like there, I could imagine they're not being cameras in every cell or pointed at every cell because there is the friendly,

the, you know, the more friendly, you know, prison thing happening here. Eat as much as you want. Here's your food tube. get used to it and you eat as much that you like it when you're happy. Your bed

will be cleaned every night. Everything's, you know. He says, the guy literally says that, yeah, bro,

I love to shower with the boys. Shower is also just, it's just a soft, a soft mist. Also though, Disney,

not going to show any asses on its channel. Show ass. It's got, like, man, life's brutal and this in this prison shower and everyone just like curded in there and blasted by the spray and it's like

okay but ever like modest little photo like a real ass prisoner prison thing is like a part of it is about bro it's 2020 it's 2022 i'm gonna say it's 2023 and my mind is 23 hang hog like let's go all the way yeah put it on disney plus 100% especially because it's all about that like The dehumanization of all these carriers. You don't have privacy. You're just hosing the animals down. That's right. They can go back out there.

Oh, yeah, quick thing, just to make it explicit, the scorekeeping. If you win, you get the food, you alluded to that, Austin. If your team is slowest, and because they were a man short until Keith joined them, the table he joins was short, they get zapped at the end of their shift. so like it is they adopt you just have to be faster than the slowest the person than one other person if you're running from the bear and the umpires the bear

so they all get zab but if you win you get taste in your food flavor yeah I gotta believe man I got to believe I actually prefer it not have flavor the food slurry I feel like I don't want that to have flavor but if it's good but if it's like delicious

vicious flavor. It's the Snapple apple. Wait, Ali, can you please talk about the Snapple apple part?

This is a thing you and I have talked about. Literally a 20, 18, 15 years now. Okay,

so Snapple Apple is repulsive to me because it doesn't taste like apple. It tastes like the sensation

of biting it into an apple and it's a liquid. And it's liquid and apples are hard. So it's like the texture gap there

is horrid. to be. You take a little sip and you're like, where's the crunch? Right, exactly. The crunch is the flavor and I don't understand how they do it. And I don't like it. So that's why I would not want. How do you think about jelly bellies?

When you eat like a popcorn jelly belly, are you like, this is wrong? No, because that's, I mean, that's even its own thing where it's like, this is butter, but sugar and it's so much like biting into an apple. If it's like a good smoothie, though, I guess I'd be like, oh, yeah, nothing like a hard day. at the widget engine manufacturing place. And now it's like, do you like a, would you like a, like, cacao and like peanut butter powder milkshake? I'd be like, yes.

Sure. Have you had soylent? I have. I had it recently. I just imagine it's suilent. It's fine. And then sometimes they get like the cacao soilant. I had the, I have to like not have.

in my life because I could be that person and I can't be that person. You know what I mean? It's my darkest moments have been when I was a soiled person. I could be, it's like, oh, I could be the person who only eats and drinks soilet and ruin my father. And this is not a, I'm not saying it's because I think it's good or like a good company or it's not. This is me saying, I have something broken inside of my brain that says, what if I didn't

have to think about eating? What if I made this efficient? I like to eat. I, you've seen me. I like to eat. I like food. Food is delicious. I like to cook.

I like to prepare a meal for myself. It's a fun thing to do. But what if I use those hours to work more? Bad, terrible thought. The prison's in my brain. We're going to make you the form in this room. This is the thing. You play against all the other rooms, Austin.

It's terrible. It's terrible. What are they building? Hey, y'all, what are they building? Toes. You think it's toes. You think it's Walker Toes. Walker Toes.

Not like A-T-A-T or A-T-Walkers. To me, it looks so much like an engine. I'm voting Death Star, and I don't know how far along we are, Death Star, but, like, there's something about the way that the, like, that they're pointed that seems like it could, like, fit together into a sphere, you know? I saw someone say, what if they're building the trench that Luke will shoot a whistlebell to? That's too, it's, this is not that show. I kind of like, my favorite thing is Typhus. fighters something about like tie fighter wing units i don't think the size is right but i can kind

of see it it's that it's that shape it's the six six star you know it yeah i could see feet though i could see feet i'm looking at them i could see feet they're just kind of cogs aren't they they're just giant cogs like sort of they have the it's i'm going through the sequence now it's yeah it's it's it's a it's like a six-sided star right Right? Or like an asterisk. But metallic and gray, it could be the interior support structure for something. I think my favorite thing would just be like, we're building something that has to do with this prison. We're building the machine that keeps the, we didn't mention this. When they fly down to the prison facility in the transport, it's not just that it's in the water.

It's like there's like an anti-mote around the structure. there's like a waterfall I don't even know how to describe what I'm looking at No it's really bizarre because there's waterfalls cascading around the underwater prison house It's like there's an underwater waterfall and my brain breaks And then there's a whirlpool like it's the world pooling I guess it's a you jump off you're not like getting in the water

You're not getting in the water That's exactly what it is You're like in this like There's a baby outside my door I was like, dad walking out with the baby outside my front door. Yes, it's like they're whirlpools. They're like whirlpool generators or something. That's my favorite theory.

They're building the whirlpool generators for the next wing of this prison. Of which, by the way, we see like three or four of these giant prison structures in the ocean. Yeah, there's a lot. Also, just the gorgeous, the gorgeous shot of Narcina 5 against presumably Narcina, the big gas giant. Oh, all the space stuff. looks so good. Like we're looking out between the hallways and stuff. Like all of the CG looks so good.

So good. So like just buildings. Like it's not some, woo. You ever think I'm getting ahead of myself here a little bit, but I was thinking at the end of this episode. I was thinking about, I mean,

it's not even a lot ahead of myself, because I was thinking about this in relation to the arc in clone wars with the prison, where when we want to goes under. cover as that guy. All the Clone Wars knowledge is dripping out of my brain. Nemo.

Yeah. It's something oh, right? Is it? What is it? I'm thinking of bricks, but I'm thinking of bricks and that's not it. That's not right. I forget what his name is. It's funny. It's a funny thing that he's pretending to be. But Raco Hardine. RICO. I looked it up.

Raco. Yeah, Raco Hardine. And I was thinking about how much better this is. And like, Obviously, there's a lot of things that are different. This is a 37 or a 40, 50 minute episode or whatever. Yeah, about 50 minute episode, 48 minute episode. This is a filmed, you know, product. This is shot on location.

This has high quality actors. This has a deeper original score. There's all these material differences. But it's a purely as a story, purely as its understanding. And there's stuff about that arc. We love. We love the thing about the clone troopers. in the prison, ending up being the same clone troopers who end up being key to, you know,

working alongside Palpatine, becoming the Corrassant police, becoming the greater, you know, tied to Tarkin's takeover. We love stuff about that arc. There's stuff about that, especially that episode, about the corruption side of the prison. There's stuff that we like about that. This is so, so, so much better. And again, it's silly to say, it's a children's cartoon. This is a wider audience show.

that was on Cartoon Network and had to adhere to certain rules this is on Disney Plus this is a streaming service there's less rule I get it but it made me start to think what if Dave Filoni isn't the guy

what if he's the guy we needed to get to the guy he's the guy who brought us to the guy do you know what I mean yeah especially because like the thing that I was thinking of I wasn't thinking of clone words but I was thinking of

when that one episode of the Mandalorian dropped it everyone was like oh my God he said that the empire has like labor prisons. I can't believe they said labor prisons on a Disney Plus show. And then we get this and it's like, yeah, we're talking about labor prisons.

Yeah. We are talking about it. The, the, it feels like we couldn't have gotten here immediately. We know this because we've seen the sequel trilogy. The team at Disney that it was picking, who was going to do Star Wars shit, had lots of competing ideas,

and also didn't ever write them all down to make them cohered into a thing, into a story that they wanted to tell. It all came together in a bad way. But like, in some ways, we get to Andor because the crew that made the clone wars and then rebels. And some of them splintered off and did resistance and some of them would go on to make Mandalorian. And the person we've interacted with the most here, we've gone to the Filoni zone many times

as Dave Filoni understood something about the fandom and understood something about Star Wars and interface with George enough. and did get big picture cool stuff about Star Wars. There's lots of cloners we love. We just finished the season six Clone Wars stuff high on that season, except for the middle parts, which were the worst things I've ever seen with my eyes. I remember I was not,

I personally was not as high on it collectively because of those bad episodes. But the high point, unbelievable, really big fan. And it's like you needed that to get to Mandalorian, and you needed Mandalorian to be a successful show to get to Andor. But I want, I, I want the handoff. Blevine was great when we needed Blevine.

But it's Dedra time. Party-a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. You're not a wartime conciliary, Tom. You're not a war-time. Dave, Dave. Listen, Dave, you were, you were great in peace times. But it's, it's war time. What's the, we're going to, we're going to the mattresses?

Is that the fucking lie? Okay, but Okay, but what if... And Dave's going to be fine. Dave's going to go make your show. Well, Dave is going to be fine. And this is the thing, is because I want to see

Dave watch this show and get his feelings hurt and then make another show. I want to just see Dave Bologna is trying to be like, I got to be as good as Andor. I wasn't making Andrew this whole time.

Wait a minute. Kathleen Kennedy comes down to the Star Wars creative facility. Kathleen Kennedy says, I'm dividing you into rooms. Each of you will lead a room and each of your rooms have tables.

What do you think Disney thinks of Andor? I mean, here's what I'll tell you is I was on the Andor Wikipedia. And I know, again, where you have to finish this episode, but this moment of comparison between it and everything else feels appropriate to have this conversation a little bit. I was on the Andor Wikipedia page today, obviously, getting information like you do.

And there's a critical response thing here that did not use to be here. I feel like this got added. And the critical response, you know, the numbers have come in the critical response is high whatever that opening four episodes was where it was dipping between dipping between an average

of 95 and 90 percent five six seven eight that's all hundreds that's a plus material that's above you know what I mean the hundred emoji yeah it's the hundred emoji you know push a T voice we're putting numbers on the boards

yeah like I don't know what the number numbers are but the critical response is positive and I want them to be you we can't pick who we work for but sometimes you get lucky and have someone whose broad aesthetic interests are allied with you in the creative industries who you can be you can find the person who has the right flaws And I hope that whoever's in charge of this shit at Disney has the flaws that make them go, yeah, we needed a critical darling. And not, I don't care about critical darlings. I care about numbers. We can't sell any toys from this. Right. Nobody buying a mouchy plushy, but baby Yoda. I'm so curious.

It does not have a, yeah, if we, there's no, yeah, there's no cute plushy that you can make out of this. I mean, I still, I think, you know, people are raving about these characters, but they're not really that transferable to action figures and they don't have cool, like, big, people funny posters of skiing on their wall. Okay, but would you or would you not buy the Mon Mothma dinner party Lego set? 100%. Absolutely. Oh, my God. But it's because it's so, it's so. Oh, God.

It would be so funny to have, like, that type of a scene in, like, if they ever do a Lego and or, like, what are they going to do with it? They did. Did you see that? You saw the Lego andor set from the first, from the episode three, right? Did you not see that video that I sent? You didn't see the video that I sent. I did, but I, this is, I mean, it was a while ago now, obviously. But yes, I did.

Yes, I did. And then I responded, imagine if they make one for the, for the garrison escape with a, but. credits the credits inside do you think they would have the credit things inside and it would be so funny yeah they did they did the lego set for they did a lego set for episode three the it has the the ship that uh karn and the rest of the little corpos come down on uh and then it's it's cassian and luthin uh and there's a video on the official lego site of little kids looking so bored playing with it i'll um I'll link to it in the show notes.

Woo. It's so funny. But, you know, if you want a Cyril Kar and minifig, it's out there for you. It includes my favorite line ever that is just so funny. Build an action-packed mobile tack-pod with Lego Star Wars Ambush on Farix. And then, I'll get the exact quote. Where is it? unclipped Cassian and Luton's blaster pistols

and fight back against Cyril Karn That's how that scene went, right? Incredible. Incredible. Power through the salvage markets of Farix to get away. Anyway, they will find a way, but it's not going to be baby-old. I want to build Cyril Karn's apartment.

Just imagine the scenes of domestic strife and rewrittenized child humiliation playing out in your very own Cyril Karn Pizos play set The things they're building kind of look like Big Legos

What's the Not Bionicle Isn't there another Mindstorm Whatever like the super advanced Legos were What are just saying things No there was a set

I remember they used in the back In the catalog Where it's like you went through the Legos And then there's like Advanced Legos With like machine parts With machine parts

Oh, this was for, like, the robot club. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm thinking about another third, like, like, advanced Legos. When we were, when I was a kid, there was, like, different Lego tiers. Yeah. Anyway. So. Should get back to the episode.

The, so one other thing we do see, we get, once they're all back in their barracks, yes, all the conversation is one about, like, they know some sort of rebel attack happened. nobody's sure what happened they ask him for info he like plays dumb about the entire situation never heard of it but the thing that does come out of it is they've heard about the P-O-R-D they know sentences are being

re-evaluated they're being doubled and Malshi is the one who tells everybody like get it through your heads nobody is ever getting out of here and that's when Kino comes up and snaps and like puts him in a chokehold and backs him up into his cell and puts the conversation to an end

because, you know, but to be fair, that is one of the things. I think Kino doesn't want to hear that. I think Kino's terrified that that might be true, that 249 days is going to be the rest of his life. He's always going to be close, but never actually, like, paroled. But also, if these guys don't have a hope of salvation, you will lose control of them. And to be fair, the Prism will lose control of Kino if Kino doesn't think that there is a, there's a ticket out of this place somehow. But I think that sets up the scene that we get a bit later where, you know, after another gruelly day of the factory, we see a character standing there contemplating the red floor, the red illuminated floor, which is in zap mode, not ouch mode.

And he just steps off and kills himself in the barracks. Like it's a very full metal jacket in a lot of ways. You know, just killing himself and immediately the guards show up after. couple minutes pick up the or they leave him they don't they leave him they leave and we smelling him all night is the line smelling him all night which and it all goes

back to that original conversation with with Kino right or not the original conversation but maybe it was the Kino conversation when he was getting his cell where Kino is like you know if if anything breaks you let me know

if you need more food you let me know if you're getting tired if you're having a breakdown, stay quiet and stay productive. Like that's not the thing I'm here for. And that is the vibe. Because again, labor is cheap. Labor is cheaper than ever. You are getting more people sent to this facility than ever before.

You will get replaced. It's cheaper to replace you than to attend to your needs. And the way they talk about him is, like the other prisoners talk about him, is in the same regard. It's not, we've, you know, lost one of our own. It's, fuck, now we're down a man. Yep. Like, our productivity's going to go down.

They're not going to come clear. Why would he do this to us? Like, it's, and I think that's, to your point earlier about the collective punishment, even this person's, like, individual action is regarded as collective punishment by his peers. like that man's decision to you know end his life is is perceived by the others as why would you why would you do this to us and look at the the the ramifications that it has on our lives and our like experiences um and i think it's from that collective punishment that you don't that you stay in that mode of for the greater it is not about individual comfort it is about getting out and collective productivity. Sorry. No, I was just going to say,

I also think, like, one other element of this is, people create stories about why isn't that going to happen to me? You know, when we saw, like, the, like, dead or the henchman being kind of grossed out by someone like Cyril. All these guys are kind of grossed out by the idea of someone doing that,

because also they're closer to it than they're like to admit. Like, it reminded me of, there was a scene, like, season two of the wire. everyone thinks DeAngelo like Barksdale kills himself in prison we later learn we know that he didn't that he's murdered but we see one of his best friends who's still out on the street

a guy named Bodie buying like flowers for the funeral and he like says some really callous hard things about like you know figures that DeAngelo do something like this it's a weak thing to do something like this and I think part of like what you see here is the way people are broken down into this. They can't admit weakness to each other

because they don't admit it to themselves that they have this weakness. They all want to think, it does not matter what happens to anyone else here. I'm going to keep my shit together, keep my head down, and I'm going to do my time and get out of this fucking place. Yeah.

It's honestly surprising there aren't more people that especially in the wake of a doubling of their sentences. There aren't more. I think you are starting to get the rumblings of it in terms of especially you know and or's like

peers are asking him for information like what do you know of the rebel like the rebels are out there they have like there's like a bit of excitement um behind uh what that could mean for them and then you know one person is like oh it's rebel nonsense uh so there's like some you know uh dismissal of of what's going on

but uh sorry I just totally lost my train of thought the the there are the very first conversations that would theoretically lead to they want to know is revolution happening out there is there a chance that a rebellion's going to come bust us out of this place right right and they don't um the answer they're looking at the wrong guy they're looking at the guy who actually knows a little bit but won't say shit uh and and we'll say less than even someone who who only knew a little bit but he almost fucks it up he pretends he doesn't know and and and Everybody knows about it in the galaxy. And he's like, oh, I certainly never heard of the Great Train Robbery. Exactly. But you can also imagine that Andor actually doesn't really know anything about the PORD. Like, who knows how far Niamos is, like, from the core of Corson.

Who knows how long it took for the PORD to, like, become, how long was Andor there before he got arrested and like how long was he living with you know god it's so brutal surprise you shack up and a fascist like police state emerges like the curfew comes down while you were shacked up and you just emerge to like get beers and food sometimes it's coughing season and sometimes it's coughing season um i should note by the way star wars dot com says pisos are a form of legal pep pill or stimulant popular on both Coruscant and Laid Back Niamos. Layed Back Niamos.

On Corrassant, there is an advertisement, a holographic ad for Pizos, as well as a reminder message for the ISB to always carry your chain code ID. That's what Deidre is probably popping. She's popping Pizos. Poping Pizos. Yeah, she's popping Pizos. So, what's her favorite color? What's her favorite Pizos?

Greeny greens. Green and the greeny green ones. No, reds. She likes ready reds. She definitely likes the running reds. God, I need future to drop Poppin Pizos so bad. I took the Pizos. Oh, my God.

I'm so sorry. So any last points on Narcena 5, the prison sequence? I guess we don't, where do we leave and, or? 30 shifts later. 30 shifts later, right. And he's fully in the groove, yeah. crucially the the intro music since come come back for the I think it's the first time at least it hit me for the first time at this moment 30 shifts later he's getting dressed since come in we're in the shower with the bros and and then we end with the the sequence of um of the older uh umla I forget Ulaf, I think.

Ulaf, but the tension that builds before, like, as he's kind of struggling to get the screw in and you don't, like, it almost feels like there's this threat of being reprimanded, this threat of being punished. And it never quite comes. It's so unsettling to sit in that, like, non-resolution, even though, like, everyone's okay and they resolve. You just always feel so close to getting fried, I guess. But then we go back after that sequence. The final, final, final shots of the episode are just the crew working in the prison. And they are like a finitune machine. They're a finitune machine and Cass is starting to talk to people.

Bring it in, come on in. Like, he's part of the crew. The crew is moving. He feels comfortable there insofar as anyone working a 12-hour shift can feel comfortable somewhere, which is long-term a good sign because that's how he's going to, when he gets out of here, he's going to have to talk to his boys. The boys are going to have to make a plan. You've got to be close with your boys.

So, and if it sounds like we already did a whole episode of content and like, wow, that was a good episode. We've covered half the main plots of this story. So I think. Sort of. Because Dedry even shows back up, but just that she crosses over with another thing. Oh, right. So as we were talking, like, everyone's like, tell us about the rebellion.

Tell us of the rebellion. Marva has apparently heard enough. The rebellion is out there, and she's going to Great Pumpkin, the rebellion, into existence on pharynx. So we catch up. Brasso and Bix are, like, taking turns monitoring Marva. And her health appears to be in decline. She is, she is coughing. She doesn't turn on that freaking heater that, that Andor was always concerned about.

I'm going to freaking break her heater. So it's always, if I was Bix and, and Bimo, I forget the other guy's name. Brasso. Brasso. The boy. Brasso, the boy. I would just simply turn it on and break it. So it was always on for Marva.

Oh, I see. You're going to break it on. I thought you meant like break it. So she freezes. I was like, Jesus. That'll solve the problem. Fuck Marva. I'm just kidding.

I love Marva. She's amazing. But. And that. thing they all love marva and when they have the conversation outside and they ask like the how is she really doing conversation what are we supposed to do and it is the it's the is a time put mom in a home type situation except you don't want to go to a home and there are no good homes and really she doesn't yeah not even the daughters or ferricks she's she's fair she's

she's ferricks's mom but like she but well the daughters want to take her in but marva refuses to go anywhere but she refuses to go she wants her house it's so it's very it's very much if anyone's ever had like an elderly family member and has gone through the experience of having to either move them out of their own homes into yours or into it's it's it's hard it's it's really hard and there's a lot of like resignation and shame I think that marv is probably feeling um and that's what's fueling her determination to stay that not only will the occupation not stop her

from doing what she wants but her health and wellness won't stop her as well well and she thinks like this is where like Brasso sort of was trying to get at like well why does she want to go away and Bix is like because she thinks the rebellion is coming that when she does have her strength

she's going around trying to find gaps in the imperial security she'd gone under the town to see if the the tunnels leading into where the hotel is built, whether those are still there and can be opened. And spoiler, it turns out they are. But, like, she is doing legwork for a rebellion. She has no contact with. Has no reason.

She thinks the rebellion is going to show up a bit like those prisoners. Like, maybe the rebellion will just show up. And there's no, well, this is the irony. Bix and Brasso know this is a futile hope. There's no rebellion on Ferris. Nobody's coming to be like, Marvo, we're here to blow up the hotel that the Imperials are staying at. Like, Marva is, like, white-knuckling her life,

preparing to join a cause that is absent on Farix and not interested, except the irony is, they are there. Literally across the street. Sinta and Vell, literally looking out at Brasso. This is so painful. Bleak moment alert. The fact that we're fucking...

Well, like... Hey, good news, Sinta made it? Yeah, Sintam made it. They're back together. Not for long. The first thing Vell says as Sinta walks into this room is, where'd you go? Who's the... Sinta says who's the big one?

But she goes, like, where were you? I was about to come looking. Your tea's going to get cold. There's like cold now pointing to the tea. Senta doesn't care if the tea is cold. Vell has like There's a domestic life That Vell fantasizes about

With her and Senta And she makes her tea In the morning And Sinta And says thank you for the warm tea I love when my tea is warm I love it when my beautiful wife Brings me my warm tea

And scone And Sinta also Just ruthless Bro. Bruteless. Should I read it? I'm in mirror. You have to do it.

You have the... I was like, I would have Allie wrote the whole thing there. There's, there's, okay, so I wrote, I wrote,

fraught lesbian conversations. And this is when Val is like, we were alone for so long. You know, we're going to separate again. You're going to stay back here and I'm going to go. Right.

That's the heart of this conversation is, should someone stay behind here and wait for cast to show up? Yeah. While the tea was getting cold, Sinta was down the street looking at a room that could be rented so she could stay behind and do the damn thing. And then I wrote,

You think the Empire stops to catch its breath. This is a fight to the death, Phil. Who would you say you are? Maybe I'm a rich girl, running away from her family. That's cold. Even for you. I told you up front. A struggle will always come first.

We take what's left. I'm a mirror, fell. You love me because I show you what you need to see. I'm going to God. Help me. Normal thing to say, you think. Are they even a couple at the end of this conversation, or is it just done so? They hold hands.

They hold hands. They hold hands. Damn, she just got, like, resentment against, like, the life that Vell is running away from. I mean, it's a different, you... We know Sinta's whole family was murdered by Stormtroopers. Like, that is, that is her origin story. And this is our first insight into...

to Vell's origin story, which is rich girl running away from her family. And good. I'm glad she did. She did the right thing. And we've seen her do the dirt. We know she'll, like, put in the work. Like, I believe in Val. But Vell is in a really vulnerable place right now.

Yes. You can tell there was Vell, the leader who got her shit together. She was scared, but she got her shit together. And they got through the garrison heist. But Bell that met with Clayah, Bell that's sitting in front of Sinta is like she doesn't have that strength behind her she's she's beat up

yeah I was going to say like oh the different there's a difference between someone who runs a sprint and someone who's a marathon runner and Sinta is a marathon runner and VAL is a sprinter I think that's true except I actually think Sinti is more like the person who the people who had to you know chase down uh animals in the ancient pre-ranged weapon hunting gathering day she lives running she isn't she is a right exactly like this is not just i'm not at a race i'm not doing an event i'm living this life i'm always running um and it's a it's a different i told you up front

the struggle is will always come first we take what's left it feels like there's like almost a little bit of like Sinta pulling Vell into this. Yes. Here's another quote here. If you're ever in a relationship and you feel like you're going to say this to someone or if someone says it to you,

get out of there. It's over. I'm a mirror Vell. You love me because I show you what you need to see. Your partner doesn't love you. If someone tells you that, I don't care how good the dick is.

Yeah, don't be willing to be that person in someone's life. in either direction. I get y'all have been in this because like you've been on the fucking on the fucking Aldani together for like six months you've been in it whatever when this is over break up and find someone new find someone healthy get on your healthy relationship shit y'all are going to be talking with each other forever forever yeah yeah you've been through it in a real way it's fine it's closed the door on the chapter yep a lot of

a thing. Here's the other thing that was easy to rationalize. A lot of stuff you're pretty convinced you're going to be executed by an imperial firing squad within a year or two. Right. We, you know, we... Yeah, you're totally right. If we were married and we live

normal life, yeah, these are issues, but let's be real, we're both going to be killed on a mission soon. So we just take what we can get. But yeah, it's not... It's not good, and Sinna basically sends her away. You know, like, two of us stay here it looks weird. Like, it's two people, two new faces in town that's pretty closed off doesn't get new faces you have to go and also you don't

look like you belong here it's a weird thing cinta doesn't she didn't look like she belonged on khorasan in part because it's just the shock of like seeing her that way done up that way or vell you mean uh val sorry yeah the shock of seeing her not in like commando leader mode she looked like someone comfortable like not wearing military garb uh not being like outliving rough but also now you can sort of see uh that she She also doesn't, she's not from places like this. You know, she didn't have to, living up in the rebel camp, you know, in the mountains alone, didn't require pretending like you belong in a place like Farrix.

And Sinta can do that work, and Vell just like can't. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Like, retroactively, it means just comfort with her dressed up like that in Corrassant is about having fled that life. She fled that haircut. You know what I mean? She used to have to wear her hair the way she did in Corrassant because she moved in

those spaces and does not like it. But it's a different thing than the discomfort here of not really being from places like this. The Sinta grabs her hand, like we said, and they don't ever really make eye contact, but there is a subtle, I just act, you know, like the movies. Sinta lets her eyes for just one second dart to look at Vell's face, you know, from the side. And it's, seriously it's a quarter of a second a half a second and it's the heart dipping for one moment

you know she does she is fond of this person in some abstract way some particular way uh it's not bigger than this she's trying to meet her halfway here or whatever you know this doesn't absolve anything but I just it communicates

sympathy for her she like she loves she does she loves her too yes but the struggle comes first it's not a loving look it's just eyes on her for a set it's just so acting acting it's a bit like

it's a bit sympathetic it's a bit like yeah yeah it's a it's a glimpse into what if we what if the world was different and we met in a different way and we didn't have to be toxic

because we weren't in a rebellion movement is in a lot of these relationships between characters we see a lot of looks that, like, do you have an air of, like, you matter to me, but I'm not sure what I am to you. I'm not sure what you are to me. Like, where do we stand with each other? This is, you know, Andor has that with Bex.

Like, this is what Tim is, like, so there's something there, but it's, like, hard to put your finger on. But here's the other thing. We also see it in conversations among rebels, where it's like, are we friends? Are we allies? Or are we going to be enemies at some point? This is, like, this constant, everyone in Andor is constantly trying to work out, how are we related? Like, really, if you strip it down. I'm like, what are we to one another?

What do we, like, what do we mean to one another? What could we mean? Not to get ahead of ourselves here, but what are you? Yeah. As Saul says later this episode. What are you? And. God, we have so much.

Well, we don't. I know, but Sa's, yeah. I know. We're going to spend time. Can I just say real quick, though, also I'm a little disappointed because it is, Bix decides that she has to get in touch with Andor somehow, right? This is what motivates this phone call. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Like, he's, because Marva's dying. He's wanted for, he had to leave forever. I know, I know, but what do you do? What do you do? Well, the thing that I wrote down was, oh, my God, is Marva going to fucking die while Cass is gone? Is that going to have been the last conversation they ever had? But it was supposed to be.

She said this is the last conversation effectively. But it isn't. You know in their heart of hearts there was going to be a phone call one day in her mind. Or a stop over. When things settle down a bit, Cassion would keep you the window. Even if you're right, even if in her heart she has made that piece, it's still just brutal. And it's brutal because the way the death always is. Because it's not always just about the person who died or the person who's dying or the immediate relatives.

There's always that after shock. And for people like Bix and Brasso, the fact that it's not a, you know, a formal relationship makes it harder in a lot of ways. They've inherited this, need to take care of this person. She was offered a chance to be taken care of by Cass. I mean, wouldn't have gone bad. I bet he wouldn't have been going out for those greenie greens in first thing in the morning if, if mom was around. Did you imagine, yeah. It would have gone bad eventually.

live with, with, like, Cass, if Marva living with Cassian while he's in his, like, like, slut era post, post-heist. He would have put her up across town, you know. He would have, he would have had her in the two floors up apartment. I don't know. Marva seems like she's been through it and she's sick of it. You're sick of it. You're right.

You're right. You're right. She'd be starting shit on Niamas. Let me tell you. That's the other thing that seems like it's part of Bix and Brasso's conversation. when she's like, are you, you're serious that you don't know what Andor is? Like, it seems like there's the expectancy that he takes these little trips, right? And they have to stop off at her house in the morning.

And, you know, the expectancy that, oh, he's going to come back. But now there's this time sensitive issue of she needs somebody with her now because she's, she's acting it rationally in their eyes. Well, and because the realm of, or the, there was an amount of space, there's a amount of give in which you can act various ways and right now that amount of give is limited the rope is taught

you know Bix at a loss for anything to do Oh my God goes to What's the guy's name? So good Pock

P-A-A-K like Anderson Pock Basically like everyone's a similar sort of shop even Across the way And she's like I need to make Basically, I need to get on that secret comms array. And he tells her it's not a good idea.

And she's got to do it. She's trying to reach out to Luthan to see if someone somewhere can get a message to Andor that his mom's not doing well and needs help. And we get, and by the way, like, the look his son gives him across the way. I worked with my dad for years. and there is a there you know you work with anybody for years obviously you get that sort of like silent

communication you get the image of two Victorian ladies touching hands and being like oh my god I can't wait to talk to you later about the asshole at this party but you work with I worked with my dad for years and that thing of like oh my god you know I worked in a clothing store with my dad basically for years and and the guy who gave the store

that sold the store the you know the checkout the bags for checkout right like would come in and like talk about what the fuck ever politics for three hours and then it's like you and your dad just like oh my god he's still going on about Al Gore you know um it was a different it was a different time uh and so that is the he was not a fan of Al Gore let me tell you um uh that that little look I knew him me I was like oh it's done it's done it's all going to go everything here is going to go bad this is a son being like but dad you said we're going to we shut that down and the father being like, you know, it's Bix.

What are you going to do? And no word said. Just three seconds of a conversation of a conversation via eyes, via glances, being like, that's it. Acting. Acting. And you've heard of it. You know, she calls and calls and calls no answer.

We see the other side of that conversation, which is sometimes things do need to be said. Clea needs Luthin to get in the game as she defines it that he needs to seal off contact with this entire Andor situation

It's a shopowner on Farrix She's trying to find Cassie and Andor his mother is ill The conversation The stuff that she ends up saying to him Is basically like I know that you're still in it But I need to see that you're still

in it because you're making mistakes. You are not, you're not, you're not working the way that you normally do. I think she says, I just need you to wake up. There's a lot we need to do. She wants to shut the whole thing down on Farrex. She wants to kill the listening post. She does not want to, she does not want to respond. But the way she goes about it is not to say, I'm shutting it down.

The specific thing she says is, tell me to shut this down, which I think has given us one more glimpse into whatever this relationship is. Allie. Oh, I also, that's my favorite bit of this conversation when she says, I'm thinking clearly and you're not telling me to shut it down is like a good dynamic.

Also, once again, this place is filled with weird Star Wars memorabilia. Oh, I noticed the Mandalorian armor this time. There's Mandalorian armor. There is the face mask of one of the Jedi temple guards that we saw in the final arc of season six of Clone Wars

is in here. That's wild. The guys of the yellow double-bladed lightsabers you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, you were like if I could ever have a job. I'm just saying I'm just saying who would get access to one of those? Someone who has access to the Jedi Temple.

He says in this when she says Yeah, go ahead. What? Okay, so he has access to the Jedi temple, but like, Jedi, Jedi things lost their stock, you know? But he has it out here on the floor. Those were all in the clearance bin for a couple of years. Maybe it's coming back and to style now because it's rare, but.

What's the line? She says, she's the one who's like, you know, you're, you've been vulnerable, you're making mistakes. You're slipping. You're slipping. I'm not slipping, Clea. I've just been hiding for too long. Bro, you're a Jedi. Yep. You're a Jedi.

He's not a Jedi. Freaking Jedi. He's a Jedi. But he's a fucking... Hey, everybody. That man's a fucking Jedi. That's a Jedi. I know it.

You're kidding me. Is that why he doesn't have any political vote in his body? He can't explain any of that. Oh, no. And he's like, well, I just have to... All these things are the same to me. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. That ends up being the thing that he can't have a coherent political philosophy because the Jedi of poor actually engage it with ideology and politics and actually getting people prepared. Doing it on the rebel groups like a Bible salesman like pitching them on the force being with them. All right. Luton gets, Luth, okay, new pitch. Luton recovers the Nemic manifesto and adds all the shit about the force to it.

he edits in the force into whatever the manifesto is and he ends up being a guy we need to lose the bit about the sextant and put in the force put in the force villain villain of all time um to god and he's not a jet but claya saves him like he's he wants to answer he like because what he wants to answer so bad they would have been fucked if he answered. Like, I was pissed that he didn't answer, because I was like, so he needs to tell

Andor that Marva's dying. I can't. I can't, I can't with, like, I mean, we also get from this that he seems to know if he doesn't know that the kill, the kill message is out, the kill job is out, the hit job is out, there we go,

sort of. If he doesn't know that there's a hit out of Andor, he at least knows that they are out looking for Andor in this way. And he seems to be okay with that. And we also get clarity on exactly what the piece of information is that he let slip. And it's he put him on the ship. He's been on the particular model. He says it's the Fondor. He knows about the Fondor, which is the unique ship that he has. And that's his civilian ship. He rides that ship back into Coruscant. That's registered on his name. We had a particular conversation with them when he came on board the ship the first time. Cass is like this is a Fondor or he asks about the ship. He gets detail

and what the ship is. Well, he identifies that it's a custom. It's a custom. Right. It's a customized. This isn't a regular Fondor. Whatever he says, that ends up being the specific piece of information that would ID who he is. And that, you know, he's seen that it has like the special droid and he knows that it can, you know, calculate different, you know, routes and all that shit. I think that was also an interesting and important detail. I was like, oh, this is the thing we have to worry but Ander slipping up and saying or a piece of, this is the leverage he has over him. That was a good added context. Does he fully, does he, I'm still not sure.

The first time I saw it, I was like, okay, so he does know that there's a death mark out on. The conversation is ambiguous. He wants to find Endor. He knows they're looking for him. He says, knowing he's out there, not knowing what he knows. It's, it's, that's what's bothering him. It's not clear like, you know, does. He just want to tie off this.

He asked, you know, Clayah, was I insane for Tame on the Fondor? I'm still, I'm still not sure how much they're on the same page around this. But either way, like, so this is, this is the root of, like, the problem, like, why Ander has been dealt with. I think, I think Andor was a, like, a side thing that, that Luthon did without maybe involving Clea as much. I find like Luthan's pursuit of

Andor to be something entirely motivated by Luthan. Luton identified it. And that's why he got wrapped up and Clay identified Clay is like you were desperate

like you wanted Aldani to work. You wanted it to work and you got it to work but now here's here are all the vulnerabilities we have from it based like as a consequence of those actions um so well yeah and like and it's so interesting with that context where it always like al-dani felt like wow this is a real major move by this nascent rebel group and such but the weird thing is it feels like maybe everybody but uh luthan was ready

to at least walk away from it if the mission wasn't coming together right if the time wasn't right but mademal wasn't ready for this there are there are groups like you know Saw is out there still doing shit, but he was desperate to kick this off and get this money to get the rebellion going. And he made the announcement, right? And suddenly his recruitment of Andor does look as desperate as it now sounds. He took a flyer on the idea that because Bix was offering this one piece of goods for sale, somebody shouldn't have unless they kind of like knew their shit, he flies out there,

reveals himself, recruits him basically sight unseen on the strength of like a quick conversation to, and he has info on him that we know, we now know, we don't know where he got that info from because he didn't get it from Bix, right? Last episode, the thing we moved past was, uh, he, Andrew's trying to figure out what does Luther know about him? Yeah. Uh, and the stuff like him being from Canary and some of his past shit, she didn't tell him shit about, about, uh, and he knew that stuff. So he has a source somewhere that's able to give, info that as far as we know you know nobody else has had access to except the imperial cinta would cinta have that info from

cinta's whole family was killed by stormtroopers right but maybe that's a story is cinta and or his sister no no but we've seen this as lighter skin different also they met yeah they met yeah but maybe i mean the last time he saw him she was a child Yeah, I think it's We saw that sister She has the same complexion as Ander does She's a little more light-skinned than that

It's true It's true, it's true But it's weird It does sort of highlight All the stuff that like Him being recruited immediately Sent on an important secret mission All that stuff makes sense

From the standpoint of the show is named Andor And it's about the awesome adventures Of this guy But like if you look at it through What Luton is actually doing What the people around him Expect him to be doing It's a weird move

It's a Hail Mary play that works out But yeah, he did Breach a lot of like safeguards To get this done Either way Speaking of breaking Like safeguards The thing is Bix doesn't realize

How dangerous this became Because Dedra's there She set up an entire Like apparatus To catch messages Just like this Pock gets busted immediately

And as she tries To escape the scene she's spotted by the prefect um or is that Tigo is that what his name was remember we were yeah it's Tigo my note is I knew Tigo would be a problem the second he had a name the piece of shit

because remember he had a name the other when he first shows up and Blevine is talking to him and he's like do you want the hotel it's like oh Tigo was responding I was like oh no this guy's going to be a problem because it isn't just Imperial Guard or whatever well I wonder if it's it's in the chain in the

hand over to Dedra that creates this as Oh yeah as the catch like if Blevin was in charge if this call would have gone out and maybe nobody would have caught it

Yeah definitely because Blevin did they not I guess maybe we hadn't seen them use it since then right so yeah but Blevin had been in control of Farrick's previous and then catch shit right right also we know it's been a month

theoretically if the timelines are the same since Deadger did the big speech to now so that would be a month of her getting the approval from Yalarin and putting all that shit together on Farix the code the code droid all of the counterintelligence stuff that she wanted

would now be in place. She would have had a month to set that all up so and now she's staring down the barrel of torture like we see that Pock has been given roughed up by the guards

Dedra makes a point of making sure that Bix sees it and then it's like oh you weren't supposed to see that also again the difference here you know Bix tries to escape after Tigo recognizes her tries to run away through the city

streets again the bells had been rung to call attention to this to begin with she does not get away This is not the same thing as the Primor Corpos coming down here and being confused and getting, you know, again, previously we talked about in the first part of the season for episode three, we talked about how the locals knew the area so much better than the Imperials or so much better than the Corpos did. And they could sneak away, they could get away. That does not happen here. We see Bix running away. And then the next time we see Bix, she has been apprehended.

You know, we don't even see her get caught. We don't need to see her get caught. She gets caught. Pock's been tortured. Dedra begins the interrogation. I don't think we see the results of that, though. We just see her get pointed to a chair. I do want to give credit to Natalie here for how much we called in the last episode in terms of

Dedra being like, let's go girl boss until she's a terrifying figure in a scene of committing torture. We literally read that quote from, from Tony Gilroy. Tony Gilroy, thank you. It's been going for a while. It's been a long week. Gilroy is saying, dead or somebody you root for until suddenly you don't. For me, that scene was the scene with Yalarin earlier this episode where she was like, oh, she hasn't all figured out.

She is a nightmare. This is all going to go bad for the rebels. But I could see it being this one, too. I could see it being pointing at one of our favorite characters and being like, please sit down in my torture chair. Yeah, it's not great. Dedger has gone from Girl Boss to Gatekeep. God help us when she gets the gaslight.

I mean, we are. Are we not getting a little, we got a smidget of gaslight here in terms of her being like, like, oh, no, get him out, get him out. yeah she's she's all three simultaneous this is the thing she's all three simultaneously once these are not stages these are they're like layers yes exactly exactly so so rip bicks well so this is the thing i think the fucked up thing is this wild hope marvis had for like it's going to become relevant there's the secret path into the hotel we've arrived um um It's going to, like, hey.

Oppression breeds Rebellion. Via this under, yeah, uh-huh. As Deidre comes to Ferrex and in her grasp on Ferris' Titans and she's surveilling more. Around Ferris' mom. Around Ferris' mom, Marva, rebellion will begin. Ferris will be a rebellion site. Oh my God. What if she gets carned where it's like we gave you all these resources and you went

Neferix and now in Imperial headquarters and a prefect were all blown up and a prisoner escape and now the planet's like... What if this... Okay, what if it goes the other way, which is, we've talked a lot, I've talked a lot, I keep talking about the oranges that, like, Brasso wears the same

color orange that the rebel pilots end up wearing in the actual rebellion. And also the orange in the prison? Also the orange and the white in the prison, right? Like, they're playing these colors, they're costuming intentionally, 100% What if they go to get Marva out and it goes bad and there's a massacre on Farix and it becomes another, this is like the moment that people are like, that was just a regular salvage town.

They killed all those people. It becomes the thing that lights the fire of the rebellion and or has to buy in now because they killed his mom and Brasso and Bix. And who else does he have to go home to? It's over. He actually has nothing left now. When Marva dies, he will have in Bix and Bix and. and Brasso and Mammick and B2. No.

They kill, oh my God. B, no, they're going to kill that. They're going to kill that dog. No. This is it. No, this is it. Save the cats. Kick the dog, right?

What's going to happen is Sinta is going to have a relationship with Marva to try to get closer to Antor and then Marva's going to be like, oh, I love the rebellion. The rebellion's so cool. Since it's like, I agree. I'm part of the rebels. And then they're going to get Bix out. And then Brasso is going to go back to the. rebel base and he's going to look so cool that everyone's going to be like, yo, Brassel looks

kind of... What a doubt? What if... What is this doing? Brassel had a pile of... Oh, yeah. That's going to be the final episode of Andors be like, damn, Brassel is all right. Years later, as a bunch of rebels are looking at each other and, like, giant orange jumpsuits

and greens and, like, browns. And it's like, so that guy actually dressed well, or was he just big? He was just big and carried himself well. You just got to carry him? it well. What if Sinta and Bix get together and Vell comes back, Vell comes, like,

oh, the chaos. Sinta, Sinta gets in with with Bix to, to gain her trust and get more information on Andor. Bell, like, stops in unannounced and is like, yo, the struggle comes first, though, says Sinta. The struggle

always comes first. And with Bix, it certainly seems like it would be a struggle. God So the Yeah there's a cut here I mean that's the end of the pharic stuff right While Bick we should wrap the Luton stuff maybe

Before we go to Coruscant There's a great cut From Bix running through the streets To the Fondor Luton ship cutting across space On its way to a new planet To the planet of Susson

Segram Milo where we see Saul Guerrera's partisans. There, you have an X-wing. They have two X-wings on the ground. They're ready to go. And in fact, Air superiority comes into play in the conversation that follows. Well-funded, apparently, compared to many of many operations, but also living in a cave, right? Cool alien. Cool alien.

That alien's also in Rogue One, I believe, and maybe in something else I heard. Yeah, they look familiar. We got a cool face mask on Giant giving plowkin vibes Well I love the keeping up with the Joneses conversation they have One cell leader to another No be honest with me You did Aldani

Didn't you know you did Alton Oh now I know you're lying And each of them quietly running Like massively capable organizations But like you know the weird thing is It is like Luthan we get in this conversation. He runs around

trying to knit different rebel groups into some sort of coherent plan and financing their promising plans and get them to like point roughly in the same direction. And Saw has his direction and he sees where the struggle needs to go and everything else and everyone

pitching something else is a distraction from that or is an active enemy that like just because they hate an empire doesn't mean they're your friend. He calls out Lufin the type of people he's working with. He begins listing all the affiliations. Yeah, I have it here. Kregar is a separatist.

Maya pays a neo-Republican. The Gorman Front, the partisan alliance, sectorists, human cultists, galaxy petitionist. They're lost. All of them, lost. Lost. What are you, Luther?

I've never really known... What are you? I'm a coward. I'm a man who's terrified the empire's power will grow beyond the point where we can do anything to stop it. I'm the one who says we'll die with nothing. If we don't put aside our petty differences. Pity! Pity!

I am the only one. I am the only one with clarity of purpose. Well, anarchy is a seductive concept. A bit of a luxury I'd argue to a man who's hiding in cold caves and begging for spare parts. No sale today, Luther. Good luck with Anto Kriega. There is so much we could speculate on, but given that we're already going long,

I will not believe her going through each of those groups one by one and being like, what does that mean? What's, are the human cultists the same as human separatists or human supremacists? Like, what's the deal? Hopefully we find out more about that. But I am just kind of curious, big picture, what was some of the big takeaways for folks. the the positioning of like anarchy as like a luxury

like it's a little scary you're scaring me that you're going to villainize saga I mean this is we have a lot to end up in rogue one but right right right but here's the I will say that why I find reassuring he don't seem villainized he seems like he is calling out like the like it's like my timeline is so is so split on this

in terms of whether he so give me the case explain. Okay, again, so here's the high level of this conversation is Lutheran wants the Saw Guerrera crew to do airs to help out attack a place called Spell House. S-P-E-L-L-H-A-U-S. Incredible. Help out a guy named Anto Krieger to do. In fact, he doesn't even say that. He's, I want you to meet him. I want you to meet him. He's probing the Imperial Power Station at Spell House. Yes, I'm going to give you all the shit for free. He's found a weakness in the defenses. You know, he has an angle.

Saul is extremely dismissive of him. He calls him slow and stupid. He doesn't want to work with this guy. And then what follows is what we've already heard. He wants the stuff to help fight the empire, but he doesn't want to work with this other guy. He works alone. He trusts his people. He doesn't want to get his people killed for somebody else or somebody else's position.

And he does not agree with the politics of the other people that Luzon is trying to bring together into a rebel alliance. generally speaking so rob what is your case that this is a positive or not a negative what is your read on the scene let's not fall into the positive negative thing what is your overall read on the scene and how it positions saw and luthan so i think fundamentally the fact that it he's asking one of those trenchant and piercing questions anyone has asked luthan in this entire series because luthon is defined as a man who's infinitely changeable like from the first the fact that he can like switch affects the fact that he like can blend in anywhere and like and that seems to apply to his politics he can work he can figure it out with anybody he can take any resistance group any

place where people there's anti-imperial sentiment and convince himself that that is a rebellion that he can work with that is that is something he can or he can fashion into a weapon to fight this fight and what saw is driving at is that that stuff comes at a cost it blurs purpose. If you were constantly sort of changing your pitch, if you were constantly adapting yourself to whatever groups you find you have to work with, whatever the conditions that exist there on the ground, your own clarity on what needs to be done is going to get blurry. He think like legitimately setting aside the success of Aldani, the idea of like, what if we get these two rebel groups to work together? Saw's position, I think it's probably correct,

is that groups like this aren't going to be able to work together for long. them together might destroy them. I think the other thing he points out, because and or Cassian made a similar case when he realizes he says later previous rebel wars

did devolve into internecine faction, factional fighting and it got incredibly blurry. But I think one of the things that Saw is driving at here is that we know he's been

fighting some version of this war for like 20 years and he well yeah very good we've seen the beginning of it right which part of why he doesn't want to fuck with any separatists by the way separatists came and took his his planet away right so I think you know it's in a funny way he is a person who has a sense of history here about like what does this what does all this actually stem from like what has what has been the conflict that's been like turning the galaxy at war with itself for decades at this point. What has been driving it? And Saw has a theory of it. He's seen the dynamics. I don't know if he's had the scales drop where he realizes that ultimately the separatists themselves were kind of the paving the way for the empire. I don't know if he's ever

like, I don't know who has actually put that all together. Who like still has an agency in this world at this point. But for me, the entire scene really seems like. it is holding Luthan's feet to the fire about the entire project he's undertaken the way he's driving it and the way he's driving it forward and I do think the series has been about the absence at the whole of like

the the hole at the the center of like what are we all doing this for because there hasn't been a good enough answer to date right this is this is the thing that we suspect that the manifesto could become right is the thing, what is the thing that holds all these groups together besides the hatred of the empire? What is, which you had, by the way, our most recent Patreon episode was good, was killer.

If you want to hear us go deeper on some of these bigger questions around things like ideology and does, where does leftism come from in space and how do you, you know, what is the place of anger and hate in Star Wars across other elements? Well, I'm right about. clarity of purpose is the thing we ended up talking a lot about we did we already had this conversation exactly on the patreon episode so please go give that a shot patreon.com slash civilized but yeah what that that right here for me I understand the read that some people are having which is like okay they're setting up saw as a villain again or at least as someone who is fundamentally wrong about the situation I think they're setting them up as being inflexible but I think given the context that we know

that inflexibility makes sense and I don't think that they my read on this is that he is right when he says that he has clarity of purpose and that he's unique in having clarity of purpose but clarity of purpose is not enough. You cannot

win this war with just clarity of purpose you got to have X-wings and Starpath units and you got to have enough butts and seats in your X-wing fighters you got to have enough people in the trenches and trying to see them navigate this is really interesting and I think it's I think for me when I think about a scene and I think about the framing of it one of the ways that you can interpret a sequence is like your protagonist enters the scene with a goal do they get the goal

yes or no Luton does not get the goal here he is unable to maneuver saw here he leaves knowing he has failed to do the thing he's supposed to do that he doesn't have the juice that he doesn't have whatever the the McGuffin is that he needs with you know he had the he had the Kyber crystal to get to get I almost said Keefe I almost said Clem Cassian on board

always K sounds interesting to get Cassian on board with the thing he doesn't have a similar thing here there's no amount of you know new Imperial hardware that's enough to get someone like Saw to turn his back on his

on his beliefs or to put his people in harm way, which again, it is not just inflexible philosophical positioning. He's like, I'm not going to let my people die for this other guy, right? He's very aware of what the material costs are here. And we know how things weren't on to run again. You know he saw his people die for other people's bullshit, right? And so I think that for me, I think this is a complex situation. I think this is a show that is less interested in, like, is this character right or wrong and more interested in what are the interesting ways in which these characters are all fallible and what is it that will eventually move them towards working together at least for some period of time you know um you know

i've i've not seen rebels i know saw carrera shows up in rebels i've i've played july fall in order he's in that and he's doing rebel shit with other people right um i don't know if he's part of the rebellion at that point i don't remember where that is in the timeline but also the gorman front shows up here in correction to last episode the Gorman Massacre has not happened yet. We're all in the lead-up move to the Gorman Massacre. So we'll learn about the Gorman Massacre in a later

element of something we cover apparently. So Well, also, crucially, Saw has not suffered the scarring that forces him to use a breathing apparatus in the when we see him in Rogue One. So like we see him here at

the height of his physical and military power at this moment. Yeah. So good. His performance is just killer. The, the affect that Saw Guerrera has that Forrest Whitaker brings to it is commanding and a little strange in a way that is like... Forst Whitaker's always a little strange in all his roles. I mean, in a way that, but I can never put my finger on like...

But it's a choice. It's always so good. Yeah, I love him. He's so good. It creates a sense of like unpredictability about where this conversation will go or what his reaction will be. like you're never quite sure of what he what he will make of a certain thing you say could just I love seeing him on the back foot between this scene and the Clea scene

Lutheran is just on the back foot in this episode and it's so funny because you leave the clay episode the Clea sequence thinking okay he's gonna go do something he's he's okay he's waking himself up and he comes out here and then just no he gets get stonewalled you know no sale today good luck what was the thing that the Dedra said earlier to Karn. I wish you luck. I'm running late. I got some X-rings to tend to, my guy.

Good luck with all that. And I do think just the fact that like the fact that he is there with a like a fully well, like a decently armed and equipped group that's clearly been fighting for ages, you know, the types of people like the Alda. the operation was like a week away from falling apart because like one the window was going to close but two like they just these things are hard to sustain he has sustained his group for years uh he's not he's not coming down out of the hills for what luthin is offering right now alley and nadley i'm curious if you read this as a not pro or anti saw but i'm curious if you

felt either you felt a strong way about how saw was being positioned here compared to what we eventually see in rogue one and just how we've thought about it him before. I think there's like a nod it feels not uncommitted to any direction to me.

I feel like it's it's legitimizing and it's like respectful of of Sagrera's role in the rebellion and it acknowledges it and values it but it also

doesn't it's not totally condemning or platforming either or either either way um so i think it's it's kind of ambiguous and i think we're supposed to be meant uh we're meant to be uh situated in that ambiguity a little bit longer um i think maybe if anything it's walking back sort of a more black and white approach that was taken in rogue one that you know maybe is a constant of being in the mainstream film like group and because of that

it has to be slightly more binary in the way that it treats Sagarera and here maybe we're being allowed a little bit more complexity so I think it's leaving room open for that but I feel like we just have to have to see more. I got a little afraid

I mean it's hard because I think the eccentric eccentricity of Saaguerreira is what has been villainized it's like that is taken in Rogue One and it's made him to it makes him look like

sort of this crazed just lost in in the power and the violence of the rebellion exactly war's war's war and other and like you know one of one of the roles that Forrest Whitaker is famous for as Edie I mean right like

that that casting is not is not uninformed by some past roles, let's say. I think that there is a lot we have already unpacked over the last two years of this show about how Star Wars others people using things like the way they speak and the way they look and are they white and are they human or can we make them whiter in some cases. How much of their body is biological versus mechanical? Yeah, 100%. Are they using prosthetics?

Are they using breathing apparatuses? Are they, do they need a translator? Are we translating the text? All of that stuff is always in play. And seeing how it gets deployed is part of what we try to pay attention to. I felt good that I could leave this conversation with them feeling like I could defend Saul's position, you know? Yes. By the end of the Rogue One stuff, it gets trickier.

He has slipped so deeply into caricature of warlord, you know, that it, it, it's hard to be the Sagarera. He's got an evil snuffle off, I guess, that mind tortures people. He doesn't have that here yet, you know. I do sort of see the counterargument of how you walk away from the scene, thinking that he's being unreasonable, though, in terms of, like, what you were saying, how are you supposed to address the scene?

How are we thinking of the character? Like, if you're someone who's rooting for Lutheran or rooting for the eventual rebel alliance, like, did I fuck that up again? It's your maze window Which was yours originally too But then I got it way worse You adopted it Yeah

You adopted me's window so bad But yeah The sort of thing Like Luton says to him I don't spend my days Arguing with people who agree with me And like that just seems like Such a common like

You know Current Critique of leftism In terms of like All this leftist infighting if we just came together about blue no whoever who and then the term

of him like you know being the the thing that makes Luther Luton fail in that scene if he was if he was willing to come into the circle would he would this change something

would Luthan be ahead would I feel better about this episode or whatever so yeah but I feel like that bringing that we tend not to read shows with that model, right? Where the, like, oh, yeah, yeah.

Guy, did they win or lose, right? Right, but, you know, you'd think of the, the people of responding to the IGN Twitter account to the review of this episode or whatever, like, you know, I try to keep that in mind a lot because we've seen this sort of like, in terms of the difference of the way that things are characterized in general in the show in terms of, like, familiar Star Wars things. and then also just like the the the gap between how much people are enjoying it. It's like what are the flags here, you know? Yeah.

I can't believe how I can't believe how we started joking. Hey, it doesn't it look like Luton's cane looks kind of like a lightsaber? Today, I am now. We're now that you've introduced this idea that Luton doesn't have an answer for what he is, besides saying he's a coward because what he is is a Jedi. And he can't say that out loud. And that's why he doesn't have any good answers for anything. I can't believe how absolutely convinced I am now that this is real.

And also the thing of like, we're going to have to learn what his background was eventually. But the only other answer is like, was he like a low level or like a mid-tier republic, you know, diplomat or a functionary of some sort? Like, what was he during the Republic? I don't think it can be that because Monmothma would know him, I think. But Montmathma does know him. We just don't know what their relationship is, right? But she, but she knows him in a way where she doesn't really know him. Like the way that their relationship is we need to not know, you need to not know a lot about me, actually.

So I feel like unless he was undercover for a while before. What if he was a, what if he was like a librarian, non-Jedai Jedi? What if he was one of like the, you know, ancillary Jedi secondary crew? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to imagine like a role. in the universe of someone who would have this sort of like cultural knowledge that he does right like the only other person who we've seen do that is Obi-1 oh hold on what if you were trained by a Jedi

with an aristocratic bent and an eye for the finer things and appreciation of historical curiosities he's like a duku he's the unheard of ducu assassin or assistant That'd be so funny Or he's just rail Oh he's rail avarous Yeah

Sorry I forgot The rails Yeah That's me I'm on that hill I'm just like I'm just like flag planted Yeah I love that for you

I do I mean God So We have one more thing to hit today On this longest of the episodes Somehow this has been our longest Episode strange bedfellows time

Ah, uh-huh It is time to catch up On the Another dinner party Mothmas Moth Well, anyway Perrin and Mahn

So The way that this is twisted Some of the things that we've spoken about with them That it starts with this like So what's the team doing today? What is our mission Between Perra and Mothma? The fact that

Bad Bata goes, oh, ask your father about that thing. After we've been like, why does Perry keep me sending her to Mabatha? They're all horrible. They're all horrible. They're all horrible. This episode, by the way, was I believe, is it written or was it directed by a House of Cards alumni? Oh, sure. You see it immediately, right?

Yeah. It was written. Natalie, is that what you said? I think it was written, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, there you go. Also, just quick, quick aside, uh,

I love the, the world of Star Wars has sour gummy worms that you drop into a cocktail to turn it. Um, Bob. They're so nasty. Rob. What?

They're not gummy worms. They're squigs. They're real worms. They're alive. They're moving around. Oh, yeah. I mean, clearly,

yes, they're clearly real worms. But, uh, they look like they make one hell of a insubes. at Mimosa. They say squigs so many times.

They say it so many times. They say it's so many. Are you going to have that squig? I'll take your squig. Do you want to say three squigs? Love squigs. Uh, squigs. Gross.

I thought you didn't like squigs anymore, mom. What if Marasino cherries were cool worms? Uh, what's the thing that they say when they take the drink? What's their little, what's their little, uh... Oh, it's, uh... There's a toast. No, there's a little like toast.

What's the toast? It's so good. I wrote it down, but I wrote so many things down that I don't have anything useful. Well, either way. I'll say it later. I'll just out loud when I get this. So Tay shows up as they are having their conversation. Sargonautima.

Sargonautima. And also with you. They talk Simlish on Shandula? They do. They're going to Tima. Hargona. They're going to Pema. Yeah.

Wait. Really? Is Timlish. Wow. I'm bad to noodoo. So before, before Tay walks up, Perrin's like, uh, I love this, I love this, this shade, so I have to call it out, is he, the bartender's about to put a squig. in Mon Motho's drink and she's like no I don't want it and parents like I'll take hers what

happened I thought you loved squigs and she's like I used to love squigs and she was like I was better at pretending I was like oh she's mask off from here on out here on out okay wait wait wait the thing is the thing is he doesn't say you used to love squigs he says I'll have hers getting the second squeak in his drink which again makes it all like you know what it looks like it's like when you had emergency to water or something or like an Alka-Seltzer, right? And he goes... And the worm gets skinnier.

Like the outside of the worm like dissolves and then you're left with the core jelly bit in the middle. It's like a stick. It's weird. Yeah. He goes, you used to like it. Which is vague in the right, in the perfect way. That's great.

Yeah. And then she says I was just better at pretending. Well, I find that hard to believe. Cigrona. Cigrona. Anyway, hi, hi, Tay. My old friend. Okay, so, crucially,

Tay, Perrin, and Mon Mothma all went to high school together. And there's a fascinating comment, Mon Mace. Which is, go ahead. So, they're talking and... But also, oh, great, going back to the actual beginning of it, when she says to Grotto, he goes, what are we toasting to? And she goes, a quick night.

And he goes, I'll drink to that. They know what they're in. They know the score. Yeah. They're in it together But they're partners in hate But they're partners in hate. And you got to respect

You know what it reminds me of Do you remember those Looney Tune Cartoons With the coyote Who's not Wiley Coyote Ralph and the sheep dog? Who the fuck is Ralph? You all know this? You all know the shit dog Looley Tos?

We just had this entire conversation On, were you there? It's on safe points. I'm sorry to say this. You said just, you and I have had this conversation on Waypoint material like four years ago. So I hope that's not what you're thinking of. Okay. Where somebody's like, you know Wiley Coyote talks and I was like, no, he doesn't.

No, that's Ralph and Sam. That's different. Because that's where, that's where we were trying to figure out, we remembered Sam the Sheep Dog. We could not remember who his foil was. It's Ralph. It's like, it was Wiley Coyote. And I was like, I don't think that's true. He looks like Wiley Coyote, but he has a red nose instead and it's like a little more droopy.

And they go and they check in in the morning every day. Well, time's a wasting, Sam. Yep, another day, another dollar. They clock in. How's your wife doing, Ralph? You know, like, ah, doing good, doing good. Like, that's the vibe, right? They check in.

That's very funny. And then they go and they do the thing. And they go do a cartoon bit. where it's like, I'm going to go try to kill all the sheep. I'm going to go try to do da-da-da-da. And at the end of the day, they clock out, you know. Better luck next time, Ralph. Oh, sure.

You can't win them all, you know. Thanks. Nice day, I, Sam. Yep, good to be alive, Ralph. And this is them clocking in. They're about to clock in and go to work to their marriage. They know what the situation is, and they just want to get through the day, sniping at each other all day.

But also, here's a weird thing. there is like so it's the weird thing of like Tay is an intruder on the domestic patch and so when he walks up Perrin's like I don't think you're on the menu tonight Tay

bro still in town or commuting a bit of both really what are we having to drink I just want to point out that Tay also immediately went to Perrin's Taylor to get his Chorazade outfits

because they They could be in a boy band together Color matching Next level Because Because the whole situation is Perrin has the outer robe In the royal blue

Right? And Tay and then it's the brown vest underneath And then Tay has the brown robe With the blue inner piece Blue! They're in a subgroup together today.

I don't get it. Do you think that he was like, oh, I know, I know a Taylor. We got to get you fixed up, Tay. We got to get you dressed right. Perrin is going, I feel like, is doing the thing where you reach out to the person that you trust the least. And you're like, we take you out to my Taylor. Yeah. What you've been talking about with my wife also.

Do you play cyber golf? We go, I got a, I got a membership at the club. They let me bring somebody every once in a while. I got a great instructor there. He'll really help you on your swing. Like, kill with kindness. the person you think might be your mortal fucking enemy yes exactly yeah

well so also and he's got he's got fucking the kid on it too the kids and on it too later we'll talk about her in a hundred percent lives are weird the fucking it's like the you know when there's a fighter jets or dog fighting and one of them

releases like a like chaff like countermeasures and it scrambles all the sensors Clayda Clayda's Clayda Laida is scrambled Laida the whole whole situation, like, this does not compute. I don't understand what I'm, are you my real dad? Like, the vibes are wild.

They're so wild. The other thing is Perrin notes to, after the, you're not on the menu tonight thing, says, Ramada has a big plan. It's very busy tonight, saving the empire from the emperor, which is how he sees her political position. And then she smirks and looks at, looks at Tane says, remember Perrin at 15. the Academy Firebrand. And the look on Perrin's face as he looks away is so ambivalent.

Like the realization, wait, is Parent an X radical? Yes. Like, is part of this, like, detachment, and I don't give a shit, the fact that, like, he's deeply disappointed by the world? I guess 15 years ago, I know, it was at 15, which would have been during, no, because that would have been during the Galactic Republic, that would have been anti-separatist shit, right? I think...

At 15... How old is Mon Mothma? Well, what we know is Mon Mothma became a senator and got married at 16. Married at 15. She got married at 15. Senator 16.

She's in Clone Wars as a senator. Which means during the Clone Wars, this motherfucker is in the school on Chandralla, Perrin, being a firebrand, which to me means... I think he was a stymour. the separatists out firebrand not a maybe the separatists have some good ideas firebrand but maybe I don't think you get a firebrand reputation to be like yeah let's really destroy our national

enemy I think you get a firebrand reputation for being like hey there's things like deeply fucked up either about the institution we're at or like what it represents in the broader power structure I think he's anti-republic but pro like the the life he lives now you know what Or is just so checked out, is so, like, if all he can take from life now is luxury and, and, and just be, you know, like this Dionysian, like, I, I'm going to just revel in what, what's lush about this vapid, empty world. I'm just going to revel in that and celebrate. And I'll have two squigs. Give me her a squig. The idea that...

And three more on top of that. If he really was the dude who is like, we have to be careful about Imperial Oversight when he was 15, marrying... That's why I think... Marrying a 15-year-old, it's so... It's so fucking rancid. They mentioned that it's like...

There's a point where they're like... Yeah, so a little bit later as they're walking, Ma'amathma is walking around the room, and she approaches Perrin who's standing at the window with two other people and the people are like, you guys must spend all day

looking out this window. I mean, God damn, this view. And Perrin's like, tell her, tell him, Ma, Ma'an, tell him. And Ma'an Mathema is like, oh, you know, one forgets to savor the familiar. I never look out this window, ever.

And she's like, I guess we came here as children. And the people are like, and Perrin mentions oh, she became a senator at 16, whatever. And she's like, well, we were married at 15 and the other couple is like, wow, so romantic in Perrin response traditional.

It's like, where were they, are they secretly, like, maybe perfect for each other because he's like an anti-imperial and she's like doing this rebellion effort, but maybe they were forced, like, forced to marry each other, because of their families or something and they just always resented each other. He's black pilled.

He's Dumer. He's like, we can't change anything. So what I'm going to do is kick back with my stupid centrist wife and get drunk all squigs. And is this the read that you're, the two of you are positioning for us now? This is what I'm positioning, yeah,

is that he's Dumer. But why is he hanging out with slime more? Yeah. He's a Dumer. He doesn't give a shit. He's like irony pilled now. He's iron. Right. He's part of the downtown scene. He's part of the fucking. I'm done, sir.

Yeah, he is. Yes, 100%. Oh my God. He's like a Mark Cuban dude where it's like, what do you mean? Like, yeah, of course I hang out with Steve Bannon. Like he's a good time. The party is good. Yeah. He throws great parties. Yeah. That's my read on this. And I think they never really got to know each other. You don't think they were tight in the, like the early. I mean, it's terrible. in the early days just again. His response as traditional, you don't know what anyone's going to turn into. Yeah, 100%. His response as, yeah,

as they're getting together is traditional, makes it seem like it was not their choice to marry each other. Yeah, and he was not necessarily, it feels like he is not pleased with that, that neither of they were necessarily pleased with that arrangement,

regardless of the specifics. And they were adults and probably they could have, yeah, right. She became a senator at 16. So they didn't have like, it doesn't seem like they had like a life like a romantic life together like they were immediately thrust into this is a marriage of politics right like this is 100% which is what something someone somebody here suggested that weeks ago was like was this a political marriage was this an arranged marriage at some point and it seems like yes

yeah I think so also her little laugh at the end of that she's like so painful I'm going to spend more time looking at this window I promise you so bleak moment one forgets to say for the familiar is that performance for the people they're talking to or is it also they're like shit eating like boy our marriage just fucked up right it sure is it is because what the actual thing that we first hear him say in the scene

is oh you should ask my wife I never look out the window and then she basically says the same thing right like both of them they're both in performance mode but I do wonder Is spiritual, he isn't looking out the window. The ex-radical is making a very point of a very, like, he's making a very, like, a pointed attempt to avoid looking out of the window at the world. He won't, yeah, he's just going to say, I, I am not 100% on the ex-radical buy-in. I feel, I have to, I have to be the dissenting voice.

I want you to be right. I would love for you to be right. But parents shipbag vibes are too strong. His shit-bag vibes are so strong. A lot of leftist. have become dirtbag leftists. Like he like we there are fucking dirtbag leftists at the Belenziaga shows. Yeah, you're not wrong.

But I, but I will say also he get, but he does feel like it is pinned to the 10 where he's just nakedly materialistic and checked out. And like, that's what I'm saying. But you can get there. This is the, this is the hippie to yuppie thing, right? Yes. Like, yeah, yep, yep. Do we just have this conversation? Was that somebody else?

It wasn't here. Okay. It's a well-known pipeline. Yeah, yeah, it's a well-known pipeline. Like, he was a true believer, and then 20 years go by, the empire rises. What are you going to do? Cash my checks is what I'm going to do. Yeah.

And, yeah. I just want to know if he's a spy. I just want to know if he's a spy. You want to know if he's a spy? I want to know how much he's looking into my momothwa. because like all the eyes are on her right like it's going to be Perrin that that what if he doesn't what if he oh what if they try to get him to

snitch and he won't I've been yay and he's secretly a real one in the end well did anyone catch the the line that Tay says to Perrin that seems like way out of pocket when he says charity begins at home oh my God line roll.

My dude did not know he was about to get hit in the face. Yeah, go ahead. Good luck feeding the galaxy. This is right after they toast each other and then monitor off one and after they squig up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like go off on to talk to each other. Perrin goes, well, oh, well, because she's like, he's like, it's not about charity

tonight. So you're off the menu, um, uh, Tay. So, uh, good luck feeding the. galaxy. I'm off to feed myself. Charity begins. Charity begins at home. Charity begins at home. And it's, as he's walking away, he didn't need to say anything. He was leaving. He was disengaging. This was sucker punch right in the kidney. Bop. In his apartment. In his, in front of his wife. Like the power plays. And then they go talk to the late, the Leda and Leda again

Leda is in retreat mode Lada is not here Oh there's none of that shit this week There is just a Tate pull her aside and do the like Now listen What you do with your dad is You know but your mom

deserves respect What I'm here you're gonna respect He's stepdadder He's stepdadding her He could do it too You totally see like You know easy Hey Lada I just had a question about like

how school's going and then listen I've known my mom a long time your mom works hard for you I can see it yep

and I know you're at that age but here's the thing I don't give a shit also because she wants she's at that age she doesn't give a shit but she does want to put on certain hairs so when she hits her with like

you're drinking a squig that's disgusting and and Taya's like it's supposed to be is like you little child and you don't understand anything about culture it's so good what a scene

sometimes the kids vibes are off sometimes the kids vibes are off you know television sometimes the kids got terrible vibes but yeah you're right she is but she is just spinning out because she's like I don't know what these vibes are because this might be her first encounter

with like affectionate sexual attention in her life but between you're between Taye and Mothma yeah the two of them actually have vibes? Why are you here all the time now? That's so weird that she asked him that. She's like, why are you here all?

She says, you're here all the time. Well, and this is the weird thing. This is the danger of it. But Mothma doesn't have friends like this. And even here, she still doesn't. Oh, my God, this is the point. And by the way, it's not going right. No, no.

And then we see her with other quote unquote friends, right? We see her with the, the brightest minds of the political sense. scene on chorisome. Just fucking morons. Like this is who's leading leading the Are you got any squigs? I hear you got squigs.

Oh my God. Again from the thing here Palpatine's frustrating. Yes, we agree. To easily provoked? Yes. Overreactive perhaps. Understatement. He says what he means.

What does that mean? He says what he means. means, I mean, this is all just, this is literally lifted from a dinner party in 2004. Right. 2003, 2004 about George W. Bush. This is when I, I had this conversation with centrists in my life. Who voted, yeah. Who voted for Bush, says what he means.

He's an honest guy. You know, I mean, specifically what they say is, his primary charge is to protect us, isn't it? That's what the PORD is supposed to do. That's what it will do. Mom-Athmas is how much how much protection is too much and we know what too little looks like

it looks like 9-11 like that's this is the we've seen this yeah I mean this is a Trump conversation too you get you get those same things there where it's like oh well at least

you know he's shooting from the hip and he's doing what has to be done dangerous times there's so much danger all around us we need someone who's going to protect us who's going to call it like they see it they're so mad about what he says but the things that he's doing are the right thing

or whatever, yeah. Yeah, exactly. 100%. Oh. It's strange because it doesn't feel like anyone here is outside of Monmouthma really pushing, like, is the guy in the green hat? I can't tell if he's like anti-

He's on Monmahma side. Yeah, yeah, he definitely is. But he's not, yeah. He's on Monmothma side in the way that you could be on Monmothma's side at a dinner party for her. a senator. You know what I mean? You're not going to get the I'm the only one with clarity of purpose Saw Garera shit here. You're going to get what is public order. It's an awfully big box, isn't it?

Which is right, right? Like you're going to get liberal, you know, op-ed arguments here. This was what, the reason I end up going back to Bush for this stuff is I think at least in the Trump era, you know, Leftism in America It was in a different place Come 2016, 2017 Still not where it needs to be, right? Obviously, there was no great unification In that first Bernie run

There was no great, you know, We can unpack all that shit forever But in the Bush era, the best you could get was I think that the security stuff happening At the TSA is a little bit too much. We've talked about the, Rob, you often bring up the

public speech zones, the free speech zones stuff, right? It's interesting to see here that the best that the opposition to the emperor can get is Palpatine overreaches. Palpatine is too easily provoked, etc. They can't begin to even have a conversation about a different structure of what society could look like. There is no, I wonder if he's ever not going to be emperor and become chancellor again. I wonder if he'll ever be replaced. These are all people, these are all people in this conversation who can remember the

Republic, who can remember term limits, who can remember a different era. And all they can even begin to offer up is what is public order. It's an awfully big box, isn't it? Well, and also the which again is right, but it's not enough. The whole like, he says what he means thing. Often feels like it's a meaningless statement. It's an utterance. But I think the vibe it gets at is this idea that someone, someone's strong, is going to cut through all the, all the wheel spin of democracy. But the thing is, like, it is, you have this idea of, oh, I know this person means what they say, because then they go and do the thing. Yes, because, like, if you're an authoritarian, you have an authoritarian bent, that is very easy to do, where it's like,

I'm just going to cut through all of it, and I'm just going to go with what I want to do and fuck consensus building. Like, I don't care about that. People like, in Mahatma, people who are like the boring institutionalists, you know, they aren't, they aren't, they aren't fit for the moment they're in, which, which Madna has arrived at. You know, her way, her way won't work is the conclusion she's, she's reached. But that's sort of politician who seems like, you know, they, there's a lot of double speak, you know, they don't always do what they mean. Well, part of it is that they're forced to work in, they're forced to work within systems that breed compromises that mean what you said you wanted

to do, your intentions, they all get watered down, and they all become disappointing and boring and underwhelming. You don't get that rush of like, this person put a marker down and then they did it. And people here, like, in the show, you see the affection they have for like all that messiness and confusion of representative politics is done away with. And we just have the idea of like what's the guy want to do and you know he's going to do and that must mean he's honest and he's the guy he's the guy that we have put our faith in to get the job done and that is that is reassuring in a way that standing in a hall with hundreds of other people thousands of other people debating some sort of policy is not leaves a debate to the dinner party let the guy

do the thing and it'll shake out afterwards we can put pressure on him afterwards right I mean, to me, this is very much, the war is over. Like, all of this really feels like playing at politics rather than, it's like, as soon as it gets to a place where Mon Mothma is about to, like, really engage, like, dig her heels in a bit and engage with what they're really talking about, the man standing across from her is like, you know what I am at great risk of? is ingesting too much of this nourishing chandrelin hospitality. And then Mon Mothma has to... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The clothes of her eyes is just... Defeated.

It's like the politicians retreat back... The politicians stay in their sort of like pageantry of politics. And Mon Mothma is trying to talk about something... Real policy, a real, you know, state of... state of the world, state of Corrassant. And it's like, she,

I mean, she's going to, she's going to the hardware store for milk in this conversation by thinking that she could have like a real conversation about, about politics here. Where everyone is here to be at a dinner party. Nobody's here. We don't even see her initiate this conversation.

This is a conversation that she has been, this is where the conversation. went to and she's there and is asking some questions what is public order what is what's going you know but she isn't um she isn't holding court this is not sateen holding court in those clone wars episodes this is her out of dinner party trying to like maneuver through a conversation where maybe she's supposed she knows what she's supposed to say she can't say what she really believes and she's going to just kind of get through it um which is a bad, which is a hard place to be in.

Well, I mean, the agenda of the night is to get votes, right? Like that was established at the very top. Right. When she meets, like, when she sees the senator, the man in the purple, who's standing with that group, he says, I always forget how sweet you are when you're looking for votes. Like, there is this underlying, like everyone, she has an agenda. She's trying to get votes.

She is there to engage with people politically. They're there to have squelior. Whigs at a shandrelin cocktail party dinner party. Like they don't really give a shit at this point. The war is over. It's interesting that yeah, here she is

doing politics but where she seems to get the most pool is charity, right? This is as true for us you know, now as maybe it was the height of the gilded age

of like the way you get things done in America, the way you get things done under capitalism is through private charity. You can't just get good, you can't get good policy through. You got to get a rich person to say that they support an effort. And then you can go try to use that to do some sort of direct change, which is completely shot through with a billion flaws ranging from the lack of oversight to having a different set of objectives versus, you know, policies that was to work towards public good versus whatever the charity's actual objectives are um all that stuff is is it's fascinating that is where she has the most luck because she can go get one rich person to be like here's 50 000 credits to help the

gormons much harder to get votes to actually put some restraint on new imperial law right she is not going to get the poured repealed you know well and again like you know we saw the senate it is it's a ghost ship like uh yeah You know, the helmsman's dead, and everyone else here is kind of like, we're just here to enjoy the perks that come with being a vestigial body. And here's the other weird thing is all their comfort, all their prosperity, all their world. They are now tied up in the fate of the empire. For most of these folks, it is like, you know, the idea of a rebellion, you wouldn't, like, a lot of these folks might be thinking, the sort of people who do

who do something like Aldani would not draw a lot of distinction between the emperor and the imperial the imperial power structure and me and we don't want to go back to the days when Cadbane was blowing up the fucking Senate so I like the public safety law

They weren't hostages a couple years ago or a year ago how long it was been? No it was 20, 15 years ago Oh right right remember when that awesome guy came and fucked up the Senate that's super sexy cowboy i will say that was there's another thing there tay is the one who is like you know when when when mom mothma is like uh hey you know the the politics i'm at the emperor's going too far tay is the one who's like well maybe the rebels should have thought of that before they

blew up al-dani so i don't know if that's points for or against him being tay doesn't say parent sorry i meant parent i meant parent not yeah my point being I don't know that's points four against Perrin being former radical or died in the wool super conservative. But it's one of them. I mean, you can imagine a world where it's, again, the intellectual leftist who, you know, sits and theorizes it all. But like, oh, but we shouldn't, what's the point of this, like, what are you getting at with this protest? You're just interrupting our, you know, life. and you're actually making it whatever harder.

Like, that's what it's direct action. Like, what we need to do is be thinking of, of... Uh-huh. So you're calling him a squig socialist? I don't know what I'm calling him. I'm calling him a herb. Yeah, I mean, that's true. I mean, it's also easy to imagine a person having those sort of ideas

or, like, at least having their reputation at 15, and then moving from his planet and going to a richest, city and rubbing elbows with you know politicians all the time and then just having all of that drain for that. One could just become Christopher Hitchens. It's so funny.

Robb is like, yeah, you went to Hitchens. I've been thinking a lot about with regards to the rest of this like David Plotz style. You need the room where it happens. You need the back room filled with cigar smoke. You need the dinner party. You don't, you know, real Pollock says it doesn't happen in the Senate House anyway.

It happens in between the the you know the drinks that you share with the person across the aisle because only only away from the senate house can you have the real you can only get honest with people behind closed doors you can't do it out in public and it's easy to imagine mon mothma was that person for a decade you know i would oh 15 years ago the idea that that parent this is the thing you're going to convince me like this because the idea that perrin was the one who is like we have to be more radical and mon mothma being like no there's a process he's only going to be emperor for a few years once things are stable things are going to go back to normal is very i it's so juicy to me

if that was the case and there's an implication he went off to war and comes back and the empire happened and it's like yeah did he go off to war he mentions yeah it's weird yeah they mentioned him as a soldier but yet he does have my own old friends from the regiment. I was a social officer, basically, like, old British. Yeah. I don't know what he did. He'd do.

Because it was always the clones out there catching the bullets. Yeah. I don't see that man in any, like, come on. Unless he was one of the blue suits down at the prison. Oh, he could have been one of the, yeah, the Senate guards who got deployed somewhere, maybe. That's where he likes to wear the blue. It's like, I want to know so bad. I am so, look, they know, they know.

They know. They know we want to know more. about the the parent Mon relationship and they're giving us they're giving us like tasty little appetizers I need more I need more please is he a complete piece of shit or is he

I mean he's a complete piece of shit yes he is a great time when he arrive at at the piece of shit yes yeah I guess I see a terrible man I need to know more I need to know how he became terrible I need to know more

Maybe the sort of crises that Andor is going to provoke what can fix him I think that we will see how all that unfolds That will do it for this week's episode of Andor I gotta tell you it's it's good that we record this the day after the episode comes out Because it gives me some time to edit it I don't have to rush to edit it the next three and a half hours Right exactly But I want to see the next

episode of the TV show. Me too. I want to... What's going to happen? We gotta see? I actually have no... Because we knew that the next episode would be something about the prison,

right? I have no idea what the next episode's going to be about. Prison. More prison, but what? It's going to lead up to a prison break, right? They're going to... Some next episode, he's going to start being like...

Yeah. But is Val going to be involved? Is Val going to be involved? Is, is... Is Vell going to figure out the prison stuff? What if it's two prison breaks happening simultaneously, the cutting between? That's what I think. That's what I think. That's what I think.

It's like the Aldani thing where we thought, oh, maybe the Aldani people will, like, hop. I think this will actually be maybe two things there once. Ferrix and Nekima 5. Well, then Andor is going to be like, you need to get ham out with me. Ham and Mesh and Melshi and. Jambo. Usla and Chando and Bingbo and everyone I can't believe you did Bingbo like that

And Bell's going to be like I've room for one I've room for one And it's you and I have to kill you I'm real By the way I'm real curious If Kina is the sort who like tries to rat out Like hey what are you doing Like tries to rat it all out

Or if at the crucial moment he's the guy who knifes a guard in the throat Because he seems like he has that That would be epic Who? Who's nice to Kino? Oh, Kino, yeah, I got to know. I got, yeah, is Kino going to be the guy who's like... Backed into the corner of that situation.

Yeah. What comes out? Is he a company man or is he... Or is he Andy Circus? Or is he Andy Circus. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder how, because, like, the thing that stood out to me in terms of how the guards were moving is how limited they're willing to interact with the prisoners.

So I feel like it's got to be like a full revolt. Like, six guys against 80 or whatever. But do they have to kill Kino to get past Kino? You know what I mean? No, but is he going to die heroically or as a sacrifice. I think now that you pointed out, because now it was established, they only come down to the floor, the shop floor. It's a clear body. Someone's getting it. Someone's got to die. You're going to have to drop an engine on that, man. Mm-hmm. I mean, they had to figure out to turn off the, the electric floors or get boots. They're just going to get some boots. They get some boots.

But they could throw that shit on for the whole facility and just like, perk everyone. Yeah, okay. I got my boots on. I'm Andor. I'm trying to get out of prison. Yeah, that's true. But he's like on the ship as it flies away heroically. He's like, yes, I did it.

Meanwhile, Marva and Brasso and Bix are all being killed on Farrix as their shit goes. bad, the cut between the two. And or the man was a man passed. Yeah. Bell gets him off the prison and then they're like and he's like, thank you

and he turns around gun to his head now it's time for you to die now that I have you in my ship, you must die because you knew too much about Luthin and then he has to talk her into keeping him alive. And then he kills her. Oh, shit. And then he goes

to settle up with Luton, but ends up. Sinta would care. You can't kill. Sinda would care. Sinda would care. Sinda would be like recipes. She would. Sinsa will never go to the grave except for it in like 30 years.

And she'll like. She's going to make it through the whole thing you're saying. Since it's going to make it to the end. I hope so. I hope so. We'll see. Sintz is at the EWalk event at the end of whatever. Yeah.

She was, she's running. Disney secretly edits her into that scene and she's like dancing with like wicked God. I'll take it. Dave Filotti. You know, this is why we need a Faloni. Shout out to Faloni, because Filoni will make it happen. He knows what the people need. He puts people together.

Yeah. What are you saying about Gregor? He's like, I don't like it when people die. I like die. So he's just like one day you're going to turn out of return the gentleman. I haven't seen that in the while. When like Anakin and Yoda and Gunner all there, Plow's going to be there like throwing horns and like it's going to rule.

I need the Filoni at it. Which way, Western man? This is the future. This is the... Make Gilroy and Faloni work together. Like, man, this is an incredible speech. I love it. Film it. What if we gave it to a Muppet? it would be so can we okay I have one last thing

that we can go because I know it was a long one we okay so lots of y'all reached out to let us know we can't watch

Tales of the Jedi because two of the episodes have big spoilers and oh this is what I'm so fucking mad about

no Natalie you got spoiled I got spoiled I got spoiled this is I'm just gonna you can't avoid this yeah

that was in one of these oh yes I knew I knew that but I found out the second part we're gonna say it

so if you Have it go with everybody, Patreon.com slash civilized. We're going to spoil a nothing thing about Yaddle. You've already seen if you're on the internet. If you are online at all in the past 24 hours. I'm going to say I don't like this. Okay.

So the thing is, Yaddle speaks normal. Yaddle speaks normal. It's because she was, you know what? She was on Khorasan on too long. She came to hate Yoda culture. And changed her pattern of speech. So that she could fit with the rest of the Jedi Council. but Yoda too proud of being a green swamp weird now.

She was a young, she was young firebranded at the young age 150 back at the academy and then, yeah, became changed you have. Yoda's just a little freak. He's just a little freak. He just, you know, he's sitting down and one day he was like, I'm going to order my meal with a funny accent. And that took it for the rest of the grammar thing. It was the grammar. He uses ancient grammar. But maybe she's not that old.

Yeah, that's what I think. I think Yadal's not that old. She's just not that old. Yoda's like a thousand billion years old. Yeah. How old is Yadal? Yadal's probably like 200. She's only like, she was born in 50 and he is a baby.

She was born in 509. And Yoda is much longer than that. Yota was born. Yoda was born in 896. Oh my God. Yoda's so old. The age gap. I don't know.

It's 400. Well, I guess for, you guess... 400 years? Four hundred years. I think you're just... After a point, though, it kind of doesn't matter because you might as well be immortal. It's like, it's not so, like, it's the...

Depends. Yeah. Because growing was, like, 50-year-old, right? Like, an 80-year-old? Yeah, a little close of that, I think. Like, yeah. Once you're over the, like, 50 mark... I think you have to both be over 600.

It's not a sliding scale, though, yeah. Yes, you know. Yeah. Yoda's just weird He wanted to talk weird He wanted to do his little party trick And the people ask him about it was like Oh an ancient thing

Because everybody around him is younger than him Nobody's going to fact check Yoda That's why he should not have been allowed To be on the Jetta Council for so long Anyway I gotta go MK has been Twirling a rope for the dog

For about 25 minutes To try to distract Mita from derailing the show So that Thank you Thank you. We got to think Mina. Make M.K. Thanks, Lena.

Mina has been a minute. But that'll do it for this week's episode of a more civilized age. If you want to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com slash civilized. Until next time, please rate and review us on a podcast platform of choice. And remember to avoid engaging the curiosity of the ISB and drawing the wrath of a poodle. That is my advice. We're going to be. We're going to be.

You're going to be able to be. Thank you.