THE MANDALORIAN - CHAPTER 14 - THE TRAGEDY (Patreon)

“I have a personal problem,” [Bong Joon Ho] says. “I respect the creativity that goes into superhero films, but in real life and in movies, I can’t stand people wearing tight-fitting clothes. I’ll never wear something like that, and just seeing someone in tight clothes is mentally difficult. I don’t know where to look, and I feel suffocated. Most superheroes wear tight suits, so I can never direct one. I don’t think anyone will offer the project to me either. If there is a superhero who has a very boxy costume, maybe I can try.”

That’s why I like Dad Bod Boba Fett. There’s just something delightful about that image of him first emerging for me. In a world where everyone is in form fitting or x or y. There’s old Boba, putting that armor over his sweatshirt robe thing and standing proudly. It honestly made all the butt kicking 10 times more enjoyable to me.

And overall, I honestly don’t have a lot to say about this episode because it’s the one that finally gets the ball rolling and throws all the plots together. Boba shows up. Ming Na Wen comes back because, hey, why not waste her talent. The dark troopers show up. The dark saber shows up. They’ve even teased the Bill Burr come back next time. Yes, everything they’ve teased out this season finally just shows up.

And I will always take stuff finally showing up! Especially when it comes together in a tight, smooth, no frills episode that’s basically just a reasonably tight series of stand-offs. Culminating in the sad moment of our little green boy getting hauled off by the empire, which of course makes us go “oh no!” All this is all the sign of a show being straight forward and on it’s toes. And when it’s working? There’s not much grind against on my part.

So I’m just happy for it.

But I does mean I have a lot of RANDOM THOUGHTS!

-The opening scene is actually important because I’ve been arguing we have to get into Mando’s interiority more. So I really like seeing Mando drop his guard with Grogu (also they’re gonna make that name stick if it kills them). This was definitely the episode where it was mission critical, especially giving the ending taking of Grogu. But we’re need more of it going forward.

-The moment Slave I appeared on the horizon I literally said “oh fuck!” out loud to no one.

-I could watch Giancarlo mercilessly taunt a baby all fucking day.

-Also, I know I keep saying this, but remember when people freaked out cause Rey could do Jedi stuff really quickly? Anyway, a literal baby was just force chucking some dudes for fun.

-I will say you can make these team up / alliances a LIIIIIIIIIITTLE more precarious? Everything is so dang easy in these deals and I feel like they gotta find some tighter focus on this stuff in the give in takes. I mean, deals don’t always have to be axes to grind, either. Often they can funny and deal with more changes in status. Basically I feel like this show needs to go back and take lessons from THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY or hell, even the negotiation scene in the Coen’s TRUE GRIT. I just want SOMETHING more to this stuff because they aren’t even trying anymore.

-So if we go back to my personal hyper fandom, the first person shooter DARK FORCES is one of my all time favorite star wars things ever. That game was so amazing. The level design. The feeling of using the blaster. The weapons. The basic focus and intuition. It was lightyears ahead of its time and still does things modern first person shooters honestly FORGET to do. And a big part of that game was, that’s right, the Dark Trooper project… Honestly, I have no idea where it shows up in other SW lore, but it’s fun to imagine that game had some kind of impact.

-Speaking of which, I always want to put more interesting stills in the header, but I worry anything I put will get too spoilery, but it leaves... little option... hopefully today's effort was fun.

-I burst out laughing at the director credit. Not for any bad reason! The guy just always makes me laugh in a kind of meta context that’s hard to explain.

-So there are weird amount of people saying that this episode was “depressing” and I’m kinda like… huh? Like, yeah, Baby Yoda’s been kidnapped, but that’s happened like ten times already and yet they were talking about being emotionally destroyed and depressed and angry at the show and… it sort of gave me an existential crisis? I mean it’s not depressing, right? It’s playing big theatrical games that are fun as hell. This is just the part where bad guys take the thing we love, which elicits fear and good cinematic emotions, but, I mean DEPRESSING!?!?

I dunno. Mostly, it’s one of those reminders of how much time I spend in the seams of narrative construction and thus understand the game that is being played with my emotions, which probably helps. But turning the screws is a core part of drama. And the moment these things becomes “oh no the bad thing makes me sad,” that’s the moment you loose the ability to even construct a story. I guess I don’t mean to be pearl clutching about this, it’s just one of those things that reminds me of where core audiences are at and how we need to listen and yet still parse. I just always always always worry when everything becomes about naked placation because that’s how safe, boring shows keep happening. I want people to remember that drama is the reason they care in the first place.

And keep caring.

<3HULK