Opining On OBI-WAN: PART IV Recap (Patreon)

What the fuck are we even doing anymore?

I ask this because, ostensibly, my job is to write recaps that highlight the meaningful events of  a given episode. To characterize its emotion or power. To analyze and give insight into how they pulled some great thing off, or why a certain story beat didn’t land. Within that aim, I always do my best to mine some kind of edifying purpose of a given piece of media, even if it may seem trivial. For instance, a weird tree branch shot a few episodes ago can turn into a conversation about blocking and hiding awkward movements in the edit. Because there’s always a way to find some kind of purpose in analysis… But I genuinely don’t know what to do with something like this. What new thing can I say about something that is going to repeat the same exact dynamics (even within the past few episodes) and recycle famous lore beats so nakedly as to be craven? Of all the episodes so far, this one is somehow the thinnest and most testing. And in the end I just have so profoundly little to say about it.

Like, remember when stories used to be about shit?

Forget the idea of having arcs and thematic import. I’ve already given up hope on that important front. I’m talking about even just having meaningful character conflict within a story. For instance, let’s make a little apt comparison, shall we? Because the show is soooooooo fucking eager to basically ape the Death Star Leia rescue sequence in A New Hope, what with the 9000 callback details. But hey, here’s kind of an important one! Remember how our main characters disagreed and clashed in all that? Remember how Han and Leia and Luke were kind of immediately at each other's throats and disagreeing and always ending up in hotter water than when they began? Remember how fucking fun that was and how it make the middle part of that film come alive with purpose? Well, imagine you got a sequence that aped all the details and none of the actual dramatic understandings that fueled it. Imagine if everyone went through the motions like robots and it constantly put us on our heels and I just… I’m so tired y’all. I’m so tired of D- writing getting thrown into these positions to play with all our favorite toys. I’m tired of the fact that these shows somehow display our lowest standards.

I mean, what do you want me to analyze, here? The fact that this is our second repeated Leia rescue in three episodes? That she was only gone for 20 minutes of largely ineffective screen time? That as hard as they tried, they had no idea how to dramatize REAL danger to her because they have no idea what dramatic stakes are? That the episode opened with yet another hyper-repetitive psychological realism of Vader / cross-cutty bacta tank stuff, while offering no character-centric investigation to follow? Which is the sure sign of a writer desperately reaching for texture with absolutely nothing to say of insight?

Or should I note the fact that every single non-conflict or parameter in this story is so ridiculously convenient, including Vader’s absence? Should I note there’s been like four repetitive “get past a guard” scenes all with the same terrible bluffing mechanisms? Should I note that any “heist” mechanic operates on carefully establishing a plan so the audience can build tension and then when you introduce wrinkles, they better understand the stakes of what is going wrong? Should I point to the function of Ocean’s 11 or Heat or The Killing and be, like, hey, have none of you even studied the basics of this stuff? Or should I note that it’s dramatically inert to have Reva interrogating Leia when WE know that she doesn’t really know anything - and they’re not even playing THAT part of the despair in the conflict?

I mean, should I talk about the awkward action again? Specifically, how bad it is at hiding people who can’t convincingly run or use the most lazy movements on their lightsaber, without selling the snaps of their choreography? Should I admit that the shot in the dark where Obi-Wan is kinda cool, but it’s a shame that it’s the highlight of the episode? Especially given the fact that Obi Wan suddenly breaking out the lightsaber and being pretty good with it basically negates any idea of build-up or any kind of arc with him? Because it just kind of happens? And all of this ability delay has really just been an artificial, faux de-powering to provide the worst kind of false tension for the series?

Should I do research and find out who those people were in the Jedi tomb? Apparently they were characters from clone wars and the new Feloni-verse sure likes to reference those in continuity, huh? And that for some reason, people are very mad on twitter because they were expecting clone wars flashbacks to the cartoon for some reason I cannot fathom?

Should I note that idea that when Leia was hiding under Obi-Wan’s coat it genuinely reminded me of Vincent Adultman dating Princess Carolyn in Bojack Horseman?

Should I talk about how this show is utterly wasting Sung Kang? And whatever interesting things they could be doing with Reva and making you empathize with her station they ruin by soooooo clearly hiding the most empathetic aspects of her story?

Should I talk about pedantic continuity stuff and the fact that after three weeks of people yelling at me that, no, it hasn’t fucked the continuity because she’s only heard him as “Ben,” she very directly is told his name OBI-WAN in this one? To which, I’m telling you, the show is not worthy of the trust you are putting in it.

What should I offer as constructive means of analysis? Should I break out Mamet’s rules for drama again and look at any scene and ask the critical questions: 1) who wants what 2) what happens if they don’t get it 3) and why now? And then look at the myriad of ways the show fails at it?

Should I talk about the jaw-droppingly lazy use of Deus Ex Machina and how, if it actually gave a shit about storytelling, they would have properly set up Maya Erksine’s character and “Wade” to give his death some kind of meaning to the audience? Or would that be too much of a BUMMER and they rather have the insincere texture of sentimentality of sadness that, while not actually rocking us, let’s us pretend like there’s some kind of stakes here? Should I note that this is the heartbreaking difference between moving properties that get our empathy and trifling projects that just try to milk our sympathy?

How can you pick and choose criticisms when everything doesn’t work? How do you try and lift something up, when at it’s very core purpose, it seems so misguided and lost and lacking in a very identity for existing?

Okay… I know what I want to talk about. Because that’s he real question that’s not being answered: “Why tell a story about Obi-Wan at this stage in his life?”

Forget capitalism, forget whatever circumstances created this show. Let’s actually ruminate on the potential answer to that question. Because you have to come up with a good one for Obi Wan Kenobi: The Series to exist with any real purpose. Granted, the original trilogy and Prequels give you some parameters. He gives Luke to Owen. He waits. Then R2 and the plans came roaring back into his world in A New Hope. But with that end-point locked in, we have to deal with a kind of fatalism that the first film never had. Along with a chronologically before. So how do we tell a REAL story about that in between time?

Unfortunately this reaches into the well of all the Skywalker-dom that already exists and copies it out of desperation, rendering everything it touches less effective. Obi-Wan? Vader? Lil Leia? It’s a xerox of a xerox of xerox. And I can’t help but wonder if there was a way to get at something meaningful instead. Something that allows us to dive into the space of Obi-Wan’s feelings and failures without throwing a grenade into the story that already exists and undermining it completely. Something that acts more as parable, something about a lost, wayward Jedi, looking for solace in a modern world that hunts them. What if we got away from the Skywalker-dom. What if Obi-Wan tried to rescue that Safdie kid? What would their adventure to safety even be? What would safety even look like in this world? How could it give Kenobi a new hope for the future? What if this show didn’t oblige us with what we already loved… What if it dared to make us love something new?

I, for one, am already mourning that possibility.

<3HULK