The Mandalorian (Spoilers!!!) Season 2 10/30

[Daniel]

I will say it annoyed me that they just had to redeem Burr’s character (kudos whoever called it earlier in the thread).

But yeah, that Imperial officer was the most genuinely disturbing/scary thing Star Wars has put out yet. Overall a great episode.

[THE DUKE]

13 minutes ago, Daniel said:

I will say it annoyed me that they just had to redeem Burr’s character (kudos whoever called it earlier in the thread).

But yeah, that Imperial officer was the most genuinely disturbing/scary thing Star Wars has put out yet. Overall a great episode.

You also had Titus Welliver earlier in the season suiciding himself rather than being subjected to real interrogation.  I love the fanaticism they are putting into the Empire loyalists. That officer was creepy as hell and got a legit "oh ****!" from me when Mayfeld shot him.

That reminds me of another thing I loved about this episode.  All the stormtroopers fired up when they believed their comrades fought off those pirates not knowing it was Mando.  That kind of camaraderie, enthusiasm, and respect is something you'd see from the Clone troopers in Clone Wars not from the seemingly mindless drones that are stormtroopers.  It was a nice touch.

[naptownskinsfan]

20 minutes ago, Daniel said:

I will say it annoyed me that they just had to redeem Burr’s character (kudos whoever called it earlier in the thread).

But yeah, that Imperial officer was the most genuinely disturbing/scary thing Star Wars has put out yet. Overall a great episode.

Richard Brake is a pretty underrated actor IMO. Great casting, and that really shows you who survived Operation Cinder to rebuild the Empire into the First Order.

[Broncofan]

13 hours ago, THE DUKE said:

That may have been my favorite episode of the season.  It didn't advance the overall narrative much, but in terms of the action, the speech from Mayfeld about Empire vs New Republic and what it really means to most of these planets and what you have to do to sleep at night and what makes you cross those lines you think you have, then listening to the speech from the true believer and Mayfeld snapping, just everything was on point.  Awesome direction from Famuyiwa.  For as much crap as some give Bill Burr in this series, I thought he was great in this episode, as was Pascal.  Pascal is just so great at non verbal expression, and this one was no different.  Even though he barely spoke with his helmet off, you could just see the conflict.  Everything is geared up for the finale now.  About the only part of the episode that didn't feel on point to me was sending that message at the end to Gideon.

Loved the ep too.   Just a point - wasn't it exactly the same speed Gideon gave them when he first met them in S1?  I thought it was very effective in throwing the gauntlet, much like how Gideon tried to sow intimidation and fear when he showed up, Mando serving notice he's having none of it.

[AlexGreen#20]

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Anybody who has ever spent significant time watching the NFL has developed a unique filter for commercials. It’s an evolutionary response developed after a decade of: Touchdown – Commercial – Extra Point – Commercial – Kickoff – Commercial. The human brain can only suffer so many advertisements for insurance and domestic light beers before intracranial bleeding develops, so evolution has found a way to shield us from the wreckage we choose to expose ourselves to. It takes a tremendous effort to crack this filter, and the last time it happened to me was a jarring moment and (I suspect) explains why some fans are so enthusiastic about The Mandalorian.

It was the week after the election, and I don’t remember which game I was watching (the sort of generic Thursday Night Football game that was Jaguars vs Bengals in spirit if not reality) when a commercial broke through the white noise machine. It was an advertisement for Ford F150s, the sort of generic ad spot talking about things like towing capacity and bed size (as though 98.7% of pick-up trucks sold currently aren’t just dad-SUVs or ******-bro flexes). It was the exact sort of advertisement that a year ago never would have made it past my commercial filter, but my filter had been specially calibrated after months of shock exposure to search and destroy exclusively for political ads (#battlegroundstateproblems).

In the moment that ad struck me like lightning. It was the first non-political advertisement that I had seen in weeks. There wasn’t an American flag back drop projected badly on a green screen, no swelling music, no confident promises, no beaming family surrounding a man in an expensive suit with nine ounces of makeup slathered on his on his face. That 4-wheel drive, aluminum body, heated-seat, blind-spot-protection-having overpriced mess of a vehicle was more beautiful to me in that ****ty bar than the first wildflower in spring after an atrocious winter. It was glorious in that after months of the awful cacophony of politics that we all just lived through, there was no listing of party-affiliated talking points, it was just there to sell me ****. This commercial had Absolutely. Nothing. To. Say.

As I watch the Mandalorian, and then watch the commentary on it, I’m reminded of that damn Ford commercial and my immediate visceral response of appreciation for it. The Mandalorian, gloriously, doesn’t have a point. There’s no negligently veiled allegory hidden in Mando’s vectorless meander across the stars. It lacks all of the miserable and overbearing mandates of representation that helped turn the sequel trilogy into a disjointed mess. It’s simply a story of Mando bumbling and lost amidst the galaxy, and it’s a beloved show for that (even though I think we all acknowledge that it’s primarily here to sell us **** we don’t need, Disney + and Baby Yoda plush-toys most immediately leaping to mind.)

It’s simple, it’s episodic, it’s a call back to a time when a tv show could exist without taking a dramatic stance. It’s everything that The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker were not. But I question if without those trainwreck movies and the absolutely wretched election cycle that followed, if The Mandalorian would be nearly so highly acclaimed. It seems to me that Star Wars fans, (and maybe to an even greater extent, fans who find the politicization of ever aspect of our society to be abhorent) have been so beaten down by their beloved franchise in recent years, that they’re choosing to cling desperately to one of the few rafts that they can find. I understand the instinct, The Mandalorian has a lot of neat things about it. But the year is 2020. There’s a nigh unlimited amount of television content, much of it truly excellent. Heaping praise on a show as middling as The Mandalorian says more about the state of the fanbase (especially it's deeply loyal roots) and it’s confidence level in future feature-length-films than it does the quality of the show.

As I watch it, I can’t help but want something more. Television and movies have evolved beyond this narrative structure, and the lack of theme seems nothing short of cowardly in the world of 2020. It seems as though Disney took the criticism of “keep politics out of movies”, (something lobbied frequently and heavily by the most arduent fans of the star wars universe) to its most logical extreme. And the result of that narrative decision is something that seems downright sterile.

What better way to ensure that a production never accidentally creates racial commentary than to make sure that the main character’s race is never visible, and the only thing that he ever fights are aliens or other face-covered people? What better way to avoid talking about fiscal or class struggles than to dip your toe into a civilization and be gone the next day without exploring any of its structures?

 There exists a middle ground in entertainment between not having a theme and being obnoxious and overbearing about it. Breaking Bad, often held as the gold standard of television in the 21^st century, was a scathing indictment of the American Health Care System, but Walter White didn’t take his money and bomb a hospital with it while pontificating about how his decision to turn to terrorism was righteous in light of a failed system. He was steadily driven deeper into desperation and madness by this system and the audience was trusted to pull their own thoughts about the themes without harsh prodding from the show.

The counterpoint to that this is obviously that not ever show should be, or even aspire to be, Breaking Bad. Shows can exist for cool explosions and a cinematic experience, and that’s an entirely fair counterpoint. But the Mandalorian doesn’t have to be philosophical to have a theme. Hell, pick your favorite good Marvel movie (not Avengers) and there’s some point to be made.

Iron Man was as flashy and explosive as one could want, but still managed to demonstrate a strong stance about the military-industrial complex and dangers of mixing for-profit weapons developers with unimaginably wealthy theocracies in the Middle East. Captain America: Winter Soldier was all about the erosion of our privacy rights from the government in a post Patriot-Act/Social Media driven age. Black Panther (I’ll grant you this one lacked subtlety) was about the unpleasant results of two centuries of racial injustice beginning to manifest in a world where the international interests have the technology to impact our daily lives. You might not even agree with the things they were saying, but at least they were brave enough to have a position. The Mandalorian just seems bland and pointless.

Or at least, it did seem bland and pointless until this week’s announcmenet about the new slate of Disney Star Wars shows. It still seems bland but the purpose of The Mandalorian has now become undeniable. It’s to seed the ground for more Star Wars shows and to sell more stuff. Maybe I’m a fool for thinking it might ever have been about anything else.

The first episode was an Easter Egg hunt (Did you see Cobb Vanth riding Anakin’s pod racer changed into a speeder while wearing Bobba Fett’s armor? So cool bro!!!) lying about being a re-skin of a thousand different Westerns in which the Main Character has to get the Cowboys (townsfolks) and Indians (Tuskan Raiders) to come together in order to kill the bandits (Krayt Dragon) that have been attacking both settlements. In the process, the two groups can come to an uneasy truce. But more importantly to Disney, it laid the ground-work for the Bobba Fett show that we all know in our hearts is coming. (6/10)

The second episode was my favorite of the season so far, and ironically the one where the least long-term relevant things happen. The Mandalorian agrees to take a Frog Lady to a different planet so that her husband there can fertilize the eggs that she’s carrying in a Gatorade cooler and continue their race. Apparently the Frog Lady’s husband has some information about the location of some Jedi that Mando might be able to drop the child off at. Things happen, there’s a giant spider that attacks the trio of Baby Yoda, Mando, and the Frog Lady. They eventually are saved by some X-Wing pilots (Yeah Rogue One, coming to a screen near you!!!) and escape. The thing I appreciated most about this episode was that there actually felt like there were stakes and the potential for failure. Mando’s so protected by his armor and Baby Yoda is so protected by Disney’s capitalist interests, that the show lacks any drama. In Episode 2, I legitimately was afraid for the Frog Lady and her eggs, I haven’t been remotely concerned about a character in an episode of this show in . . . since its inception (I didn’t care about the suicide droid at the end of Season 1). (8/10)

The third episode featured more Mandalorians, specifically Bo-Katan. There’s a 15 minute beginning sequence before the Mandalorian meets the other Mandalorians and then they decide they need to attack an Imperial transport ship in order to steal a bunch of weapons. They do this and it’s revealed that Moff Gideon has the dark saber (You can skip this episode if you don’t care about Disney jerking itself off to Clone Wars/Rebels easter eggs). I don’t know what to say about the action in this episode other than that it so perfectly demonstrates the criticisms I have about this show and the complete lack of stakes involved with most episodes. The stormtroopers are so incompetent and Mando is so heavily armored, that at one point he charges a fixed machine gun position with no cover and entirely shrugs off the barrage of lasers that hits him. Stormtroopers can’t shoot for **** and when they do miracuslously stumble into a hit, it doesn’t do any damage, why do these idiots exist? How did they conquer the galaxy? Bo-Katan then gives Mando the location to find Ashoka Tano who she believes will help him with Baby Yoda. (6/10)

But before we can do something interesting, we need a filler episode. Mando goes to where Cara Dune and Carl Weathers are hanging out. They inform him there’s still an Imperial base on the planet and they want to destroy it to free up trade. So they go to the base and as they’re bumbling around the base shooting the mentally challenged (stormtroopers) they discover that this is a science base where an Imperial Doctor was experimenting on Baby Yoda’s blood (Midochlorian reference, drink to forget). Why there’s a science base on the very edge of the galaxy and not anywhere that makes remote sense isn’t asked. They eventually escape in some vehicles that will undoubtedly be coming to a Toys-R-Us shelf near you in the coming months. They eventually escape and it’s revealed that an Imperial Spy placed a tracker on Mando’s ship, and that Moff Gideon has a bunch of dark troopers (imagine if Darth Vader had knocked up one of the droids from the first prequel movie). (5/10)

So we’re off to another planet. Ashoka has an awesome opening where she Assassins Creed kills a bunch of hunters trying to defend the walled town that she wants to get into. Apparently the woman running the town has information that she wants. Mando arrives, they chat, she does a bunch of fun little things with Baby Yoda before eventually telling Mando that she can’t help him, but she does need help attacking the walled town (She does not). They attack the town and it eventually ends up in two standoffs. Mando (who is wearing bulletproof armor) and some lackey end up with guns drawn at each other, and Ashoka (who can use the force and has two light sabers) squares off against the town administrator who has a Beskar spear. If these two matchups sound entirely absurd, it’s because they are. It’s revealed that Ashoka is hunting Admiral Thrawn (coming to Disney + soon). She then informs Mario that his princess is in another castle and that Mando needs to go to Tython where there’s a Jedi altar. (7/10)

So Mando drops Baby Yoda off on a special rock on Tython. Jedi magic powers surround the child and then Bobba Fett and his sniper friend arrive and threaten to kill Baby Yoda if Mando doesn’t hand over Boba Fett’s armor (that he got in Episode 1). In the stand off, Boba makes Mando take off his jetpack (the gun in his hand is fine apparently). As they continue to argue. A bunch of stormtroopers attack. The trio beat the hell out of the stormtroopers (this looks cool, but one has to remember that the stormtroopers are basically The Wet Bandits from Home Alone at this point in the show). Boba Fett gets his armor back. Moff Gideon destroys Mando’s ship from orbit, and sends his dark troopers down to kidnap the child. Mando forgets that his jetpack can be controlled remotely so they succeed in kidnapping Baby Yoda. Moff Gideon reveals the dark saber to Baby Yoda. Mando decides he needs to rally the troops to rescue Baby Yoda, so he needs Bill Burr for coordinates (don’t ask me how coordinates to a ship that moves all over the galaxy would be helpful). (6/10)

Bill Burr gets rescued from prison and tells Mando that he needs an Imperial Terminal to get the coordinates. So they decide to find the single most difficult base to find the terminal in. The only way they can get in is to pretend to be imperial drivers carrying high explosives. Bill Burr needles Mando about never taking off his helmet and decides to wax poetic about political nihilism for a shockingly long time considering the show’s pace up to this point. Mando kills a small army of aliens intent on blowing up the high explosives. Eventually they get the high explosives to the base, and locate the terminal, but they can’t get the information from the terminal unless the person accessing the terminal reveals their face. Why this terminal is willing to give up coordinates to a highly classified ship carrying one of their highest ranking officers to someone who’s face it doesn’t recognize is beyond me, but that appears to be the ham fisted way we’re getting to see Pedro Pascal’s face. They get drawn into a conversation with an Imperial Officer who talks about the insignificant value of Bill Burr’s unit until Burr can’t take anymore and shots the guy. The good guys shoot their way out of the base (again, the Stormtroopers would lose a fight to a well coordinated pair of gerbils). Bill Burr shoots the high explosives and Cara decides to not return him to prison. Mando issues Gideon a challenge over hologram for some reason (6/10)

Short of a transcendent finish to the season, I can't help but wonder what the point of this whole thing is. Maybe it is just to act as an avenue for escapism. Maybe in 2020 it's serving a much needed purpose in allowing the public to turn off its brain and bask in the cuteness of Baby Yoda for 40 minutes each week, but I'll forever be disappointed that it didn't aspire to grander heights. It's in a universe filled with the boundless potential for it. 

 

 

[Deadpulse]

13 hours ago, Daniel said:

I will say it annoyed me that they just had to redeem Burr’s character (kudos whoever called it earlier in the thread).

But yeah, that Imperial officer was the most genuinely disturbing/scary thing Star Wars has put out yet. Overall a great episode.

reminded me of this scene:

 

[Oregon Ducks]

8 hours ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

 

You don’t think there’s political messaging in the Mandalorian? Lol
 

 

[Beck Bristow]

18 hours ago, Broncofan said:

Loved the ep too.   Just a point - wasn't it exactly the same speed Gideon gave them when he first met them in S1?  I thought it was very effective in throwing the gauntlet, much like how Gideon tried to sow intimidation and fear when he showed up, Mando serving notice he's having none of it.

It was the exact same speech.  I didn't realize at first until my son pointed it out.  Makes it a lot better in my opinion.

[THE DUKE]

13 minutes ago, Beck Bristow said:

It was the exact same speech.  I didn't realize at first until my son pointed it out.  Makes it a lot better in my opinion.

I didn't get that either, but good turnaround. I still think the element of surprise would have been better. 

[Beck Bristow]

Just now, THE DUKE said:

I didn't get that either, but good turnaround. I still think the element of surprise would have been better. 

Yeah, he's got a good crew, but giving them a heads up seems like a bad idea.

[Oregon Ducks]

We’ve gotta see Bo Katan and friend right?

[MikeT14]

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-mandalorians-pedro-pascal-says-he-doesnt-want-to-ta-1845895057

 

Quote

Speaking recently during an interview on the BBC series The One Show, Pascal discussed rumors that the actor was lobbying for more screentime without Din’s trademark helmet on; in the more outlandish reports, Pascal was supposedly meant to have been considering actually leaving the show over it, which...seemed distinctly untrue even before his rebuttal.

“That is not true, actually,” Pascal said of his alleged desire to get more facetime on screen. “It’s a really wonderful way of telling the story, it’s always been a very clear creed for the character and the collaborative process of the whole thing has been–we’ve all been on the same page with this, so I, you know, what I want is for them to make the best show possible however they get that done.”

 

[WizeGuy]

On 12/11/2020 at 10:10 PM, Daniel said:

I will say it annoyed me that they just had to redeem Burr’s character (kudos whoever called it earlier in the thread).

But yeah, that Imperial officer was the most genuinely disturbing/scary thing Star Wars has put out yet. Overall a great episode.

I thought Burr was great in this episode, and you're right, that imperial officer played the role perfectly. Also, it was cool to get an inside glimpse of storm troopers. When Mando and Burr arrived at the station and everyone was cheering it reminded me of all the times we've seen the rebels cheer after a successful mission. This episode made the troopers seem human like "hey! We're the bad guys of the show but we're not always evil bastard shooting inaccurately" especially when Burr gave the old "We all come from different areas and are born into different causes" speech. 

This was actually one of my favorite episodes. It didn't have the most epic fight scenes, but I thought it had a ton of substance. 

Edited December 17, 2020 by WizeGuy

[Acgott]

I can’t believe they actually did it! Give me that spin-off now!

[D82]

That's how you do a character justice. 

After credit scene was pretty nice too.