Last night's Mandalorian was a mixed bag for me. There were some ideas I really liked but I think the teleplay by Jon Favreau would've been improved by more consideration given to the logistics of some of what we see. I also wish Carl Weathers had directed this episode, too, because director Peter Ramsey's action scenes are a bit lethargic and unsuspenseful. The stakes presented in the teleplay have to do all the work for the story's suspense. In a couple places, it works. Not so much in others.
The fabulous green-bearded pirate, Captain Gorian Shard (Nonso Anozie), returns to lay siege to Navarro. Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) is forced to call New Republic pilot Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) for aid.
Next to Teva at some remote New Republic outpost is none other than Zeb (Steve Blum), one of the main characters from Star Wars: Rebels, a show I'm not a fan of, though Zeb was my second favourite character (after Hera). It was kind of cool seeing him, too, because his design comes from one of the early concept illustrations for Chewbacca.
This launches the episode into the "tangled bureaucracy" subplot that makes me think Favreau read the scripts for Andor and decided this is what he really wanted to be doing. He doesn't quite have the knack for conjuring the subtle mixture of personal investment and career conceptualisation that make the functionaries on Andor so fascinating.
Carrying on a tradition from season one of Mandalorian, Favreau has cast another comedian. This time Tim Meadows plays a New Republic officer called Tuttle, presumably a reference to Terry Gilliam's Brazil. A bit ironic since the black helmeted troopers in Brazil were conceived by Gilliam as a criticism of the endless supply of disposable stormtroopers in the Star Wars movies, a trope The Mandalorian has been happy to indulge in.
Meadows' Tuttle makes a valid point about New Republic resources already being stretched too thin to offer aid to worlds that aren't even members (though it didn't look like Teva's squad had a lot to do, nor did it seem Teva had anything else on his docket). I think a more interesting portrayal of the clerk would have shown him to seem truly sympathetic to the plight of Navarro but unable to overcome other concerns on the topic. Katy O'Brian was sadly reduced to broad moustache twirling, too.
As for the siege itself, I found myself thinking of a class I recently taught about pirates (I teach English at a Japanese junior high school so I try to find interesting topics to discuss in English). I told the students about Henry Morgan's capture of Panama and I think Favreau would have benefited from reading about that or something like it himself. At the very least, he may have considered how long it took Teva to get all the way to Coruscant, a core world, and then all he way to the world where the Mandalorians are keeping their base, and then for the Mandalorians to get all the way to Navarro. Favreau's idea seems to be that the pirates are still looting and the whole surviving populace of the town are just hiding in a cave somewhere. It may have put some people in mind of the last season of Game of Thrones, a memory no show wants to trigger, I should think.
The focus felt very far from Din and Grogu this episode. I felt genuinely happy for Bo-Katan that everyone was rallying around her at the end and I loved the idea of the Mandalorians, their confidence boosted by recent gains, deciding to retake Mandalore. I think we all knew the season was leading up to that but it's nice to have it here. But I do hope they fill out their ranks more with Mandos who can take their helmets off.
The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.
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