Official Mando Dandyism

I really, really wish last night's Mandalorian was better than it was. The locations I loved, the action sequences I loved, some of the premise I loved, the performances I liked. But, damnit, the writing was perplexingly sloppy again. How long have they had to work on this thing? Why, why is it like this?

It started with something good, some dog fighting in which Bo Katan and Din Djarin deal with some TIE Interceptors. In my day, TIE Interceptors didn't have hyperdrives, but whatever. It was a cool scene.

And then we cut to Coruscant for a completely different plot. I'm guessing this whole section was written by inexperienced screenwriter Noah Kloor, who's credited along with Jon Favreau for writing the episode. He had a staff writing credit on Book of Boba Fett, though none of that series' scripts are actually credited to him. In 2020, he co-wrote a stop motion Christmas special with two other writers. And that brings us to the sum total of his imdb credits.

I love Coruscant. When I was a kid, before the prequels came out, I used to love the old Expanded Universe stories set on Coruscant. And I loved Coruscant in the prequels and on Clone Wars, though it never seemed quite as sinister as it did in those old books. The idea of a neverending city with a vast murky underbelly appealed to me and I liked how last night's episode gave us some little infodumps on the lore which most of us Star Wars geeks already know. It was amusing that Doctor Pershing (Omid Abtahi) seemed a little like a tourist.

The segment begins with Pershing doing a sort of TED Talk at the familiar opera house from Revenge of the Sith. I liked seeing the location again, but it made no sense for him to be giving this big speech about the potential in genetic research only for it to be followed by him sidelined by a bureaucratic policy and talking only reluctantly about the possibility of attempting such research again. Like the alligator fight in the first episode, it felt like the opera house scene was tacked on by someone who didn't actually understand the rest of the episode.

I liked the idea of former Imperials being rehabilitated and reintegrated, and it's nicely chilling how many echos we see from Andor. It looks like Pershing is even working in a cubicle similar to the one Karn worked in. It goes to show, the ideology of the regime may change but uprooting the habits of a bureaucracy may be another thing altogether. Of course, anyone who was pissed off by Luke Skywalker becoming a bitter old man in Last Jedi may not enjoy this stuff, either.

I liked Katy M. O'Brian's performance as Ella Kane, Pershing's duplicitous new friend. Though the elaborateness of her scheme to entrap him didn't make a lot of sense. She could have at least gotten tickets for the tram.

The episode is bookended by segments with the Mandalorian characters. Just last week, I mentioned how nice it was Katee Sackoff gets to act with her face. The moment I saw last night's episode was called "The Convert" I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. And sure enough, at the end, we had Bo Katan getting accepted into the tribe. Ugh. Well, maybe next week's episode will finally convince me it's interesting for these characters never to take their helmets off. But next week's is co-written by Dave Filoni so I kind of doubt it.

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1678

A dappled pie delayed the party guests.
Asleep at home a foolish clerk resides.
To-night the eyes'll close on twenty tests.
A dozen bellies pulled computer tides.
A broken thought was gliding over sky.
The winter wind was all contained at home.
Removing ghosts resume a banshee's cry.
Again, the agent's forced to widely roam.
A harmless action set the party's tone.
A gentle gun deserved a heavy drink.
Abhorrence firmly banned the hollow bone.
And now the guests are past the very brink.
Returning houses hold a talk to none.
The day belongs to homes that lack a sun.