Rebels 4x03-04
Dec. 27th, 2021 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsRebels 4x03-04 – In the Name of the Rebellion
Hmm, this one is going to present a bit of a reviewing challenge. I want to say I liked it; but I’m not sure that would be the truth.
It’s like…there’s a spice mix I like; I like most of the individual spices in it and I like it as a mix, but then the show only uses a pinch of said mix and put it on a bunch of zucchini. I can tell that there are flavors I like in it, but most of what I taste is zucchini, which I don’t like. Maybe if there was more of the spices it could trick me into liking zucchini a little better; but the cooks here find even a pinch of spice to be a lot, so don’t have any concept of how what it needs is more of that and preferably less zucchini.
That tortured metaphor aside, this is at least an episode where I feel like the show is trying to be more than the shallow creature it’s usually content to be. I can see the bigger themes and conflicts and questions that it’s dipping its toe into, but it still always pulls back in case it drowns in a couple inches of water.
And if this was season 1 or maybe s2, I’d find it easier to say something about the show being pointed in the right direction. Maybe if I didn’t know this was the last season I’d be a little more confident that it still had time to right the ship and at least think the show could balance out to be alright by the end. But even if this season does continue to do things better than s1-3, I don’t know if it can balance the scales.
Because one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time is that this show should be teaching Ezra (as the audience proxy) about the complexities and difficulties of war. Mon Mothma is 100% correct in her stance that they are not ready to go to war. Even if the war is already happening (and I would agree it is), the Rebel Alliance is not ready to fight as an army so they have to pick their targets and their shots.
And at times in this episode (again, calling it a single episode), this does seem like a story that would cause Ezra have to stop and consider what them being in a war means. What strategies are on the table? What are they willing to sacrifice for a greater victory down the line? Understand that what you want may not always be good for others or even you in the long run, so pick your shot.
Sah is almost a good foil for this. Because he could be right, that the shot they have to take is finding the big target before it finds them. He could be right that they’re sacrificing too much while waiting to make a move. He could be right that what they say shows they’re being willfully ignorant of the real cost of the current status quo; and if some sacrifice of one’s morals save hundreds or thousands of lives, are you sure that’s balancing those scales?
I’m not saying Sah is right, I don’t really think he is. I think Mon Mothma is the right balance between Sah’s cynical terrorist campaign and Ezra dumb idealism, and I’m willing to say the show agrees with me (Mon Mothma is a legacy character, they’re willing to let her be right sometimes), but the show glances at the idea of Ezra learning that lesson and then ignores it. Instead of teaching Ezra something about the realities they have to work with, it pits Sah and Ezra’s ideals against each other, and of course it’s Ezra who wins because he has to on this show.
That said…there is a whole lot of ‘I’m not going to kill you but I don’t have to save you’ going on with Ezra here, in both episodes of this arc. And that ties back into my view of the Mandalor story. The stormtroopers here are super weak and ineffective, so when Ezra just cuts their weapons apart or bonks some helmets together (I think that was last episode, but there was something equivalent here) we accept that he doesn’t have to battle them in a way that actually tests him. But having that non-lethal (in what we’re shown and told, not always in implication) force always be enough makes me feel…sorry for the stormtroopers; they’re clearly not a danger, so they really don’t deserve to be left to die like that.
I think it probably is time that I rewatched the movies to see how much of the thought I’ve put into these reviews bleeds over into the movies. Because in my memory, even if the stormtroopers aren’t that big a threat, they are enough of a threat (if only because it takes lethal force to deal with them) that I don’t question that it’s war and so fighting them means using lethal force. I may think differently after all this, but this seems especially bad on that front.
If I’m not mistaken this is a very different character model for Sah than we saw before. It’s much more in line with the movie version, and given the date on the end of the episode, this would have been released after Rogue One, and would definitely overlap in production. Plus the mention of Jeda is a clear reference to what was seen around the same time in the movie-level canon.
And this is probably the last we see of Sah, since he dies in Rogue One and the timeline is getting fairly close…I think. I tend to use Ezra’s age as my guide, since he’s the same age as the Skywalker twins, but the show is a bit ambiguous. They’re still drawing him (and Sabine) with ‘teenagers are short’ rules and when we meet the twins in the movies they are clearly young adults because they’re played by real people. But given how much time seems to have passed in story I would think we were getting up near RO/ANH time before too long.
I forgot to mention it last time, but for all it’s still not given much actual screen time, they are being a bit more explicit with the Kanan/Hera stuff. Even if I didn’t know what happens later in the season, I might be a little worried that this was there for a reason. And not because the writers suddenly care a lot more about non-Ezra characters. Partly because they clearly don’t, as Zeb has had basically nothing to do. I’d be happier if the show actually let their relationship be a bigger deal (maybe actually let them hug), but I don’t hate that they’re getting a bit more overt shipping material.
Really, once again we’re kind of in the weird place this show has chosen to work it. It’s super focused on Ezra, so we don’t get stories that are focused on other characters very often; but it’s not about Ezra’s *growth* and him being a different character at the end of the show compared to where he started. For him to grow he’d have to be wrong sometimes and learn.
Look, I really wanted the techs to die. It’s terrible to say, but I wanted Ezra to fuck up, be taken down and for him to have to learn *something*. Even if it’s ultimately Sah’s fault in some way, I want Ezra’s narrow focus to cost something. I want his assumption that everything can just work out to actually fail; and while it would still be other people paying for Ezra’s mistakes, maybe this time they actually show it affecting him. I know it’s getting late in the game to hope the show will do something like that (to any useful degree), but hope seems to spring eternal.
Hmm, this one is going to present a bit of a reviewing challenge. I want to say I liked it; but I’m not sure that would be the truth.
It’s like…there’s a spice mix I like; I like most of the individual spices in it and I like it as a mix, but then the show only uses a pinch of said mix and put it on a bunch of zucchini. I can tell that there are flavors I like in it, but most of what I taste is zucchini, which I don’t like. Maybe if there was more of the spices it could trick me into liking zucchini a little better; but the cooks here find even a pinch of spice to be a lot, so don’t have any concept of how what it needs is more of that and preferably less zucchini.
That tortured metaphor aside, this is at least an episode where I feel like the show is trying to be more than the shallow creature it’s usually content to be. I can see the bigger themes and conflicts and questions that it’s dipping its toe into, but it still always pulls back in case it drowns in a couple inches of water.
And if this was season 1 or maybe s2, I’d find it easier to say something about the show being pointed in the right direction. Maybe if I didn’t know this was the last season I’d be a little more confident that it still had time to right the ship and at least think the show could balance out to be alright by the end. But even if this season does continue to do things better than s1-3, I don’t know if it can balance the scales.
Because one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time is that this show should be teaching Ezra (as the audience proxy) about the complexities and difficulties of war. Mon Mothma is 100% correct in her stance that they are not ready to go to war. Even if the war is already happening (and I would agree it is), the Rebel Alliance is not ready to fight as an army so they have to pick their targets and their shots.
And at times in this episode (again, calling it a single episode), this does seem like a story that would cause Ezra have to stop and consider what them being in a war means. What strategies are on the table? What are they willing to sacrifice for a greater victory down the line? Understand that what you want may not always be good for others or even you in the long run, so pick your shot.
Sah is almost a good foil for this. Because he could be right, that the shot they have to take is finding the big target before it finds them. He could be right that they’re sacrificing too much while waiting to make a move. He could be right that what they say shows they’re being willfully ignorant of the real cost of the current status quo; and if some sacrifice of one’s morals save hundreds or thousands of lives, are you sure that’s balancing those scales?
I’m not saying Sah is right, I don’t really think he is. I think Mon Mothma is the right balance between Sah’s cynical terrorist campaign and Ezra dumb idealism, and I’m willing to say the show agrees with me (Mon Mothma is a legacy character, they’re willing to let her be right sometimes), but the show glances at the idea of Ezra learning that lesson and then ignores it. Instead of teaching Ezra something about the realities they have to work with, it pits Sah and Ezra’s ideals against each other, and of course it’s Ezra who wins because he has to on this show.
That said…there is a whole lot of ‘I’m not going to kill you but I don’t have to save you’ going on with Ezra here, in both episodes of this arc. And that ties back into my view of the Mandalor story. The stormtroopers here are super weak and ineffective, so when Ezra just cuts their weapons apart or bonks some helmets together (I think that was last episode, but there was something equivalent here) we accept that he doesn’t have to battle them in a way that actually tests him. But having that non-lethal (in what we’re shown and told, not always in implication) force always be enough makes me feel…sorry for the stormtroopers; they’re clearly not a danger, so they really don’t deserve to be left to die like that.
I think it probably is time that I rewatched the movies to see how much of the thought I’ve put into these reviews bleeds over into the movies. Because in my memory, even if the stormtroopers aren’t that big a threat, they are enough of a threat (if only because it takes lethal force to deal with them) that I don’t question that it’s war and so fighting them means using lethal force. I may think differently after all this, but this seems especially bad on that front.
If I’m not mistaken this is a very different character model for Sah than we saw before. It’s much more in line with the movie version, and given the date on the end of the episode, this would have been released after Rogue One, and would definitely overlap in production. Plus the mention of Jeda is a clear reference to what was seen around the same time in the movie-level canon.
And this is probably the last we see of Sah, since he dies in Rogue One and the timeline is getting fairly close…I think. I tend to use Ezra’s age as my guide, since he’s the same age as the Skywalker twins, but the show is a bit ambiguous. They’re still drawing him (and Sabine) with ‘teenagers are short’ rules and when we meet the twins in the movies they are clearly young adults because they’re played by real people. But given how much time seems to have passed in story I would think we were getting up near RO/ANH time before too long.
I forgot to mention it last time, but for all it’s still not given much actual screen time, they are being a bit more explicit with the Kanan/Hera stuff. Even if I didn’t know what happens later in the season, I might be a little worried that this was there for a reason. And not because the writers suddenly care a lot more about non-Ezra characters. Partly because they clearly don’t, as Zeb has had basically nothing to do. I’d be happier if the show actually let their relationship be a bigger deal (maybe actually let them hug), but I don’t hate that they’re getting a bit more overt shipping material.
Really, once again we’re kind of in the weird place this show has chosen to work it. It’s super focused on Ezra, so we don’t get stories that are focused on other characters very often; but it’s not about Ezra’s *growth* and him being a different character at the end of the show compared to where he started. For him to grow he’d have to be wrong sometimes and learn.
Look, I really wanted the techs to die. It’s terrible to say, but I wanted Ezra to fuck up, be taken down and for him to have to learn *something*. Even if it’s ultimately Sah’s fault in some way, I want Ezra’s narrow focus to cost something. I want his assumption that everything can just work out to actually fail; and while it would still be other people paying for Ezra’s mistakes, maybe this time they actually show it affecting him. I know it’s getting late in the game to hope the show will do something like that (to any useful degree), but hope seems to spring eternal.
