The Book of Boba Fett 1x05
Jul. 13th, 2022 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsHelp me guys, I'm feeling the draw back to the Vampire Diaries. I don't want to go back to TVD, I'd rather stay with Buffy, but...the pull is strong.
Yes I was reading TVD fic instead of posting anything here on Monday. I'm weak and probably going to cave to the terrible brain-melting show.
TBoBF 1x05
Well…this one was…a different kind of stupid at least.
I’ll start with something that’s been growing through this series, I have reached the point where the Kenobi series is the last hope of Star Wars as far as I’m concerned. There’s just nothing I like about the any of the series and the world at this point. I might still play a game if someone offered to run another roleplaying game in this universe, but aside from occasional flashes of potential and even rarer flashes of brilliance in the animated shows, this galaxy far, far away isn’t giving me anything to care about or invest in.
And it’s not as if I have a vast hope of the Obi-wan show, nor does it really prove anything about my potential to reinvest in this whole world going forward if I do happen to like one story that’s set in the past. But if they can’t succeed at that show when they have every possible advantage on hooking me back in, I might as well call it done. Rewatch the OT just to remind myself that I have liked this ‘verse in the past, and then go back to not thinking about it except for fond memories of roleplaying.
So help me Obi-wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope. (You’ll have to wait a few more weeks to find out if this worked out.)
This episode is bizarre. Not exactly because it isn’t about Boba’s adventures, they could make that work. But it is a non-essential add-on to the Boba Fett show that doesn’t tell us anything about Boba, his plans, his arc, his history, or anything. It may or may not be considered essential as part of Mando, but it has no use in this show.
Still that’s not the worst aspect about it. That would be that it’s bloody boring. Occasionally interesting to look at, and there are a lot of things I was trying to hold in my brain to complain about or at least ruminate on, but everything took twice as long as it should. And yet this feels like at least two episodes shoved together. So it’s stretched but also padded, that shouldn’t be possible, but here we are. And it’s not exactly the first time I’ve said that about an episode of Mando.
It's kind of a shame that this is such a Mando episode, because in between last episode and this one I had a thought about just how wrong the Boba story is. I’ve been pointing out regularly that there is no intelligence behind Boba’s actions or what he expects to be able to do. But I’ve been resisting drawing comparisons to other stories that this criminal underworld show should have used as a storytelling guide; because the most obvious examples are shows that I don’t actually watch, that being The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. I know enough about them to say these writers should have had to watch and understand them all the way through before tackling this show, but not enough to know for sure what lessons they would have gotten from the shows.
But then I finally realized what I would compare it to is Peaky Blinders. I basically stopped watching that show a while back too, but at least I can use it as a guide. Of how a character who starts off a small fry gangster running little more than a street gang, wants to build a criminal empire. And gradually does. How ruthless and cunning one has to be to pull it off without getting picked off by the bigger fish before you can grow; how you have to manage the public, press, police, and politicians to gain an advantage that can climb a level higher on the ladder. I buy Tommy Shelby a crime lord in a thousand ways that I don’t by Boba Fett.
Now back to this episode which is an episode of two halves, neither of which is good and don’t go together. The Tatooine half is stupid in its own right, built adds on a few other layers of stupid and poor writing. Oddly enough, it feels more like the disconnected and forced in Mandalorian (the show) segment even compared to the first half. Because once Mando is on Tatooine there should at least be world-building happening that connects with the Boba plot, but there isn’t. In one out of the five scenes of ship repair they talk a bit about the Pykes taking over on Tatooine, but the rest of it is just inane babble with no plot importance.
And that’s ignoring the big stupid in the middle of even having this story. That being the new ship is a bad choice. It may be cool, but if a person needs a Winnebago, a compact sport car might be cool and fun, but it’s not even close to what they need. How much of his work is even done in space (as in needing to chase someone down in regular space) as opposed to using the ship as a base of operations once he’s landed on a planet?
Although that takes us back to one of the problems with the first half of the episode, and it’s a constant problem with Mando. We don’t ever have to see him having to track someone done, or making deals, or having to think his way out of a situation where he’s at a disadvantage. He’s always just handed exactly what he needs to have in order to get through the next task in his quest book. Even the new ship is that way; he didn’t go looking for a new ship, he waited for someone to call and tell him they had one for him, and it will no doubt prove the exactly right ship for some next point in his adventures. But I can’t ever draw any conclusions about him from the fact that he let himself get talked into this ship, except that he’s a gullible idiot, but I already knew that.
The Mandalorian lore info dump/retcon is obviously trying to plaster over the plot hole last season created about how one gains the Dark Saber. But that means that that arc in Rebels was pointless, and I don’t think it was meant to come off that way. I don’t mean because Mandalor ultimately got glassed in spite of Bo-Katan’s apparent triumph in that Rebels story (although that shouldn’t be ignored either); I mean Sabine’s choice at the end was in fact wrong. That was one of her few actual arcs on the show, and this show has now completely taken it away from her because she didn’t understand the task in the first place.
Brilliant move there; just top notch storytelling.
Also, I don’t remember as well, but didn’t Sabine just pick the Dark Saber up off the floor after Ezra and Maul had one of their many jam sessions, and Maul just left? And if that’s the case, and the last person to win the saber in combat was Maul then, who’s the rightful heir now? I’d guess either Luke, Ahsoka, or maybe Wedge…or Lando. It depends on when Maul lost rights to the Saber and how much this operates on Harry Potter wand logic. Palpatine beat Maul not too long after Maul took the Saber, but didn’t take the Dark Saber (since Maul kept it until Rebels); but if he did have rights, then Wedge or Lando won over the Saber by blowing up Palpatine on the Death Star. Ahsoka also beat Maul in a fight but he wasn’t even using the Dark Saber in that one. Now, if Maul dying at Obi-wan’s hands relinquished the Saber to Obi-wan, then Vader took spirit possession when he killed Obi-wan; then Luke beat Vader. And then if we say Palatine beat Vader, then we’re back to Wedge or Lando.
Of course I only remember now that apparently Palpatine is alive if we’re using TRoS logic, so I guess Palps could still be the claimant?
I kept getting distracted, now I don’t have a clear thought on the subject of Mandalorian hypocrisy regarding honor and weapons and life, and all their weird cult stuff. There was a lot of it that deserved comment, but it has slipped away now. But I will point out that Bo-Katan now definitively has more people with her than Mando’s (former) club. I think she’s still ahead of you, dumb armor lady.
Yes I was reading TVD fic instead of posting anything here on Monday. I'm weak and probably going to cave to the terrible brain-melting show.
TBoBF 1x05
Well…this one was…a different kind of stupid at least.
I’ll start with something that’s been growing through this series, I have reached the point where the Kenobi series is the last hope of Star Wars as far as I’m concerned. There’s just nothing I like about the any of the series and the world at this point. I might still play a game if someone offered to run another roleplaying game in this universe, but aside from occasional flashes of potential and even rarer flashes of brilliance in the animated shows, this galaxy far, far away isn’t giving me anything to care about or invest in.
And it’s not as if I have a vast hope of the Obi-wan show, nor does it really prove anything about my potential to reinvest in this whole world going forward if I do happen to like one story that’s set in the past. But if they can’t succeed at that show when they have every possible advantage on hooking me back in, I might as well call it done. Rewatch the OT just to remind myself that I have liked this ‘verse in the past, and then go back to not thinking about it except for fond memories of roleplaying.
So help me Obi-wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope. (You’ll have to wait a few more weeks to find out if this worked out.)
This episode is bizarre. Not exactly because it isn’t about Boba’s adventures, they could make that work. But it is a non-essential add-on to the Boba Fett show that doesn’t tell us anything about Boba, his plans, his arc, his history, or anything. It may or may not be considered essential as part of Mando, but it has no use in this show.
Still that’s not the worst aspect about it. That would be that it’s bloody boring. Occasionally interesting to look at, and there are a lot of things I was trying to hold in my brain to complain about or at least ruminate on, but everything took twice as long as it should. And yet this feels like at least two episodes shoved together. So it’s stretched but also padded, that shouldn’t be possible, but here we are. And it’s not exactly the first time I’ve said that about an episode of Mando.
It's kind of a shame that this is such a Mando episode, because in between last episode and this one I had a thought about just how wrong the Boba story is. I’ve been pointing out regularly that there is no intelligence behind Boba’s actions or what he expects to be able to do. But I’ve been resisting drawing comparisons to other stories that this criminal underworld show should have used as a storytelling guide; because the most obvious examples are shows that I don’t actually watch, that being The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. I know enough about them to say these writers should have had to watch and understand them all the way through before tackling this show, but not enough to know for sure what lessons they would have gotten from the shows.
But then I finally realized what I would compare it to is Peaky Blinders. I basically stopped watching that show a while back too, but at least I can use it as a guide. Of how a character who starts off a small fry gangster running little more than a street gang, wants to build a criminal empire. And gradually does. How ruthless and cunning one has to be to pull it off without getting picked off by the bigger fish before you can grow; how you have to manage the public, press, police, and politicians to gain an advantage that can climb a level higher on the ladder. I buy Tommy Shelby a crime lord in a thousand ways that I don’t by Boba Fett.
Now back to this episode which is an episode of two halves, neither of which is good and don’t go together. The Tatooine half is stupid in its own right, built adds on a few other layers of stupid and poor writing. Oddly enough, it feels more like the disconnected and forced in Mandalorian (the show) segment even compared to the first half. Because once Mando is on Tatooine there should at least be world-building happening that connects with the Boba plot, but there isn’t. In one out of the five scenes of ship repair they talk a bit about the Pykes taking over on Tatooine, but the rest of it is just inane babble with no plot importance.
And that’s ignoring the big stupid in the middle of even having this story. That being the new ship is a bad choice. It may be cool, but if a person needs a Winnebago, a compact sport car might be cool and fun, but it’s not even close to what they need. How much of his work is even done in space (as in needing to chase someone down in regular space) as opposed to using the ship as a base of operations once he’s landed on a planet?
Although that takes us back to one of the problems with the first half of the episode, and it’s a constant problem with Mando. We don’t ever have to see him having to track someone done, or making deals, or having to think his way out of a situation where he’s at a disadvantage. He’s always just handed exactly what he needs to have in order to get through the next task in his quest book. Even the new ship is that way; he didn’t go looking for a new ship, he waited for someone to call and tell him they had one for him, and it will no doubt prove the exactly right ship for some next point in his adventures. But I can’t ever draw any conclusions about him from the fact that he let himself get talked into this ship, except that he’s a gullible idiot, but I already knew that.
The Mandalorian lore info dump/retcon is obviously trying to plaster over the plot hole last season created about how one gains the Dark Saber. But that means that that arc in Rebels was pointless, and I don’t think it was meant to come off that way. I don’t mean because Mandalor ultimately got glassed in spite of Bo-Katan’s apparent triumph in that Rebels story (although that shouldn’t be ignored either); I mean Sabine’s choice at the end was in fact wrong. That was one of her few actual arcs on the show, and this show has now completely taken it away from her because she didn’t understand the task in the first place.
Brilliant move there; just top notch storytelling.
Also, I don’t remember as well, but didn’t Sabine just pick the Dark Saber up off the floor after Ezra and Maul had one of their many jam sessions, and Maul just left? And if that’s the case, and the last person to win the saber in combat was Maul then, who’s the rightful heir now? I’d guess either Luke, Ahsoka, or maybe Wedge…or Lando. It depends on when Maul lost rights to the Saber and how much this operates on Harry Potter wand logic. Palpatine beat Maul not too long after Maul took the Saber, but didn’t take the Dark Saber (since Maul kept it until Rebels); but if he did have rights, then Wedge or Lando won over the Saber by blowing up Palpatine on the Death Star. Ahsoka also beat Maul in a fight but he wasn’t even using the Dark Saber in that one. Now, if Maul dying at Obi-wan’s hands relinquished the Saber to Obi-wan, then Vader took spirit possession when he killed Obi-wan; then Luke beat Vader. And then if we say Palatine beat Vader, then we’re back to Wedge or Lando.
Of course I only remember now that apparently Palpatine is alive if we’re using TRoS logic, so I guess Palps could still be the claimant?
I kept getting distracted, now I don’t have a clear thought on the subject of Mandalorian hypocrisy regarding honor and weapons and life, and all their weird cult stuff. There was a lot of it that deserved comment, but it has slipped away now. But I will point out that Bo-Katan now definitively has more people with her than Mando’s (former) club. I think she’s still ahead of you, dumb armor lady.
