All in all, tonight yielded another great installment of Clone Wars (though I think 1.7 (Duel of the Droids) is the best so far still)…

With Padme having captured Nute Gunray in the last episode, Luminara Unduli and Ahsoka are tasked with escorting him back to Coruscant so he can stand trial for his war crimes.  This is obviously bad news for Count Dooku and he dispatches Asajj Ventress to retrieve him.  That’s basically how the episode plays out with a lot of cool lightsaber dueling all along the way.

Dooku was in the episode far too little and makes me wonder how far off an episode that is centric to Dooku can be.  What little he had to do in this episode was really good, though I doubt many who watched it picked up on the subtelty.  I mean, when Sidious calls him out on sending Ventress who fails pretty much all the time on this most important of assignments, it made me realize that Dooku is still as much a Jedi as a Sith.  He seems to have a much more nurturing demeanor than other Sith we’ve seen and it seems as though it stems from being a Jedi Master for so long.  The scene was well written enough to conjure images of Dooku training Qui-Gon and it was a good thing.

There was more great business with Ahsoka soaking in Anakin’s demeanor during Nute Gunray’s interogation.  And Luminara Unduli was a good temporary foil for her, but my biggest question is where the hell was Barris Offee?  Was there an off-handed line that explained that and I missed it? I’m I being too nerdy in caring?

The level of detail in the animation hasn’t ceased amazing me since the start of the series.  In this episode, I was blown away both by the quality of the lightsaber duels and the sets they happened on, but the architecture of the ship was great.  Even the cell block control room was about 90% the same as the cell block on the Death Star in A New Hope and it made me happy to see them officiating their scene from the same spot on the set that Han unsuccesfully conned his way into that reactor leak.

As good as this episode was though, the best part about tonight was the preview for next weeks episode which will pit Kit Fisto, his Mon Calamari of a former padawan, and some clone troopers doing mortal combat in the lair of General Grievous.  Seriously, the fleeting glimpses of the backgrounds and animation in this episode took my breath away.  I instantly wished it was next Friday already.

My only complaint?  The show is on too damn late for the kids…  10:00pm?  What are they thinking?

UPDATE: Here’s a trailer of next week’s episode: