This week’s episode promised a high-adventure thriller with the Duchess Satine dodging assassins on every corner, but instead we were treated with a thrilling Hitchcock sort of the wrong man story.

In order to advance the Separatist agenda, Dooku lays plans to force the Republics hand into occupying Mandalore so the Death Watch, Separatist sympathizers, can take control of the planet.  Satine heads to the Senate to insist that they respect Mandalorian neutrality. Unfortunately, her second in command has allegedly recorded a message to the senate saying that the Republic had to intervene and occupy the planet.

That’s when there’s a first attempt on Satine’s life, but is made to look like an accident and people think she’s crazy.  Soon she’s on the run and wanted for murder and Obi-wan is the only one who believes her enough to help her.

The Mandalorian action was actually pretty yawn worthy, there wasn’t much of it at all.  There was a great fist fight with Obi-wan and a Mando, but aside from that, the rest of the episode was all Hitchcockian suspense.

To be honest, I was pretty bored for the first third of the episode, but, like a Hitchcock film, it was building very carefully to a boiling point.  Satine is essentially Cary Grant in North by Northwest, telling everyone in the world she didn’t kill that guy, but no one will listen.  (Except Obi-wan, obviously.)  They captured that desperate feeling of being called a liar when you’re telling the truth in situations that are life or death incredibly well and it was almost suffocating.  The scenes with the Mandalorian assassin looking out over the fountain in the courtyard looking out for Satine while the police droids were doing the same and she and Obi-wan were trying to meet up with the secret information were straight out of an old school Hitchcock film and I was left clamoring for more.

Having said that, this episode was pretty much a giant tease for a conflict that was never going to happen.  And for that, I am sad.  I want to see more Mandalorian Death Watch on the show and I want to see the war they were aiming for.  On the other hand, I’d also love to see more Hitchcock homages on Clone Wars as well.

I hope it doesn’t seem obnoxious that on most weeks I seem to find something that I love that Clone Wars is homaging in my reviews.  I love Star Wars, and when I see it paying respect to other classic things that I love, it makes me incredibly giddy.  From Kurosawa to Hitchcock, it seems like the crew writing and directing these episodes have impeccable taste and if ever I were to meet them, I would certainly owe them a beer.

The last thing I’d like to say is to reiterate something Anakin said to me while we were watching, “Where is Ahsoka?”  Seriously.  Where the hell is Ahsoka?  I miss Snips, damn it.

And with that question, I’ll leave you until March, when Clone Wars returns.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing an interview with James Arnold Taylor (the voice of Obi-wan Kenobi) so you’ll have that to look forward to.

To catch up on Season 1, you can order The Clone Wars: The Complete Season One at Amazon by clicking the link.

For other Clone Wars news and reviews of previous episodes, click this link.