This episode of Clone Wars, ‘Corruption’, tells the story of Mandalore’s black market troubles. Mandalore is under significant stress because of their neutrality and trade to their system is choked off. Smugglers and black marketeers keep things flowing into Mandalore. Unfortunately, some of them unwittingly poison a number of children with their tainted goods.
It was very much like The Third Man with Padme Amidala cast as Holly Martins, coming to the planet to visit an old friend, the Duchess Satine. The children are poisoned and they set out to investigate.
The problem with this episode? There was no Harry Lime. Orson Welles’ character in The Third Man was the black marketeer who unwittingly let out a tainted batch of penecillin on the children of Vienna and had to fake his own death to escape. He’s one of film history’s most despicable and well loved bad guys and he’s exactly what this episode needed.
This episode looked very pretty. The lighting, the animation, the costume changes, the voice acting, it was all very good. In fact, there were scenes in the throne room areas with light pouring in that looked pretty incredible and the facial animation just keeps getting better and better. The attention to detail that no one else would notice was fantastic. Did anyone else notice shapes from Boba Fett’s armor (particularly the diamond in the center of his chest plate) all over the architecture of Mandalore? I did. And it’s details like those that help me remember that the people making this show love Star Wars as much as I do.
But the writing in this episode was so dry, it was almost unbearable. Nothing really happens in this episode. Sure, we can see the unrest in Mandalore. I get that. I see that it’s setting things up for future episodes, but couldn’t it have done it with a little bit more spark? Couldn’t it have used an actual bad guy, even if he was just a misguided black marketeer? And couldn’t everything have been assembled a little bit more logically?
Why did Satine ask for the warehouse full of evidence be burned to the ground before the investigation? And it’s not like it wasn’t pointed out to her in the show. It just didn’t seem called for, especially since in the next scene she asks Padme for help in furthering the investigation.
This was perhaps the most lifeless episode of this show I’ve watched. I’ve been going back and rewatching episodes and I really can’t remember feeling more ambivalent to an episode than this one. It was good. I mean it was Star Wars, so it wasn’t horrible or anything. But it just kind of….was.
On the other hand, the first thing my son said when the episode was over was, “That was a really good one, dad. I can’t wait till next week.” So maybe I’m just way off base.
My only hope is that the coming episodes set on Mandalore build on the situation created here. And next episode we get Ahsoka on Mandalore. And if it’s a powder keg, then she’ll be sure to spark it into an explosion.