This week’s episode of Clone Wars sends us back to Mandalore where Ahsoka Tano has been given the assignment to teach Mandalorian students in the Academy about corruption and for some reason that would lead her to investigate corruption that for some reason would help eliminate the corruption on Mandalore.
I know, I know. It really is as contrived as it sounds.
The first two acts of this episode are preposterous. For some reason these students are inspired to investigate the food shortage and find that the government warehouses are full of food and they happen to stumble upon a black marketeer making a deal with “off-worlders.” They make a holocam recording of the whole affair, but are quickly discovered and chased. Fortunately, these teenage students somehow escape from the personal police escort of the hooded bad guy and decide they need to go to the authorities about this corruption. One young Mandalorian lad, Korkie, happens to have an aunt that is actually Duchess Satine.
They go to her for help, but she acts incredibly suspicious and sends the children on their way.
“She must be in on it,” they assume. And then Korkie drops another revelation, “I’ve known the Prime Minister all my life, if my Auntie Satine won’t help, let’s go talk to him!”
After a quick call with the Prime Minister of the entire planet of Mandalore, he tells them to meet him in a darkened plaza, alone, with everyone who knows of the plot of corruption. You know, because it’s totally reasonable to have the Prime Ministers phone number as a young Cadet in school, and it’s even more reasonable to think nothing is afoot when he asks to meet you in a dark alley.
See where this is going?
These kids need a healthy dose of stranger danger.
Ahsoka gets involved and they realize that Satine has been captured also.
There’s a commercial break and then I really started to enjoy the episode. The last act reveals the villains, has some really well-played action, brings all of the political brinksmanship of the last episode that had no pay off to a head and kind of fixed things on Mandalore. And it really brings Ahsoka further into her own, which is something we needed to see heading into the rest of the season.
And seriously, Ahsoka fighting off a bunch of Mandalorian police with binders on? That’s worth the two preposterous acts of set up with Korkie and the Mandalorian Mystery Machine.
I do not want to give you the impression that I’m the guy who needs action at all times to sate my desire for Clone Wars. I realize the last episode was “boring” and a lot of people assumed it was because there was no action (even though the entire last act was a firefight). It’s because of lazy writing. This episode was written by Cameron Litvack, who also wrote the last episode. (Coincidentally, it was also directed by the same fellow, Giancarlo Volpe. I’ll be wary of seeing their names together on any future episodes.)
The situations in the last two episodes have been contrived, the scenarios preposterous, the characters acting erratically… It felt like he hasn’t been watching the show. As a writer, it really frustrates me to see lazy, bad writing on Clone Wars. This is the best show on television and they should be holding their writer/director teams to a higher standard. I’m sure these episodes are playing better to kids, my son was wrapped up in it completely, but they know we’re watching and they know we pay attention. And they know we’re going to invest more thought and care into it than apparently Cameron Litvack is capable of.
Having said all of that, I really did enjoy this episode a lot better than the last one. It had an ending that I was actually happy with and I’m hoping this is the end of us seeing Mandalore for a while. Which is sad for me to say, because last seasons exploits on Mandalore were some of my favorite. It ended on a high note and left me eager to get to next weeks episode.
After watching this episode, though, my son said, “That was one of the best ones yet, right dad?”
“If you say so.”
“But tomorrow, can we watch Bombad Jedi? That one is the best.”
“Yes we can, Anakin. Yes we can.”
To catch up on season one, order that here. You can preorder season two here.