The first two acts of “Jedi Crash” were balls to the wall Star Wars action that would make Genndy Tartokovsky proud.  The episode begins with Anakin on his way to bail out Aayla Secura from a battle over a planet in the Outer Rim.  Anakin, Ahsoka and a contingent of Clones make it onto Secura’s Star Destroyer, but a phalanx of rocket droids start blasting the ship to pieces.  They all make their way out of the ship into a transport docked in the hold, but the Separatists have destroyed the ship and it’s exploding deck by deck.  Seeing the explosion is imminent, Anakin force pushes the rest of the crew onto the ship, closes the blast door and holds off the brunt of the explosion with the force, but is put into critical condition after doing so.

Then this happens.  A stray blast from a rocket droid kills the Clone in charge of the hyperdrive and his death accidentally sets it off and the ship is blasted into who knows where.

The first act was so action packed, it didn’t even give you time to breath.  It was four solid minutes of intensity and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.  And did I mention these new rocket droids?  They were incredibly cool.

The second act was equally breathtaking in its intensity.  Basically, they realize their randomized hyperspace jump has them on a collision course with a star.  They avert that disaster, but find themselves crash landed on a foreign planet and Anakin in even worse shape and since the ship crashes, his life support is now nothing more than a warm campfire.

Act three takes an interesting philosophical and political turn as Ahsoka and Aayla Secura find that the planet is inhabited by a race of vegan pacifists who they must convince to help them.

Things end well, with their healer mending Anakin, but the preview to the next episode doesn’t bode well for the Jedi or the peaceful village.

This episode was everything I love Star Wars for.  It had action that was tremendously exhilarating, great ideas, political intrigue, and lightsabers.

This episode also furthered the attachment between Anakin and Ahsoka.  I know a lot of people don’t seem to like Ahsoka (at least based on comments left both here and on the youtube clips I’ve been posting) but I think she’s perhaps the strongest addition to the animated iterations of Star Wars.  (Better even than Durge, who I hope makes an appearance in this series.)  But the writers of the show (in this case George Lucas’ daughter Katie) really understand the complexities of all the characters in the saga enough to have Anakin’s bad habits bleed more and more into Ahsoka.  In this episode, she very much deals with attachment and fear of loss that plagued Anakin’s descent into the dark side. I hope to see her write episodes of the rumoured live action series.  I hope to see me write episodes of it, too.  (But that’s a different ball of wax.)

I’ve said it before, but the writers have paid careful attention to have Anakin treat Ahsoka (after he’d warmed up to her) exactly as he wanted to be treated as a padawan: with more independence, responsibility, trust, loyalty, and the ability for more recklessness.

The biggest question raised by this series so far, however, is where Ahsoka will end up?

I have a bad feeling about that.  I can imagine that it makes Anakin’s descent into the dark side that much more believable.

As for my rating of this episode overall…  I haven’t decided whether or not this episode has knocked Duel of the Droids off it’s pedestal as my favorite, but it’s certainly given it a run for it’s money.  As for next week, it’s George Takei’s Star Wars premiere as obese Nemoidian Lok Durd, who can be glimpsed in the tag at the end of this weeks episode.  Here’s a preview for next weeks episode, “Defenders of Peace.”

I would also recomend that every read the small comic backups to each episode that can be found here.

So, until next week…