Ep 4 was really solid. Good Grogu scenes, Bo-Katan falling deeper into the Mandalorian cult mythos, weird alien monsters.

 

Great episode but felt uncomfortable. Was confused but then it hit me.

The Watch Mandalorians are fundamental baptists.

 

Honestly, I felt like this whole episode was absolute gruel. Nothing of consequence happened besides some light implication of Bo-Katan embracing the Watch.

As for the rest, the entire 'Mando conclave group training day' was completely cringe. Awkwardly wrestling on the beach, a bunch of supposedly elite warriors shooting water.

Even the paintball 'training' was bad - at first, I could almost believe it as quickdraw twitch reflex training, but then the kid got shot three times in one 'round' and lost and I realized, oh, no, this is just a mook stomp.

This show has gone really downhill from the first season in a big way, but most disappointingly in the fight choreography - compare and contrast the slick shootout scene from the very first scene or the Grogu retrieval in the third episode with the awkward pool-noodle Darksaber duels and flamethrower-offs and it just gets sad.

 

Yeah I feel like they don't really have any idea what to do with the show, so they are now just using it as a vehicle for random fan service like the episode that mostly happened on Coruscant and this one of Bo Katan stuff.

Episode 4 was also definitely the point at which it became very clear that I have very little interest in the action. During the whole extended action sequence with the kidnapping flying dinosaur I was just browsing my phone waiting for it to be over so the story could move on.

I don't think the problem is primarily choreography though. It's much more severe. The problem is that I don't really care.

The writers are making the mistake of thinking that stakes is the same as investment. "A child's life is at stake, and everyone thinks saving a child's life is the right thing to do, so people will be invested, right?"

But no. Stakes do not on their own create investment. There has to be a meaningful connection between the stakes and the role they play in telling an interesting and satisfying character arc. That's what was missing here. It was just busywork. A fetch-quest.

Meanwhile, Mando has basically zero personality and is now just a generic protective father figure. He no longer has an arc. He doesn't do anything that isn't related to Grogu. He definitely isn't a bounty hunter anymore. If the theme of The Mandalorian is anything, it is that parenthood erases you as a person as you become little more than a prop in the life of your offspring.

As for Grogu, they keep trying to stick character arcs to him, but no matter what arc they pick, they all run up against the fact that he's a puppet with limited movement, zero dialogue, and who barely seems to understand what's happening around him.

 

I feel like they could’ve done something really interesting if they had played up the Mando Cult as a bad thing…not something to be embraced like they are doing.

treat it as a cult. Give Mando the story arc of someone leaving a cult and the trauma that comes with that. Etc.

 

Honestly, I only barely liked this show as it was. Given the current reviews, think I'll just forget about the rest of it.

 

That's been a key aspect of this show since the beginning.

 

This is basically the gist.

The Mandalorian originally felt incredibly fresh, with a space western feel that hadn't quite been nailed for me like that since Firefly, but somewhere around the point that the other Star Wars properties began flopping I feel like leadership grabbed Mandalorian in a life-preserver deathgrip, and now everything that comes out of the show feels like it's been boiled to death to avoid the slightest possibility of an allergic reaction.

If anything, it's reminiscent of the last season of Game of Thrones for me - too timid to introduce truly new content, they've fallen back on repeating aphorisms and nursing easily digestible scenes.

'This is the Way' used to be an actual poignant, solemn feeling declaration (albeit a little stilted); now I feel like I hear it fucking 2-3 times per episode. Beyond how fast the Grogu puppetry has gone sour, it feels like Favreau has a bomb strapped to his chest that'll explode if he doesn't mandate one Baby Yoda uwu scene per episode; I couldn't see him getting away with the Stormtrooper punching scene right now.

Book of Boba Fett was absolutely embarrassing, and this season has broke the surface to gasp for air a few times but is still drowning overall.

EDIT: Especially putting Grogu back in. The end of that season of Mandalorian was a full, complete end to his storyline - and was immediately followed by an awkward backslide in Book of Boba Fett (which wasn't even supposed to be his story primarily), presumably on behalf of the Disney executive mafia visiting the set with a gun and telling him his toy sales were too good to leave him out.

 

I think that the CGI is particularly bad this season. They had an excuse in the middle of the pandemic, but season 3 somehow looks worse than season 1. The lightsabers in A New Hope look better than the darksaber in this.

I had honestly forgotten that Grogu went off with Luke at the end of season 2. Book of Boba Fett was such a slog that I didn't make it past the third episode, but I didn't like most of season 2 either. It never felt like there were any actual stakes, or even the slightest chance that a character we cared about might die. They neutered the storm troopers as a threat so much that they had to replace them with some generic Marvel style killbots for Luke to walk through at the end. I don't know how it went from Din getting beaten up by a few unarmed Quarren fishermen at the start of the season to mowing down legions of the Empire's finest without getting his armour dirty.

 

They made a mistake when they brought in a character that doesn't grow in any significant way and made him an integral part of the show, there's only so many episodes I can endure of goo-goo-gaa-gaa before it becomes an annoyance. This show could run for 20 seasons and Grogu will remain the unspeaking deus-ex nugget long after Din is dirt in the ground. The cult is largely uninteresting too on account of them being just a group of awkward extras, did they really use a bunch of fans that own their own costumes to save money? The armorer was the only interesting one and even her mystic dead-pan exposition-dump has started to wear thin, Bo-Katan's own group were more interesting.

 

Episode 5 was definitely another example of writing confusion.

They spend the whole episode fighting to save the planet from pirates on basis that doing so will buy them a brighter future in the form of a new home to settle.

You get to the end of the episode and the Mandalorians are welcomed and told they now have a home. Episode arc complete.

And then.... the Mandalorians randomly decide they must retake Mandalore. So... this planet is not going to be their new home and they just fought and died to achieve a goal that apparently they don't even want and immediately discard upon having achieved it. In that one moment, the entire episode is made pointless.

 

Fighting to defend new home made them realise how much they missed old home.

Perfect riteing.