Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Clone Wars -- "Senate Spy" (Ep. 2.4)

-- A true heart should never be doubted.

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This is an episode with, kind of, a deliberately misleading title. I'm not going to explain that more than to say it; if you want to know what I mean, you should watch the episode. It's a stand alone, so you can get away with that even if you haven't been watching the series.

However, it isn't the story that interests me about this episode, though the story is fine. Good even. No, what interests me is the continued exploration of Anakin and his attachment issues.

I suppose it might not be entirely clear why the Jedi are not allowed to have attachments, at least from the prospective of the movies. I mean, it's never stated why Jedi are not supposed to own things or form romantic entanglements or, well, have children. Because it seems like having Jedi have children would be the thing to do if you wanted more Jedi children, right? So the underlying reason for the "no attachments" rule is never given. Anywhere. But The Clone Wars gives us plenty of examples, through Anakin, of the issues that arise from having attachments, everything from disobeying orders to retrieve some personal object, to making some one person a priority over completing a mission, to, well, jealousy.

And that's the real issue: Attachments open the Jedi to the negative emotions that lead to the Dark Side of the Force. And that's what's explored in this episode: Anakin's jealousy over a previous lover of Padme's.

So, yeah, the story of the "Senate Spy" is fine. It's good. But it's Anakin's jealousy and his anger and attempt to control Padme's actions because of those things that make the story of real interest.

And, actually, importance.

It's these episodes where we can see Anakin's slide to the Dark Side and that it wasn't some sudden change during Revenge of the Sith.

Also, we get to see, again, a glimmer of Obi-Wan's suspicions about Anakin and Padme, which is good. I mean, it's good that we get to see that he had suspicions, because it's a bit much to believe that Obi-Wan, of all people, had no idea what was going on.

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