Showing posts with label Disappeared. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Disappeared. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Clone Wars -- "The Disappeared: Part 2" (Ep. 6.9)

-- Wisdom is born in fools as well as wise men.


[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]
[Well, actually, considering that we're into season six, now, probably no one new is going to sign up, BUT! Hop over to The Armchair Squid for his take on the current episode.]


Last episode was Temple of Doom; this episode is Raiders. You know the whole thing where Indy chases Nazis (see, Indiana chases hates Nazis! If it's good enough for Indy, it should be good enough for, well, everyone) carrying Marion through the streets while she's yelling his name? Except this time it's cultists carrying Queen Julia while she yells "Jar Jar!" Which is fine as far as it goes, except that it's Jar Jar chasing them because Mace Windu stopped to beat up some cultists.

I have a serious problem with Mace stopping to beat up Nazis. I mean cultists. I don't have a problem with him beating them up, but they were chasing the dudes who had the queen, and Windu had no reason to spend his time on those dudes. He stopped long enough to get split up from Jar Jar which gave the cultists time to get away. But, see, those particular guys were no threat to Binks or Windu, and they could have just bypassed them and retrieved the queen.

Yeah, I know that would have been the end of the episode... except it wouldn't have to be! I mean, Mother Talzin is the big bad in this, so any number of things could have happened! Probably not what did happen, but I hate when a story hinges on a stupid decision someone makes that isn't a decision the person would normally have made. [It's okay for a character to make a stupid decision if it's a stupid character who makes those decisions all the time, but a smart character shouldn't make stupid decisions just to further the plot.]

So... As it turns out, this two-episode arc was here to give us closure on the dangling Mother Talzin thread, which, I suppose, give us closure on all of the Dathomir plots. Other than, technically, I suppose, Darth Maul and Asajj Ventress, but I don't consider them part of the Dathomir plots even if they did both come from there.

Anyway... Cut ending. Anti-climactic. It's fun to see Jar Jar with some romance? Maybe.


"Maybe using the Force is taking too long..." (paraphrased)

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Clone Wars -- "The Disappeared: Part 1" (Ep. 6.8)

-- Without darkness, there cannot be light.


[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]
[Well, actually, considering that we're into season six, now, probably no one new is going to sign up, BUT! Hop over to The Armchair Squid for his take on the current episode.]


Today's episode: Jar Jar Jones and the Temple of Doom!

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about this episode. On the one hand, we find out that Jar Jar has a love interest...
Yeah, I'm going to stop right there.
There is humor in it, though, in that Jar Jar goes off with Queen Julia for the night and Mace Windu spends the time freaking out about where Jar Jar has gone and what he could possibly be doing. That the queen is Jar Jar's girlfriend never enters Windu's mind. Inconceivable!

Anyway...

The dagoyan people don't like the Jedi despite their affinity for the Light Side of the Force. They hold the belief that the Jedi are kidnappers because of their practice of taking Force sensitive children to train at the Jedi Temple. And, well, we don't know that the Jedi are not really kidnappers of a sort. All we know is that they take young children to the Temple to be trained as Jedi and that that is common practice in the Republic. We don't know anything at all about how this is carried out or whether it's with consent or how often it might not be with consent or anything. And all of this is something that's mentioned, basically, in passing, but it's the most interesting question the episode brings up.

Well, that and why anyone, even Jar Jar's girlfriend, would trust Jar Jar to solve a mystery. You'd think that someone that close to Binks, in fact, would be the last one to trust Jar Jar to handle an important task completely alone.