Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Clone Wars -- "Bounty Hunters" (Ep. 2.17)

-- Courage makes heroes, but trust builds friendship.

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Hondo is back!

But not in a good way. Seriously, if this episode is your first interaction with Hondo, you'll come away from it wishing that Anakin had just finished the job. The job being Hondo. So to speak. He is almost without his former charm in this episode. Unfortunate.

The episode doesn't have a lot to do with Hondo, anyway, other than that he's the bad guy leading a band of pirates against a defenseless village in order to steal their very valuable crop of... something or other.

This is one of those episodes where the Jedi attempt to teach the villagers to defend themselves so that they can be self-sufficient in the future. It would be a fine episode -- well, it is a fine episode taken all on its own -- except that there was one of these in season one, also. Maybe there was more than one? I don't remember. Or maybe there are more coming up. Whatever the case, it feels like a thing they fall back on when they need a one-shot episode: "Let's teach the villagers to defend themselves!"

The more interesting aspect of this episode is the disagreement between Obi-Wan and Anakin over the fate of the village. Obi-Wan actually wants to leave the village to fend for themselves because they are on an urgent mission and, to him, that takes priority. Anakin wants to stay and fight (Anakin always wants to stay and fight). Of course, the decision is taken away from them by the arrival of Hondo. I would have liked to have seen if Obi-Wan resorted to pulling rank to keep them on task.

6 comments:

  1. I am going to skip ahead so I can watch the episode when you write about it. At the rate I watch I will never catch up.

    cheers, parsnip

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  2. I've really fallen behind, too. I feel like I should just admit that I will never get caught up but I don't want to be a quitter. I do appreciate the recaps, though. I like your analysis.

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    1. Briane: Don't be a quitter!
      I want to know what you think.

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  3. Okay, perhaps it's not a good Hondo episode but it IS a Hondo episode so I'll take it.

    I enjoyed the 7 Samurai mock up. The last help-the-villagers story had more of an Ewok feel to it to me.

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    1. TAS: It is a Hondo episode, although probably the least of them.

      You know, it's not -just- that Clone Wars uses this idea more than once but that many shows use it. Rarely do they do anything different or unique with it.

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