Clone Wars -- "Assassin" (Ep. 3.7)

-- The future has many paths: Choose wisely.

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Remember when Aurra Sing died? Yeah, me, neither, because, as it turns out, she didn't die. Which is why I was rather confused at the end of "Lethal Trackdown." I kept thinking, "I don't remember her dying." Because she didn't, and, now, she's back. Thanks to Hondo.

The episode itself is about an assassination attempt on the life of Padme, or, more specifically, Ahsoka's vision of said attempt. Or Ahsoka's vision of Aurra Sing. Well, let's just call it an episode about learning to trust yourself and your own instincts.

Now, I want to take a break from the episode itself for a moment:
I sort of hate the whole "trust yourself" or "trust your instincts" message. That's what it is: a message. And it's a message that has pervaded our society. For instance, a new study has shown that young, first-time mothers, especially teenage ones, are more likely to trust their instincts than the recommended scientific advice when it has to do with their babies; as a result, infant deaths due to things like suffocation are on the rise. The mother just felt like the baby needed that fluffy blanket despite the fact that it's a suffocation risk. It's that whole, "My opinion is as good as your fact," thing, and, well, it's not. Sure, you're entitled to believe in whatever stupid thing you want to believe in, but it doesn't make it valid just because you believe it or because your instincts tell you it's what you ought to do.

Having said that, trusting one's instincts is valid for a Jedi, because a Jedi has the Force; we, however, do not. There is a distinct difference between believing in oneself and doing whatever it is you feel is right in any given moment.

So, yeah, Ahsoka has to learn to trust in herself and her visions... and Padme's life hangs in the balance.

It's a good, solid episode with some teaching from Yoda, since Anakin's off on a mission in this one.

Clone Wars -- "Lethal Trackdown" (Ep. 2.22)

-- Revenge is a confession of pain.

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This episode marks the end of the young Boba Fett story arc and the end of season two. It's an interesting to end the season (with no cliffhanger).

Also: The return of Hondo!
In a good way.

Aurra Sing and crew took hostages during the previous episode and use those hostages to entice Mace to come after them and face Boba Fett in combat. Boba does want his revenge.

But Mace is too injured to go because of the events last episode, so Plo Koon goes instead and takes Ahsoka with him.

The interesting bits:
There's a conversation between Anakin and Mace about revenge, because Anakin thinks Mace should go after Boba because of the attempted assassination and all the troopers the bounty hunters killed. Mace has already let it all go and says doing that, going after Boba, would lower him to Boba's level. Anakin... well, Anakin doesn't agree. Mace only "agrees" to go after Boba because of the hostages they took.

Plo gives Ahsoka a lesson on subtlety, something she hasn't learned from Anakin. She's not really very good at it.

Honda is Aurra's ex! I hod completely forgotten about that, so that was a cool re-discovery.

It's a good story arc, and it provides interesting background material for Boba Fett. And it raises some questions, none of which I'm going to say, because there would be spoilers. I will say that one of them has to do with the Slave 1, though. I can't remember if any of the questions get answered, because I can't remember if young Boba returns to the series or not. I suspect that he does from the ending of the episode, but I can't remember it. It makes it like watching the series for the first time all over again.

Clone Wars -- "R2 Come Home" (Ep. 2.21)

-- Adversity is a friendship's truest test.

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The title of the episode is a little misleading. I suppose it's only meant to bring up images of Lassie. You know: "What, Lassie? Timmy fell down the well? Oh, no!" Which is exactly the kind of episode it is. However, when I read the title, I actually thought of the movie, Lassie Come Home, which is about Lassie trying to get back to her owners, to which I thought, "Again?" So, fortunately, I suppose, it was just an episode where Anakin fell down the metaphorical well and R2 had to go for help.

The episode picks up where the last one left off, just after Boba Fett sabotaged the ship Mace Windu was on. Anakin and Mace have gone to where the ship crashed to look for survivors. Aurra Sing and Boba Fett are doing the same thing but for different reasons. Boba, knowing Mace escaped, is still after him and has set a trap. One that Anakin walks right into.

It's not a very complicated episode, but I do think it's a very well done episode. The group of bounty hunters (Aurra, Boba, Bossk, and a... thing called Castas) have a lot of infighting. And Anakin and Mace's relationship is never one that can be said to all roses and sunshine, so there's a lot of interpersonal conflict in this one.

Then there's R2. Because, like I said, it's up to him to save the day and to deliver the message that Timmy fell down in the well.


"He's got a lot of personality. That's all."

Clone Wars -- "Death Trap" (Ep. 2.20)

-- Who my father was matters less than my memory of him.

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I have in my head this picture of the young Boba Fett first going off with Bossk and Aurra Sing, of him climbing the ramp into the ship with them, but I don't remember where that happened. The Clone Wars is not all in chronological order so, maybe, that's an episode later in the series. In this episode, though, the young Fett has already joined the bounty hunters, and he's undercover for them as, you guessed it, a clone trooper cadet.

It's unclear what the actual objective of the mission is, but Fett's objective is to assassinate Mace Windu. And it could be that that is the overall mission objective, but it seemed to me that that aspect of it was not actually what was important to Aurra Sing, she being the one in charge.

In effect, this is another episode about clone differentiation. Boba, going by the name Lucky, of course, blends right in with the other cadets. They look at him as a "brother." But Boba, while a clone, isn't actually like the other clones. He's the same but different, because Boba is actually a true clone of Jango, not a modified one like the other clones. Boba, though, still feels a kinship with the clones, the other cadets and the full troopers. He doesn't want to hurt any of them.

Aurra Sing doesn't care about any of them. Including Boba; he's just a tool to her.

The other thing of interest has to do with origin stories for established characters. It's not like Luke or, say, Spider-Man; we got to watch those origin stories as they happened. But you put in a character like Darth Vader or Wolverine, and everyone wants to know their origins. The problem is that the characters are so cool that no origin story can possibly live up to it, although it's entirely possibly that people would have been pissed if we'd first met Luke as full Jedi only to find out later that he started as a whiny farm boy from Tatooine.

Boba Fett suffers from this problem, probably even more than Darth Vader. When I was a kid, everyone wanted to know who Boba Fett was. It was great speculation. Finding out that he's just a clone of Jango Fett was a great letdown for a lot of people, although I think it works rather will considering the implied relationship between Vader and Boba in The Empire Strikes Back.

Effectively, this is an origin story episode. How did Boba Fett become the hardened bounty hunter that we know in Empire? This episode is how. Or, at least, the beginning of that how. There's a moment... but, well, that would be telling.


"When I show off, it is instructive. And inspiring."

Clone Wars -- "Hostage Crisis" (Ep. 1.22)

-- A secret shared is a trust formed.

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You can blame it on Boba Fett. Or, more specifically, whoever it was who decided that Boba Fett should be released as a secret character action figure ahead of the release of The Empire Strikes Back. Between that and the actual bounty hunters in the movie, bounty hunters became a mythos of the Star Wars universe without doing much more than standing in place and being told, "No disintegrations."

With that in mind, it's somewhat surprising that they waited until the last episode of season one to introduce bounty hunters to The Clone Wars. However, they did it by introducing a whole team of bounty hunters, including Aurra Sing (of The Phantom Menace fame). But it's Cad Bane who runs the show, and a very interesting character he is.

And I'm not really going to talk about that other than to say that he's an ongoing character and, possibly, one acting outside of Palpatine's machinations.

This episode has a hint of Ocean's Eleven flavoring. It's not a heist, per se, but each of the bounty hunters definitely has a specific role in the plan that Bane is hatching.

Still, with all of the bounty hunter action that's happening, the true story revolves around Anakin and Padme and the stupid things that people can do for love. Specifically, you guessed it, Anakin. It's another step on the path of Anakin's downfall for him, though it might not appear that way, but it's an obvious thing that Anakin does not hold his Jedi code in the place that he should.

All in all, this is a pretty good episode. I think it would have been more enjoyable as a two-parter, especially if they had done an end-of-season cliff hanger but, maybe, that's not a thing in shows primarily targeted to younger people do. I don't know. It's a fun episode as it is, but it could have been a bit more. Of course, season one Clone Wars doesn't have any actual multi-part episodes, so that's probably part of why it's contained as a single episode.