Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Also the Child had some nice egg related character development

Another A+ pre-title intro

Great ep. BDH did a dope job

didn't love the spidey ep, but thought s2e3 with the roots mandos and calamari ppl was really fun.

Awesome episode!

(Someone needs to make a gif of Mando jetpacking off in the others’ faces on the boat — “PEACE OUT”)

Without getting too spoilery (within the 3-day window)—the Empire stuff was a v satisfying execution of Disney’s “make the OG elements a little deeper & darker” strategy... worked even better than Rogue One for me in that regard (at least on this smaller scale).

I appreciate this take

Star Wars has 50s diners and electronic 30s jazz and fish aliens wearing cardigans and 1890s former boom towns and absolutely shitty asshole robots and if you aren’t down to play in this space you have plenty of other options.

— Nolan “Void” McHorse (@HitlerPuncher) November 14, 2020

And yes, great episode.

Genuine lol at the pre title sequence after some of the talk upthread

This sh1t is so much better than the new movies

Fscking spiders 🕷 man

would sackhoff

i've been watching this and finding its mixture of '50s tv serial, awww relationship between mando and yoda, deliberate genre and film refs, misfit, second-hand sci-fi universe low-key v appealing. sometimes it's *so* low key that i go 'ah this is just too airy', but then there's an episode like the last one, which i just through was... well brilliant tbh. as much as anything it was the depiction of Trask that really worked for me. That industrial port crane pulling his ship out of the sea was just a brilliant depiction of a science-fiction universe, and would happily watch a short documentary on cephalopod trawler culture. the bar was nicely done as well. a slightly rough place, but clearly welcoming enough for frog couple to know the owner and eat there sometimes etc.

i'm not *actually* worried about the sort of hole that says a mandalorian can pretty much threaten an entire sea/spaceport population with crashing his ship into their town and nothing and no one gets impounded or arrested, but an imperial freighter thinks twice about ascending before they've left the port area, and I *liked* that information, i would have liked to have understood more about Trask port culture as i say (and chowder recipes and mechanisms for getting into people's bowls) because what the episode did v well was imply it was all there.

also, unlike the opener, which i found pretty dull, the ship heist was sprightly and fun. just enough dark mythos undertow to avoid the slight endless side-quests feeling you get sometimes (and again are characteristic of 50s/60s tv serials).

clearly made by people who care about the universe they're depicting and the people... uh organisms in it.

This is just The Sooty Show in space now and I'm totally on board for that.

Oh no, they said the M-word. Well, they said "M-count", which is almost the M-word. Ugh.

That’s a coincidence. 100,000 dollars is exactly the amount I charge to direct episodes of the mandalorian!

I thought it was fun they gave Carl Weathers a shot to direct an episode. Also lol that as soon as Mando gets his ship fixed up he needs to go find a laundromat.

We waited a few episodes to start in this season, so that we'd have a few, but finally just watched the first one. Pretty good! Good effects! Best of all, though, was when they introduced the Marshal, and I heard his voice, and thought, hey, it's Timothy Olyphant, that's hilarious, he's another Marshal! Then he took off his helmet and ... confirmed. And my daughter goes, wait, who is Timothy Olyphant? I rewound a bit and called down my wife, then let her watch the scene. As soon as he spoke she goes "It's Timothy Olyphant!" And my daughter goes, who is Timothy Olyphant?! And my wife says, oh, an actor we like who always plays Marshals.

cool story bro

Carl Weathers directing an action-heavy episode worked well

That canyon bit seemed long but remained tense, good timing on when things failed, etc

The kid was great and more present, good work puppeteers

Carl Weathers directing an action-heavy episode worked well

Extremely good. I never look ahead to see who directs what episode so that why I can be surprised and damn, that was some of the best action-oriented Star Wars in general. Just enough clarification on what The Big Plot is too while still leaving it just unclear enough.

I think the Imperial base design of corridors with doors at each intersection makes it far too easy to imfiltrate. They need to go open plan.

I’ll be in the minority I guess but apart from the set pieces I thought this was a weak episode. Badly written, unbelievable actions from the characters, massive plot holes. I enjoyed the action but the rest was pretty dire. And I’ve loved the rest of the series for the most part.

Yeah, I was a little underwhelmed. Lots of continuity errors too - just felt a bit lazy.

I’m still not sure how a “lava tide” works.

No I agree this was the weakest episode of the season. Dialogue extremely corny. I mean, it's Star Wars, the dialogue is *always* corny, but somehow the mark of a well-directed, well-paced episode is that you don't notice how corny the dialogue is; in this one I did.

So many callbacks to the OG 77 shit, I loved the fuck out of this ep

Yeah, found it very enjoyable. Stormtrooper fodder levels continue to be off the charts, love it.

I enjoyed the episode a lot, but I realllllly wish I wouldn’t have followed it up by looking at Gina Carano’s Twitter feed for the first time... oof.

Four people trying to make a quick escape - one in a full knight suit of armor, one in a whole body rubber fish suit, one is an old man, the last I would describe as quick, but not fast.

Also yeah GC has been hit in the head a lot

Flashy episode. Kinda filler, but if that “reveal” in the middle means what I took it to mean – it’s an awesome tie-in to the last movie.

(The girl with the Rey hairstyle was also a nice touch.)

Suddenly, instead of a random Western set in Star Wars world, the series is feeling like a very deliberate bit of connective tissue for the entire saga.

(By the way – this does not make up for the inexplicable fact that they apparently travel hundreds or thousands of miles to the other side of the planet in a speeder; then Mando later makes the return trip in a jetpack, retrieves his ship and the kid, and flies back... all in around 20 minutes of story time.)

this ep is 100% why i love this show
go to a place, shoot stuff, kill bad guys, force-compel cookies from kids, make some stormtroopers fall to fiery deaths, secret lab full of genetic experiments
what’s not to love?

and the 77 callbacks were sweeeeeeet af

also i like how it’s mostly an “adventure of the week” show w a smattering of overall arc & i am deeply down w that

feel like director Carl Weathers had a word with actor Carl Weathers about toning his performance width down by approx 45%, with good results

I guess maybe ithe episode overall was just a bit flat - but also really cool?

Not much going on in the episode with the snow spiders, but it was still fun (appreciated the nod to Alien), and looked great. I'm pretty impressed by the effects, particularly the way they seem to be designing their green screens/digital backgrounds to look like matte paintings, which is a cool retro application of state of the art FX.

Saw a cool behind the scenes on YouTube about how they do it. They’re not using green screens much but huge LED backdrops with benefits being how they can control the angle of the background and crucially how the light of the screens reflects off his armor (and anything else). It makes it more realistic and adds a quality to it and otherwise the green would be reflecting everywhere.

One thing that annoyed me: it was called The Siege and it didn't involve a siege.

also i like how it’s mostly an “adventure of the week” show w a smattering of overall arc & i am deeply down w that

the gum-snapping lava tide line was so 77 OG that its nonsensical content was therefore necessary, because lol 77 OGness

Otoh i want s2e1 and e3 over e2 and e4 every time. 🤔

We're all caught up now. The one with Katie Sackloff was fun, as was "The Siege" (though yeah, why was it called "The Siege"?).

Did I hear a mention of "M Counts?" As in, I assume, whatever those Jedi genes are called? Anyway, I wonder whose idea it was to lean off the mythology pedal and press down on adventure instead, since that's key to this show's success. Yeah, there are callbacks and hints at the big picture, but they seem to be there in service of a good time rather than some portentous soap opera plot line.

You did indeed catch that "M counts" reference. I mean, if this has already been brought into the mythology for better or worse, at least it's a slightly more oblique reference.

By the way, neither of my kids have ever been particularly into Star Wars, but the one I've been watching this with turned to me and said "they should really train better Stormtroopers, these guys can never hit anything." On the money, second child.

i think more stormtroopers died in this one episode than in the original trilogy

who didn't love the motorcycle chase starting with half of them dying off the bat

Wondering if a stormtrooper has ever got on a speeder bike and *not* died in the next couple of minutes or so

Well, at least now we know why not everyone carries a light saber, they'd all be cutting their own limbs off left and right.

xpost really shows you that deregulation killed the Empire. they hadn't the proper license or training to drive those

OG77 lol at "it doesn't even have a guard rail!"