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Ep 3.2- The Helmet Stays On
13 Plays4 days ago
We roll into Mando's Monster of the Week era, get drunk on shrimp alcohol, fight a Disney Princess, wax poetic about Connor Storrie's ass, the art of tight storytelling, Kurosawa, and spoiler culture and twists!
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Transcript
Connor Story's Performance and Cultural Impact
00:00:00
Speaker
We simply have to talk about Connor Story's ass. Oh, is that the guy who plays Ilya? Yes, it is. Okay, I haven't watched the show yet. I'm reading the book.
00:00:12
Speaker
But I have seen a screenshot of the ass. And I see why you felt the need to share it. It was really important. Strictly speaking, what you saw was because we hung up Tori's projector. So what you saw was me sitting on the couch in their apartment, zoomed in on my phone, just their ass. I mean, injector the rest of it is kind of irrelevant.
00:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. Hello, listeners. We're talking about heated rivalry. I think legally all gay people are required to talk about heated rivalry. I'm not sure who checks these things, but we are on top of a trend for once, and it's excellent.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, my my old roommate made me watch the entire series with them in two days. Yeah. it And then I brought this up to one of my coworkers and she was like, I don't know if I could watch that show with anybody. And this is my like very straight coworker. And I was like, I didn't say anything to that. I just kind of like shrugged and was like, and this is how I know you're not queer.
00:01:16
Speaker
or I mean, yes, but also I feel like it does take a very specific type of queer person and a specific type of queer friendship.
Heated Rivalry Audiobook Discussion: Explicit Content
00:01:25
Speaker
This is true. This is very true.
00:01:27
Speaker
Not everyone has the total erosion of boundaries that can sometimes happen. I have not read the books. You're you're in the middle of the Heat of Ravelry book itself. They start fucking eight minutes into the audiobook.
00:01:44
Speaker
It happens immediately. I was expecting a slow burn. You know, I've read a lot of books. I've read a lot of rom-coms. Okay, there's going to be some flirting. There's going to be some banter. There's going to be some for forbidden desires. No, they cut straight to it. And generally, when I discuss the smut that I read, you know, it is with a certain degree of removal. I don't talk about how it affects me personally, because that's nobody's business.
Acting and Cinematography Praise for Connor Story
00:02:11
Speaker
But in this case, it wasn't even hot because there was no context to make it meaningful. It was just meat immediately. And I'm like, I don't know this man. Who are these strangers? Why are they fucking? What's happening? And then, you know, later they develop more of a rapport and it gets more interesting. But at the beginning, I'm just sitting there like, wait, why am I watching this?
00:02:34
Speaker
Listening to that. In this case, yeah. Why you listening? Yes. You know, watching it metaphorically, the theater of the mind. Watching it literally, it also is not that long before they start fucking in in the first episode.
00:02:48
Speaker
It's become a huge sensation, right? Obviously. obviously But as I as i said to Tori, it's not like the pinnacle of cinema, right? by any means. Like, the writing is sort of your classic romance. it's It's groundbreaking in that it's an incredibly popular gay romance on a mainstream site.
Call for More Inclusive Representation in Media
00:03:12
Speaker
But the cinematography and the acting are so phenomenal. Connor Story, who plays Ilya, his, like, facial micro expressions are just so incredible.
00:03:25
Speaker
And then just the way they do all of the shots, the lighting is is so beautifully done. I don't know. I don't know film, despite the fact that we have a film podcast now. Oh my god, we do now. We talked about this last time. We need to take some online course about I don't know, whatever the word is. I feel like cinematography is when you're like making the movies. We need some kind of free film studies course to learn the relevant vocabulary words. But I do want to watch it. We'll probably end up watching it together because it's really fun.
00:04:00
Speaker
Because we have a complete erosion of boundaries in our friendship.
Unique Storytelling: Blending Sex and Sports
00:04:03
Speaker
One single boundary hanging on by a thread. It's going snap any day now. There was a tweet that I saw that I screenshotted and put in book club. People keep asking if the gay hockey show is good or bad, but it is simply too horny for either of those words to apply. It's the first show I've seen where a sex scene fades to black, then fades in again, and they're still going at it.
00:04:25
Speaker
And I can't speak to the show, but the book is like that. And I respect it. You know, we know I love something that does what it says on the tin. And boy, howdy, heated rivalry is delivering.
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, they, there's a scene where it fades, it fades to black, and fades in on the hockey game, and then intercuts the hockey game and the sex scene with each other for the next like 10 minutes.
00:04:53
Speaker
Fascinating. i texted our Canadian friends and said, I'm so excited to learn more about your culture. Yeah, because one of the characters is in fact Canadian.
00:05:04
Speaker
Also, a lot of these actors were like unknown. Yeah. They had very, very limited roles before this. I did also hear somewhere that Connor Story, he's he's from Texas, but he got his Russian accent so good that in a scene with a but bunch of Russian extras, the Russian extras started talking to him in Russian.
00:05:31
Speaker
no. And he had to be like, no, actually, like, I like i know my lines. Sorry,
Personal Stress and Transition to The Mandalorian
00:05:36
Speaker
guys. don't know shit. I'm so sorry. No, had a really, really good time with that show. It's it's a fun one.
00:05:42
Speaker
again, it's not like earth shattering in terms of plot. And I, I long for the day. Cause now we, now we've had like red, white and royal blue, the the red, white and royal blue movie. We've had heated rivalry.
00:05:56
Speaker
I fucking long for the day that we can have like mainstream sapphic shit like this or better yet trans people like this.
00:06:10
Speaker
Wouldn't that be something? It would be so nice. It'd be so lovely. I would love to see trans actors and actresses on screen being treated as objects of affection by literally the entire fucking fan space. That'd be so nice.
00:06:30
Speaker
I don't think it's going to happen in the next 20 years. We can dream.
Podcast Introduction and Hosts' Backgrounds
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, all my dreams right now are stress dreams. Oh no! You know who i think is also having stress dreams?
00:06:43
Speaker
Who? Fucking Mando. Hello, everyone.
00:07:05
Speaker
And welcome back to another episode of the fandom apprentice. I'm one of your hosts. My name is Rin. I grew up with Star Wars and various other sci fi and fantasy stories.
00:07:18
Speaker
And now as an adult, I'm sharing in this in this instance, Star Wars specifically with my very good friend, Sam. Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one. I am also a lifelong nerd of a different variety. And we are revisiting The Mandalorian as our sort of foray into Star Wars. And I say revisiting because I have actually seen it, but it was in 2020 that I watched it. And so I don't remember any of it. And I think I can be forgiven for that.
00:07:51
Speaker
But, you know, as your only introduction to Star Wars... it's It's an interesting one because it is so full. Watching these episodes that we're talking about today, it is so chock full of like references for hardcore fans.
00:08:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So I'm really interested to see sort of your perspectives on these. How do they hold up as stories when you don't know shit about the rest of the galaxy? Mm-hmm.
00:08:19
Speaker
But yes,
The Mandalorian: Episodic Storytelling Style
00:08:20
Speaker
we are going through as much Star Wars media as we would like to go through. hey That's tactful. And we are starting in a slightly strange order. We're starting with The Mandalorian, season one of The Mandalorian.
00:08:39
Speaker
And today we will be discussing episodes four through six of season one. Anything else before we get started? I don't think so. I think we should just get right into it.
00:08:50
Speaker
These three episodes like as a whole are very like monster of the week-y. Mm-hmm. And I really... really liked them. I know they they got a lot of s flack for being like, quote unquote, filler.
00:09:04
Speaker
As Mando will say to what's her face in the episode four, you know, filler, I hardly know her. but But, um, the, the thing is, I mean, these are not, these aren't filler. Also, I hate the, the idea of a filler episode. Filler episodes don't exist.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah. It was strange in our sort of modern ecosystem of these short seasons, you know, back in back in the day when you had 22 episode long seasons of television.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, there were episodes that like didn't advance a plot or like didn't really give you anything new about the characters. But these aren't filler They might not advance like an overarching plot line, but we learn new things about Mando and his past and about the child in every single episode. Mm hmm.
00:10:02
Speaker
Every episode expands our understanding of Mando as a character. Yeah. And to be honest, I was actually really, really hopeful that we just continue getting episodes like this.
00:10:14
Speaker
I love Star Wars. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely adore Star Wars. I was so thrilled when we got season one of The Mandalorian as as a live action Star Wars story character.
00:10:28
Speaker
That wasn't a movie. And that wasn't like connected to these characters we we have spent our entire time previously with. That wasn't connected to this larger overall struggle for galactic freedom and the you know light and dark side of the force. It was like just some guy.
00:10:48
Speaker
In his, you know, beat up Ford F-150 and and and is his fuck off sniper rifle and and his jousting armor.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, i honestly, having no context of the other sort of overarching Star Wars narrative... I don't care. i don't mind. I'm just enjoying the story for what it is.
Marvel vs. Star Wars Storytelling Approaches
00:11:12
Speaker
i don't need it to be a grand epic, constantly advancing grind. And I'm sure that there will be a larger story that unfolds, obviously, but...
00:11:22
Speaker
I'm just having fun. I'm just enjoying it. Well, and and like, you know, I think I was talking about last time, Rick Famuyiwa, one of the directors, was saying that he always imagined, like as a kid, the little games he was playing, like with his friends or his action figures, like could conceivably...
00:11:40
Speaker
happen somewhere in the Star Wars universe. Because it is, it's, it's an entire galaxy. There are entire planets, probably, that I've never fucking heard of a Jedi.
00:11:52
Speaker
You know, in entire places that I've not, that like haven't had to deal with the Empire. There are trillions of beings in this galaxy, which means there's billions of stories to be told.
00:12:04
Speaker
And I was just so excited to get even a couple of these other little stories. So like the Mandalorian does, particularly in future seasons, fold into like this larger overarching narrative.
Nostalgia for 'Monster of the Week' Format
00:12:20
Speaker
And I was also hoping we'd get more of these because while I love a giant overarching narrative that you have to pick apart slowly with tweezers to uncover little every little piece of, and it's fun to do that.
00:12:33
Speaker
It's also really exhausting at times. And it's kind of why I hate Marvel. for the same reasons that I love the Star Wars version of this, is, you know, in part because Star Wars came up with all of this over 50 years.
00:12:49
Speaker
Like, it has been almost 50 years since the first Star Wars movie came out. Whereas the the marvel Marvel movies have been coming out since 2012, and now there's movies and TV shows, and if you don't watch all of them,
00:13:04
Speaker
you're gonna miss something vital about the story. Like, they all fall in a specific order. And aren't they super aggressive about spoilers to the point of even withholding information from people on the production because they're scared of things leaking? And I think to me that just means that your story probably isn't very good if having a plot point revealed will totally ruin someone's enjoyment of it. I think that's another reason that these more isolated episodes are fun and Because if you miss one or if you hear what happens in it, oh, Mando fights a giant robot thing. Cool.
00:13:41
Speaker
You can still have fun experiencing it and you haven't ruined some puzzle that you have to solve.
The Mandalorian Season 1 Episode 4 Recap
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah. And I also, that's that's kind of a separate thing, but it we're going down this rabbit hole anyway, so let's let's run.
00:13:57
Speaker
i really dislike the the idea that like your viewer or your reader should not be able to guess the twist. isn If you're telling a good story, you should be able to put it all together.
00:14:12
Speaker
Ideally, they should put it all together in the seconds before you drop the twist. right? And then the the twist confirms the hypothesis.
00:14:24
Speaker
The idea that your twist is going to be so out of left field that nobody could ever guess it, and that's why you have to hide the spoilers, because that's the only thing that your story really has going for it.
00:14:37
Speaker
that That's just not fun storytelling. Yeah. And I understand why people do it because of the internet and fandom culture. And if you have a bunch of people all Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
obviously as proven by the existence of this podcast we like unpacking things in very granular detail but sometimes you just want to watch a show Even I am a huge mystery fan and I read a lot of mystery novels.
00:15:08
Speaker
I don't sit there really stressing about solving the mystery because I know the book is going to explain the mystery to me. And if it's good, it'll be in a way that makes sense. But not everything has to be work to enjoy.
00:15:22
Speaker
You know, I feel like people should be able to enhance the experience by unpicking things if they want. But it's not everything has to be that way. I also really enjoyed this, because these these couple of episodes, because I do feel like, and granted, this came out in 2019, these really, really short seasons has been something that's become super common in the last, like, six or seven years.
00:15:46
Speaker
Before that, when you had more, like... you know network TV, you'd have the really, really long seasons of television. But I feel like so many so many television shows now when they're eight episodes long become an eight-hour movie, which, don't get me wrong, can be really fun and really interesting to watch.
00:16:06
Speaker
And it gives you so many opportunities to tell a more complicated story than you could in two or three hours on on the big screen. And then also if you're releasing it week by week to draw out that tension a little more. It's it's an interesting storytelling mechanism. But I do feel like the the monster of the week technique has become almost kind of a lost art.
00:16:29
Speaker
Like you're saying, like if you miss an episode, you might have missed something, but it's not like essential to your understanding of the show. And I feel like I haven't, granted I don't watch a lot of TV, but I haven't really seen a lot of shows with that sort of monster of the week flavor as an adult. To me, that's very reminiscent of like Saturday morning cartoons type of things.
00:16:53
Speaker
And it's just, it's nice. It's fun. It's nostalgic. I like it. So i know I know that we have some listeners that are much older than we are, but I know we also have listeners that are younger than us.
00:17:07
Speaker
So quick
Season 1 Episode 5 Summary and Tatooine Return
00:17:08
Speaker
explanation for those listeners of what Monster of the Week is. yeah um I mean, I think they could probably get it from context clues, hopefully.
00:17:18
Speaker
I would hope, I mean, beyond the fact that Monster the monster of the Week is a tabletop RPG by Evil Hat Productions, it's it's also a ah method of storytelling in old school TV shows, also known as Villain of the Week.
00:17:32
Speaker
Doctor Who, Supernatural, Buffy, X-Files. I mean, X-Files is really where you get... the the monster of the week, quote unquote, term, where like every week they're dealing with something new. Criminal Minds does that sort of thing. Bones, like all of those old like CSI, NCIS, you know, there's always a new antagonist every single week, a new mystery to solve, and they will handle it and solve it in a 45 minute episode, which is of a really, like it it challenges
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah. to tell a really tight coherent story in those forty five minutes so i really really enjoyed seeing these three episodes specifically using this sort of monster of the week format while also still falling into this eight-ep episodede season structure Because at the end of the day, i don't feel like we lost anything by having these singular really tight stories.
00:18:36
Speaker
Which just goes to show you like how fucking incredible Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, who wrote most of these episodes, and Christopher Yost, who wrote Chapter 6, just goes to show you like what incredible storytellers they are. That they can...
00:18:52
Speaker
you know fold these sort of short mini stories into their overall, like, already abridged storytelling format. Shall we get into those episodes? Do you have anything else that was sort of overarching?
00:19:05
Speaker
No, I think that's good for now. Let's let's start with
Heist Episode: Mando's Strategic Skills
00:19:07
Speaker
episode four, Sanctuary. Cool. So we open on a lovely, serene, kind of fishing, farming, pastoral type scene. And my first thought was, these people are too happy. Something is about to My first thought is shrimps, but without the eyes.
00:19:27
Speaker
Shrimps. Shrimps is bugs. And they're glowing in blue. Yeah, because it we're in space, naturally, and it's Star and they have to be. Bright and glowy. And then it starts raining and there's explosions at the same time and I'm just like, what do these bad guys want with these poor people and their shrimp? And is this about to be an episode of Leverage? It kind of is. A little bit. I feel like I'm going to have a lot of comparisons to draw between The Mandalorian and Leverage, which is not the parallel that I expected. But I might just commit to that bit and see where it takes me.
00:20:03
Speaker
Fucking go with it. And of course, after our intro hook where we are addressing the problem that we will come to solve. We go back to the Mandalorian and the baby.
00:20:15
Speaker
Also, like sidebar, I know that we know that that both of them have names, but we will keep using the Mandalorian and the child because at this point, through the end of season one, we didn't know their names.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah. So they're in the cockpit of the ship and the baby's pressing buttons. And just every 30 seconds that the baby was on screen, I had to stop and go, oh my God, he's so cute. He's so cute. I know I talked about this last time, he was really cute. And so the baby's...
00:20:44
Speaker
being annoying. And Mando says, stop touching things, which is the fastest he has spoken since appearing on screen so far in the season. Because I have been kind of keeping track of, you know, he'll appear, he'll be silent and brooding, and it can be three, four, five minutes before he utters a single line of dialogue. No, I mean, that first that first scene in the first episode, where there's an entire fight scene before he says shit.
00:21:13
Speaker
Incredible. Now he's immediately talking to the baby, which tells me either this is the 5000th time he said stop touching things or it has reached a breaking point where there's been hours of silence and he can't take it anymore. And he gives the baby a really long lecture about staying put while he goes to check out this planet. And then the baby just kind of gives him big, adorable eyes and he gives up.
00:21:38
Speaker
instantly because I love that shot where the door is opening and like you have the shot from behind and it's like ass up on the Mandalorian which first of all glorious thank you and then it switches around to the the front as the door is opening and you're like it it essentially slowly reveals the Mandalorian's entire body and right as you get to the shins all of a sudden there's two big green ears and the baby just standing there I love just like the little shoulder, just like deep sigh, the shoulder drop and the deep sigh.
00:22:15
Speaker
Congratulations, Mando, you're a father. You understand. Exhausted dad. They're the ultimate grumpy in sunshine. It does not get more grumpy or more sunshine. So immediately we get to invoke rule number two.
00:22:29
Speaker
If there is a tavern, there will be plot. Yes. And I think this is time to establish corollary number one for for the second role. Ooh, do tell. There are two types of plot-inducing character in a tavern.
00:22:45
Speaker
Dark and broody or overconfident. o We will have more evidence to support this in later episodes. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:55
Speaker
And I will, you know, retroactively think about this. When we have the tavern in the very, very first episode, we have overconfident. We have the two guys who are overconfident as they're trying to extort the blue fish man.
00:23:11
Speaker
We have grief Karga later in the episode. He's overconfident. This is true. And Mando is constantly dark and broody. isn So that's ah corollary 2.1.
00:23:25
Speaker
Excellent. And we do have the dark and broody type in this particular tavern. Some mysterious lady, they instantly get into a fight that ends with Mando saying, do you want some soup?
00:23:40
Speaker
Which is very charming. The baby is just standing there, it like flashes to the baby and the baby is standing there with like a little muck of soup, like sipping tea, like ah Kermit the fucking frog.
00:23:52
Speaker
Spiritually, it's his appy juice. If there were juice boxes in Star Wars, that would be his juice box. And is this actress the lady who sucks? Yeah. So honestly, I'm not going to like talk about her too much. She's a wrestler and she's an absolutely raging transphobe who said some shit on Twitter.
00:24:12
Speaker
And then Disney was like, hey... don't not do that because like we do have like public standards pieces in your contract and we're firing you and she went on a whole, way you're discriminating against me and sued them.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, no, she sucks. And yeah also the like the only acting jobs she does now are with like Ben Shapiro has and and like Turning Point USA have like their own little...
00:24:44
Speaker
bullshit movie studios and she does shit with them now. But yeah, she sucks. Yeah. Just confirming that that's who I thought it was and it wasn't some other lady actor in this series, but we don't need to spend too much time with her.
00:24:58
Speaker
She's there. Mando starts working on his ship, which always seems to need some kind of work. And he gets approached by some of the villagers from earlier, which it turns out they're krill farmers, which is just such a charming way of just yeah shrimp krill, you know same thing, basically. But it just seems so quaint. I love that they're krill farmers. And they ask him for help. He gives them a hearty fuck you. And they're laying it on real thick about, oh, we're so helpless. These are all the credits we have. And it's fun that instead of money, it's credits because we're in space. Why not?
00:25:34
Speaker
Then he hears that they live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. And he's suddenly all in because he wants to be in the middle of nowhere to hide with the baby. So this works out for everyone. he gets that lady from before and they go to the farm.
00:25:47
Speaker
So two things. Thing one is the credits thing. um And I'll bring this up now and I'll keep fucking bringing this up as long as we watch Star Wars. As anybody who has ever been on Tumblr knows, there are two types of currency in spec fic. If it is gold, you're in a fantasy universe. And and if it is credits, you're in a sci-fi universe. Yeah.
00:26:10
Speaker
Here's the thing about the word credit is it kind of implies that there is not a physical bit of money being exchanged. Yeah, I'm imagining ones and zeros. The credits are points being transferred, but they are something. They're a shape. In episode one, when Grief Karka tries to pay Mando in Imperial credits, they're literally like gold, silver, and bronze tokens.
00:26:37
Speaker
These are, you know, a bag of fucking coins. Which brings me to my, one of my overall theses about Star Wars.
00:26:48
Speaker
Star Wars. is high fantasy in a sci-fi hat. Ooh, I like it. So just we'll we're going to keep coming back to that.
00:26:59
Speaker
And I know it's it's it's like not really a kind of controversial take. It's a fucking lukewarm ass take. But Star Wars is ah is... Star Wars is... Falls into that subgenre of sci-fi that we talked about back in our like sci-fi breakdowns episode. Yeah.
00:27:16
Speaker
Before the our murder bot season. This is space fantasy. So, you know, it can't be sort of neatly placed in a box. But for shits and gigs, I'm going to neatly place it in a box.
00:27:27
Speaker
I love that. I respect it. Anyway, I guess we can continue. Well, there was one more. yeah we'll continue on the Star Wars thing. Apparently, this lady is an ex shock trooper. I don't know what that is, but I assume it's a big deal. Maybe she was previously a bad guy.
00:27:42
Speaker
Do I get to know what that is now? Or do I just assume, OK, she's some kind of black ops badass and that's all I need to know? That's... she apparently She was a rebel shock trooper.
00:27:53
Speaker
So she worked she was part of the Rebel Alliance. She was anti-imperial. Okay, we love that. Shock troop is an actual, like... term they're like frontline soldiers who engage in like shock and awe you know the first wave of attacks you know get through get through the first defenses circle around and take them in the rear and all that shit they're like not really like special forces although she describes her what she describes doing is a is a little special forces e
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, she made it sound way cooler than the thing that you're describing, which I mean, still very impressive. I'm sure she's very brave, but I didn't really know what that was. You know, star wars Star Wars loves to take a real world concept and twist it slightly. You know, that's that's a hallmark of any sci-fi or fantasy ever.
00:28:46
Speaker
So what the real world term shock troop, the shock troops is used to describe may not be exactly what we're describing here in Star Wars land.
00:28:59
Speaker
But yeah, she's ah she's an ex-rebel soldier, basically. Cool. They come to the village. Yeah. And I want to talk about the aerial shot of the village. Yeah. Again, because we pick apart things in granular detail. There's a river nearby, but there's no irrigation or anything.
00:29:16
Speaker
There's no like, like how did the krill get farmed? It's very rice paddy in design. That is intentional. And we'll talk about that more shortly, but that is intentional in design. Because it is paying specific homage to something.
00:29:32
Speaker
Also, the housing ah layout is kind of funky. The houses are kind of like haphazardly scattered in the middle of this circle of like krill pits.
00:29:44
Speaker
Meet me in the krill pit. And they talk about, at one point, like, our grandparents seeded those ponds. So did they pick up krill from the river and bring them inland 200 meters away?
00:30:01
Speaker
into the pond and like how fast do the krill reproduce the krill do get used it's it's very like it's not explained but if you listen you learn that they're the krill are a primary ingredient in spachka which is that completely Which is an alcohol of some kind. It's the glowy blue alcohol that they're drinking.
00:30:25
Speaker
This is also the first time that we encounter Spachka in Star Wars. I could have sworn I'd like seen it elsewhere, but no, it this is the origin of Spachka. I don't know that I would want to drink a krill-based alcohol. I'm imagining it kind of fish sauce flavored situation. I don't think that's something that I would like.
00:30:45
Speaker
Blue beverages are a thing in Star Wars. Blue Milk, I know, is a thing. They have that at Disney World. Anyway, i I just was a little bit confused, but also like any sort of sci-fi or fantasy, you kind of have to hand wave it a little bit.
00:31:00
Speaker
who But if you're new to this podcast, we will hand wave things when we need to, but we will also still pick them apart just for shits. Yeah. So they take a cute little carriage ride into the village. The children immediately love the baby. and there's this widow who has a kid and she goes, this nice man is going to protect us from the bad ones, which is just so lovably corny. They're really just like with the villagers from before. They're laying it on really thick. And it's very obvious that this lady is going to try to get with Mando.
00:31:36
Speaker
It's very predictable. you can't blame her for trying. There's even when they're talking about something early on in the episode, there's soft harp music in the background and she's trying to get him to remove his helmet. But this is the way, lady. Sorry.
00:31:51
Speaker
ah the soft guitar versions of the Mandalorian theme that were all over this episode. i fucking loved it. It was delightful. It was very silly.
00:32:01
Speaker
Very clear what they were trying to convey. But then after that whole conversation, he does take off the helmet and we see a shot from him behind where he puts it down on the ledge looking over the children playing. And that's very exciting. Even though we don't actually see his face. I mean, we know what Pedro Pascal looks like. It was still very thrilling to be like, OK, he does take it off sometimes. Right. And he he mentions like he took it off, you know, yesterday because like but like he takes it off when he's alone.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun. Apparently big imperial machine things have been in the area. This is a bigger problem than just raiders. And Mando breaks the news to the villagers very delicately by saying, bad news, you can't live here anymore.
00:32:46
Speaker
yeah so Yeah, so the AT-ST, the All-Terrain Scout Walker, All-Terrain Scout Transport, is, it's a tank. It's like a small tank. But shaped like a skull with glowing eyes and big feet. Yeah, there's therere a lot of like mechie walker type things in Star Wars, and there's really, really fucking big ones.
00:33:08
Speaker
And then these are like the little ones, which this is for me. These are the little Well, this is really fun for like, a you know, for longtime Star Wars fans, because these are sort of the littler ones that we like think of as a threat, but like pretty easily overcomable by any, you know, any Jedi or like any competent soldier.
00:33:28
Speaker
And so... What we're doing here is establishing the power level of what's happening is we're we're establishing like this is a threat. We're so used to dealing with level 15 characters. We're back down now at level seven.
00:33:45
Speaker
This is a level seven character talking to villagers. Yeah. Yeah. But somehow these bandits got their hands on a tank, which makes total sense of Mando going and being like, hey, when these were just thieves, it was fine. They have a tank.
00:34:03
Speaker
We can't fight a tank. That's totally reasonable. He's a gunslinger. Yeah, this a little bit above his pay grade. Yeah, he's not a like, even the ex-professional soldier is like here as a courtesy. And she was one person. She's used to working with a unit.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah. So, but the the villagers won't have that, you know, their grandparents seated these pawns. And so they, ah so Mando and Cara Dune, the shock trooper, train them to fight.
00:34:38
Speaker
a fun montage. The widow is a fucking beast. They give her a gun and she's destroying. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Good for her. And so after the training montage, Mando and Shock Trooper sneak up on the raider camp.
00:34:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm. That's where that is. My notes are very loosey-goosey. And I'm slotting in my like random outbursts into your very detailed like step-by-step notes to be like, when the fuck does this happen?
00:35:10
Speaker
This is one of many reasons that we're a team. We synergize very well. Please continue. But when they figure out that there's an AT-ST, they figure that out because they happen upon a footprint.
00:35:21
Speaker
And it looks it looks like, you know, stumbling on a like dinosaur footprint or like a dragon footprint. very St. George and the Dragon here. But when they' they stepped in the footprint and it zooms out to show like the entire size of the footprint, I audibly, like in my room alone, just went, they do move in herds. And whoosh.
00:35:44
Speaker
that's the sound of it going over my head jurassic park my love that's another one i haven't seen we're gonna have content forever patrick would be so disappointed in you listen if pat wants to hang out and watch jurassic park he knows where i live ah our very good friend of the show slash one of our dnd players is is a big jurassic park fan Speaking of D&D, this whole sequence of them sneaking up on the Raider camp is so D&D. I can hear the stealth roles being made in the background. It's super fun. They break into one of their tents and they have these mysterious vats, which I assume are just for atmosphere. So they have something cool and bubbling and I love it. Spotchka.
00:36:31
Speaker
Spotchka. Oh, that's the spot. They're making spotchka. Yep. wow They are stealing the shrimp to make their own spotchka. It all comes together because I was thinking, why the fuck do they want these people's krill? How valuable can krill possibly be of all the things to steal? But okay, if they're making moonshine in the woods, I guess. I guess. That seems like very, very labor-intensive process.
00:36:57
Speaker
We can't get too far into it. Listen, our whole job is getting too far into it, but I will move past it. They have a big fight. They awaken the... You said it was an AT-ST?
00:37:10
Speaker
Yes. Okay, cool. My subtitles were not working, so I wasn't able to catch all of the things that I wanted to write down. Oh, and I found the description I wrote of it. A Baba Yaga skull with laser eyes. Yeah, pretty much. I think a really apt description.
00:37:25
Speaker
And so... Mando and the shock trooper lure it back to the village, but it doesn't fall for the trap because they dug a big hole they want it to fall into. I really like the glowing laser eyes.
00:37:36
Speaker
Again, it it it settles us in the power level for this episode because the colloquial fan name for these is Chicken Walkers.
00:37:47
Speaker
I can see it. Yeah. And so I was very on point with the Baba Yaga thing then. Good for me. Gold star. Right. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Absolutely. One gold credit piece, actually.
00:37:59
Speaker
So just, like, showing this thing as so much more terrifying, as so much more undefeatable than we're used to as Star Wars fans seeing it, just settles us, like, helps set our expectations for what should be happening.
00:38:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So then this is all happening with the AT-ST. There's more raiders busting in. And I felt this way about stormtroopers. I forget if it was in the previous batch of episodes or this batch of episodes where there was a bunch of stormtroopers. I think it was in the previous one because he was getting the child out of the facility. Anyway.
00:38:31
Speaker
How many raiders are there? And is this a question I need to stop worrying about? Because I just keep going, where do all these bad guys keep coming from? It seems like there are so many. Is this just a thing that there's infinite supplies of cannon fodder bad guys? Or is there usually a proportionate number of bad guys? Pretty much.
00:38:51
Speaker
So this is a this is a rule ah a rule of fantasy that I wasn't sure if I wanted to introduce or not. Well, let's hear it. We'll workshop it. There is always a Klingon. this The meaning of this is there is always a like sort of faceless, warmongery enemy whose motivation is war.
00:39:19
Speaker
You can also swing this, though, in the other way of there is always a proud, misunderstood warrior group. I was about to say the Klingons have a complex and beautiful culture.
00:39:31
Speaker
They do. But if you're looking at original series Klingons, they're they're they're the orcs, basically. And then we get, because we have Worf, then we get more about Klingon culture.
00:39:47
Speaker
And Klingon poetry. So I, yeah. Love that man. Breaking Jadzia Dax's back on the daily to the point where Bashir tells them they have to stop fucking too much because they're using too many resources in the med bay getting healed. Jesus fucking Christ. I love Deep Space Nine. Anyway.
00:40:04
Speaker
Jadzia Dax,
00:40:08
Speaker
the truest of masochists. Truly. We love that for her. Yeah, i I don't think I want to make this an official rule quite yet. It was, it's it's a loose, this is a rough draft for now.
00:40:21
Speaker
We'll keep it in the back of our minds. Because also, like, with the first definition of there's always a Klingon, the the sort of cannon fodder, loose enemy, like, that's just kind of a the nature of of these sorts of heroic stories is there has to be an enemy to fight.
00:40:38
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And it can't be one that you care too much about. So like they have to have sort of a nebulous evil motivation. i think my thinking was just more the sheer number of them because there were so many.
00:40:53
Speaker
yeah that too. Their raider camp didn't seem that big. How are there dozens more spilling from the woods or in the facility where we were breaking the child loose? Where are all these stormtroopers? How does he employ all these stormtroopers? How does he pay all these stormtroopers?
00:41:06
Speaker
I think too much about the logistics And the supply chain of, okay, who's making the all the meals? Who's getting all the equipment? I i just need to stop worrying about it. So the AT-ST goes down. There's an awesome explosion. Everything is fixed. Baby Yoda catches his frog, which in a previous episode when they were with the Blurg herder, he was trying to catch a frog and he couldn't quite get it. And in this episode, he does get it. Even Baby Yoda is growing.
00:41:34
Speaker
And the widow lady is not at all subtly Hinting, oh, you know, he fits right in. You guys could be happy here. And Mando does want to leave the baby on the planet.
00:41:50
Speaker
And to her enormous credit ah credit, the widow takes Mando's rejection very gracefully because she obviously wants to get in his pants. Can't blame her, like I said. But she takes it in stride and offers to raise baby Yoda as her own.
00:42:07
Speaker
So... Points to her. Good person. We also get a little factoid that if you take the helmet off in front of someone, you can never put it back on again. Don't know why, but it's interesting. It's meant to be like a like if an enemy forcibly removes it from you or if you remove it yourself, you are giving up your identity as a Mandalorian.
00:42:30
Speaker
If an enemy forcibly removes it from you, you let them get close enough to do that. Therefore, you've lost the right to exist as a Mandalorian in that regard. That's a lot of pressure.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah. Also, they do note, like, it's a single throwaway line. This is a several week time skip. They've been just chilling here for weeks after that whole thing. Good for them.
00:42:53
Speaker
But unfortunately, the baby cannot stay because there's a sniper in the woods, another bounty hunter. And Cara Dune takes out the bounty hunter and Mando realizes we have to go keep on the move. Can't stay in one place.
00:43:10
Speaker
Because we learned from the last batch of episodes that there are so many people who are trying to do this job of getting the baby. There is an unknown number of tracking fobs out there in the world that anyone could conceivably have. So they're basically never going to be fully safe because they don't know who can access their location at any time.
00:43:33
Speaker
I'm also choosing not to worry about how the tracking fobs work. They just do. It's space magic. and Yeah. Is this the same one of the other bounty hunters? Is this the same newt newt guy from episode one who summons the little thing? Same species. Same species. Is that little proboscis? Is that part of his face or is that a mask? That's his face.
00:43:58
Speaker
Amazing. Love it. or I think it's a mask over part of his face. Yes. So this happens, we realize we're never gonna be safe, there's tearful goodbyes with the villagers, and they're sort of loading up on the cart getting ready to leave.
00:44:10
Speaker
And all I'm thinking is that this is taking so long for them to get all their stuff on and climb on the thing. It has to be really awkward just having everyone watch you go like that. This isn't a quick goodbye, everyone is just sort of standing there staring and watching them load up on the cart and waiting for them to leave. That just has to be a little bit weird.
00:44:30
Speaker
And then watching you as you like go to the tree line, which is like really far the fuck away. It's like when you say goodbye to someone and realize you're both walking in the same direction. It's just, it was just slightly awkward and it was very funny.
00:44:42
Speaker
So this episode is almost beat for beat, a retelling of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 samurai movie, Seven Samurai.
00:44:53
Speaker
okay. Okay. This is a common theme that we're going to see in Star Wars. There's at least three other episodes, I think, that I can think of where this story plays out almost exactly. Because Kurosawa, in general, has a massive influence, what or was a massive influence on George Lucas.
00:45:15
Speaker
And samurai movies in general, Kurosawa especially. So it's it's not surprising to see retellings of samurai movies or of Kurosawa's work specifically.
00:45:27
Speaker
um And Seven Samurai is one of one of his most famous. It's you know supposedly one of the greatest and most influential films in cinema history. If you've ever heard of the um film The Magnificent s Seven, which is a Western film,
00:45:41
Speaker
It came out like two years after Seven Samurai. It is a retelling of Seven Samurai. I do know that there's a very interesting relationship between Westerns and Samurai movies, but I know nothing about either of those things, so I have no commentary on it. But I know there's, at least people love to make Tumblr posts about similarities between them.
00:46:00
Speaker
They're frequently retellings of each other. Very frequently you'll get a Samurai movie that's a retelling of a Western that's a retelling of a Samurai movie. Mm-hmm. Or vice versa. But yeah, this is this is like beat for beat, you know with the locals begging the samurai to help them, the wandering ronin to please come save our village, to the bandits have a weapon that is so far out of the league, which in Seven Samurai, the bandits have muskets. Mm-hmm.
00:46:25
Speaker
Which that's the ah that's the weapon that's so part of everyone's league. That's the advanced technology. Exactly. They build new fortifications around the village. And there's a training montage where they train the villagers to use spears.
00:46:40
Speaker
Use little, like, wooden-cut bamboo spears. This is, it's Seven Samurai. Mm-hmm. So we've had our samurai movie, which means we now need to go to our next great influence on Star Wars, the Western.
00:46:55
Speaker
And in case this was not obvious enough, the title of the next episode is The Gunslinger. So this one opens with a very fun big pew pew space laser fight. And the most important thing I took away from this is that the baby has a car seat that Mando is in. It's fucking cute. Oh am my God. It's just like a crate that he's kind of basically taped to the wall. But you know, it counts A for effort. I think if you took that to the fire department and ask them to check to make sure it was properly installed.
00:47:29
Speaker
They might have some notes, but you know it's space we're making do. Fun fact, that is a thing you can do. If you have a car seat in your car, you can take it to the fire department and have them check that it is properly hooked in and all that.
00:47:41
Speaker
Also, if you are in a car accident and you have a car seat in your car, even if there is not a child in the car seat, you need to get a new one because the shock of the accident can compromise the integrity of the car seat. Anyway, that's my car seat rain. Carrying on. Notes from childcare professional.
00:47:57
Speaker
Listen, it's important. we Car safety. It is. It's it's important. It is. So during this big fight, one of the opponents... does the I can bring you in warm or I can bring you in cold thing that we saw the first episode and Mando hits him with that's my line and also hits him with a laser blast thing and explodes him he does like the classic like sci-fi like top gun bullshit of like slam on the brakes essentially get behind them and then shoot them m and then we land on our planet of the week
00:48:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's a desert again. is and so is this the same? planet This is not the same planet as before. This is a new planet. It's a new desert planet. There are a lot of fucking desert planets in Star Wars. It's really hard to keep track. They all look the same. ah Yeah, they're all deserts.
00:48:49
Speaker
and I know there's an I hate sand joke. That's a Star Wars. And if I knew more, I would make a joke. This is not a desert planet in Star Wars. This is the desert planet in Star Wars. Welcome, bestie, to Tatooine.
00:49:05
Speaker
Yay! You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than Mos Eisley. Oh, it's that Okay. Yes. So we land in Mos Eisley. And this is where there's so many little references for Star Wars aficionados because this is the Star Wars planet. We come back here in Every Star Wars game and every book and every show and every movie, this we spend time on Tatooine.
00:49:33
Speaker
Despite the fact that Tatooine is like the galaxy's, ah not even the galaxy's asshole, it's like the pimple... three inches to the left of the galaxy's asshole.
00:49:45
Speaker
um Like, it's that fucking irrelevant. Somehow, we're always back here because our heroes are always back here in this backwater. And so, you know, we we spend time in, like, the Mos Eisley Cantina, which is our this this week's If There's a Tavern, There Will Be plot.
00:50:04
Speaker
You know, there's buildings and and droids we recognize from previous movies, and it's... it's very familiar to us. Speaking of droids, as they land, I was typing in my notes, adorable repair droids. And before I finish typing that sentence, they get shot because Mando hates droids so much. But luckily they bounce back. Yeah, he shoots at them. Yeah, he shoots at them. He doesn't like kill them. They're pretty robust. They're okay.
00:50:31
Speaker
And it turns out that the ship needs a lot of expensive repairs and Mando needs more money to pay for those repairs, which is a mood for just any car owner especially if you have a kind of old and shitty car I hate owning a car so much but I just switch job positions which meant I switched locations where my lab is so I'll be biking to work again soon as opposed to driving which does mean of course that my car I still own a car that I pay car insurance for but gotta take your wins where you can get them
00:51:08
Speaker
Yeah. Our garage owner, Peli Motto, at one point goes, geez. And I went, well, fuck, we now have a Jesus somewhere in Star Wars.
00:51:19
Speaker
Is she another famous person cameo? She has the air of maybe being someone famous, but I don't know who she is. Like, I didn't recognize her, but I recognize the name of the actress. This is Amy Sedaris.
00:51:31
Speaker
Oh my god. Yeah, so that's pretty famous. I'm glad you recognize the name because mean, I recognize the name, but like, yeah, what's she been in? This is where we reveal how old we are.
00:51:44
Speaker
We're old enough to know what Monster of the Week is, but not fully old enough to recognize things that Amy Sedaris has been in. She has been in She was in School of Rock, Elf, Jennifer's Body, The 2019 Lion King, The Third Shrek Movie.
00:52:03
Speaker
Yeah. Sex and the City, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bob's Burgers, ah The Good Wife. hello ah She was only in a couple episodes. She was ah Samantha and Inga in three episodes.
00:52:23
Speaker
Don't remember who they are. Oh, well. She was in BoJack Horseman. She was a main she was Princess Carolyn in BoJack Horseman. that's the main thing that I know her from is BoJack Horseman, because that's my... Not secret shame. My real secret shame is that I've seen every episode of Frick and Morty. But my less secret, less shameful thing is I've seen every episode of BoJack Horseman and I love BoJack Horseman.
00:52:43
Speaker
Anyway. Yeah. So this is Amy Sedaris. So I was right that this she has the air of a famous person. Yeah. And this is not the last one in this in this episode specifically.
00:52:56
Speaker
We'll get to that in a minute. Yeah. We go to our tavern. Mando's looking for a job. And we have our other type of tavern plot guy. The ah overconfident one. Overconfident, flashy, funny. We had our broody last time. Now we have cocky.
00:53:11
Speaker
I said he has college douchebag energy and is trying way too hard to act cool. Oh my god, that's so perfect. He really seems like he should be... not i didn't go to a school with Greek life. So this is just based on vibes. But I'd I don't think he would have gotten into a fraternity, but he wants people to believe he's in a fraternity. Like, even the frat bros probably think he's, like, not quite cool enough. Like, he has the right level of assholery, but not really much else going for him. Like, maybe his parents aren't rich enough.
00:53:43
Speaker
and And he just sucks. I hated him instantly. My school had Greek life, but like it wasn't like residential, and also it was a tiny fucking school. So like some of this is true, and some of it I can't quite substantiate.
00:53:58
Speaker
But he's tracking down Fennec Shand in Assassin, and they capitalized the word Assassin in the captions. Ooh. And clearly, College Douchebag, which that's just perfect. That's incredible. Nicely done, Bestie. College Douchebag is not up to the job of tracking down Fennec Shand, the capital A assassin.
00:54:21
Speaker
So he brings Mando onto the job and they'll split the payment. So they're going out into the desert to find the assassin. And College Douchebro brings a couple of motorcycles.
00:54:35
Speaker
And he's showing them off really proudly going, not too shabby, eh, about the shabbiest bikes that I have ever seen. And also they look really fun. I want to ride one of those so bad.
00:54:48
Speaker
i have wanted to ride one of those speeder bikes since I was about, I think, probably eight years old. They look amazing. They look like the most fun thing ever. No, the first time that we saw these in Return of the Jedi, i I was fucking hooked. I wanted one.
00:55:04
Speaker
isn it With my incredibly limited knowledge of physics and engineering at the time, my immediate my brain started spinning for probably the next like five years about how you could possibly build a working speeder bike. Yeah. One of my cousins, I think she's probably like 15 now, when she was about five or six, confidently announced that when she was older, she would go to MIT and study physics and build a working lightsaber.
00:55:34
Speaker
And like that was her career plan as far as I know is still her career plan. I think there's something that happens in the formative years when you are exposed to Star Wars. It's like, ooh, this is good. And that also reminds me of a note that I made that it took me a second to make sense of. But, you know, this college douchebag has such a sort of helpless kid energy that it reminded me of a comic that a Tumblr user had made about this female merganser, which type of duck, that in 2018 somebody had photographed with 76 ducklings.
00:56:13
Speaker
that She just kind of kept collecting them. She had a lot of babies that she had obtained. And there's really funny pictures of her just with all these babies trailing behind her. And somebody had drawn a little comic that was like, having a baby equals success. More baby equals more success. And then the duck with all the baby ducklings. I'm being so fucking successful right now. That's Mando collecting more helpless babies. More baby equals more success. Is college douche bro a helpless baby or is he just a college douche bro? He has sort of a a pitiful energy.
00:56:48
Speaker
I think he's not fully baby because he is still accountable for his actions. But i think spiritually Mando just can't resist.
00:56:59
Speaker
You know, his better nature is like, oh fuck. Okay, I'll help. Okay. I love that. He's just daddy. That's all we can do. He's just daddy. It's true. And we should say it. And we will repeatedly.
00:57:11
Speaker
So much. So they head out into the desert. Very scary guys, something. I don't know what their deal is.
00:57:22
Speaker
Scary people show up. Tusken Raiders. Tusken Raiders. There you go. AKA sand people. Not to be confused with people from Tuscany in Italy. No, there's a k ah Luckily, Mando speaks their sign language and negotiates with them for safe passage across the desert in exchange for college douchebags' binoculars, which I think is very fun.
00:57:47
Speaker
Sand people or Tusken Raiders have, in the in previous Star Wars projects, very much been cannon fodder. you They're just nebulously evil for the sake of being evil.
00:57:59
Speaker
And this is the first time that we like see them actually, like someone actually working with them, being like, hi. Mando's like, yeah, this is their land. Yeah.
00:58:09
Speaker
So we're going to pay them. Do you not know how to speak Tusken sign language? Yeah. Yeah. But they pay the people and they keep heading on through the desert.
00:58:20
Speaker
They find some kind of beast dragging its dead rider who seems to have been a bounty hunter. And College Douchebag sees this and is already trying to call dibs on the other guy's stuff for himself. But surprise, there's a sniper.
00:58:36
Speaker
He's not getting the stuff anytime soon. Mando kind of deals with the sniper and College Douchebag does not help at all. And then there's something about how the sniper has the high ground. And is having the high ground a Star Wars thing? I know that it's like a regular combat thing, but I think it's also a Star Wars thing. It's a Star Wars meme thing. Okay, cool.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah, we'll we'll talk about it when we get there. There's a lot to get through first. Yeah. But she's shooting at them. They make their plan. And as they're executing their plan, the sniper whips off her helmet. She's been, you know, so we've seen like her eyes through the helmet and she's shooting.
00:59:18
Speaker
She whips off her helmet and holy shit, that is Ming-Na Wen. Ming-Na Wen. She's an actress, ah model, and martial artist. Amazing. she has been in fucking everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
00:59:37
Speaker
She is Agent Melinda the Cavalry, May. There's a joke in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where they're like, oh, we're sending the cavalry. and it's it's it's her that's it that's like in um this is a very niche reference if any of our listeners get this please message us i will feel validated in the hit flash cartoon series homestar runner from the early 2000s there's a series within the series called the cheat commandos and there's a character named reinforcements so they're like we need reinforcements and then he shows up and they're like reinforcements you're here
01:00:16
Speaker
She's in Stargate Universe. She's in Eureka. She's in Boston Legal, in the Batman, the TV series.
01:00:26
Speaker
She's been all over the place. But the most important piece here is she's a Disney princess. In Mulan, she is Mulan. Like the animated Mulan or the live action Mulan? The 1998 Disney musical coming of age classic, She is the Voice of Mulan.
01:00:46
Speaker
As a queer person, thank you, Ming-Na Wen. You did a lot for our community.
01:00:55
Speaker
Yeah. So, like, and i I watched all of the first couple of seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I stopped at a certain point when they started to time travel. But, and so, like, I recognized her from that.
01:01:08
Speaker
But because I recognized her from that, like, I know her her resume. And it's just obscenely impressive. That fucking rules. Question for you. Yes. How old do you think Ming-Na Wen is?
01:01:21
Speaker
Probably, I would guess, older than she looks. She is very beautiful and she looks very youthful, but I could not begin to guess how old she is.
01:01:34
Speaker
She is 62. No. Yep. yes I know that like we as a society have very unrealistic expectations for how women should look as they age.
01:01:45
Speaker
I don't think this is a case of that. I think she's just extremely youthful looking. Wow. Damn. She's gorgeous. She's a Disney princess. Yeah.
01:01:56
Speaker
Fucking good for her. Jesus. Anyway, what were we talking about? Yeah. So when I first watched the episode, i I like had to stop and take a second and be like, especially when we end the episode, because she's not here for a whole lot of time.
01:02:11
Speaker
I'm like, wait a minute, they got fucking Ming-Na Wen for like five minutes? Are you serious? yeah And Fennec Shand will come back. We will see a lot more Fennec Shand. Don't worry.
01:02:22
Speaker
In various other Star Wars things. Okay, I was about to say, because I'm pretty sure she's dead. We'll see her in other things. But is she? We see her get shot.
01:02:33
Speaker
And then we see a shot of her lying on the ground and somebody's feet walking up. And you know, I did note that.
01:02:44
Speaker
That like seeing her get shot and just looking at her limp body on the ground is somehow a lot worse than... just seeing random cannon fodder getting evaporated, it feels more violent. it feels more visceral because you're just seeing, oh, there's a corpse now. So that would make sense visually.
01:03:04
Speaker
if you know she is not Obviously not everybody gets evaporated, but this doesn't seem to be the way that we are presented with death thus far.
01:03:14
Speaker
So maybe she's not dead. I don't know. I don't remember what happens in the rest of the series. I mean, sometimes, sometimes in Star Wars, we will have very sad deaths. Sometimes we'll have really dramatic deaths.
01:03:28
Speaker
But a really good rule of thumb for Star Wars. If you do not have 100% confirmation that they're fucking dead dead, they're not dead. Well, it's like just a fuck as a rule. Carbonite thing where I thought they were dead and you told me they were alive in there.
01:03:42
Speaker
Uh-huh. This is kind of a fucked up world, bestie. Welcome to my childhood.
01:03:52
Speaker
Other thoughts for episode five, because we've been talking for a hot minute. Yes. a whole other episode to get through. So there's a whole betrayal where she is convincing College Douchebag to turn on Mando and turn him into the guild because he'll get a bunch of money. It'll be good for his reputation.
01:04:11
Speaker
And so he goes back to the mechanic shop. Yeah.
01:04:21
Speaker
and gets what is clearly a lot of money off of his body not sure where he got a lot of money but now mando has it and watching the mechanics dynamic with the baby is also very funny because there's all these little cutaways of her seeing him and oh my god this fucking guy doesn't know that he can't just leave a baby here and then she's like holding him and rocking him and going i'm gonna charge him extra for watching you peli motto is a scoundrel she's like or like she's like scoundrel adjacent she's fun because she lives in tattoo on tatooine she has to have a level or two in scoundrel naturally Which means that, like, she's perfectly willing to squeeze this dude for all he's fucking worth. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, value your childcare workers. You should pay her.
01:05:11
Speaker
I am on her side. Hard agree. Hard agree. But, anyway, continuing to episode six, The Prisoner. The Prisoner.
01:05:22
Speaker
Let's see. We are at a space station. Yeah. Yeah, we just sort of immediately appear there and it becomes clear as we're introduced to a kooky cast of characters what is going on. Mm-hmm.
01:05:37
Speaker
There's a guy, and this is another time where my subtitles not working really did me a disservice because I'm not totally sure of everyone's names. But is the guy Bran? We have Bran.
01:05:49
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, we have Bran and we have Berg is the big dude with the horns. He's played by Clancy Brown, which I just want to note because Clancy Brown plays like five other characters in Star Wars.
01:06:04
Speaker
Hell yeah. Including in live action. So we'll see Clancy Brown again. um if you If you need a big dude with a deep voice, Clancy Brown.
01:06:16
Speaker
and And frankly, who doesn't? I am not attracted to this iteration of Clancy Brown in Star Wars. I am attracted to other iterations of Clancy Brown in Star Wars. Yeah, no, I don't find this horn guy particularly attractive. Just the idea of a big man with a deep voice in general. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This horn guy does not bring the horny.
01:06:36
Speaker
she There is Shion, who's the Twi'lek, the purple woman. yeah She's played by Natalia Tana, who folks may recognize as Osha from Game of Thrones or as Tonks from Harry Potter.
01:06:51
Speaker
Oh, nice. The world's most non-binary character that anybody has ever fucking written. And I could talk for an hour about the Harry Potter books and the subsequent fallout and all that shit. And I know some people are like, well, we should really just kind of like let them die. But like, and, you know, as, as somebody who was a super big Harry Potter fan as, as a youth, you know, it, it sucks to have that tainted again with with shitty transphobia and all of J.K. Rowling's general shittiness.
01:07:25
Speaker
As people who spend time analyzing literature and pop culture, it was such a huge part of pop culture for so long. yeah And pretty much every British actor was on Harry Potter at some point.
01:07:39
Speaker
Speaking of actors, there's also Mayfield, Nope, sorry, not Bran. Ran. Ran. See, this is... mean Ran. people's name Ran. Silly name.
01:07:51
Speaker
Then we have Mayfeld, who's the Imperial sharpshooter. Who doesn't like Mando for reasons that are unclear to me. It's... This is clearly... Like, we're getting pieces of Mando's history here. Because Mando clearly used to run with most of these people.
01:08:06
Speaker
Clearly. Mando fucked Sheehan. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I have questions. Because we know that Mando has not taken the helmet off.
01:08:17
Speaker
So I would like to know, does Mando, like, take off the rest of his clothes? Or is this just like a dick out situation? like There doesn't seem to be rules about the rest of his clothes. Like, is is it pants off and armor on from the waist up? Like, what's going on here?
01:08:37
Speaker
No kissing involved, obviously. I'm imagining, like, you know, those old-fashioned pajamas with the butt flap. But just like a little flap in front. but I mean, that's what a zipper. That's just a zipper. But it's funnier if there's like a little trapdoor.
01:08:56
Speaker
But also, so there's rules about taking off the helmet. We get that. But if he is naked from the neck down, if someone kind of like sneaks a peek up under the helmet, you like shine a little flashlight in there and like see what he looks like.
01:09:12
Speaker
if I don't know. What's allowed? Which then I also have, so I have so many questions about who how two Mandalorians have sex. Yeah, there's no, so there's no exception for, I don't know,
01:09:26
Speaker
i don't know if they do marriage partners or if your life is supposed to be lonely. We see Mandalorian children and we know that at least a good chunk of them seem to be adopted.
01:09:38
Speaker
But presumably Mandalorians do fuck. At what age does a child get their helmet? Do they have little baby sized helmets? Well, because we see like the little kids running around in helmets. Yeah. But if you have like an infant, you're not going put an infant in a helmet. At what age do you get the helmet?
01:09:58
Speaker
Yeah. is it Is it like a puberty situation? I can see some upsides to having a helmet during puberty, actually. I can see that really working.
01:10:10
Speaker
I think a lot of us may have wished for a helmet during that time. Yeah, so like Mando and She-Anne have clearly fucked. Mando and Mayfield clearly have some fucking beef.
01:10:25
Speaker
And it's unclear whether Zero and Berg were in this prior crew. And Ran clearly also used to run with the crew.
01:10:35
Speaker
But they are going to break somebody out of a prison ship.
01:10:41
Speaker
It's a heist. Yes, it's so fun. And also everyone is being really obnoxious. Speaking of helmets, everyone's being really obnoxious to Mando about the helmet thing. went Oh, take it off. Why can't you take it off? if This is the way. It's just obnoxious.
01:10:57
Speaker
It's not even really funny. It just really emphasizes that these people are all dicks. this this to me i feel like is a is this definitely came about after mando and shian were no longer fucking and shian was like yeah he keeps it on even during sex yeah which like it seems like a low blow but whatever yeah and it's it's below the belt anyway but in the ensuing scuffle over the helmet rudeness somebody accidentally bumps a button and reveals the baby who's just kind of chilling in a compartment and Mayfeld's like oh is this a pet yeah Mando is clearly uncomfortable leaving the baby with all of them but they all go down they reach the Republic ship like before everyone can argue about things and I would like to invoke ah is it rule number three that time doesn't respond the wording of this one always fucking escapes me it's Time doesn't respond to storys story.
01:11:56
Speaker
Story responds to time. No, other way around. Time responds to story. Story doesn't respond to time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this this journey to the ship takes exactly as long as it needs to to avoid the argument. To, like, just start the argument and create the tension that will be hanging over our heads for the rest of the episode. Which I know is exactly, like, that's how story writing works.
01:12:19
Speaker
But we're going to invoke our rule of fantasy anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So they go down onto the ship. There is a droid that might as well be a toaster and they shoot at it. And I find the toaster very charming. There's a recent episode of make some noise on dropout where they have all these made up star Wars characters.
01:12:38
Speaker
And they ask the contestants to name them. And one of them is literally just a Nespresso machine that they put on top of a remote control car and just sort of roll it out. It was the same energy. I love the stupid toaster droid. It's very delightful. There's more fights. There's a guy in a stupid helmet. I have talked. oh you're talking about the mouse droid. I'm so sorry. that the little The little rolly one. that Yeah. did to Yeah, it's really cute.
01:13:06
Speaker
Mouse droids are from the original trilogy and they have continued on because they're fucking delightful and they always make that little
01:13:25
Speaker
It's so fucking cute. Real nice. Hate them. Mouse droids. Best thing ever. a plus. I love all the droids. Sorry, Amanda. I cannot agree with you. and I mean, I know he has droid trauma, but i I love them all. I think they're so cute.
01:13:40
Speaker
So there's a guy in a stupid helmet and I felt like his outfit had kind of a vintage vibe. Is it vintage in universe? so there's There seems to be something something about his whole look seems to be signaling this is a reference for people who know Star Wars, but I don't know what it's referencing. Do you know why it's it looks that way? No, I don't.
01:14:08
Speaker
Do you have any guesses as to why it looks that way? It's probably from the Empire. and All the Empire stuff is old. it's a So the New Republic is you know what happens after the original trilogy.
01:14:22
Speaker
But that means that they're drawing on the through lines that they're pulling for a lot of the visual pieces of this episode. are from that original trilogy, which means they're constrained by what the props department did in the 70s and the 80s.
01:14:42
Speaker
That tracks. Yeah. Uh-huh. So, which is why all the droids look very boxy. And it's why matt Lanter, who plays the sole human working for the New Republic on board,
01:14:56
Speaker
Matt Lanter, by the way, is the voice of Anakin Skywalker in um the Clone Wars TV series. Oh, damn. So he's that's a fun that's like a it's a little cameo because we never see a voice actor's face, obviously, but that's Anakin.
01:15:12
Speaker
But yeah, his outfit is meant to call back to the original trilogy. There's a lot of fight scenes as they're trying to escape. I did have a little bit of shade to throw at Mayfield because supposedly Mayfield is the best trigger man that Ran has ever seen and he needs like fucking nine shots to take down three droids and he misses most of them.
01:15:37
Speaker
And there there is a joke at one point about like he's an imperial sharpshooter and like well, that doesn't mean much. And he's like, I was a i wasn't a fucking stormtrooper. Because the joke is that stormtroopers can't aim for shit.
01:15:51
Speaker
But clearly even an Imperial sharpshooter is not worth a whole fucking lot. Yeah. I did find myself returning to my roots of zoning out during fight scenes in this episode because I found a lot of them very boring. There's a lot of protracted sequences of No dialogue, just fighting, people running kind of Scooby-Doo style through the same fucking hallway, which I assume these are all meant to be different hallways on this vast ship. But if you told me it was all the same hallway set and they just ran through it at different angles, I would believe that.
01:16:28
Speaker
They probably did. it's If I had to guess. I'm sure if you like that kind of thing, it's very fun. But I didn't care about that part at all. And I don't really have any other notes until they're back on the ship.
01:16:40
Speaker
Oh yeah, they do rescue the guy they're there to rescue. And they double-cross Mando and they trap him in the cell because the guy was that lady's brother and Mando had betrayed him and so it was a whole thing. But I didn't really care about that at all. He gets out.
01:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's Quinn. Who, later on, Quinn is like perfectly willing to betray everybody else. like Including his own sister. he's He doesn't give a single flying fuck.
01:17:06
Speaker
So, back on the ship, Zero, the droid, is kind of checking out Baby Yoda. And the baby is very clearly trying to use the force on him. He's reaching up his adorable tiny hand.
01:17:19
Speaker
And then Zero's head explodes. And you can see the baby look at his own hand going, oh my god, did I do that? No, it was just Mando shot. It's the second time that we've had droid threaten the baby and the droid's head just explode. But it was very fun but for a second. Baby's like, oh my god.
01:17:38
Speaker
this amazing i'm so cool no not quite and so then mando's fucking killed everybody and then i'm thinking how is he gonna explain ran that all of his friends are dead but i forgot that at the beginning of the episode they established that their policy is no questions asked so no questions are asked but then there's even more backstabbing and double crossing because mando leaves his thanks for the job this was great bye ran give somebody the green light to kill mando but then turns out that mando had slipped a distress signal beacon thing into the new guy that they rescued into his pocket and so there's a bunch of cops coming to get them as he flies away
01:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, the three X-Wings show up. o The pilots in the X-Wings are played by Deborah Chow, Rick Famuyiwa, and Dave Filoni, aka three of the directors for the series. Oh, that's fun.
01:18:45
Speaker
I'm sure they sat around some table or Zoom meeting going, okay, which scene do we want to have a cameo in? And I'm going, oh we want to fly X-Wings. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because they're all the biggest goddamn Star Wars nerds.
01:18:58
Speaker
That's the thing about Star Wars lasting 50 fucking years is now everybody who is making Star Wars grew up with Star Wars. There are people who worked on the original trilogy, like still working within Star Wars. um Kathleen Kennedy, who is one of the producers... like back in the original trilogy and has been the head of Lucasfilm for a number of years is I think just retired.
01:19:19
Speaker
So like the last of the old guard are starting to retire now, but it does mean that like everybody who's in charge now are all like massive fucking Star Wars nerds who've been massive fucking Star Wars nerds since the Mm-hmm.
Mando's Moral Dilemma: Killing or Imprisoning?
01:19:36
Speaker
When they were kids. yeah It does turn out that Mando just locked everybody on the prison ship. It's sort of unclear whether Mando killed them or locked them up. And it does turn out that Mando locked them up on the prison ship that now nobody can find.
01:19:51
Speaker
So he might as well have killed them. And
Visual References and Baby Yoda Curiosity
01:19:54
Speaker
that's that's the episode. I didn't have anything else for plot one. No, that's that's it. We did our whole talk at the beginning of this episode about the various and sundry things.
01:20:05
Speaker
There's a lot of like little visual references in these episodes to the original trilogy. And there were several points through these episodes where I was like, oh, this will like Sam will get more out of this once she's seen more of Star Wars.
01:20:21
Speaker
But having not seen the rest of Star Wars and therefore not getting all of these little references... Thoughts on these three episodes? I liked them. I thought they were very fun.
01:20:32
Speaker
i am curious to see if the baby becomes more of a character. Because right now he's just kind of an adorable sidekick. He might as well be a dog for, you know, all that he's...
01:20:48
Speaker
contributing besides occasionally using superpowers. But I am very curious about him. I want to know what his deal is. I want to know what species of creature he is and how he's 50 years old, who's been taking care of him for the last 50 years.
01:21:03
Speaker
I have
Star Wars: Campy Sci-Fi with Real-World Politics
01:21:04
Speaker
a lot of questions about the baby that I hope will be revealed. But I thought these episodes were very charming. And like I said, with the first of the three that we talked about, they're not subtle.
01:21:16
Speaker
in their acting or dialogue but I think that that's the charm it's just very direct and silly and I didn't really have any big deep thoughts I think partially because they're all so separate from each other but I like them No, I mean, that's the thing. Star Wars doesn't typically tell these like incredibly deep stories. It tells stories with heart and it tells stories with meaning and it tells stories with references and politics and real world implications. Just wait until we fucking talk about Andor.
01:21:51
Speaker
But is also true to its origins as campy fucking 70s sci-fi. Mm-hmm. And so at the end of the day, it's campy fucking sci-fi. Yeah.
01:22:05
Speaker
And it just goes to show that you can have you can have these fucking campy sci-fi stories and also still have a lot of heart in them. I agree. Campy sci-fi does not mean bad sci-fi.
01:22:17
Speaker
Anyway, we've talked for a hot fucking minute about these three episodes. So I think we'll close it out here.
Future Podcast Episodes on The Mandalorian
01:22:27
Speaker
Thank you for listening, everybody.
01:22:29
Speaker
If you like what you're listening to, you can come back in two weeks and we'll have more of this for you. In two weeks, we're going to go over the last two episodes in season one of The Mandalorian.
01:22:40
Speaker
We'll also talk about some of the special effects and the music and the production itself of Mandalorian. of the show as a whole, the origins of Disney+. plus Now that was all connected to Mandalorian.
01:22:55
Speaker
And then after that, we will get into more Star Wars things. We're not going to go into season two of The Mandalorian yet. We're going to jump into other Star Wars So if you like what you're hearing and you'd like to come along for the rest of that journey, you can subscribe to our podcast wherever you're currently listening or on any other podcast platform of your choice.
01:23:16
Speaker
If we are not on your preferred podcast platform, please reach out to us and we will do our best to be there.
Podcast's Social Media and Listener Engagement
01:23:23
Speaker
You can reach out to us on any of our social media. We are at FanAppPod on every social media site that we are on.
01:23:30
Speaker
That's at F-A-N-A-P-P-P-O-D. Yes, that's three Ps in a row. I'm sorry, but not really. I'm not going to list out our social medias. If we're on a social media site, that's what we're on it as. Some of them get used. Some of them don't get used. Some of them get used occasionally when I decide to poke at it.
01:23:46
Speaker
I run the social media, so be nice. Our Tumblr is a great time. I'm very proud of our Tumblr. That's that's delightful. I occasionally will contribute a poster too to that one. Yeah, i I enjoy our Tumblr.
01:23:57
Speaker
If people want to get in touch with us in a way that we will see swiftly and definitely respond to, what is the best option for that? The best option for that is our email. You can send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com.
01:24:11
Speaker
It's ah pretty easy to remember. We will see that and respond to you within, say, three business days. A very reasonable time frame, I would say. Now, what are business days? The...
01:24:24
Speaker
is anyone's guess, particularly for our business, considering we make no money off of this podcast. Point is, you'll get a speedier reply. Yeah. If you really like what you're hearing, tell your friends about it. We're a small podcast. Word of mouth is the best way to spread. You can also always leave us a five-star review on any podcast platform you're listening on.
01:24:45
Speaker
And if you really like us, you can go onto to podcast platforms you're not listening on and leave us a five-star review there. Yeah. You can also leave us a comment on our episodes, or you can leave us a written review if the podcast platform you're listening on allows one of those things.
01:24:59
Speaker
Any sort of engagement with what we make fills our hearts with delight and lets us know that other people are enjoying listening to this as much as we're enjoying making it.
01:25:10
Speaker
h So we hope that you're enjoying listening to this because we're enjoying making it.
Show Closure and Credits
01:25:15
Speaker
And with that, we will be back in two weeks with the last two episodes of The Mandalorian Season 1.
01:25:23
Speaker
So until then, we're sitting here. We're recording this like right before a big ass winter storm. It's about to hit the United States pretty much all over. It will have passed by the time this comes out, but I will still say stay, stay warm, stay safe. I think that will just apply all the time.
01:25:42
Speaker
Stay warm, stay safe, stay dry and ah stay nerdy. We'll see you next time. See you next time. Bye. The Phantom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam.
01:25:54
Speaker
Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Beiruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z. Our art is by Casey Turgeon.
01:26:06
Speaker
You can find more of her work at KCT Designs on Instagram. The content discussed is the property of the original copyright holders and is used here under fair use.