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S02E47: Rapidly Rewatching Mando S1E2
14 Plays8 hours ago
Baby Yoda is a Force user! Are you surprised? Probably not, but the second episode of The Mandalorian was a fun one! Join Bob, Phil, and Ben as they revisit Arvala-7, some red-eyed Jawas, and an egg dish like no other. I have spoken!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Child'
00:00:01
Speaker
The force is strong in the child and he's coming at you real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome back to Short for a Stormtrooper, and we are diving into episode two of season one of The Mandalorian, titled, this time we did see it on screen, The Child, because it is about The Child, otherwise known as Baby Yoda.
Baby Yoda Naming Controversy
00:00:32
Speaker
ah Spoiler, Phil, we do find out his name later. You probably already know what it is, but we will not refer to it until then. I i wouldn't dare. za for for the For the sake of our viewers, our listeners, excuse me.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah. So, so we can, we can call him the child or we can call him baby Yoda with the official blessing of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. They were like, you can call him baby Yoda when there were people who were, remember that was a big fight back then.
00:00:58
Speaker
there was There was some resistance to, there was some that people didn't like it. Well, there were some gatekeepers in the hobby who didn't like calling it baby Yoda because it's like Yoda is not a species. That's the name of ah it. And some people thought that it actually was Yoda. Yeah.
00:01:13
Speaker
But, you know, it's not. Anyway, we're we're not even going to get into that. Let's talk about what this episode was
Mando's Quest and The Child's Force Use
00:01:18
Speaker
about. Here's the recap from Chad GPT. With the child in his care, Mando tries to leave the planet but finds his ship stripped clean by Jawas. After a failed attempt attempt to attack their sand crawler, he negotiates through Quill and agrees to retrieve a prized egg from a fearsome mudhorn.
00:01:36
Speaker
The battle nearly kills him until the child unexpectedly uses the force to lift the creature, giving Mando a chance to strike. He returns the egg to the Jawas, recovers his ship parts, and repairs the razor crest. Realizing the child is extraordinary and vulnerable, Mando leaves the planet with a growing sense of responsibility.
00:01:57
Speaker
That was episode two. So, Phil, what did you think about episode two?
Comedic Elements and Adventure Tone
00:02:01
Speaker
I really liked the way that they continued this story. um Something really interesting about it that I found, sort of my overarching takeaway from episode two, is that I think You know, in episode one, we really get kind of this hard-nosed character in The Mandalorian. Very little compassion. Obviously, you know, in our previous episode, we talked about how there's just a little bit coming through when he meets Baby Yoda, right? I feel like in this episode, it's much more comedic in tone.
00:02:25
Speaker
All the interactions with the Jawas, I feel like, really lend that comedic element. Also, you know, The Mandalorian kind of being like, thrown around and you know getting like down and dirty in the fight with the mud horn for the egg and then also when the jawas are like all screaming about the egg i feel like this is a lot yeah there is definitely um you know there is fighting there is combat in this second episode but it feels a lot more lighter um almost like kind of a side adventure episode which is sort of strange to say for the second episode in a series And so I feel like there's a lot of those comedic elements, but then it's all this buildup and the confrontation with the mud
Mando's Complexity and Vulnerability
00:02:59
Speaker
horn. And then we get that moment when baby Yoda shows what it's made of and what it can do, what the power that it has, and maybe give a little bit of a sense to the viewer of why is there such a high bounty on this creature?
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah. Overall, I liked it. And I felt like it also showed, I liked how it made the Mandalorian in some ways a little more complex. You know, he's a little, he's fallible, right? He's not, he's not just this badass who can, you know, defeat every obstacle that comes in his way. He will get down dirty. He will get thrown around. He does need help from others.
00:03:31
Speaker
um So I like, I like where they took it in the second episode. Yeah, he definitely does show his vulnerability in this episode a little bit more with him, you know, admitting to Cleo, like he doesn't know how to ride a blur. And I love when blur gives some crap about that. Right. It's like, you know, aren't you the race that rode the mighty mythosaur? Like, come on, Mando, get on the blur and ride it. What's your point of order, friends? Yeah, that's episode one. Because remember, they've got to do that in order to cross over to get Baby Yoda in the first place.
00:04:05
Speaker
so Oh, you're right. You're right. that He has his whole thing then. um Sorry, it's a blur. here's Well, no, this is good because there's still a lot of really interesting things going
Mando's Skills and Combat Scenarios
00:04:15
Speaker
on here. One of the things I think is really interesting is that you know that the episode begins with an ambush.
00:04:25
Speaker
We see him walking back from this thing um and he is jumped by two more of these bounty hunters or whoever it is that's probably coming for the child. And so you think of that in contrast to the battle with the Mudhorn later. He's very competent. He's very equipped. He's got those features that you guys are talking about where he's really good at it. so Again, it's almost like they want to remind us, hey, this guy's really great because they're going to beat him up for the rest of the episode. Right. So i thought that was a neat contrast. I think it's neat that we get to see more of his arsenal. So we see more of what's going on with that rifle that he's got. We see more of, you know, he's got a rifle. He's got a pistol. He's got a grappling gauntlet thing. He's got a flame gauntlet thing. and
00:05:11
Speaker
what all is What all can he do? How good is this guy really when it comes to all kinds of craziness? So far, he's just been fighting you know some some guys in the local bars, that kind of stuff, some soldiers. you know It's a lot of gunplay, but when you put him up against a Jawa sandcrawler that's you know, running away from him and he's got to do this chase scene, you know, like, is is he mobile? Can he do, you know, a fight while he's getting debris thrown at him? ah
00:05:42
Speaker
How powerful our jaw was anyway, they always seem like they're a bigger deal. and I didn't really ever get it until now. Like those guys are a pain. So I agree. I think there's a lot of great comedic bits, especially when they finally settle on the egg as a ah thing to trade.
00:05:58
Speaker
There is amongst all those interactions with the Java, there is one incredibly badass line, which is when he put he draws his weapon and ah they say, put your weapon down. He says, I'm a Mandalorian. Weapons are part of my religion. And I was like, o that's ice cold. That's really good.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's so great. Yeah. And when they're started, the the bargaining and um I forget exactly what Mando does. He's like, well, what do you think about this? And then blows the flame at him. Like, yeah, so good. Yeah. Yeah. But yes, ah a swarm of Jawas, like a single Jawas, probably not an issue, but a swarm of Jawas is a formidable opponent, as he really found when he reached the top of the sand crawler and had, what, 18 Jawas? He's going to shoot him.
00:06:41
Speaker
It was pretty great. Yeah. Yes, this is where we do finally see what we suspected.
The Child's Force Power and Significance
00:06:50
Speaker
i mean, you had to suspect because it was a baby of Yoda's species that he probably was going to be Force sensitive.
00:06:57
Speaker
ah We did get a little bit of a hint of that in episode one when he was hurt and he was reaching out. It looked like he was trying to heal him and Mando didn't let him. So, he you know, that wasn't the opportunity to really...
00:07:10
Speaker
demonstrate what he could do. But here, pretty big force display from Baby Yoda, so big that it knocks him out.
00:07:22
Speaker
And we know if you use the force too much, it'll kill you. We learned that from The Last Jedi, from episode eight, ah the poor demise of Luke Skywalker. But ah you know that's what he does in this. I'll tell you, one of the things about this episode that didn't really work for me was I felt like it ended.
00:07:46
Speaker
Well, I was gonna say it ended too early. It wasn't the duration of it, but it feels like that climactic moment of finally defeating the mud horn. That to me felt like the end of the story.
00:07:57
Speaker
And then the rest of it, I felt like they could have wrapped it up in about 10, 15 seconds, as opposed to going on for 10 more minutes of him going back to the Jawas, getting the parts, rebuilding the ship.
00:08:10
Speaker
yeah I don't know that we necessarily needed all that. It felt like an ending that went on too long, kind of like Return of the King, where it probably could have ended about four times over the last 45 minutes. So i don't know. what do you guys think about that?
Episode Pacing and Ship Repairs
00:08:24
Speaker
I think we're gonna be careful. because We're going to branch into Lord of the Rings podcast here pretty soon. but Yeah, that could always happen. We'll do that later. Yeah. um I thought, you know, it was interesting. i remember this is the second time I've watched this. I didn't haven't done another rewatch of The Mandalorian, but watching the Mudhorn fight again, you watch this weapon didn't work. That weapon didn't work. You know, he loses his rifle. The...
00:08:45
Speaker
And then he's got his knife and I'm like, oh, wow, that's a real, that's a real moment. Like he's, he's clearly just expecting this thing's going to kill him now. And then there's the force intervention. And then And then he just kills it by stabbing it once with a knife that's probably you know the size of of your palm. And I thought to myself, there is no way that thing dies because you get stuck that way. maybe Maybe the Mandalorian knows something I don't about the anatomy of those things. but Yeah, he's an expert in mudhorn anatomy and knows the tender spot to hit. That could be. ah yeah i' I'll concede this one. That's fine. Yeah. To your point, Bob, I think, you know, i I definitely, I already said I liked this episode. I liked what they did with the character, but I definitely liked the first episode better.
00:09:32
Speaker
And I did feel like the pacing was a little bit off here. um Something with the jaw was just, it did throw the, like, sort of the pacing off. it You know, I sort of said this when kind of my overall recap of the episode, but It feels like kind of a side quest episode, which I feel like is strange for the second episode in a series. So yeah in that way, it felt it felt different than what I was expecting this journey to go.
00:09:56
Speaker
Obviously, you know, there's a lot of narrative steam that still like, you know, pushes through in this second episode. yeah, it does feel, it feels odd for the second episode in a series. Yeah.
Does The Child Influence Mando's Choices?
00:10:08
Speaker
But let me ask you this though. Do you think that we needed to see the child save the Mandalorian for us to then believe the Mandalorian wouldn't turn him in later? Because that I think is the big open question as we see the credits roll on this episode is you're going, well, is he going turn in the child or not?
00:10:27
Speaker
i think I think it bolsters that case, but I still don't think that he would because of that connection of being a foundling, right? Like like you said on our last episode, talking about episode one,
00:10:39
Speaker
it does have the back, the flashback scenes to show that he was a foundling himself. And so he's got that connection. So I don't think that he would, but I think realizing, you know, to the point of the chat GPT summary, realizing that there was a lot of power in this baby, I think made him even more invested in protecting him.
00:11:01
Speaker
And i think it adds intrigue for the viewer because it's like, okay, clearly this is not just, a random bounty here there is some reason probably more that we don't know at this point about why the bounty is so high and why the client wants baby Yoda so badly yeah um Ben you know you said credits and that made me think of something that I haven't talked about yet in this episode or the previous episode which the
Praise for End Credits and Artwork
00:11:21
Speaker
end credits with the anim with the you know the graphics and the animations are pretty amazing they are so good I was really i was really impressed and floored by those i thought those were So great. And I felt like it was really, i feel like it just added an additional element. It just really felt very um thought through by the creators. And I really appreciated that.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's really great.
Jon Favreau's Star Wars References
00:11:44
Speaker
great You know, a couple other a couple other kind of Easter eggs that I wanted to mention is just for a Star Wars fan of a certain age, i.e. mine, like it's just so transparent how this is created by Jon Favreau, who is the same age as I am, and he grew up on Star Wars the same way that I did. The the deep cuts in here.
00:12:06
Speaker
that are really artfully used. So they're not member berries. you know it's just It's having fun with what you're given. So the Jawas.
00:12:17
Speaker
Jawas, like you said, always kind of a pain in the butt in the first one. The scene with him disintegrating Jawas was amazing on so many fronts. It's something that everybody would have wanted to do because Jawas are annoying, number one. Number two, the gun, that big disintegration gun that he has, we first saw the very first time we were introduced to Boba Fett during the Star Wars Holiday Special in the animation. He had that gun. Favreau made sure that he had that gun.
00:12:47
Speaker
on this show, which again is a deep cut. Even the Blurgs, by the way, Phil, you don't know this, I'm sure, but the Blurgs weren't invented for this. The Blurgs were invented for the Ewok TV movies back in the 80s. Oh, man. um They were very, very chunky stop motion, so they look much better now. um There's just so much of a feel of like Favreau playing with his Star Wars action figures. He's basically just filming a story that he probably told with his action figures in the backyard.
00:13:16
Speaker
when he was growing up as a kid. And I love that aspect of it. and there's many more of those that we could talk about. It's clear this is made by somebody who really deeply loves this franchise, but also I think has a lot of other interests, i.e. like other film genres and film itself and film history that he pulls on. And that's a really interesting combination here. Obviously, you know, some of our listeners may know I haven't really watched a lot of Star Wars media, and but I'm obviously really into movies. So it's really interesting to kind of see that cross section here from Fabbro.
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Ben, any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Anticipation for Future Episodes
00:13:52
Speaker
I'm just looking forward to the next few episodes. I think you know when we see him get back into his normal everyday groove and he's got to make some hard choices about what to do with his child, what the fallout of that is going to be, what he's going to say to grief Cargo when you know when things go down. ah i think there's a lot of interesting things to open up in the next episode or two to come.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah, there's an episode coming up that um the ending of it was just such high quality that it made me tear up watching it. it wasn't It had a slight emotional resonance that was part of it, but sometimes like something is just so good that I have an emotional reaction to it, and and that happened on an upcoming episode. So... It'll be fun to watch that again. Guys, thanks again for being here. Appreciate it. We'll see you again next week.
00:14:42
Speaker
To all of our listeners, thank you for being here. We'll see you next week. May the Force be with you. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short?
00:15:02
Speaker
Aren't you a little short for us, Sporntroover? Aren't you a little short for us,