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S02E46: Rapidly Rewatching Mando S1E1
15 Plays23 hours ago
It's time for the Mandalorian rewatch! Join Bob as he welcomes Phil and Ben back to the show for a rewatch (or in Phil's case, FIRST watch) of The Mandalorian! It's all leading up to the release of "The Mandalorian and Grogu" in May '26, so strap on your jetpacks and let's get started!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guests
00:00:01
Speaker
We're launching our Mandalorian rewatch and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome back to short for a storm trooper. And we are finally starting our Mandalorian rewatch with us today. Our good friends, Phil Salmo, Ben Dyer. How are you guys doing?
00:00:28
Speaker
Good, Bob. How about you? Doing and great. Ben? I'm looking forward to this. It's been a little while since I watched The Mandalorian last.
Episode One Recap and Key Themes
00:00:36
Speaker
Oh, we'll get into that. But hey, today we're going to talk about episode one.
00:00:42
Speaker
So let me recap everybody before we we get your opinions on episode one. Episode one was titled The Mandalorian.
00:00:53
Speaker
ah up episode one of The Mandalorian was titled The Mandalorian, but you never saw that on screen. You found that out later. um Here, courtesy of my friend ah Bob Bot on ChatGPT, is a 30-second recap of what happened in that episode.
00:01:07
Speaker
The Mandalorian works the Outer Rim as a stoic, highly skilled bounty hunter. After delivering a series of captures, he accepts a secretive under-the-table job from an ex-Imperial client who offers an unusually large reward.
00:01:22
Speaker
Mando travels to a remote desert outpost, teams up reluctantly with assassin droid IG-11, and fights through armed mercenaries to reach the target. Inside a bunker, he discovers the bounty is not a criminal, but a mysterious green infant.
00:01:37
Speaker
Instead of allowing IG-11 to kill it, Mando destroys the droid and chooses to save the child. That was episode one. Phil, you watched it for the first time. What did you think?
Western Influences and Reflections
00:01:48
Speaker
I did. i love the way that they open this series. I love how normally, you know, having after watched Andor, we get kind of that normal Star Wars intro. I love that we skip that. We go straight to the tracking device beeping.
00:02:01
Speaker
I love the take on the cowboy walking into the saloon and having the fight with the gunslingers, but in kind of this Star Wars turn instead. um We'll talk about this, I think, throughout Mandalorian. But immediate impression is that I can tell Jon Favreau loves Westerns and really has an appreciation for them.
00:02:20
Speaker
all of the different elements that I think he incorporates into the Star Wars universe, but again, in this context of a Western, and then also this amazing desert landscape that he takes advantage of. ah Just to give one example, like riding the blurgs.
00:02:33
Speaker
think that's a great example of like, you know, taking that kind of Western trope and putting into the Star Wars verse. um As far as the shootout, which you mentioned, Bob, another like Western element that I love,
00:02:44
Speaker
And I think they did a great job. If anyone's ever seen the wild bunch in our audience, that's what it was giving for me. And I thought it was great. And I love the way that they close out this first episode with just before they touch the Mando and the mysterious green infant.
00:03:00
Speaker
It's just before they touch and cuts to black. Yeah. um Yeah. I really liked the way they started off the series. yeah that's really sweet. I like that take. Ben, what was your take on watching it again?
00:03:14
Speaker
So re-watching it again, I was i was thinking to myself, well what's going to jump out at me first, right? What what are the things that I might notice on reflection that maybe I didn't appreciate enough the first time around? um And, you know, there's a lot of stuff to reflect on. There's certainly been plenty of time for everybody to talk about this stuff. So some of this won't be especially new, but, ah you know,
00:03:34
Speaker
immediately you're kind of wondering, well, when exactly is this you know set? like Yeah, what's the setting? What part of the Star Wars mythology are we in? And we kind of figure out that it's got to be after the Empire falls, sometime after Return of the Jedi, not clear exactly when.
00:03:51
Speaker
ah The Imperial soldiers we meet ah in episode and the first episode are... They're kind of grimy. Like they're, these guys are not maintaining their gear. This is a little bit of a weird splinter operation, something, something not quite on the up and up with this. I'm not really sure what their motives are goingnna be like.
00:04:09
Speaker
um I loved, so that's one thing that i think is interesting is just, we don't have a whole lot after
Character and Cast Highlights
00:04:16
Speaker
we Return to the Jedi. And this is a really interesting contribution to that space. I also like that, you know, at least so far, a lot of what we're getting is is what you might call small still or storytelling. It's storytelling about, you know, individual struggles. it's We're not talking about the fate of the galaxy here.
00:04:33
Speaker
yeah um These are people who are who are doing the kind of stuff that... that you know, reflects all of the interesting kind of human frailties and weaknesses and small challenges and things like that that you're going to find in, for example, a Western or a noir tale, or as as I think we're going to then go on to see later in the series more like a samurai movie, you know. Yeah.
00:04:59
Speaker
And ah maybe I'll just wrap up by saying that I think there's a lot of really interesting illusions, a a lot of really interesting imagery and tropes and things like that in the way that this is made that borrow from Westerns and samurai movies in these places where you know you've got these kind of solitary figures who are Maybe not entirely wholesome. This is not, you know, the white hat good guys necessarily always.
00:05:24
Speaker
So a lot of really great stuff to study. A lot of people. There's a lot here that's really um indicative of an awareness of all of the kind of romantic roots that come from Star Wars and other kind of popular genres.
00:05:39
Speaker
So really, really fun. Yeah. You know, the the one big take I had on watching it again was also, wow, this is so much of a Western. This is the biggest space Western that we've had since Firefly.
00:05:53
Speaker
and ah And that works for me. And also, again, you know, cowboy movies and samurai movies have... a very similar vibe to them. There's a reason why you can take the seven samurai and and remake it as the magnificent seven, right? It just makes sense. So that's there.
00:06:11
Speaker
That opening sequence that you called out, Phil, I absolutely loved that. That was just so perfectly set the tone for the series. And I would think of it as kind of the Han shot first moment for the Mandalorian.
00:06:29
Speaker
Like we needed to see right up front that he wasn't a soft guy. He was a bad ass MF. He was a BAMF.
00:06:40
Speaker
He wasn't going to take garbage from anybody. He's not afraid to kill people. He's not afraid to kill people by having ah doors dilate and chop them in half. um You know, he he does what he does.
00:06:52
Speaker
That twist at the beginning of you thought that the mithril was the victim, but then he actually was the bounty that he was looking for. Super great. I loved that.
00:07:04
Speaker
And yeah, it just proceeded from there. The buddying up with IG-11 at the end and then betraying him at the last minute and shooting him dead. Again, that just had such a Clint Eastwood bounty hunter vibe.
00:07:19
Speaker
Ice cold. Yeah, exactly what we want from something like this. um One thing that jumped out at me again, and this is a theme that kind of comes up with Mandalorian um ah over and over again, is the casting and the guest casting. And sometimes it's stunt casting.
00:07:39
Speaker
I think when we get into season three, you're going to see a lot more stunt casting, no spoilers, but, um Having ah Carl Weathers, the amazing Carl Weathers as Greef Karga, he was great. And he was basically playing carl's what Carl Weathers.
00:07:57
Speaker
i i He doesn't have a lot of rage, i don't think, does Carl Weathers, but you love what you get, right? So he was great. um Horatio Sands, the comic, was actually that mithral at the beginning in all the blue makeup. And he was he was really good.
00:08:12
Speaker
um There were a couple other little cameos, but you got to talk about Werner Herzog. Oh, so good. Right? i As soon as he walked in, I was like, oh my God, they got Werner Herzog in this.
00:08:25
Speaker
And I think he apps obviously sort of known more for his filmmaking, but I think has a personality all its own, all its own you know aside from his films, absolutely crushes as, I believe his name is The Client. The Client, yeah. I don't think we ever get his name. I think we just call him The Client. Yes, yeah.
00:08:43
Speaker
yeah And so good. um Bob, to piggyback on that point, Taika Waititi as well. Yes. Great. um And then probably my favorite ah was Nick Nolte.
00:08:58
Speaker
I completely forgot about mentioning Nick Nolte. Absolutely. So good. um He was probably my favorite. I have spoken. Yes. Yeah. Nick Nolte is the voice of Quill. When they announced that he was cast on this show, everyone's like, well, what kind of character is he going to play?
00:09:15
Speaker
And then I think the word got out is like, he's actually just doing the voice and it's an Ugnaught. You know, and we first saw the Ugnaughts in The Empire Strikes Back. Those were the little guys who were like taking apart C-3PO on Cloud City and throwing his pieces around. Those were Ugnaughts.
00:09:32
Speaker
um Very similar to Jawas in many ways. And so the the idea of Nick Nolte being an Ugnaught was laughable, but oh my gosh, it works. And totally A-class character in this story.
00:09:47
Speaker
And the i have spoken catch line like, that We were saying that for weeks after that episode. We were saying that for weeks and it's like the perfect tool for a parent trying to get their kid to just do something. so much better than because I said so.
00:10:01
Speaker
Just um go to bed. I have spoken. Exactly. Eat your broccoli. I have spoken. That's great. That's great. Ben, other thoughts you've got on your little post-it note there?
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just thinking about things that that set the tone.
Mandalorian's Character Depth and Ending Discussion
00:10:18
Speaker
you know I mean, one of the things I think is interesting is initially, you know we're talking about who is this character when we we meet him. And i think this is a little bit before Pedro Pascal really blew up.
00:10:30
Speaker
Maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't know. But But you know we don't really know who the guy behind the mask is. All we know is we've got some guy who looks a lot like Boba Fett, who at this point we've known as kind of a dark, badass kind of character. All right. yeah And so we don't know what kind of character this Mandalorian is going to be. So one of the first things that's really interesting, if you go back and you look, as soon as as soon as he makes his first capture, right, um they almost frame it as a...
00:11:01
Speaker
as a kind of a, there's a little bit of a jump scare, kind of a horror moment when, but yeah before he, he freezes his, his bounty there in the very opening part. And so now we're like, oh man, this guy's cold blooded.
00:11:13
Speaker
yeah This is, this is bad news. This guy is something. And then by the end of the episode, we get that kind of trope of, he broke his one rule, you know, he set up as non-compassionate at the beginning, but then at the end of this whole thing, no, he's making an exception that immediately draws us in. Why would he do that? We've got some indication that he was a foundling from the middle of the episode. Some moment where clearly he's got kind of, uh,
00:11:40
Speaker
a soft spot or a kind of a, a, a willingness to be empathic toward children who maybe are caught in the middle of things that are beyond them and and violence and so on. So, um, I think immediately it gives us a bit of sympathy for this character without necessarily dulling that hard edge that we've already been introduced to.
00:11:59
Speaker
Right. We're just starting to see a crack of compassion with him reaching out to, to baby Yoda. We can call him baby Yoda. We can call him the child, at this point phil you obviously like you knew about baby yoda that so yeah how was the reveal for you um i mean i knew it was coming but i actually still it was still had impact to me even though i've seen it yes uh obviously we don't have video on this one but ben is currently showing his baby yoda um i remember the frenzy on the internet when that happened when the series first dropped
00:12:33
Speaker
And even with that, I feel like the impact of seeing him for the first time still hits. He's still very cute, even though he's 50, allegedly. I don't know. I don't know. with Maybe they'll explain that later. um Obviously, you guys know.
00:12:45
Speaker
But um yeah, I thought that was, it still had impact to me, even though it was such a, I feel like it transcended beyond Star Wars when it kind of went, made its rounds on the internet. Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:57
Speaker
Absolutely. So it's good to let you see ah Baby Yoda in his natural setting and get the full appreciation. But with that, it's time to wrap up our discussion of episode one. So thanks for being here, guys. We will jump back next week with episode two.
00:13:14
Speaker
So listeners, thanks for being here. In the meantime, do all of the things with liking and subscribing and telling your friends. May the force be with you. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye.
00:13:25
Speaker
Who's that line with toys to do? Podcasts, hope you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite unit. Let's chat for 15 minutes. Aren't you a little short?
00:13:35
Speaker
Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper? Aren't you a little short for us?