Ep 3.15- A Collection of Half-Truths and Hyperbole

Transcript

Speaker: My only banter that I had. So we have been so busy discussing Dungeon Crawler Carl for the last couple of episodes, which I'm still working on. By the way, I'm on book six now.

Speaker: But I don't think I mentioned, or maybe I was just trying to avoid thinking about the fact that my car got totaled about three weeks ago. So we've been dealing with that, which is great. It's fine. We got a good payout from insurance. It was the other person's fault. Nobody was hurt.

Speaker: It's all good. We have a new to us car now, but it's older. It's a 2015. And so that means it has a CD drive.

Speaker: which is very exciting because Miles and I like our CDs. We don't have that many, but we have some. So the day that I picked it up from the dealership, I had a little bit of time in the afternoon. So I went and I bought some CDs from a local record store and I got a pretty good haul for $12. But one of them was a Jimmy Buffett CD. It was Off to See the Lizard, which doesn't have any of my favorite Jimmy Buffett songs, but it's fine.

Speaker: But one of them just absolutely tickles me. And it's just a song about how the man really loves to eat lunch. It's called i Wish Lunch Could Last Forever. And crucially, it's Lunch is not a metaphor for sex. This is not some watermelon sugar. This is genuinely, literally just about how he enjoys eating lunch.

Speaker: Just the idea of lunch. And I feel like that is probably the least romanticized meal. For a man who also has songs called Cheeseburger in Paradise and The Last Mango in Paris, he might just really like food. ah He does like food. And as we know from his chain of Margaritaville restaurants the man likes his food but I just think I can't really think of any other songs that are about eating lunch breakfast makes sense because you're starting the day you can be a newly divorced mom ready to take on the world and you're having your breakfast you know Dolly Parton tumbles out of bed and she stumbles to the kitchen, pours herself a cup of ambition. this Things can happen in the morning. You could have breakfast in bed with your lover if it's a sexy song.

Speaker: Dinner, that's at night. You're going out on the town. You're partying. You're being cool in the city. Lunch is a very utilitarian meal. Yeah, I mean, I guess, like, I was like, well, scenes from an Italian restaurant, but like.

Speaker: But that's just about the vibe vibe of restaurant, not lunch specifically. yeah And just something about the frequent returning to just the word lunch in the middle the song is very charming.

Speaker: Yeah, and Italian Restaurant is still a love song at the end. You know, I'll meet you anytime you want in our Italian restaurant. The lunch song is also a little bit romantic, ah but it's mostly about the food.

Speaker: There's also something that is maybe... shorter but arguably stranger banter that I forgot about until just now. I'm going to paint you a little brain picture. So I was in a real nasty mood this afternoon. I was just having a day. I was really snappy. was really miserable.

Speaker: Counting down the minutes until I could leave work, getting ready to go. My day ends at 6.30. At 631, I get a text from an unknown number that is a group chat with me and Miles. So this isn't one of those spam group chats with like 70 people in it. No, this is just me and Miles. I have no idea who this person is. Let me read you the text. Hit me.

Speaker: Would either of you be interested in joining a witch dancing troupe? I just joined one and we're looking for more members. It's pretty laid back and the choreography isn't super complicated. No punctuation.

Speaker: So that was just utterly baffling. And so I'm going through my mind. Okay, who could this possibly be from? Miles and I both dance different kinds of dancing but they happen in the same place is this their contemporary teacher who also kind of knows me because we're both named sam and so that's fun so we have a little banter about the fact that we're both sam Is this someone from my studio? But why would they have Miles's number? Why would this person, if they're from our dance lives, why would they have both of our numbers? And why would I not know who they are?

Speaker: And so eventually, and just flipping on my drive home through my Rolodex of people that it could possibly be... And I'm also telling my boss, because I'm very chummy with my boss, like, hey, I just got invited to join a witch dancing troupe. And he was like, what is that? What does it mean? Like, I don't know Apparently it's something done in a group. And this person thinks I would be a good candidate.

Speaker: I did eventually. It's dancing around the cauldron of the devil's sacrament, obviously. Yeah, clearly. Sky clad, obviously. Obviously. oh my god, i was having fucking flashbacks to my neo-pagan era.

Speaker: i I also had a neo-pagan era. we We're queer. Your spouse also had a neo-pagan era. We all like sort of vaguely overlapped in the neo-pagan That's how miles and I met was at the um pagan Wiccan collective at our college, which my good Christian mother does not know. it's She doesn't need to know that.

Speaker: So, you know, no no shade at all. This is not making fun of the concept of being a witch, but this is just not something that is actively a part of my life. So I did eventually put together who it was, but that just added a lot of whimsy and mystery to my evening. going Why have I been summoned to this witch's gathering?

Speaker: And that did cheer me up a lot. And sadly, even if I wanted to join, I am so fucking busy and just vibrating with stress and overwhelm from the number of things on my plate right now.

Speaker: I don't have time to join the witch dancing troupe. But tragically, I feel which dancing troupe would you join? But um if i had more brain cells, I could make this a whole who's on first situation.

Speaker: But yeah, listeners, I asked if we could record an hour later than we usually do because I just needed to die a little bit before I was ready to do anything.

Speaker: So I have no time in my life for the witch dancing troupe. But I do feel cool that this person thought I was a good candidate. Because, you know, who should be in this? Sam.

Speaker: Yeah. Amazing. It iss pretty great. I'm glad they thought of me. Correct. I would like to read you a couple of lines. Okay, hit me. I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion. My eyes stayed dry, even for Argos the dog, whose adorableness as a puppy is predictably amped up to suit our animal-loving times. If only the human characters have been treated with such serious attention.

Speaker: The film's vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped to deliver what it promiseds it half promises in terms of big ideas, although it is very good at conveying big bangs and big giants.

Speaker: Oh, is this The Odyssey? This is The Odyssey. So Emily Wilson, who is a translator and professor of classics at UPenn and I believe chair of the department, wrote an absolutely scathing review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

Speaker: And a disclaimer, like I have not yet seen The Odyssey and I probably won't watch it While it's still in theaters, because one of the criticisms I keep hearing of it is it is as loud as shit.

Speaker: And also three hours long. Oh. And I simply don't really want to sit. Like, I need an intermission. gotta pee.

Speaker: Yeah. And I don't need things to be that loud. No. So I was exposed to the full din of thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armor, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples.

Speaker: Sounds immersive. So Emily Wilson wrote a, quote, feminist translation is what it it often gets referred to as. And apparently Nolan was inspired by Wilson's translation to make this adaptation.

Speaker: And it is an adaptation. Like, this is not a one-to-one transfer of this poem to the silver screen. Wilson says, as they say at the awards shows i was humbled to learn that nolan had read at least the first line of my translation of the odyssey into iambic pentameter in at least one interview he cited my version of the first line of the poem tell me about a complicated man but i would be ashamed to have written any part of this script Which is just rough.

Speaker: Yeah. Aren't there also no Greek people in it? Is that true? i had heard this tossed about the internet, but not fact-checked. There were also pieces of it where it was it was filmed in the occupied Western Sahara territory.

Speaker: But she does close out her review by saying, despite all this, the release of the Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas.

Speaker: In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the death of the humanities, translations of the Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves. Some of those who buy the book or show up in cinemas to watch Tom Holland may go on to study ancient Greek.

Speaker: Perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language, and history departments. Nolan, who studied English at University College London, where students still study the Odyssey as a first-year foundational text, is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't have more to it than that, really. just That's a very measured and empathetic take. I do like when people are reading because sometimes I will see stuff about the state of American literacy and be filled with rage and despair. So if people will pick up literally any book for literally any reason.

Speaker: i Yeah, I highly encourage reading Emily Wilson's full review and then also reading her translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I need to sit down and like actually read through her her Odyssey translation. I haven't gone through it. I have a copy.

Speaker: It is sitting... in my eyeline currently. It has been sitting in my eyeline for the last 10 episodes of this podcast. So I should get to it.

Speaker: and And no shade to you if you if you enjoyed the movie. There are definitely things to like about modern cinema. And you know I've seen several of reviews that praise Nolan's adaptation for various things usually for sort of like the artistry of the shots and set design and and then also things that criticize it rather heavily for other reasons including filming it in in occupied region and contributing to ongoing oppression of the people that live there you know we can have complicated feelings about art yeah you know who else has complicated feelings about each other

Speaker: I was going to say we can have some complicated feelings about this art, although it is not nearly as deep as the wine dark sea.

Speaker: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Fandom Apprentice. My name is Rin, I'm one of your hosts. I grew up with Star Wars, and with Lord of the Rings, and with A Wizard of Earthsea, and with Greek mythology, with The Odyssey, with The Iliad, with I would say Metamorphosis, but it was really just retellings of myths pulled from all of these.

Speaker: There are no new stories under the sun. But sometimes we encounter new tellings of stories for the first time. And that is what we are gathered here to do.

Speaker: I have chosen to share my childhood love of Star Wars with my dear best friend, Sam. Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one. i am so emotionally destroyed about these episodes. You were going for emotional damage and you've succeeded.

Speaker: oh my god, oh my god. I just want to get into it immediately. This isn't even the emotional damage part. I'm just excited about true love. Even if it's tragic and angsty.

Speaker: We're not even at the tragic parts, my dearest. What are the tragic parts? What are the tragic parts, bestie? Listeners, what are the tragic parts? I was thinking earlier, i was thinking, man, I bet there's some really good, crunchy, 140p YouTube emo AMVs of Obi-Wan and Satine clips. But I can't look them up because they probably will include even sadder things that I haven't seen yet.

Speaker: So I just have to create them in my mind. i have to just play with my dolls in my brain. i can't say anything at all. But yeah, so today we are talking about the first couple of sections of the Mandalorian arcs in Clone Wars. So we are covering season two, episodes 12,

Speaker: through 14, which is the Mandalore plot, Voyage of Temptation and Duchess of Mandalore. And then we are covering season three, episodes five and six, Corruption and the Academy. And then we'll leave Mandalore to cover season three, episode seven, Assassin, and season three, episode two, Arc Troopers.

Speaker: Let's get right into it. Okay, great, let's begin. So, Season 2, Episode 12, The Mandalore Plot. Obi-Wan and the Duchess Satine of Mandalore uncover evidence that the Separatists are meddling in their affairs, but Satine doesn't want to admit it.

Speaker: So there's a lot of... interesting political stuff floating about miasma it's the separatists seem interested in mandalore since they have jedi murdering technology that seems to make sense but this all seems to be a really touchy subject obi-wan is showing up in these Gorgeous chambers. I don't really know what this building is.

Speaker: It seems like a cross between a palace and an office building. Yeah, it's very like, is it art? It's very art deco. You know, there's these Minecraft ass chandeliers. There's like Picasso style paintings.

Speaker: And then there's one motif that we see everywhere on Mandalore, which is the Iron Heart. which is that hexagon with the two long sides and the short top and the short bottom. Yeah. That is everywhere, particularly on Almec.

Speaker: Like it's in hit the center of his shirt. It's in his beard. It's shaved into the back of his head. It's dyed into the sides of his head. Like it is a Mandalorian cultural symbol and it is everywhere.

Speaker: Yeah. It's in every single window. Yeah, there's some art deco. There's a little bit of Art Nouveau and some swirlier stuff. It's very pretty. It's very nice to look at. There's a big cubism.

Speaker: I don't know. cube is necessity I mean, there are cubes. There's the Minecraft chandeliers, the Minecraft trees. The trees. The trees are really. it but there's definitely a big, if you like, visual upgrade.

Speaker: in these sets and settings, which is nice. But so we're in these chambers and there's a big meeting and I clock immediately. One of my first notes for this episode is what is Obi-Wan's history with Satine?

Speaker: From the first line he says, we know they have history. Yeah. What exactly is it that he says? cause I didn't write it down. It's ah he gets off the ship and a guard goes, the Duchess Satine has been expecting you.

Speaker: And his first line is. Far be it for me to keep the Duchess swayed. but the tone of his voice. The tone.

Speaker: I was trying to explain to Miles why I was so excited to record this episode. And I was saying, okay, you've seen little clips of Clone Wars over my shoulder. You have seen how Obi-Wan has sexual chemistry with everything that breathes. And...

Speaker: They went, well, he has sexual chemistry with you, but I haven't really watched that much of the show. And I said, okay, but just, you know how I describe him. Imagine this, but with his one true love.

Speaker: It is off the charts. I've got to put a pin in it because there's more juicy stuff as we go on. But oh my God, immediately it's clear that they know each other. But we have to put that aside for the moment because- She's really defensive over what she perceives to be the Senate meddling in her affairs. But then Obi-Wan is saying, well, the Senate didn't order me to come here. This is a Jedi thing. And she kind of softens up a little bit.

Speaker: But the issue that we're dealing with is this group called Death Watch. Are they the Death Watch or just Death Watch? Just Death Watch, I think. Okay, so Death Watch. They are hooligans who are obsessed with this idealized warrior past of Mandalore. And Dooku is obviously supporting them.

Speaker: So they're just kind of the overarching political issue. And then Dooku's meddling is sort of the secret second layer. And I wish that I had more, honestly, i wish I had fresher memories of How to Hide an Empire because that's a good book that I've talked about on the podcast before. But supporting extremist causes in foreign countries to further your own political agenda is a thing. And so I just went, oh, great. Oh, boy.

Speaker: and We're doing that. We've also talked about it on this podcast before with regard to Banana Republics. U.S.-based corporations supporting extremist groups to destabilize countries so they can continue their economic goals.

Speaker: there will be economic interests as well very soon. And so we're dealing with all of this and then they're leaving the meeting and Obi-Wan and Satine are having a very interesting conversation about the duties of a peacekeeper. Should they be on the front lines of a conflict, which is what Obi-Wan thinks, or should they be preventing conflict, which is what Satine thinks? And Obi-Wan says, that's cute, but it's kind of idealistic. So they're having this interesting conversation Little discussion.

Speaker: And it's very clear that they are both, they both have a strong sense of duty. They both have a code that they subscribe to. And those codes are similar, but there is obviously friction between them. And this conversation is about the current situation, but also kind of about something else.

Speaker: No, this feels like it's ongoing. Yeah, this is like a, this is a continuation. And this gets interrupted by a massive fucking bomb going off.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. And there's an epic rooftop confrontation where Obi-Wan chases the hooligan, who then ah fucking kills himself. He jumps off the side of the building and utters some last words in his local dialect, which I don't know if you know what he said, because we don't find out exactly what he said.

Speaker: Yes. So I spent a lot of time looking this up because Mandoa, which is the language that the Mandalorians speak, is one of the languages in Star Wars that has like actual construction.

Speaker: And some of it comes from like legends, like reverse construction from shit that people put into books. Concordian is not Mendoa. It is similar, apparently. And so the first thing that he says as he jumps off, because he says he climbs up onto a railing, says something and throws himself off the railing.

Speaker: Kalhava brokun dauscharan! And the translation of what he says there is compassionate leaders will burn.

Speaker: m And I had a bunch of technical difficulties before we started recording this podcast. So I think I had pulled up some of my findings for the translation of the other stuff he says, but it has something to do with like duty. And yeah, I don't, I currently, of course, don't have it anywhere. That's all right. it's all That's the vibe. It's poetic, meaningful last word stuff. Not like, tell my mom I love her. It's it's for the cause. Right.

Speaker: Everything he says is for the cause. And she seems to reply to him in a like almost absolving fashion. She being Satine holds this man's hand as he dies.

Speaker: But he is from Concordia, which is the moon. And Concordia supposedly is where all of the warriors were exiled to. And they died off years ago, according to Prime Minister Almec, which going to talk about that later.

Speaker: i want to like talk about these first three episodes and then I have a whole host of like analyses. But they go to Concordia, which is a separate province. It has its own governor. So they try and figure out sort of where this man came from. How did he get radicalized by investigating old mines? Which I was getting very Mass Effect vibes from the old mines.

Speaker: I had noted at several points throughout these couple of episodes, big Mass Effect vibes. Yeah, yeah. And we encounter Mandalorian warriors.

Speaker: Yeah. The big piece here, we started our watch of Star Wars with the Mandalorian. And so we are used to Mandalorians as this great warrior culture. We're familiar with Boba Fett.

Speaker: We're familiar with Jango Fett, who Almec denounces Jango Fett as just a common bounty hunter. Crucially, the new Mandalorians are pacifists. Yeah.

Speaker: There are no more Mandalorian warriors, according to Duchess Satine. And so that's the big like concern here is that, oh, we're suddenly encountering warriors again, wearing Mandalorian armor, whether that's Jango Fett this other saboteur who we have evidence of.

Speaker: And you know we don't know where he possibly could have come from, but now there's this terrorist group that idolizes the warrior ways of the past. And so Yeah, we encounter people in Mandalorian armor who clearly know how to fight and who clearly know how to fight Jedi.

Speaker: Yeah. Because Obi-Wan has a a hard time getting through this. Yeah. Like, he ultimately wins his fight with a couple of them, but they don't get away unscathed or easily by any means.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, he gets captured and put in some sort of force field torture thing like everyone always does in the show. And luckily, before all this happened, he had given Satine an earpiece so they could do, you know, leverage style banter and shenanigans.

Speaker: And he has to call her away from her diplomatic stuff that she's doing to come and rescue him. And through that whole thing, which is a very, like you said, a very difficult fight that they don't get out of easily.

Speaker: It's so clear that they have worked together before. not They don't just know each other. They have fought together. They have survived together because they just work together so smoothly in terms of just getting things done. Like he doesn't have to explain a lot to her. She knows what to do. He knows what to do.

Speaker: But also... She annoys him. She gets under his skin instantly and constantly. He loses all patience and self-control. He's snapping at her and just being short-tempered and annoyed in a way that we never, ever see him like that with anyone else.

Speaker: Like, oh, you know her. You have a very intense history. i wrote, you could cut the tension with the lightsaber. And I thought that was funny. but I agree.

Speaker: yeah I feel like the only the only person we see we've seen so far, that is, getting anywhere close to this level of under his skin is Anakin. Yeah.

Speaker: Like, that is the only other person who has come anywhere close to making him act like he is around Satine. And even then there's that restraint because he knows that he's responsible for Anakin.

Speaker: So even, you know, it's like when you get frustrated with your kid, you'll be frustrated, you'll snap at them, but you still know the underlying dynamic of, okay, I'm your parent, I'm responsible for you, I'm your caregiver, whatever. But he's not responsible for Satine. They are peers.

Speaker: And so he can just be in touch with his emotions, I guess, even if his emotion is being really annoyed. And I've said before, i think when talking about R2 and C-3PO, that I hate when a couple's dynamic is that they fight.

Speaker: Or that they bicker. I think that that's really annoying and stupid. And if it's in real life, uncomfortable to be around. But in this case, love it. Absolutely obsessed with it.

Speaker: And sort of circling back to the fight situation, they've kind of gotten away. And there's one sort of straggler Mandalorian warrior who had failed to capture them. So our big bad guy, helmet on, strides in doing this badass villain walk, looks at the guy on the ground, says, failure.

Speaker: Hits him with a kill shot without breaking his stride. Keeps walking. And it's the governor of Concordia. And- And he has an old spooky lightsaber. He has a but wasn't there somebody in the Mandalorian show who had was it Moth Gideon who had the black at the very end? Yes. Yeah. This is the dark so saber. Oh, it's the same one. Uh huh.

Speaker: Okay, so it's the same one. It's the fucking spooky black lightsaber. And they they say it was, i don't know if they gave the the full history, but it was it was taken from the Jedi Temple by Mandalorian commandos at the fall of the Old Republic.

Speaker: Yeah, it's old. Which, yeah, is over a thousand years before the movies. But more to the point, even before it was taken by Mandalorian commandos from the Jedi, it belonged to a Mandalorian.

Speaker: This is the lightsaber Tare Vysla, the first Mandalorian to be inducted into the Jedi Order. Oh, okay. And it's like sort of half implied that he might to this day be the only one.

Speaker: It sort of mentioned he's the first, but there's like never any other mention of any other Mandalorians who are Jedi. I need like a... in-universe art historian or archaeologist or museum worker to figure out who should rightfully own this object give me that I well I'll say I'll save that bit for later but oh my god you know that's messy yeah it is well and and we had hints that the governor was going to be the big bad from earlier in the episode we see him standing in front of a mural it's very picasso style and it has a mandalorian neo-crusader standing over a dying jedi oh shit

Speaker: It's a representation of the Mandalorian Jedi war. It's based off of the 1937 Pablo Picasso painting Guernica, which is an anti-war painting.

Speaker: We can post both on our Insta or our other social medias. But it very much, like, this poster paints the Mandalorian Neo-Crusader a messiah-like figure. There's, like, literally a halo it.

Speaker: around their head and the jedi falling before them is small and clearly weaker and so you know we are we have this representation of a mandalorian warrior beating the jedi just in the background of this supposedly post-violence society yeah which you know So we have a glorification of the warrior past just in the background before we realize that he is the leader of Death Watch. That's such a more analytical way of getting to that conclusion than what I did, which is I feel like I can pretty formulaically suss out who the bad guy is going to be in any given episode because it's a kid's show and it's usually pretty easy to tell. Who is the character we haven't met before who suddenly seems pretty important and involved in what's going on?

Speaker: So I wasn't even paying attention to all of the other beautiful symbolism that also sets that up artistically. It's just like, oh yeah, it's going to be this guy. I have some more analyses, but I think i'll I'll loop it all together with analyses of sort of this whole little arc at the end.

Speaker: Do we want to move on to Voyage of Temptation? Of course we do, yes. So for this one, i was watching it on my phone and I was writing my notes down on paper and I didn't write a little summary But I think I'll just use the first line of my notes as the summary, which is, is the temptation that they're going to bone? Yeah.

Speaker: They might. So... Then my second line of my notes was, ha, Anakin knows. He figured it out instantly. Oh, you're a Jedi and you're secretly fucking a political figure?

Speaker: Hmm. I can tell. So plot wise, I frankly don't have a lot to say about the plot until the end of the episode.

Speaker: So this one is after finding out the revelations about Death Watch, Satine goes to Coruscant to speak before the Senate.

Speaker: I'm a little confused as to why she's going to speak before the Senate, because supposedly she is the designated regent of 1500 worlds who wish to remain neutral.

Speaker: I have questions. Are we just talking about Mandalorian space? Because Mandalorian space is its own micronation, essentially. Is Mandalorian space counted as one world?

Speaker: Is it counted as several? We have Mandalore, we have Concordia, which is a moon, so it might is it a separate world or is it not? Duchess Satine is from Kalevala. There's Conquer Dawn. There's Crownist. There's a bunch of worlds that exist in Mandalore space.

Speaker: And it's unclear whether those are the 1500 worlds she is the designated regent of, or if she is speaking for other neutral systems as well. Yeah, I thought there was like an alliance of neutral systems.

Speaker: they' seeing And she was in charge of that. But it is unclear. Yeah, there seems to be. And that would seem to imply... That the other senators that are with her on this ship are also from these neutral worlds.

Speaker: But we recognize there's three other senators. Well, so there's Duchess Satine and the Mandalorian senator, which I have questions about why we have a Mandalorian senator. Senator Talmeric. Talmeric, who is the villain of the episode.

Speaker: ah is but is the senator he's also from Kalevala so whether he's the senator for Kalevala or he's the senator for Mandalore is a little unclear but also is Mandalore neutral?

Speaker: Is Mandalore a part of the Republic? If Mandalore is neutral and not technically a part of the Republic up to now why do we have a senator? Yeah. Were they part of the Republic and they've decided they want kind of no part of this but the other senators we see around we have Senator Ornfritah who is a Twi'lek from Ryloth.

Speaker: And we have Senator Onaconda Farr from Rhodia. We've met both of them before in this show and neither of them are neutral. Yeah. And I did recognize them.

Speaker: Yeah. And then we have a random other senator by the name of Kin Robb. She is the one person we didn't get a name for until the very end.

Speaker: She is also the only human person of color in this episode block and has no speaking lines. Hmm. So, you know, that's that's a fun. So if if we're meant to think that Kinrab and Ornfritah and Anakhan Afar are all part of this neutral batch of systems, like that doesn't follow with what we've seen so far. yeah Otherwise, sort of why are they here? Are they part of sort of this diplomatic mission from the Republic to this group of neutral systems that now Duchess Satine and Talmeric are going to speak for?

Speaker: It's not really well explained. Yeah. Yeah, and it does sort of feel like she's being like summoned to explain yourself before the Senate. Because the Senate is being really pushy. Yeah.

Speaker: Yes. And she's trying to say, hey, get the fuck out. We did not ask for your help and we do not want it. Please leave us alone. But Palpatine obviously really wants to get a foothold in.

Speaker: Yeah, the Senate is trying to say basically that Mandalore can't handle Death Watch. So obviously... they have to send the clones. And obviously Death Watch is being funded by the Separatists, which Oewan at the end of the previous episode says it's obvious that they're being funded by the Separatists.

Speaker: But we haven't actually seen like any evidence of that. And so Satine disputes this. She says like there's there's no evidence until... the end of this episode where all of a sudden now we have super battle droids invading the ship. There's no evidence that there is a connection between Death Watch and the Separatists. Yeah. um Also, she's clearly drunk sitting on her dais. Oh, yeah. She's got her little space martini.

Speaker: Right. She's got her space martini and she's going off about... the pushiness of the senate and she has been selected to speak for all of these worlds and then about you know mounting a being able to mount a defense and being pacifist and obi-wan enters and says and yet some might argue that the strongest defense is a swift and decisive offense you are quite the general now aren't you master kenobi

Speaker: Forgive me for interrupting, Your Highness. I meant no disrespect. Really? Senators, I presume you are acquainted with the collection of half-truths and hyperbole known as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Speaker: Your Highness is too kind. You're right. I am. While she is flicking her eyes up and down over this man. If you combine eye fucking and hate fucking, that's what they're doing to the extreme discomfort of all the other political leaders in this room. Including Anakin. Although Anakin is also like, Anakin is eating this up.

Speaker: Oh my god. His smug little smirks and facial expressions. He also has a space martini. That he is just sipping like Kermit the Frog.

Speaker: It's fantastic. They get into an argument about, you know, Satine says, I remember a time when Jedi weren't generals. And the Jedi say, we fight for peace. And her response is, what an amusing contradiction.

Speaker: And at the end of this argument, end of this argument, we get a scene of a jump to hyperspace, which is wild. This is all happening. They're all drunk as shit before they have exited the Mandalore system.

Speaker: They haven't left yet. They're still on the tarmac. They're partying. They're partying way too hard. Also, I called it because I was sending you texts in all caps as I was watching this because I was losing my mind.

Speaker: so what I thought about this scene was the vibe is he broke up with her and regrets it. We'll see how this all plays out. But yeah, he's got it bad. If this wasn't a kid's show, they'd be hate fucking in the middle of this conversation.

Speaker: Also, he's saying shit and making apologetic puppy dog eyes at her. But that he broke up with her and regrets it. I was right. I was right. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And that, I think, is a tremendous credit to both the writing and the animation. Because their body language, their physicality with each other. is so lovingly rendered. Everyone was fully on board for we need to sell this so hard.

Speaker: And they do. And it's subtle and it's layered and it's really, really good throughout all of these episodes. It's not just the dialogue. It's their looks. It's the way they interact.

Speaker: It's perfect. It's very, very... lovingly done. And speaking of their history, we learn what exactly it is.

Speaker: Okay, so during all of this, there's also a thing with some assassin probes. They're these big robot spiders, and they have little spiders that come out of them. Ew, gross. They have glowing red eyes.

Speaker: A clone named Red Eye gets killed by the thing with red eyes. Ha ha. And then puppeted around by it, which is so creepy. so So the deal is that Obi-Wan...

Speaker: was assigned to protect her many years ago and they spent basically a year on the run together and became very close but then he had to leave her because duty called him away and we're getting little snips of their backstory as all this fighting is going on they find themselves back to back trying to shoot at all these little assassin probe babies and they do Sort of the classic action, back to back, we each have a gun, except she doesn't have a gun. She has droid deactivator because she's a pacifist. But they do a little shoulder bump and then like lean into each other a little bit extra. hu Because it's a physical contact that allowed screaming. And this is before we got the confessions. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's coming.

Speaker: So they get separated and then Anakin tells Obi-Wan, go find your girlfriend. Yeah. And then he takes a beat, having what I think was a moment of not wanting to correct him because he wanted to live in this little half second where he can pretend that she is his girlfriend and that somebody else knows about it. And even in the midst of all of the chaos and death, he can have this tiny split second where he can believe that the world is different so he takes a beat to just bask in it before he corrects him and goes ah she's not my girlfriend whatever Anakin totally knows But so Satine is being held captive by what's his face? The guy who's a bad Talmeric, yeah.

Speaker: Talmeric. So he's got her. He's going to kill her. There's this whole another just absolute banger dilemma of a situation where Obi-Wan comes to her rescue and then Merrick is saying, okay, okay.

Speaker: You got me, but you are both pacifists, or at least she is. So she's not going to kill me, or that would be betraying everything she stands for. Obi-Wan, you might kill me.

Speaker: You could, but you know that she would never look at you the same again. So would you be willing to save her at the cost of her respect for you? i i win either way.

Speaker: Save her and everyone on the ship because he has a he planted a bomb in the engines. Oh, yeah. There was also about I really wasn't paying attention to literally anyone else besides Obi-Wan and Satine. There's also big, important political stuff happening.

Speaker: So, you know, there's high stakes. And, you know, she's saying don't take risks with so many people's lives at stake. Don't try to be a hero. And so as they're trying to buy time,

Speaker: we get the love confession, which I think we should just put the clip in here There's going to be a lot of clips for this one. So you can hear what she says. Obi-Wan, it looks like I may never see you again.

Speaker: don't know quite how to say this, but I've loved you from the moment you came to my aid all those years ago. I don't believe this. Satine, this is hardly the time or place for... And then big puppy eyes.

Speaker: Had you said the word, i would have left the Jedi Order. I also, for Talmeric, just need to click, I believe it's rule number six, which is our villain monologue rule.

Speaker: Oh yes, he does love a monologue. Rule number six, a proper villain must monologue. And Talmeric has a great one. He's dramatic as fuck, and he ends his monologue with, who will strike first and brand themselves a cold-blooded killer?

Speaker: And there's like a flash to Obi-Wan's face, and a flash to Satine's face, and then a flash to Talmeric's face as a lightsaber appears through his chest. And Anakin catches the dropped bomb remote and smiles a cheeky little smile as the Imperial March plays behind him.

Speaker: Anakin. What? He was going to blow up the ship. I missed that part. oh Oh my god. Who will brand themselves a cold-blooded killer?

Speaker: Darth fucking Vader will. I need to go lay down. This is only the second of seven episodes. I can't. ah Because all I had noted was, yeah, Anakin's always happy to do a murder.

Speaker: this This doesn't bother him. this i am afraid i don't know what the if this isn't the real emotional damage. What is the real emotional damage going to be? This is the setup for the emotional damage, my love. I'm afraid. I'm so afraid. oh it's Just the episode is so beautiful.

Speaker: And the head... yeah The last piece of the episode, they land on Coruscant, finally. And she strokes his face saying, I'm still not sure about the beard.

Speaker: And he goes, what's wrong with it? She says it hides too much of your handsome face. Yeah. um They need to go fuck immediately. i had made a point later in my notes that I was going to save for once I had accumulated more evidence. But actually, I'm going to put it here now because I just don't want to hold it it any longer. Yeah. This dynamic has cast Obi-Wan's whole thing in a new light for me as i said just a few minutes ago he has sexual chemistry with everything that breathes he loves to banter he's always you know sort of

Speaker: You know, being charming and smooth. And that's just the way he is, partially because of Qui-Gon Jinn's tutelage. We know he fucks. But this is the thing. This is the real galaxy brain take.

Speaker: He spent a formative year with Satine when he was very young. He's trying to emulate... her she flusters this man later on she hits him with the my darling she's stroking his cheekbones and lifting his little chin up she has him wrapped around her fucking finger she is the top in this dynamic uh-huh and he wants to be like her so bad that he is just a pale imitation of the riz that Satine possesses. And so all of these flirtations that he does is he's just thinking, okay, what would Satine do? How can I be cool like her? Because I love my secret wife.

Speaker: That's, this is what I think is that she is the blueprint and I'm right. i gotta agree. i gotta agree with that one. Yeah. And you know, he deserves it.

Speaker: yeah And he's also, and he's the one who's making, it like we said, the big puppy. Oh, he makes the biggest, saddest eyes. And well, and she makes these eyes back at him. The other alternative here is the like kind official timeline from Star Wars series.

Speaker: for this is that they would have been, or like he at least would have been like 18 during that year they spent together, 18 or 19. She's probably about the same age, maybe a year on either side. Yeah. We're not given a date of birth for her, but he would have been like 18 or 19. So they might have like developed this relationship Absolutely incredible fucking Riz together.

Speaker: Unstoppable power. And the both of them now separately are have been for the last 20 years, not quite, it's like 16 years, trying to regain that. Yeah. Trying regain the incredible Riz that they had after.

Speaker: as like 19 year olds on the run. They would see you from across the bar and like your vibe, but then get so distracted with each other that they forget the third person is there.

Speaker: Which, which if that isn't just a description of that experience. ah You say that like you know.

Speaker: can neither confirm nor deny So, moving on. Season 2, episode 14, Duchess of Mandalore. Satine has to trust someone else for once to stop the Senate from occupying Mandalore.

Speaker: Pretty straightforward. But there is more political nuance in this one. Lots of infighting about which form of government truly represents the people, which is, you know, the age-old question of all governments ever.

Speaker: and And Satine is speaking to the Senate about how she wants to maintain neutrality. And Palpatine produces a message about... from one of her trusted advisors that makes it look like she is withholding information from the people about how dangerous Death Watch really is and that they're actually begging for Republic intervention. But evil Satine is keeping them away. So that obviously goes great. And Obi-Wan is not the best with his GF. I think decades of being apart from each other might

Speaker: hamper their communication because he does accidentally call her hysterical. i think he purposefully calls her hysterical when she's very measured and calm and then she flips shit at him.

Speaker: She is also clearly practiced a lot of rants in the shower that she has ready to go at a moment's notice so he calls her hysterical and she goes good i can pull out one of my best ones and she has this whole scathing thing that she says to him before she goes off in her speeder or whatever hysterical The Republic is attempting to force its will upon innocent people.

Speaker: I only meant that- Frankly, I'm surprised you're not hysterical. Perhaps if more citizens got hysterical, they'd be more inclined to speak up when the Republic tramples on their rights.

Speaker: I have a note of- just She has such incredible speeches. Yeah. You know she's going to her group chat with Padme and going, yeah, I just did a really good one

Speaker: And Padme's like, God, I wish my husband would actually say things that would give me the opportunity to do this. And Obi-Wan is criticizing her about being overly self-reliant and she's not letting her friends in to help her. But so far, the Republic and everyone associated with it is constantly betraying her. So kind don't blame her for being a little guarded.

Speaker: but She goes and meets with a secret contact and finds out that, shocker, that video was fake. And her contact that she meets with is killed. And the Republic AI security drone thing identifies her as the shooter.

Speaker: And something, something, facial recognition, ai crimes. it it was too It was too prescient for, don't know, 2009 or whenever this episode came out. Yeah.

Speaker: Guilt by association. You happened to be at the scene of the crime, therefore. h I also love in this scene, but also in general, there's a lot of really good cloaks. We talked about Ahsoka and Master Plo's cloaks last time.

Speaker: i think we as a society, we could we could bring back the cloak. I went through a cloak era in middle school. I made one out of like satin fabric from Joanne's for a school project.

Speaker: I probably still have it somewhere, honestly. It was very Little Red Riding Hood, red floor length, had a hood. I wore it fucking everywhere.

Speaker: And then I also made a purple one. And maybe also another one. And I have a picture of me and my siblings running around in these cloaks. I thought I was so cool. And I was so cool. And it was awesome. Agreed. Yeah. No, I think i I had a couple of friends in college who like had cloaks. wheaten We had a there was a club in our college.

Speaker: don't remember what the exact name was. But the entire point was to just gather under the full moon and chant at the full moon. Oh, you chanted. We had the Secret Moon Howling Society, which was every full moon we would howl.

Speaker: Yeah, we chanted at the moon. And so several people had cloaks. I e borrowed a cloak from the campus rpg club of which i was a member and vice president vice president for two years um and you know people would show up in cloaks and chant at the full moon in random locations around campus it was great That's delightful. I support this wholeheartedly. heart Anyway, heart agree. Cloaks are great. And Obi-Wan does compliment Satine's cloak going nice disguise because they're both wearing the same disguise.

Speaker: Just a teensy bit of lore here. They meet at a park around a rock. This is Umete, which is the highest mountain on Coruscant and the only piece of the surface left exposed by the city planet.

Speaker: That's really sad. yeah it is. oh man. Especially when combined with the commentary that we got in Tales the Jedi from Dooku talking about Qui-Gon at the tree in the courtyard of the of the Jedi Temple. used to bring Qui-Gon here as a boy.

Speaker: He was fascinated with this tree, having been born here on Coruscant, a planet of steel and stone.

Speaker: nothing oh that's really sad it really is and we kind of had skipped over an environmental sadness thing earlier but back on back on concordia there was a whole thing about how it used to be mostly agricultural and then there was mining that killed all of the forests and all of the plants and now the planet or the moon, whatever, the environment is just starting to make a comeback because they believe that they've shut down all the mines, but the mines are secretly reopened and making more weapons. So in addition to all of the horrible

Speaker: political and war violent stuff they're also destroying the environment again after it had just started to recover and the other lore piece is ah like the fact that you mandalore sundari the city of sundari that they're in in the last episode on mandalore is a giant dome city because when they're flying into it we see it's just one thing out in ah the middle of a white sand desert because the entire surface of mandalore has been completely scoured by thousands of years of war Woof.

Speaker: Yeah. Oh, damn. So Padme saves the day in the Senate and she does an epic eye object and brings in the real tape that shows whatever the first one was a lie. Or an edit. Yeah.

Speaker: We do have a ah piece of Pre Vizsla speaking to Dooku. And Pre Vizsla here in this conversation is giving very I'm a warrior. I'm a war fighter. i know things about war and knows nothing about war. And because Dooku has to like baby steps him through the strategy.

Speaker: Hey, if you do this thing, whereas Pre Vizsla is like, I'm just going to go fight these people and then we're going to win. yeah it's very petulant. Yeah. Which is exactly the kind of guy that loves to idealize a warrior past. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker: So couple of things from this batch of episodes I had thinking about. For timelines, again, Star Wars timelines, what are we doing?

Speaker: The warrior past, the Mandalorian civil war between the warriors and the pacifists, which is a very interesting dynamic there. That ended in 39 BBY, before the Battle of Yabin.

Speaker: The Phantom Menace was in 32 BBY, I believe. Say that with such confidence. Yes, 32 BBY. So Obi-Wan would have been 18, but that's not that long ago.

Speaker: If we're thinking, yeah, okay, that's seven years before Phantom Menace, and then there's like 10 to 12 years between Phantom Menace and now. So we're looking at like 19, 20 years.

Speaker: difference. Okay. Or, you know, possibly little less. Yeah. Like so somewhere between like 16 to 19 years difference. Yeah. Right.

Speaker: But all of our warriors died out years ago on the moon of Concordia. Did they die out from infighting after you sent them there? Did Concordia become like a prison planet?

Speaker: There's a Star Trek Next Generation episode, The Hunted, which has sort of a similar vibe of the Enterprise comes across ah comes upon a planet. And they're like, oh, we are a peaceful, pacifist planet.

Speaker: But by the way, we have this vicious escaped prisoner from our moon colony. And the vicious escaped prisoner turns out to be a soldier. And said after after they decided the wars were over,

Speaker: They imprisoned all the soldiers and said, yes, our past is behind us. We're just going to ignore this problem now. Thank you for fighting and dying for us. Please go away. You're too dangerous to let live now.

Speaker: Not that different from how we treat actual veterans. Yeah. Yep. And so while we might not have like Mandalorian commandos like we're familiar with in the lore, we still have...

Speaker: guards who are in that sort of blue livery. They have a staff weapon, which seems to be able to deflect blaster bolts and also deliver some sort of like electric charge, like stab charge, and also seems to be able to shoot something out at the end. So the fact that they can deflect blaster bolts probably says that they're made of Beskar, but that's a whole other thing.

Speaker: And then we have cops who are dressed in gray and they have batons and riot shields. So this is a question of who is permitted to wield violence and for what purpose.

Speaker: Violence for the sake of war is not acceptable. But we have these these guards and these these cops who exist as peacekeepers.

Speaker: And they're you know more along the lines of Obi-Wan's definition of peacekeeper. Do they have a place in Satine's pacifist society? This sort of also timeline of 20 years and then people idealizing the warrior past, that is a great timeline. Yeah.

Speaker: for the all of our warriors died out years ago is that a euphemism for you had them all killed oh that's worse which is or you know did they die you know did they die out years ago and infighting and you kind of kept them separate and you exiled their families they you know they died in the wars but their families were you know had guilt by association and were exiled by to Concordia, and now Death Watch is made up of their children 20 years later.

Speaker: Oh my god. None of this is like in canon, but these are just brain thoughts swirling about. We also, so this was one of the first episodes, this what I mean this was the first episode, where we got anything about Mandalorians in canon outside of Jango and Boba Fett.

Speaker: Right? So like the canon that we have about Mandalorians is, oh, they were these great commandos, you know, famous warriors throughout the universe. And in Legends, in the expanded universe at the time, they have a history with the Jedi. Right.

Speaker: They've been fighting with the Jedi for thousands of years. All of their weaponry is made to counter the Jedi. You have their gauntlets, which you've got flamethrowers, which can't be blocked by a lightsaber.

Speaker: In the expanded universe, famously, instead of blasters, they use slug throwers, which is just the Star Wars word for projectile weapon. Because if you block a bullet, it just melts. And now you have molten metal in your face instead of...

Speaker: a bullet and that's not any better. Yeah. But clearly by the fact that Obi-Wan was able to deflect these things, these were blasters and not slug throwers. There's whip cord things that shoot out of the out of their gauntlets to sort of mimic like a force grab of something. The jet packs to counter force jumps.

Speaker: All of their equipment is built to fight Jedi, which of course means that they can fight anybody else they fucking want whenever they want. Yeah. but so to have that be the backstory that every star wars fan at this point is coming in with and then all of a sudden we have the peaceful pacifist mandalorians what the fuck happened what happened where is this coming from and like we're just getting hints of like oh yeah there was a war she was targeted

Speaker: Satine was targeted 20 years ago-ish, 15 ish fifteen years ago We were on the run, and then she came back you know at the conclusion of the Civil War and like helped rebuild Mandalorian society.

Speaker: The implication is that like the Civil War was so massively devastating that all the remaining Mandalorians decided we could never do this again.

Speaker: Yeah. It was genuinely a war to end all wars. But I feel like the only solid way to justify the existence of Death Watch is then that like the those who fought in the Civil War were treated as such social pariahs afterwards that they had to sort of go and create their own society. And now their children are upset that they were treated as pariahs and have formed this...

Speaker: this terrorist group. Yeah. I've written down here from my notes that Pre Vizsla is like a warrior incel. Yeah. No, literally. Yeah, he's he's like, you know, we were warriors for so long and you just want to throw that away.

Speaker: and I think Satine obviously has trauma. And so, you know, the way that she's dealt with that is by becoming a hardcore pacifist. And Pre Vizsla's response to that is you're ignoring our history.

Speaker: And her response to that is you're ignoring our recent history. We all killed each other. We're all that's left. Yeah, but we're not done with Mandalorian things. So there was a separation between these two arcs of episodes, but I decided to just kind of push all the early Mandalorian stuff together.

Speaker: We move on to season three, episode five, Corruption. Yes. Girls night, Padme and Satine root out corruption that's poisoning schoolchildren. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. tu du on This is a very fun episode, even though the premise is supplies again. i have already talked about how many of these episodes are about getting supplies from point A to point B. At least Anakin's not involved. so But his wife is.

Speaker: This is true. Padme is visiting Mandalore. And I think it's very cute that the intro voiceover describes Padme as Satine's friend. It's not just, oh, you know, Senator Amidala. It's Satine's friend, Senator Amidala.

Speaker: Oh, they're friends, just independently. i think that's cute. And coming right off the heels of all of that talk about violence and suffering, they're coming into the main, and don't know, area where they will be received in the city.

Speaker: And there's this sort of intimate reception with just Satine. And Padme goes, oh this isn't the welcome that I expected. Then it opens out into this huge parade.

Speaker: And I wrote, oh, a nice big parade of smiley people. They're all going to die horribly in the Great Purge. I don't know when exactly that happens, but seeing all the happy smiley people on Mandalore having a great day did not make me feel great.

Speaker: Yeah. So this this whole piece about supplies is the Republic has cut them off from trade, basically. It's not really said, but it's it's pretty easy to read Palpatine going, oh, you don't want our help? Well, you won't have any of our help now.

Speaker: And just completely cutting them off. Yeah. And now there's all of this stuff about relying on the black market and because that's the only way to get these fucking supplies.

Speaker: And this meeting about it is devolving into shouting and physical fighting that has to be interrupted. Yeah. And supposedly some of some of these leaders have stock in certain companies. Clearly, some have associations with the Trade Federation or the Corporate Alliance or what have you.

Speaker: But meanwhile, we have a weird sort of beetle ship that lands and the Mugans arrive and they're in sort of vaguely pseudo-Egyptian style clothing.

Speaker: And they're bringing in fentanyl. Sorry, tea additives. you know, t everybody, that substance that makes sense to dilute and um contaminate. But sure, that's what we're doing. So this tea is being stretched and people at the port are accepting bribes and it's all very messy.

Speaker: And meanwhile, Padme and Satine are having dinner in these fantastic outfits with really cool hair. Padme has this kind of fake bob thing, the way her hair is pinned in this cool brown dress. And Satine has this stained glass crystal headpiece.

Speaker: It's very awesome. And they keep changing in and out of these elaborate outfits. multiple times in the same 24 hour period.

Speaker: Because they have the fancy outfit that they're wearing to dinner and to some formal events. It's the same outfit. But then they also have more casual going out and meeting people on the street outfits. And the way that the episode presents the chronology, they have changed into and out of these same outfits and hairdos three or four times. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. And it's very silly and I don't think they thought about it. But I'm sitting there thinking, okay, these are the kind of hairstyles that you need attendance to do for you. This is not throwing your brown locks into a messy bun and looking at your blue orbs in the mirror before you're sold to One Direction. This is like something that's going to take hours to get into and out of.

Speaker: And nobody thought about it except me. But I noticed and I thought it was extremely funny. Don't worry, I thought about it too. ah Specifically after looking at your notes, though. So, all credit goes to you.

Speaker: Anyway, there's corruption. Kids are being poisoned by the tea, being sold in schools, and the superintendent at the school is profiting off of this.

Speaker: And there's... the The customs officials are profiting off of this. And Prime Minister Almec says that he's setting up a committee to look into it, which what a line that's. That's politics for you. Your call is very important to us.

Speaker: well we We'll form a committee to discuss this. Explore whether it or not it's worth exploring. Yeah. this is a This is a true fact about my life. is My mother-in-law works for a college on which she serves on the Committee for Committees. Yeah.

Speaker: There's a committee committee and she has to do meetings for it. And this is not satire. It's real. Itty bitty committee committee.

Speaker: But in positive news, as Satine and Padme are going around being sneaky, figuring out what's going on, Satine mentions... That yeah, because they're they're bantering and Padme is saying something about, you know, i was expecting to have a fancy dinner. This isn't how I thought I'd be spending my evening.

Speaker: And Satine says that Obi-Wan. had told her about Padme's time as queen and that she had been on some rough and tumble adventures. And I think it's very cute that Obi-Wan was telling her about Padme. I think that's really sweet. And it's clearly not in a, oh, you know, this is just important information about your political contemporaries. This was, you know, their pillow talk. They were just yapping and he was saying how proud he is of Padme because she did a great job being queen.

Speaker: I thought that was nice. Yeah, this is this is obviously like during their most recent reconnection. Speaking of connection, also, at the end of this episode, Satine and Padme should have hugged.

Speaker: In Lord of the Rings, they hugged all the time. And I think that Padme should have gotten a hug in this episode, and it would have been nice, but they didn't. And there's there's a hug at the end of the next episode that I actually have commentary on. Ooh! I'm excited for the hug commentary.

Speaker: i like it, yes. No, I agree they should have hugged. Absolutely. It would have been nice. It probably would have been difficult to animate because these two characters are mostly just legs. Yeah, legs in weird outfits, but we can make them hug in our mind.

Speaker: We can, but we can move on to Season 3, Episode 6, The Academy. Yes! Ahsoka teaches kids a lesson about corruption, and they get so enthusiastic about it that they accidentally expose the Prime Minister.

Speaker: But... They're still being played. So we expose shit about people profiting off of the black market. And so they call in a Jedi to talk about corruption and find more people profiting off of the black market and off of artificial scarcity to use more of the black market. Yes. This whole lecture that Ahsoka is giving is extremely meta, exciting. explaining to the eight-year-olds at home what corruption is and why it's bad because these are all teenagers in this classroom they know what corruption is they are having questions questions and answers at about an eight-year-old level and I found that very charming and funny I didn't mind it at all but I was I did notice it and I thought it was a little bit silly yeah especially when they're when they're at like a school for future government leaders

Speaker: Yeah. Which has the vibes of a military academy, but of course they're pacifists, so it's just the vibes of a military academy without being military. i was kind of wondering what is this academy for? Because it was giving cadets vibes, but obviously they're pacifists, so... Well, they refer to them as cadets.

Speaker: Yeah. So it's politics school, I guess. And one of these kids is Satine's nephew, poy So when they discover what's going on with the food shortage stuff, they go to her immediately.

Speaker: And Satine very reasonably thanks them for finding this out and asks these literal children to let her, the literal adult and ruler of everything,

Speaker: handle it but because they're teenagers they take that as her not taking them seriously and so they just want to go do stuff by themselves and then the next day ahsoka is chastising the kids for bragging about committing a crime and they're saying yeah we did this it was so awesome we just did what you told us to do and she's trying to give them a dressing down about it and she has anakin's exact body language It's finally her time to perpetuate the cycle of chewing someone out for being reckless, even though they're doing exactly the thing that you told them they should do.

Speaker: And one of the things that they do that she's like, you probably shouldn't do is they go and they meet up with Prime Minister Almec, who's definitely not being shady. Except it's not all mech. It's a bunch of cops.

Speaker: And it's it's very funny because they're getting their asses handed to them by the bunch of cops because the cadets are like level one and the cops are like level five fighters.

Speaker: Yeah. And then Ahsoka jumps in and just systematically dismantles these like six dudes because she is level 12. Yeah.

Speaker: And then later on, she comes up with a plan where we, the audience, are meant to briefly think that she has betrayed the kids, but obviously their plan is to get them inside the prison facility so they can see what's going on on the inside and get closer to Satine.

Speaker: And I noticed that Ahsoka doesn't correct the Prime Minister when he addresses her as Master Jedi because yeah she loves people thinking that she's a whole Jedi. This is her favorite thing. She will never correct you, which is, i think, mostly just her, but also probably some pride she's inherited from Anakin.

Speaker: Well, and, you know, later on, the kids call her Master Tano, which is, again, says nothing about that. But at the beginning of the episode, Anakin does describe her as a very capable Jedi, although he does refer to her as Padawan Tano.

Speaker: And I would say, you know, maybe these off-world Jedi specifics don't matter and they got confused. But A, they're in politics school, so they would know to address people by their proper titles. B, Satine knows. She fucking knows the difference.

Speaker: And C, you best fucking believe that the Mandalorians know shit about the Jedi from centuries of war with them. Yeah.

Speaker: Which means the Jedi then have been poking their fucking noses in to make sure that they're not going to have another war. I just love everyone representing Ahsoka as more qualified than she is and her just yes anding it. She's not going to say anything.

Speaker: Anakin would, he might not give Ahsoka a fake ID. He might, but he would definitely ask her if she wants anything from the liquor store. He's saying, if you're going to drink, I'd rather you do it at home.

Speaker: Yeah. He doesn't give shit. That's very true. all this is happening. And i got really excited about Ahsoka doing her first Jedi mind trick.

Speaker: It's cute. I thought that this was so awesome. Wow, she's getting so much more powerful. She's growing up. Now, the guards are resistant to Jedi mind tricks, which I probably should have expected.

Speaker: But I was still going, oh, damn. Yeah, I guess it didn't work. Yeah. But they managed to eventually get through the situation.

Speaker: There's fighting and torture with shock collars. I had a commentary about that. Yeah. And I have a hot take about the shock collars. Hit me.

Speaker: Or shock me. everyone in this show is Everyone in this show is constantly being tortured with some kind of electricity or, you know, the magic suspension bondage or other magic stuff.

Speaker: And my theory about why it's always electricity or various zapping is because it's cartoonish enough to not be scary. And it's something that kids can't easily replicate.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. So if you're playing Star Wars with your friends, you, I don't know, unless you have a large dog with an e-collar that you know how to use, you know, you probably won't be accidentally shocking your friends with real electricity as opposed to something that's maybe a little easier to play.

Speaker: So I do think that that is intentional. No beating or whipping anything. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. There's no like more conventional forms of literal torture, you know, like no poking people with needles or shoving stuff under their fingernails or whatever, you know?

Speaker: Yeah. But... They manage to defeat Almec, who is at the at the core of this, and his goons. And as Ahsoka goes off, Corky gives his aunt a hug. He goes in for a hug and she immediately hugs him back. Satine hugs him back.

Speaker: And it's very obvious from their body language, this is super common for them. Aww. Like, they're very formal in their interactions, particularly earlier in the episode.

Speaker: But, like, when he goes in for a hug, there's no hesitation on her part. And he and she just kind of, like, folds him in. That's really sweet. It's really cute. Like, they they clearly have a, like, cute family dynamic. And, yeah, clearly enough of one where he can just kind of show up to her apartment.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. To the ruler of the system's apartment on a whim with his buddies. And just the quirky is about 16-ish.

Speaker: And that war... was about 16, 17 years ago. So Corky was born right at the end of that war. Are you implying something?

Speaker: are you implying something, Catherine? I am introducing you to one of the fandom's ah greatest theories, Corky Kenobi. i'm sold. I'm sold. You don't have to convince me. I need no further evidence.

Speaker: Done. oh You think she was on birth control in the middle of a civil war? You think they had pharmacies that they could go to? no if Anakin could be divinely conceived by the Force.

Speaker: Corky Kenobi could be regular conceived the old-fashioned way. Yeah. Yeah, Corky Kree's Kenobi is not a great set of initials. No.

Speaker: But, like, this is, because this is the thing. We meet one of Satine's siblings, who is not Corky's parent. Yeah. So either they have another sibling who is never named, never mentioned, never identified, or like because Mandalore is built on like a house clan system, he is just another member of clan Kree's and therefore...

Speaker: She's his aunt. But Clan Kreeze is from Kalevala. And so now that they're both on Mandalore, it's like, oh, who's your family member who lives on Mandalore? Oh, it just happens to be the fucking ruler.

Speaker: But yeah, she's she's your aunt. Oh, this is so much more angsty because especially if she knew she was pregnant around the time that he got called away and then she didn't say anything to him because she didn't want it to affect his decision. But then also...

Speaker: secretly resenting him for 16 years. The angst. And then they're giving Corky up to be raised as her nephew by somebody else. There are plenty of arguments against it, but I'm firmly on the Corky Kenobi train.

Speaker: I also am generally not someone who likes to torment characters just for the hell of it, but I do kind of want to see how fucked up Obi-Wan would be if he realized he had a son. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: I do too. That would be hilarious. Oh man, that would be... i just want to see what happens. I'm sure there's fanfare. And speaking of Satine a little bit more, this whole situation with Ahsoka coming to do her lecture, but then getting involved in the bigger events, this is exactly what she wanted to happen. She knew that a Jedi couldn't resist getting involved if they showed up, so she brought Ahsoka in on the down low under these pretenses of just giving a lecture about corruption. And this is an extremely smart plan. This was so subtle and so clever. And I really like seeing a little bit more of a mature adult carefully execute some mischief. It's just kind of a different style than the hack slash first ask questions later approach that Anakin tends to take.

Speaker: And even, you know, Padme has some political... schemes when she's not busy being held captive but somebody who is a real seasoned politician who really intimately knows the situation that she's in just subtly trying to do her little things i enjoy tremendously Anyway, I really love Satine Kryze. I think she is a super cool character.

Speaker: She'll be back. I'm glad we got to lay the groundwork in here. i have very brief commentary on these next two episodes so we can breeze through them pretty quickly. Yeah.

Speaker: But unless you have major things you want to talk about. But we finally leave Mandalore and we go to season three, episode seven, Assassin. Yeah. Ahsoka learns to believe in herself and uses her Force visions to stop an assassination attempt on Padme.

Speaker: There's apparently a civil war happening on a planet called Bailith, and Ahsoka's sad that she can't go with Anakin to go get involved in that. And Anakin basically makes her stay at school and do homework.

Speaker: So that was very funny. And she starts having... Force visions slash nightmares of somebody being assassinated and turns out to be Padme because of course it is. And she goes to talk to Yoda about it and goes with Padme on this trip that she's on.

Speaker: And pretty much immediately... Ahsoka gets a hug from Padme and she needs hugs and she gets a lot of hugs and it's nice. And so I don't see why Padme and Satine couldn't have hugged she could hug Ahsoka. But I thought that their dynamic was extremely cute.

Speaker: it was It was really nice. It's very Girls Weekend with your secret husband's baby sister. m it was It was giving like step-mommy vibe. Not, sorry.

Speaker: Freudian slip. I'm keeping that in the podcast. Step-mom-ish vibes.

Speaker: It's giving like step-mom vibes. It's giving aunt vibes. Yeah. like more like aunt. it's it's you know, you don't have this sort of other woman role model in your life.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. You're surrounded by this hub of masculinity, and I'm gonna, like, actually sit down and fucking level with you. yeah And, like, take care of your emotional health, because Lord fucking knows the 501st is not doing that.

Speaker: Yeah, and they actually surprisingly have a lot in common, because... Ahsoka's doubting herself and Padme says that she was about the age that Ahsoka is now when she was queen and in charge of an entire planet. So she understands the pressure that she's under and they actually are able to connect, but also...

Speaker: do that in a lighthearted way. They're playing the silly ah hologram chess with the little monsters that everyone's always playing in Star Wars. And so they're also just bantering about how Padme's better at the game than her. But it's just kind of a nice little dynamic that they have.

Speaker: But while this is happening and I'm thinking about Padme constantly needing armed escorts, I have a question. Which is, is this level of drama and danger also happening to every other senator or is this just a padme thing because i would like to see sort of a west wing of the senate of all the staffers trying to deal with all of the bullshit that their senators are constantly putting them through because it must be exhausting

Speaker: And I just don't think that the government could sustain this level of espionage. Maybe that's why it collapses. Maybe that's why Anakin can waltz in and do his empire or whatever he does. But it just seems like it's too much.

Speaker: I'm so glad that you say that because we're going to actually spend quite a bit of time in the Senate in our next block of episodes. Okay, good. Because I need to see what's happening in there.

Speaker: Yeah. Anyway, they're going to a summit on Alderaan about refugees, which ultimately is not really all that relevant. We get to see Bail Organa and Mon Mothma's in the background.

Speaker: But the important piece here is that when they arrive on Alderaan, the music in the background is Leia's theme. oh Aww. see A lot of heartbreaking music in this episode, damn. Yeah.

Speaker: Turns out Orasingh survived the last encounter that she had with Plo Koon and Ahsoka, where they thought they blew her up, but turns out she did not die. And Zero hired her to kill Padme. Not for, like, political reasons, just for general revenge.

Speaker: Because if we as we recall, Padme is the reason Zero the Hutt is in jail. Yeah. But when they confront Zero at the end, he's yelling as they leave. And I'm sure that's totally not going to return and be an issue. I'm sure they totally didn't bring him up right now, three seasons after the movie, because that's just going to go away.

Speaker: Yeah, you know, just going, hey you remember this guy? he was purple. Okay, bye. Yeah, I'm sure that's totally not going to be relevant. Anywho, another thing I just want to put a little pin in before we move on. is I am very curious, and I know I won't find out for a long time, but about the circumstances of Leia being left with Bail Organa one day. i want to know about his relationship with Padme. I want to know why she chose him to be the one to be her fake dad and why he agreed to it.

Speaker: I know that I can't know yet, but I'm thinking about it every time I see him. and i go, oh, that's Leia's dad. That's nice. But also, what's going on there? It doesn't seem like she would have time. to form close friendships because she's constantly being held hostage.

Speaker: So I don't know how she knows him that well, but... I mean, her specific... Like, Padme, Bail, and Mon Mothma particularly, and there's a couple of other senators in there, are, like, sort of this, like, semi-pacifist block of, like, hey, guys, maybe we shouldn't give the Chancellor a ton of power...

Speaker: And also we we're actually here to like help people. That's why we're elected. um Notably, Mon Mothma is the senator for Chandrila.

Speaker: Bail Organa is the senator for Alderaan and Padme is the senator for Naboo. All of which are like super rich planets. These are all, you know, the city people who are not in touch with the lower classes.

Speaker: Interesting. which I am sure there's analysis that we can do on that, but it won't be right now. Yeah. Finally, season three, episode two, ARC Troopers. We're following up on the Rookies storyline.

Speaker: Yeah. Fives and Echo work with cadets and 99 to beat back Grievous and Ventress. Pretty open and shut. The Separatists are attacking Kamino directly because they're evil.

Speaker: Grievous is treating Ventress like his assistant, which is totally going to go well. And Echo and Fives are here. 99 here. And he wants to help, which is nice because he actually has strengths. He has the advantage of being extremely familiar with the facility that they're in And so he can tell people where to hide and what paths to take and where to get weapons and stuff. And it's nice.

Speaker: i feel like I feel like he could very easily just be a punchline of, hey, look at the weird one who turned out old. But no, he gets to be a character And have genuine things to contribute in his whole arc in this episode is that even though he's different, he's still as much a soldier as anyone else.

Speaker: And spoilers, he dies, which is sad. But having him and Echo and Fives and the cadets makes a very nice set. It's a good spread of...

Speaker: clone ages even though their ages are probably like 5 12 and you know they're probably very close in age but visually it's a nice little nesting doll set of clones one little visual detail echo and fives both have heavy's blaster on their armor with the words for heavy under it echoes on the on the thigh and fives is on the shoulder I noticed that on the shoulder, but I didn't know what it said.

Speaker: Yeah, it says for heavy. And then Echo has a handprint on his chest. I remember that. Yeah, from the eel that killed Cutup. going to go lay down and cry after this, listeners.

Speaker: and of feel all my feelings uh you know what i'm gonna do about the the next scene that i want to talk about is i'm gonna scream about it because please do the kiss oh my god lesbians this one's for you Oh, yeah. So like, you know, they think it's just Grievous. And then all of a sudden, Ventress is there.

Speaker: And she shoves Arch Trooper Colt against the wall with the Force. knocks his helmet, pulls him up, ignites her lightsaber, pulls him onto her lightsaber with the force, and then leans in and kisses him as he dies.

Speaker: This whole scene got cut by Cartoon Network. It was the first scene of the show to be censored. I'm not surprised. I was so transfixed. transfixed That I forgot that this is a kids show.

Speaker: and boy howdy that's a lot. Yeah, it's a level of holy fucking shit, Ventress, that we haven't quite gotten before from her.

Speaker: She's unraveling. Yeah, she's not okay. No, we've gone from like sort of her banter to like, she's starting to get a little desperate.

Speaker: Maybe it's because she's failing every fucking mission. yeah she's clearly not well regarded by her colleagues like she and grievous are having this massive dick measuring contest to which speaking of speaking of uh ventress at one point because grievous is like do you need a droid escort when she's off to do her you know steal the dna mission and she strokes his face plate and goes my dear general

Speaker: There's nothing you have that I could want. And walks off. Which I didn't realize works on multiple levels now that I think about it. Uh-huh.

Speaker: see But I mean, you know, because there's the obvious st droids and then, you know, but probably doesn't really have any biological reproductive parts of any kind at this point.

Speaker: No, i don't think so. But anyway, our our boys from Domino Squad, they save the day and they get promoted to ARC Troopers, which...

Speaker: We've had sort of hinted at before. ARC Trooper stands for Advanced Recon Commando. And it is like sort of one of two types of like semi-special forces clone.

Speaker: ARC Troopers are like embedded in with normal troops. And then there's clone commandos who are kind of their own thing. But like any clone can become an ARC Trooper. Yeah.

Speaker: So we're going to see them, like, we're going to see Echo and Fives sort being involved in bigger missions and given sort of more autonomy in what they do and how they act.

Speaker: We'll pretty frequently see, like, when the 501st needs clones to do something, it'll be Echo and Fives and Rex and Jessie. Jessie? Jessie? Yeah, we've met him briefly once.

Speaker: I don't know whether he's currently an ARC Trooper if he will become an ARC Trooper. Okay. And Cody is not an ARC. He's a different thing. Cody's Obi-Wan's commander for the 212th. Oh, okay. Different different group.

Speaker: Rex is the captain of the 501st. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's pretty much all I've got for that episode. This overall was a really good batch. I noticed when I was doing my prep work that it was fewer episodes than we've done for the last couple recordings. And I know you had said the ones that are more substantive will do fewer of them. And as soon as I watched the first one, I went, oh, I see why we're doing fewer of these. We're going to have a lot to say This is no fucking Bombad Jedi episode.

Speaker: No, and going to be doing that from here on in because there's going to be a lot more to say pretty much from here on in. There will still be a couple of episodes where we're doing like eight back-to-back episodes, and that's because I really have only have things to say on four of them.

Speaker: And the other four are kind of just there because I don't want to do a whole episode on them. Yeah. So next time, we're once again going to be jumping way the fuck around in the chronological order.

Speaker: And we won't do a whole lot more of this. We're going to be going more or less chronologically, hopefully, a little more so after this. Well, this is all happening chronologically, but it's not aired in the right order. So next time, we're going to be covering Season 3, Episode 4, Sphere of Influence. Season 3, Episode 8, Evil Plans. Season 1, Episode 22, Hostage Crisis. Season 3, Episode 9, Hunt for Zero. Season 3, Episode 10, Heroes on Both Sides.

Speaker: Season 3, Episode 11, Pursuit of Peace. And then Season 2, Episode 15, Senate Murders. Okay. And yeah, you have to do that because like we have episode eight and nine of season three, but season one, episode 22 chronologically happens in between those two.

Speaker: And we have to include season two, episode 15 later because a character dies in that that features in some of the season three episodes. So this is why this is happening.

Speaker: I appreciate you sorting it all out for me. I appreciate folks on the internet who have sorted this out for me previously so that I don't have to do all of that.

Speaker: But if you would like to come back for that in two weeks, we release every other Tuesday. You can follow our podcast on whatever podcasting platform you're currently listening on or any other podcasting platform, and you will get notified immediately when we drop a new episode.

Speaker: In the meantime... Listen to our backlog. We have a pretty extensive backlog across multiple fandoms. Lord of the Rings, Murderbot, Star Wars, Beowulf. The Beowulf fandom is clearly the biggest one there. Speaking of classics. Speaking of the classics.

Speaker: ah but Technically, technically, it's not a classics. Well, it's not ancient Greek, but you know what I mean. Yes. It's old. It's old. it's It's old, but not as old as the Odyssey.

Speaker: If you would like to interact with us, you can do so on our social media. We are at FanUpPod on any social media site that we are on. If you would like a response to anything that you have for us.

Speaker: if you have suggestions for future bonus episodes we should do, if you have thoughts on our content, if you have opinions about where I should stick particular episodes and particular shows in this watch order designed to cause Sam emotional damage. um I'm currently debating about like how I structure rebels versus some of the other inter-war period stuff.

Speaker: If you've got thoughts, send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com. I can guarantee you a response within three business days, unless I am off in the backwoods somewhere.

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Speaker: And any interaction that you have with us, whether that is on our social media or on our podcast is helpful. But the most helpful thing that you can do is to spread the word.

Speaker: And We truly hope that you will come back in two weeks to hear us talk about more Star Wars. Until then, thank you so much for listening and may the Force be with you.

Speaker: We'll see you next time. bye The Phantom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Baeruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.

Speaker: Our art is by Casey Turgeon. 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.