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S02E64: Rapidly Rewatching Mando, S3E2 & 3
26 Plays1 month ago
We're picking up the pace on our Mando rewatch to finish it before the movie opens, so apologies in advance for the whiplash! On this episode of SFAS, we go from completing the quest that we thought would take all season to a mini-episode of Andor-Lite... an odd transition, and one we will cover very quickly!
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Transcript
Introduction and Star Wars Reference
00:00:00
Speaker
Mando season three is picking up the pace and so are we. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?
00:00:13
Speaker
And welcome back to short for a storm trooper. This is continuing our rewatch of the Mandalorian season three in preparation for the Mandalorian and Grogu hitting theaters on May 22nd. I am back with the, Ben and Phil, and we are diving back
Comparison of Mandalorian Episodes
00:00:33
Speaker
in. We're going to talk about two episodes today, Chapter 18, The Minds of Mandalore, Chapter 19, The Convert.
00:00:40
Speaker
Two very different episodes from each other of The of the Mandalorian. Minds of Mandalore was written by Jon Favreau, directed by Rachel Morrison.
00:00:51
Speaker
Din and Grogu pick up an astromech on Tatooine, descend into the ruins of Sindari on Mandalore, nearly die to a cybernetic scavenger, get rescued by Bo-Katan, complete the living waters ritual, what?
00:01:05
Speaker
And wake up a mythosaur. Action-packed episode.
Analysis of Chapter 18 and Bo-Katan
00:01:10
Speaker
Chapter 19, The Convert, written by Jon Favreau and Noah Clure and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, Oscar winner.
00:01:18
Speaker
a Din and Bo escape a TIE Interceptor ambush that destroys her Kalevala Palace, and they end up at the Children of the Watch Covert. Meanwhile, in Coruscant, Dr. Penn Pershing is drawn into a honey trap by Aliyah Kane and hum rehabilitated by a Mind Flayer.
00:01:36
Speaker
Then Bo-Katan joins the Covert. That is a lot of stuff that happens. Phil, give us your rundown of let's start with the first one. We'll spend a few minutes on the first one and then we'll pivot to the second one.
00:01:50
Speaker
Sure. The first one, Minds of Mandalorian. What did you think? Yeah, so this second episode of season three, I thought it started off a little boring. You know, i I felt like we were going a little slow, but then I feel like it really picked up.
00:02:02
Speaker
I will say as we got towards, as we went on the planet on this journey with Bo-Katan and with Mandalorian and with uh Mando and Grogu um it was mysterious there were crazy creatures there was like a mechanical spider um there was obviously some great action scenes and fight scenes and choreography Bo-Katan saving Mando twice once obviously in the beginning and then and then the second time when he gets dragged into the fountains I really liked that sequence with the fountains um
00:02:34
Speaker
So overall, I feel like sort of slow going. I was a little bored maybe for the first like 10, 15 minutes, but i feel like it picked up and I feel like there is some good stuff in this episode overall.
00:02:46
Speaker
Great. Ben, I see you nodding. What do you think? I think this is a Katie Sackhoff appreciation episode, really. yeah she's She's done a lot of work here. I think she's got some great moves.
00:03:00
Speaker
There's a lot of really, really interesting stuff that we hadn't seen before. ah You know, when when Din gets captured and is like, go get help. I'm like, going you're you're you're screwed, dude. I have no idea how he's going help you. But we see it can work out. So I thought that was really fun.
00:03:17
Speaker
um I did not expect there to be a lot of active traps there with, ah you know, sophisticated technology using aliens. I expected that what we were goingnna find mostly here was a lot of the kinds of stuff we found along the way, animals and things.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah. So lot of really interesting. um I feel like it's a place I want to see explored a lot more is the ruins of Mandalore. Yeah, for sure. i enjoyed this episode a lot. A couple of the things that I noticed about it is I did really like that. Oh no, that comes in the next episode. Nevermind. I was going that TIE Interceptor chase. That's the next episode. Nevermind. Yeah, it does start a little bit boring, but it was great when he got down to the surface.
00:03:57
Speaker
um it It was the Peli Modo scene that opens up this one, right? Yeah, where he goes and he He has to buy, he has to get this droid. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, by the way, props to R5D4.
00:04:12
Speaker
I mean, Phil, you might not know this, but that is the exact same droid that blew up after uncle Owen bought it and kept R2D2 and C3PO together.
00:04:24
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, if R5-D4 had not had that accident, the galaxy, the Death Star would have never been destroyed and the galaxy would be under Imperial control even to this day. So good job, R5-D4.
00:04:37
Speaker
We're all lucky he had a bad motivator. He did. he had a bad motivator. There's actually a story in the, ah from a certain point of view, books that have, you know little deep cut Star Wars, what if, that he actually did that on purpose. That R2 was like, you have to do this on purpose, and he sabotaged
Bo-Katan's Role and Behind-the-Scenes
00:04:54
Speaker
himself to save the Alliance, which I love. um Anyway, one of the things that I've noticed about this episode in particular that comes through the rest of these is they feel a lot like very pulpy and they feel a lot like the the Marvel comic series from the 70s, which got just super campy.
00:05:16
Speaker
and very, very pulpy. And so, you know, he gets down and he's fighting against these weird mutant creatures. ah You know, it's kind of obscure. It just seems like an encounter thrown into a D&D module a little bit to me, ah which I kind of threw at Ben last night when we were playing But then like that spider thing was super cool.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, super, super cool. Yeah, yeah. And, fueling you know, the fact that it was, yeah, that it was, you know, partially organic. And then we found out at the end that really it was just kind of that crab basically driving a couple of different mechs.
00:05:56
Speaker
That was super cool. um I do believe, too, that this was all stop action animation, that that creature was stop action animation and done by Phil Tippett, the original stop motion animator from Star Wars. Oh, that's cool. They brought him back from this and that's really cool.
00:06:11
Speaker
um You are absolutely right that the attention is turning on to Bo-Katan, another one of Dave Filoni's favorites. I mean, Bo-Katan is named after his wife and his cat.
00:06:25
Speaker
So his wife, Anne, has a cat. His wife, Anne, has a cat named Bo. That's how Bo-Katan got Got her name. ah But Katie Sackhoff is wonderful. And by the way, this is just one fun little tidbit. And then we want to dive into the next episode.
00:06:43
Speaker
ah I noticed after this episode, it probably was in the first episode as well, but I really noticed it after this episode. Katie Sackhoff is now listed in the starring as part of the credits, not in the co-starring.
00:06:57
Speaker
So, All the way up until now, it's been starring Pedro Pascal and then everybody else has been co-starring. Now the credits read starring Pedro Pascal and then Katie Sackhoff and then
Chapter 19 Focus on Dr. Penn Pershing
00:07:11
Speaker
co-starring in order of appearance.
00:07:13
Speaker
so Oh, wow. Interesting. Interesting bit of foreshadowing. perhaps yeah These are the subtle bits that we yeah that we look for here. Yeah, that's right. Before we kind of leave this episode, let let's just take a moment and um consider the ah the implications of the Mythosaur, because perhaps appropriate to its name, this is a mythic creature for the Mandalorians, is it not?
00:07:39
Speaker
It is. It's huge. Again, that's part of big Mandalorian lore. Now, the one thing that a neophyte might have recognized is the Mythosaur's face looks very much like the skull that you see all over Mandalorian history. You know, it's, it's on Boba Fett's armor. It's the sigil it appears on the wall of the armorers cave. So that mythosaur is something that is very important to the Mandalorians. And also, uh, Oh my gosh, what's his name? Uh, the little, um,
00:08:19
Speaker
Quill in season one, you know, and he's like, ah you know, you are a Mandalorian. Did your people not ride the mighty mythosaur? So yeah, it's a big deal. So the fact that there is one of these things and it's alive, that's a big deal.
00:08:34
Speaker
It's big deal. It's sort of like Americans and bald eagles, right? Like this is your thing. This is your. Yes. Iconographic animal. Yeah. Really good. Really good analogy. Okay.
00:08:46
Speaker
Let's move to the next one, which It's a very strange episode. I'm gonna start with my reaction, right? You get some big action in the front. You've got this big TIE Interceptor chase. It's pretty cool, right?
00:08:59
Speaker
Then all of a sudden it turns into not just Andor, but kind of Andor as if made as a fan film. Because it doesn't look as good as man or as Mandor. That's why people should refer this as Mandor. It doesn't look as good as Andor.
00:09:17
Speaker
And the acting isn't as great as Andor. But it's on Coruscant. It's all intrigue and storyline and history. And you know I'm knocking it here. I actually think it's a pretty good story.
00:09:31
Speaker
Right? But it just seems to kind of come out of nowhere. Right? You get dropped into this middle. You find out what happens to Dr. Pershing, which is really interesting. It's setting up what's going on with the Imperial remnant, which is interesting and we need for the rest of it. But then that story stops and then it jumps back to Mandalorian again.
00:09:51
Speaker
Oh, by the way, when it jumps back, he's redeemed. He's
Storytelling Comparison with 'Andor'
00:09:54
Speaker
redeemed. Okay. ah Season's over. This is a weird episode. i i didn't really like this episode, I have to say. I agree. i really Well, so I'll say, bob a lot of what you said, I agree with. you know Very cool and you know emotional opening chase sequence. um And then, yeah, I honestly...
00:10:16
Speaker
I don't care about Dr. Pershing. You know, he tried to he tried to kill or extract something from Grogu. You know, he was working for the Empire. um And by the way, this is why the New Republic is in trouble. They're too loose on the Empire. I'm all for...
00:10:31
Speaker
rehabilitation and in like real life and there's real societal programs in like our society that are very beneficial but i'm sorry a rehabilitation program for foreign members of the empire is just asking for trouble so yeah that's just my like two cents on that in the context of star wars not in the context of real life um but there were some really interesting like There's some really interesting details I just found as they kind of explore it, you know, a a robot parole officer, it seems like, that he has to have weekly meetings with. But I just didn't care about this guy. I think he's, you know, he's a little wimp and he's an evil guy and he doesn't actually care about the greater good, even though he claims to. um I do really like, and I'm forgetting her name, that the character that he gets like mixed up with. Kain. Aliyah Kain. Aliyah Kain, who, yeah, who was a obviously we're used to work for the Empire. I really like her performance in this series generally. um Yeah. But, you know, you could have seen what was coming from a mile away, too.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah. Ben, what did you think? Well... Used to is an interesting phrase, right? Is that still what we think by the end of the episode? I'm not sure.
00:11:43
Speaker
Perhaps we'll have to explore that further. But yeah, I'm with you. This is a really interesting... side trip. And I think if you're going to spend this kind of screen time on it, you better make sure it really pays off. So we'll have to judge that later by the the fruits of this expenditure of time and effort. um I do think it's interesting to have these moments where you can kind of look at the universe that this is supposed to be embedded in and kind of see these these touch points and connections and kind of feel like, okay, so
00:12:14
Speaker
you know How is it going for the New Republic? you know um Are they finding that they can't quite be as small-L liberal as they would like to be? as you know The Empire consistently in this series is about order. It's about giving people structure. It's about making sure everybody knows their place, unfortunately, making sure they also stay in it. you know right So, you know, having all of these kind of structures and systems that show us again that the the new republic may have won the fighting part of it, right? But the administrative, you know, the holding is not as easy as the conquering, I suppose. There's there's stories about this.
00:12:54
Speaker
So that's that's kind of the big piece. I do think that um Dr. Pershing is a character who who, if we treat him as a point of view character, we get a chance to to see the other side. But I definitely think, Phil, you're right that he's not an attractive person in the sense that like we don't I don't really want to root for him. Yeah, yeah. yeah
00:13:17
Speaker
Now, one thing with this episode I do want to ask you guys about, because Phil, your experience of this was different, is when Ben and I saw it, we had just come off of season one of Andor, but season two hadn't come out. So we were judging this episode against the backdrop of having seen season one of
Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes Preview
00:13:36
Speaker
Andor. Now you're watching it for the first time and you've seen both seasons of Andor. And I wonder, would we evaluate this episode differently or that middle sequence of it?
00:13:47
Speaker
had we not kind of been spoiled by the quality of Andor. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, obviously we've talked on this podcast about how much I liked Andor, in particular season one, um but but both the series overall, for sure. ah And it, i you know, I can't help but compare it to Andor and my experience watching it. So it's hard to kind of separate the two in my mind. um And yeah, it is sort of like Andor-like.
00:14:16
Speaker
you know it doesn't quite It doesn't quite get the job done you know in the way that I think Andor does in terms of intrigue and suspense. um that's not really That's not really the Mandalorian's thing, at least from my perspective over the last you know two seasons and a couple episodes.
00:14:33
Speaker
Ben, what do you think?
00:14:36
Speaker
I... so i do remember thinking this was new and interesting and because we hadn't seen a lot of Andor yet, I don't think I really kind of judged it in the same way. um For me, when you look at a lot of the older movies and stuff where we see Coruscant for the first time, this felt like it was very much in that line. So i don't think I was um comparing like to like in that respect. I do like that I don't know, maybe maybe I'm kind of a soft touch here, but I didn't really kind of evaluate them go, well, this wasn't as good as that thing for production design or this or that. So I'm not going to like it as much or whatever. right I think that overall, I just want to see more of the world. You know what i mean? want to see those connections. So one of the things one of the things that you see sometimes when they don't do good adaptations or they don't connect you to that surrounding world is sometimes you get the sense that like,
00:15:31
Speaker
why did you even tell this story as a Star Wars story? You know, if you don't connect it to the things going on in the new Republic or the empire or something about that whole Skywalker's timeline or something like that, like you kind of go, this could have been just any rando sci-fi story. um yeah I'll even call out a paradigmatic offender. It's got nothing to do with Star Wars, but they did ah a snake eyes movie a while back.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, it has a gi literally nothing to do with G.I. Joe. And you're like, I don't even know why you guys are telling this. This was like a rando ninja story is what it was. Maybe it was going to good or bad or evaluated however, but like you just slap that on for marketing fluff. You just wanted to grab the G.I. Joe crowd on nostalgia bait and like pull them in.
00:16:10
Speaker
I think if you don't do those things that connect you to the larger world, you're in danger of that kind of stuff. So I like that they that they set a heist on a Star Destroyer. I like that they made us feel like the Empire is still active and subversive in this new Republic environment. you know so I that's all fun times for me. I'm i ah I'm a big idea guy and I may be a little less attuned to the art than I should be.
00:16:33
Speaker
I do like that character, Kane. I do think that Katie O'Brien does a fantastic job playing. Yes. And very much. Yeah. I'm going enjoy seeing her more in the rest of the show. We should wrap it up boys. So thank you so much for being here again. And to our listeners, we're always glad that you're here.
00:16:51
Speaker
We'll see you next week. As we dive into the next episode, episodes, two episodes next week. And we'll talk about it then. So in the meantime, may the force be with you. We'll see soon. Who's that mindless choice to do?
00:17:03
Speaker
Podcasts, hope you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite image. Let's chat for 15 minutes. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short?
00:17:14
Speaker
Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper? Aren't you a little short for sporn trooper?