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S02E04: One Way Out! Swiftly Reviewing the Andor Prison Arc
42 Plays2 months ago
Ben and Phil are back to recap Andor season 1, episodes 8-10. Why is this Bob's favorite Star Wars movie since the LAST three episodes of Andor? Do Ben and Phil think he's crazy, or are they on board? Tune in to find out!
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Transcript
Introduction to Andor Rewatch - Narkina 5 Episodes
00:00:00
Speaker
There's only one way out of our Andor rewatch, and it is right through the Narkina 5 episodes. We're going to talk about you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite in
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome back to short for a storm trooper where we are diving back into our and or rewatch. We are picking this up with the Narkeena five prison break episodes. I hope that wasn't a spoiler for anybody, but if not, you should watch them and then take a listen to what Ben and Phil and I think about this most outstanding series of episodes.
Is Narkina 5 the Best Star Wars Since ROTJ?
00:00:49
Speaker
You know, I've started these usually by asking Phil what he thinks. Last time I asked Ben what he thought first. I'm going to start with what I think because fair is fair. And also for anybody who listened to my guest appearance on Coffee with Kenobi, which I'm hoping a lot of you have come and joined our podcast after learning about short for a stormtrooper from Dan and Coffee with Kenobi.
00:01:15
Speaker
I made this statement on there is I think that these three episodes taken together as a movie are the best Star Wars movie that has come out since Return of the Jedi. who That's how much I value these three episodes. That's a bold take.
00:01:34
Speaker
Sure is. but So I'm not going to unpack that until I hear your guy's opinion.
Cinematic Brilliance and Andy Serkis's Performance
00:01:39
Speaker
So Phil, let's go ahead and start with you. We'll just keep the same rotation. Just enter a different place. So that sounds good. Uh, I was a big fan of this prison arc. It had for me, I think what I like a lot about Andor, which is, you know, it obviously so has kind of the Star Wars bones to it, the structure, but then when you look a little bit deeper, it has kind of these real cinematic roots to it.
00:02:04
Speaker
It felt very much like an intense prison thriller or an escape thriller, especially obviously at the end of the arc, right? And that for me was great. And it's one of the reasons, you know, Bob, I think that you knew that I would like Andor and in fact that I did like Andor.
00:02:20
Speaker
I mean the specificity in terms of the, you know, the layout of the, the prison and they're like day to day and I also love kind of the slow build, right? It is a three episode arc. It's not a one episode arc. They really do take their time with building the tension and the suspense and really taking time to focus on Andor's life in the prison.
00:02:41
Speaker
And it sucks. it's It's really terrible, right? And for all the guys in there. So that's kind of the setup for me, right? And obviously Andy Serkis, the best. And I you know wasn't expecting obviously that cameo in there. And then you know him working together with Andor in the final episode of The Yark on the intricate escape plan.
Emotional Core of the Series - Andy Serkis's Role
00:03:05
Speaker
And then him breaking my heart with saying that he can't swim just absolutely gutted me.
00:03:11
Speaker
Should we go there right now? Because i was I think we're going to spend a lot of time talking about Andy Serkis and Kena Loy, his character yeah on this. but How could you not? ah Exactly. But I think we agree on that. Like that was like a gut punch. I think this is kind of the emotional core of this whole series.
00:03:29
Speaker
And it's not, think about it this way, that episode where you get the third episode in the arc where they're tying everything up, it's not just the Keanu Loy speech, it's also Stolen Scarsgard telling us about how he's creating a world he'll never see the benefit of. We'll get to more of that I'm sure, but but we would put both of those together in one episode, like within 10 minutes of each other.
00:03:51
Speaker
oh Oh, that episode was amazing. It was fantastic. It also reminded me that, cause I was doing a little bit of of research on the internet of reactions and prepping for this. Somebody at a convention after that happened, Andy Serkis was up on stage and went up and brought him a life preserver. but That's great. And I thought, yeah, that's what we all want. We all wanted to give him a life preserver at that point. That was amazing.
00:04:18
Speaker
Ben, any other thoughts? we We kind of dove in with the with the key. What else
Cassian Andor's Character Growth
00:04:23
Speaker
for you stands out? So I think what's interesting is when you think about where this whole thing starts, you know, we think about we think about Cassian Andor and he is somebody who's begun this series kind of out for himself. He's He's trying to find his sister. He's kind of in a tough spot. This is not somebody who's you know at the high casts of society like Mon Mothma is. And he's really out for himself, like all the way through the heist episodes. you know And when he's kind of confronted with these people who are like, look, the empire is bad. The empire is something we need to fight against. Don't you want to see for it? He doesn't really kind of get it. you know he's He's still in that kind of rogue
00:05:09
Speaker
you know paradigm where he's out for his own needs and concerns and he's just trying to eke out his own survival and so on which it's understandable given where he grew up we saw that in the very first episodes of the series with him and his sister as kids but these are the sequence of episodes these are the episodes where we see how oppressive the empire is these are the episodes where all of a sudden we go no no this is a concentrated formalized institutional evil you know and And for me, I started thinking about all the different things you'd ever heard about you know Stalin's regime and about the different things that are going on and in different you know historical totalitarianisms and things like that. And you just go, wow, it's not just that it's evil. It's that it's evil protected by institutions.
Parallels Between Kino Loy and Cassian
00:05:55
Speaker
yeah And once he kind of sees that, he's ready to make that turn. Once Keno Loy sees that, that's what it takes for him to go, oh, yeah, there's no accountability here. There's no structure.
00:06:05
Speaker
And the whole first part of this prison sequence, Kino, is basically trying to show everybody, hey, you know what, you guys, if you just follow this structure, even though it's a bad structure, but it's one that you can navigate, it's one that you can get through, and ah and you've just got a limited number of shifts, and then you're out. and then at the point where he turns, it's because he goes, this was all a sham. it It was a structure to keep us under control, not to liberate us ultimately. Yeah. And, you know, one thing I realized with this last rewatch is Kino's story is really an archetype for Cassian's story.
00:06:41
Speaker
it It's kind of Cassian's story in a microcosm because at the beginning when we first meet him, he's basically going along and doing what he has to do to save his own skin. The only reason why he is floor manager and he is seeming like a toady for the empire is because he's just trying to get through until the day that he leaves. And then moment by moment as the facts start coming in,
00:07:05
Speaker
he just gradually starts to accept them. At first he resists, I don't even wanna believe. Shut up, right? He's very forceful about it. And then he starts taking it in. And then it's at the end of the second episode where the the old guy has died and he learns the whole story and Cassian says, how many guards? And he tells them, right? yeah And it's like, okay, that flipped the switch.
Speculating the Future of Characters
00:07:31
Speaker
And this is what we now are gonna see in Cassian.
00:07:34
Speaker
like Like this experience compounded with what we're going to see in episodes 11 and 12. Yeah. I would finally flip his switch and make him realize, yeah, I need to be a part of this actual rebellion. So I love that. I love it too. We can't say too much. Phil has not yet watched. Have you yet watched those? And we just need to do a later episode or or are those still to come?
00:07:58
Speaker
The Endor episode? Oh, I finished the first season like a month ago. Oh, okay. You did, right, yes. I thought that you had. So yeah, so we can... Well, I don't want to spoil it too much because I want to save that for the next two episodes, but there's one very critical thing I want to ask you when we get to the end of this.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's the way I see it unfold. And one thing that I did too, which I haven't done before, is after the rewatch, just this last week, I watched Rogue One again. And it was really nice to see that flow through. By the way, I also helped me fall asleep at night.
00:08:31
Speaker
have been listening to the novelization, the the audio recording of the novelization of Rogue One, which is very good. I highly recommend that if somebody wants to listen to that. As far as Andy Serkis showing up, that was a total surprise. It was like, oh my gosh, it's Andy Serkis. Then for for a brief second, you're like, is he playing Snoke? like I don't think Snoke would be, well, who knows?
00:08:56
Speaker
That didn't last too long. ah but along Along with the whole prison thing, Ben, as you called out earlier with Luthin's Big Speech, there's a lot of other intrigue that's going on back on Coruscant, you know, on the whole planet. It's really building towards this conclusion. And I love that aspect of these three episodes. Yeah, I'll say one more thing that is just sort of like,
00:09:18
Speaker
It was a gut punch, but in a bit of a different way at the end of the arc, which is that Cassian and um his, I'm sorry, but the the other, he had like one other friend with him, basically. It was just the two of them ah who had washed up ashore. And for me, man yeah. and for And for me, the kind of um indication was that it was just the two of them that had made it. Now, I don't know if you two feel the same way.
00:09:42
Speaker
because they don't explicitly say it, but I do feel like it was just the two of them that made it and then they kind of have to eventually go their separate ways. But it just felt like kind of another gut punch after this epic escape, right? Even though they do escape, they still have to swim. And even if people can swim, maybe they don't make it, right?
Mon Mothma's Moral Ambiguity
00:10:00
Speaker
Because of the rough seas or the waves. So for me, like, ooh, like it is triumphant, but it's also like a bittersweet moment, I think, because it's just another like reminder that it's not a clean win by any means. In fact, right maybe the opposite. And we don't know, right? I mean, it could be it could be exactly like you're saying, Phil. We have no evidence that anybody else survived, but it could be. Sure. It could be. And there's a there is a lot of discussion I was reading again today, and we're prepping for this, a lot of people saying, oh, I really hope that Keno Lloyd doesn't come back for season two, even though there's been some hinting that he might.
00:10:38
Speaker
And I think a lot of the assumption is if he comes back that he'll be like fighting for the rebellion or something like that. I kind of think it might be interesting if he gets recaptured by the empire and gets reprogrammed and he comes back. He's actually like a bad guy. That might be an interesting thing, but I'm gonna let the masters do their thing. I want to speculate responsibly.
00:10:59
Speaker
Speculate responsibly, friends. Exactly. But in terms of his friend, Melchi, you do actually know that they get back together because Melchi is in Rogue One. He is one of the Rogue One team. Oh. Okay, well, see, now I need to watch that again. You do. So can we take a second? We have to be very observant to notice that. Yes, please. Yeah, can we can we take a second, though, and talk about the brilliance of the intercutting between the horrible situation in the prison as antiseptic and clean as it is, it is is focused evil and the ah decadent lifestyle on Coruscant with parties and you know social niceties and and ah nice drinks and all of the other things. I thought there was so such frequent effective
00:11:44
Speaker
Use of that intercutting model to really help you feel the pain and the suffering of the prison because of course you had something that a contrast it with hundred percent the editing in that between kind of those two ah Those two environments and it wasn't one time. It was kind of a repetitive motif, I think, in this arc, that they would contrast these two different environments. And that was really interesting to me. I think man mata's Mon arc in this is also super interesting to me. And it's something that I think often happens in these types of um genre, ah sort of I'll broadly say like genre thrillers or political thrillers, right? Someone who's ultimately trying to do the right thing
00:12:27
Speaker
in the crusade to do the quote unquote, right thing has to then use bad actors to get what they perceive as their goal, right? So her ultimately meeting with Davo, right? yeah the sha The shady, you know, mafia businessman, right? And then her having to, I don't want to say sacrifice, but use her daughter as a pawn in this scheme, right? To get the funding and then introduce, you know, his son and her daughter. It just, again, is such like a downer. But it again, it comes back to this this arc that she has which is like in the crusade of doing the right thing you have to do some bad things at least in their mind and i think that was really interesting to me i think you could kind of put a cap on this with all three of these characters and the question for each of them is what are you willing to do
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. How far do you go? How far do you have to go for the
Final Thoughts and Listener Engagement
00:13:17
Speaker
ultimate good? Well, we'll talk more about that next week. Phil, here's the question I wanted to ask you is, when you got to the very end to episode 12, did you watch through the credits to the very, very, very end? I did. I did watch through the credits. You did? Yeah. Okay, good. Good, good, good. Good. Because yeah, it definitely is a nice wrap up on the whole what they were doing on Arquino 5. That was very cool. Yeah, actually.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, so chill chilling. Yeah, it was. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Phil. And I'm glad you guys agree. This is just some really great, not just Star Wars, but really, really great filmmaking, great storytelling. I have talked to nothing about praise for these. These are fantastic. So hoping for much more of the same when season two comes along. That's it for this episode. We'll be back.
00:14:07
Speaker
with hopefully the next episode, we will actually wrap up our Andor rewatch and then we'll figure out what we'll move on to next. But in the meantime, please hit subscribe, tell all your friends about this, leave us a review. That would be so helpful if you left us a review and your podcast engine of choice would really love that. In the meantime, until next time, may the force be with you. We'll see you soon.