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Sep. 26th, 2021 10:05 amI will be honest: I knew I was going to watch Star Wars: The Bad Batch from the moment they aired a trailer featuring Rex, but in a glum sort of 'you-got-me' way where I expected to want to fight it most of the way. I didn't particularly care for the Bad Batch episodes in s7 and while I am, obviously, as you all know, wildly overinvested in The Star Wars Clone Experience overall, the Bad Batch initially gave me some "Not Like Other Girls Clones" vibes that I didn't love -- I'm much more interested in further explorations of the individuality of (and war crimes against) quote-unquote standard-issue clones and following a group of Only Special Clones felt to me like a distraction from the main tragedy of how Order 66 depersonalized the clone troops.
...and I still do kind of feel a little bit that way -- I would truly, truly love to have at least one perfectly regular-issue non-Bad-Batch clone included in the main cast and to actually explore and interrogate the tensions there -- and, like, it's not the postcanon clone show that I personally would have designed, but nonetheless I did actually end up having a great time over the course of the first season! In large part because I am easy for the following elements:
- Unlikely Adults Accidentally Adopt And Become Overinvested In A Child ... is this becoming the pattern of more or less every Disney-era Star Wars story? Absolutely. Unfortunately I Remain Here For It.
- Look, Here's A Character Or Location You Know From Another Star Wars Property! I feel especially confliced about my enjoyment of this tbh because I do actually think that "show you a reference that you are pleased to recognize and make that a building block of narrative delight" is a sort of lazy form of storytelling to which large franchises are increasingly prone, and yet Bad Batch gave me ( mild spoilers for some specific episodes and interactions )
So, like, I don't know if The Bad Batch is good per se in and of itself, but I do think it functions pretty well as a kind of early-Imperial-era anthology show with the Bad Batch themselves and the related Kaminoan metaplot serving as a thread of connective tissue between the situations that it wants to explore and develop. I'm enjoying it a lot and looking forward to the next season, and, also, if nobody in the show ever has an actual conversation about Fives, I will be personally furious.
...and I still do kind of feel a little bit that way -- I would truly, truly love to have at least one perfectly regular-issue non-Bad-Batch clone included in the main cast and to actually explore and interrogate the tensions there -- and, like, it's not the postcanon clone show that I personally would have designed, but nonetheless I did actually end up having a great time over the course of the first season! In large part because I am easy for the following elements:
- Unlikely Adults Accidentally Adopt And Become Overinvested In A Child ... is this becoming the pattern of more or less every Disney-era Star Wars story? Absolutely. Unfortunately I Remain Here For It.
- Look, Here's A Character Or Location You Know From Another Star Wars Property! I feel especially confliced about my enjoyment of this tbh because I do actually think that "show you a reference that you are pleased to recognize and make that a building block of narrative delight" is a sort of lazy form of storytelling to which large franchises are increasingly prone, and yet Bad Batch gave me ( mild spoilers for some specific episodes and interactions )
So, like, I don't know if The Bad Batch is good per se in and of itself, but I do think it functions pretty well as a kind of early-Imperial-era anthology show with the Bad Batch themselves and the related Kaminoan metaplot serving as a thread of connective tissue between the situations that it wants to explore and develop. I'm enjoying it a lot and looking forward to the next season, and, also, if nobody in the show ever has an actual conversation about Fives, I will be personally furious.
