skygiants | (no subject)

Really truly horrible to realize that over the course of its third season I have become a person who genuinely thinks The Bad Batch -- a show that, when it was announced, filled me with nothing but a sense of wistful ennui for all the hours I was going to spend watching it against my own will and better judgment! -- is the best Star Wars television I have experienced barring Andor. Absolutely appalling to discover that I genuinely think the long arc is extremely well executed! that its characters have moral nuance and complexity! that it does a better job of any other Star Wars media properties of digging into systemic clone dehumanization! that it retroactively justifies The Zillobeast!! and that it does all this without leading any of its characters towards their ultimate Jedi destiny or showing a single Skywalker on screen!

Is any of this actually true? Who can say. I don't know anymore and you probably shouldn't trust me. All through Season One I was like "this is a perfectly fine self-indulgent Star Wars show for children" and then throughout Season Two I started gradually tilting my head like "IS the tragic postcanon clone show about the horrors of the military-industrial complex that I've been wanting for years bursting its way out of the Hijinks-Filled Children's Show cocoon in which it's been lurking all this time?" and now Season Three has happened and it's ALL horrors of the military-industrial complex ALL the way down and all the stuff it turns out they have been building for three seasons genuinely landed for me??? how could this happen to me. Just When I Think I'm Out etc etc

Okay one thing I do feel confident in saying is the fact that Bad Batch has bar none my favorite heel face turn arc in all of Star Wars, the Heel Face Turn Galaxy Long Ago And Far Far Away, because it is NOT about the power of love and it IS about radicalization through solidarity. I've been watching with

innerbrat who has Cared Very Much About Crosshair from day one when he decided to throw his lot in with the Empire instead of his brothers and I was like, I'm very happy for you that you have this tragic villainous Brother Who Betrayed Us but I am not particularly invested ... and then we got season two and Crosshair's gradual realization that being a special clone to himself does not protect him from being completely disposable within the Imperial machinery, and then we got season three and his equally gradual realization that people cannot carry themselves as entirely self-sufficient and have to be part of a community and fine!

innerbrat was right!! (I also like the Emerie heel face turn but "clone encounters imperiled children and immediately re-centers their personal morality around aforementioned imperiled children" is an old and true friend as far as Star Wars tropes go.)

I also really love that the show counterbalances its long redemption arcs with a couple different iterations of allies who are fun and compelling characters to have onscreen and also end up eventually betraying our protagonists -- and not in silly "lol Hondo is up to his tricks again!" ways, nor by dramatically Falling to the Dark Side, but just by making selfish and petty decisions out of fear in the way that people sometimes will do. This is especially good because broadly speaking the show often is the kind of show in which our plucky youthful protagonist who wants to believe in people and make connections with them is proven right; it makes it genuinely surprising and impactful on the occasions that she's wrong. I fully expected Cid to have a big redemption at the end of S2 or somewhere in S3 and I'm so glad she didn't; I love her and she and Omega did have numerous bonding moments and also she's just a shitty person. Sometimes people are like that.

And! Also! I love that the the show lets its characters have different priorities, and act on them, eventually to the point of permanently splitting the party in a way I did not think would be allowed -- the tension between Echo and Hunter about how much effort they should put into trying to help the regular clones versus finding a place of safety for their own group was so lightly done in the first season or so that at first

innerbrat and I thought we were mostly bringing our own headcanon and expectations into it, and then gradually it became clear that not only was the tension there but it was thematically central, and that the show was not going to tell us that either choice was the correct one but that they were incompatible with each other. I have never been so happy to see my favorite character leave a show than when Echo left to join Rex.

Let's see, what else ... I do really love Omega, she's a Good-Hearted Protagonist Child but I love how visibly you can see her growing into adolescence over the course of the show and that she never forget that although she's a child among adults, she's also paradoxically the oldest among them. I also, God help me, love all the absurd cameos. VENTRESS IS HERE?? VENTRESS IS ALIVE????

innerbrat was spoiled for this but I was not and I SHRIEKED. The Bad Batch is a good show!! Maybe. If you trust me. Which you shouldn't. I'm emotionally compromised by clones and that's just going to go on being true.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ambyr

I mean, I will also tell you it's a good show but I am just as emotionally compromised, so!

But it has been interesting to think back on TBB as I watched The Acolyte the past couple of months, which--really highlights how much I care about TBB emotionally in contrast to how little I connect to anything on The Acolyte. Because the TBB characters are embedded in a broader world and context in a way the The Acolyte characters just aren't, thanks to mumblety-mumblety years of canon product in this era, and . . . yes, okay, sometimes that means absurd cameos, but it also means I understand what's driving them and what's before them in a way I simply don't for characters in BBY 100-whatever.

I am so happy Cid never got a redemption arc, and I lovelovelove everything with Rampart at the end. You want to believe! If he just made slightly better choices, he could get out of there alive! . . . but he doesn't, of course he doesn't, he's gonna keep Ramparting right up until the inevitable boom. (And I do appreciate that Nala Se gets to take him out, as a final act of revenge for her species given that he's the one who took out Kamino.)

There is a Crosshair radicalization vid I want to make so badly for this show, and I do not know how to vid (I tried...once? And got very confused like four clips in and gave up) and I do not know where I would even get source files but maybe some day. Some day.

From:

skygiants

Yeah, and the cameos do feel [for the most part] [there is ABSOLUTELY some self-indulgence there] like they're telling us something interesting and relevant about the characters in question and not JUST there for the sake of giving the viewer the thrill of recognition ... like, the Syndulla family are the most significant lens through which to witness the various political changes on Ryloth, and the fact that we already know that Pantora has a significant military culture makes Chuchi a genuinely great choice for Senator Who Has Thoughts On Clone Veterans, etc. etc.

THE RAMPART STUFF WAS SO EXTREMELY GOOD, I love every bit of how that played out. And it really made me think about character design work in Bad Batch and how much it often resists the sort of visual signifiers that are so easy to fall back on in cartoons. Rampart in his jailbreak era looks boyishly handsome, like Paul Rudd. Cid looks like Shrek: an ogre who must have a heart of gold buried around there somewhere. Even Hemlock has a perfectly pleasant face under his fascist haircut; he doesn't look like an obvious threat. You can't tell by looking at someone what they're going to be. (and I also love what the show does with Kamino and the Kaminoans in general ... my terrible affection for the terrible creature who is Halle Burtoni .....)

!!! yes PLEASE. what's the song?? If you need encouragement, I will provide it! (my friend and I have been talking forever about collaborating on a clone-focused vid to Daniel Kahn's 'Freedom Is A Verb'; I also sometimes think about 'Sunday After the War.')

From:

ambyr

I really at some point want to sit down and watch every Cham Syndulla episode in sequence: "Liberty on Ryloth," "Devil's Deal," "Rescue on Ryloth," "Homecoming," and "Hera's Heroes." I think he has some of the more interesting and believable character development across the three series (as opposed to, say, Hondo, who is really difficult to reconcile between Clone Wars and Rebels or indeed within Clone Wars. Although I do have headcanon for how he ends up where he is in Rebels).

Okay I guess Cham's first appearance is in "Supply Lines," which I have not watched because when I was skipping through Clone Wars I managed to skip every single Jar-Jar episode and felt quite pleased with myself for doing so. Am I willing to watch Jar-Jar to get Cham? ...so far not yet.

The song is Erasure's "The Circus," and I need not so much encouragement as probably far more hand-holding than you want to provide, heh. I . . . am not even sure how one goes about getting video source files these days (the last time I tried to vid I still had a DVD drive and just ripped my own copies). Other people do it! It can't be that hard! But I am perhaps too law-abiding for my own good; I haven't tried to pirate anything since literally Napster. But nonetheless:

"Father worked in industry
Now the work has moved on
And the factory's gone
See them sell your history
Where once you were strong
And you used to belong
There was once a future
For a working man
There was once a lifetime
For a skillful hand... yesterday"

Do I want to use the entirely too literal post-Tantiss clips every time the song repeats "skillful hand"? ...maybe.

From:

skygiants

A Cham Syndulla run would be such an interesting set of episodes to string together!

THAT WOULD BE SUCH A GOOD VID AND YOU SHOULD DO IT

(I use a program called Tixati for torrents, which has served me pretty well for various sources.)

From:

shadaras

I really do need to watch it at some point xD but I'm stuck in wanting to watch things in more-or-less production order, so... gotta actually finish Rebels first, I think?

From:

skygiants

Extremely fair!! (Beth and I have been wtching Rebels while

innerbrat and I watched Bad Batch -- we just finished S2 -- which is perhaps not the ideal viewing order but I can't say I regret it.)

From:

shadaras

I suspect your viewing order might make just as much sense, honestly (and seems more fun!), but since I'm watching on my own I need some structure to make sure I actually finish any of the shows instead of stopping halfway through all of them. xD;

From:

ambyr

Oh gosh I did not realize you had not finished Rebels! Sorry for any accidental spoilers and I do look forward to any future thoughts on that.

From:

starlady

It's a really great show. Definitely stands in the ranks with Rebels, but I agree it's definitely more thematically coherent and well-planned all the way through.

Also the animation has advanced to the point where it can be thematically dark and/or raining in almost every episode but you can still see what's happening, it's some truly beautiful work.

I'm very excited that Ventress lived and also very excited about the rumors that she will be heavily featured in the next animated show.

From:

cofax7

more Ventress! more Ventress!

I want more characters straddling the divide between Jedi and Sith (and I continue to be cranky that the Ahsoka show apparently had her decide she was a Jedi after all). Or better yet being something orthogonal to the J/S axis.

From:

skygiants

Yeah, hearing about that (and basically everything they've done with Ahsoka previous to that in the live action stuff) really put me off wanting to watch the Ahsoka series, unfortunately. They set up this really interesting gray space for her to stand in! Why not let her stand in it!

From:

ambyr

I just finished the Ahsoka series last week, and I have so many thoughts about its characterization of its main trio (which is to say, Ahsoka, Sabine, and Hera). I take I think the unpopular opinion of liking quite a lot of it, in a "wow, these people sure are not being their best selves in ways I find . . . entirely plausible given the intersection of various past traumas" sort of way, but also I think I'm reading a lot of it heavily against the text, so to speak. But. Gosh. This might be the Star Wars show with the most interesting things to say about attachment of the entire franchise, whether they mean to be saying those things or not.

(About the show's overall plot, I have less positive opinions. Also, it is absolutely Rebels season five and why they ever tried to pitch it as a stand-alone show is beyond me.)

From:

skygiants

okay I AM intrigued by this assessment

From:

skygiants

Honestly it probably also helps that I was watching S3 of Bad Batch while watching S1 and 2 of Rebels, so I was seeing The Bad Batch knock out all the swings it had lined up throughout the first two seasons while Rebels was still finding its feet -- it's really just now in the S2 finale that I feel like Rebels is really delivering on its potential for me (and I'm excited to see it keep doing that!)

and the animation is so lovely -- the way models have a kind of hand-painted quality, it's really impressive stuff.

(I HAVE HEARD NO RUMORS AND AM VERY EXCITED TO HEAR THEM NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME!!)

From:

musesfool

I'm not reading the spoilers but I am definitely bumping this up on my to-watch list!

From:

skygiants

yessss I really do think it's worth it (and it's now all complete! no waiting on cliffhangers!)

From:

varadia

No, my friend, it IS a very good show. You will just have to accept that. You may be compromised by clones, but it is also just very good. Deal with it!!!

From:

skygiants

I'M TRYING. I'M TRYING. my biggest hear me out: so there's this Star Wars media property ....

From:

cofax7

All this, yes.

BUT WHERE IS CODY?

From:

skygiants

WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY GREAT QUESTION

From:

jothra

A question I ask to this very day.

From:

chestnut_pod

I'm happy for you, or also sorry it happened! So the saying goes :DD

From:

skygiants

and every word deeply applies 😭

From:

obopolsk

Oh no, I’m going to have to watch this now, aren’t I?

From:

skygiants

I THINK YOU MIGHT

From:

superborb

OKAY but will this be legible to someone who's seen half of Andor episode 1 and otherwise only osmosed SW lore from being on the internet?

From:

skygiants

That's a really fantastic question .... I have no idea of the answer but I would frankly love to find out so please report back if you decide to give it a go!