Cartoon Corner- Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 1)

Originally posted at the DL December 2015

Let's knock this one out right away.



Weakest Episode- Bombad Jedi.  Look at that title again, I don't have to say much more.
Thing is, it's not something I had in mind from watching the season.  There were a few earlier episodes that I was trying to pick between, but ultimately decided that those episodes suffered from the same basic problem but had other good moments to counterbalance them.  But it's a recurring issue for a lot of the season.  Clone Wars is a war series.  It doesn't go in for gore or the like, but it also doesn't back down from what it is.  It introduces characters just to kill them.  It shows refugees and displaced civilians selling out our heroes for supplies.  And truthfully, Jar-Jar, while really bad in this episode, isn't nearly the worst thing in the show for horrible tonal contrast to all that.  The standard battle droids are.  But the first few episodes where that REALLY stood out were otherwise good while this one is... eh.  There are much better Padmé episodes.

Ahsoka suffers similarly, but for here there's at least something to look forward to.  And hey, she's like 13.  And they even early on make it clear there's some arc planning here.  But yeah any episode... well except the one where "oh god all my men are deaaaaddddd :(" featuring her is not one of the better ones.

Honestly though the main appeal of the show though is that it does a better job with PT-era characters and sequences than the films.  Like...

Best Episode- Mystery of a Thousand Moons.  In particular I find myself actually rooting for Padmé/Anakin to work.  There's a video I watched comparing Empire and Attack of the Clones about body language and desire ( This one )  And that's what's working here, these are kids that are married and don't get to see each other and have to be cautious about letting anyone really see them together.  I almost nodded another episode just for that stuff, but this one has so much else going on that yeah, it's worth noting.  Everyone's got plague!  Race against time!  We might be dying but we still got shit to do!  Nice stuff.

And... actually so far I think that covers it.  The new characters introduced are largely kinda interesting but don't have a lot of screen time because about half the season is chasing Grievous and he's... just this droid-man y'know?  I kinda bought the whole series at once though so hey, we got lots of time to get better.

Rating- 6/10.