Good, good. Let the hate flow through you.


As I said earlier I agree the ARC Trooper Clone episode was good. But otherwise, that droid arc is freaking terrible and universally panned. When you see the title screen in blue, you know you're in for a bad time.

Wasn't a big fan of the youngling arc either. The Onderon stuff was the best of the season, but this has not been a great season. At least Ratingraph indicates that by far the best material of the season is coming next.

Only 4 episodes? Felt so much longer.

Coincidentally, have Rogue One on in the background on TNT, while doing football research for tomorrow. Happy to see that I think this may be the first time they've played the movies in chronological timeline order with Rogue playing right into the original SW (Ep IV) next. They steal the Death Star plans, then go destroy the Death Star.

It's so crazy when this show suddenly flips a switch and decides to be elite.

(I'm mid-arc on the Mandalore stuff late in season 5. Now that they've kicked it into overdrive, I'm guess I'll be done with season 5 by the end of tomorrow.)

This certainly feels different. Yes, shows with 20+ episodes in a season are going to have their ups and downs, they'll work in throwaway episodes, etc., but this show is structured with individual arcs that either sink or swim, and it all feels different as a result. The spikes in quality are also pretty extreme. Like, surely they're aware that they're trotting out the good ****, the **** that puts the other stuff to shame, when it gets really ****ing good. The difference between a Maul episode and a C-3PO episode is just absurd. The former is TV at its finest, and the latter is a show that wouldn't be watchable if it was that all the time.

S05E16 just set the bar as the best episode of the series up through that point. My God.

It’s happening!!

Like, I would normally guard against recency bias and not say something like that within minutes of seeing something for the first time, but as I think of other great episodes from the series I just cannot see how that won't hold up as my opinion - again, at least up through that point in the series.

Except that George Lucas legitimately believes that droids arc is the best **** he's ever produced.

I'm totally drawing blanks on the chain of command on the darksaber in CW, but yes, when you start mixing Mandolorians with sith, it's pretty damn strong, except....(don't read till done w/ S5)

Alright I just finished season 5. I guess I don't know what your spoiler means.

That late-season Ahsoka arc was comparable to Sting circa Fall Brawl '96.

I looked at the Wookieepedia entry for that episode, and I was disappointed to see that apparently I'll never see Asajj Ventress again. She was a really strong character.

If you were to look, you'd notice larger gaps between S5/S6 and S6/S7. In fact, S7 came out just last year.

Season 6 was written and partially produced when George said **** all the grief he gets from fans and sold to Disney. Being a direct competitor, Cartoon Network said no more Clone Wars. The show was effectively cancelled, despite another full season ready to go.

A little more than half the season was aired in Germany for some reason, dubbed "The Lost Missions" and eventually ended up on Netflix in the U.S.

The problem is that there were 12 unproduced episodes that were never made. These episodes covered what happened to Darth Maul, the Night Sisters and Asajj Ventress at the conclusion of S5.

The arcs were, however, produced as books.

- Darth Maul "Son of Dathomir" was a 4-issue comic covering what happened after he was imprisoned by Sidious.

- Dark Disciple was a novel that covered the other 8 episodes centering around Ventriss/Dooku and a lesser known Jedi.

So, the "inconvenience" I mentioned about a week ago after S5 is that if you want to know what happens here, you'll have to read these books. The positive is that Dark Disciple is awesome (the Darth Maul story isn't bad either). It's incredibly frustrating that arc never made it to television, but it's a bit of a time investment. Some of these characters don't appear in further CW episodes if memory serves me correctly. Their final Clone Wars stories are told in these books.

Interesting. Thanks for the additional background.

The featuring of Jar Jar Binks annoys me less than the featuring of droids...

But every time Jar Jar appears, it's very difficult for me to process it as anything but a defiant middle finger to the audience. Like, "**** you, I'm the one in charge here and you don't get to shout my characters out of existence." Feels way more plausible than, "Hmm, yes, here is a good artistic direction to take the show."

But maybe I've been watching Vince McMahon enterprises for too much of my life.

Hahaha.

If they dropped the stupid Rasta speech of the Gungans, I think Jar Jar would be infinitely more tolerable.

I agree with that completely.

Been flying through season six, since it’s short and I do tend to bear down and finish something once I get far enough; I’m always way faster at reading a book’s last 100 pages than its first 100.

Anyway, this season is kind of nothing? I suppose it makes sense that removing Maul and Ventress arcs would cause it to fall flat, as the other seasons have relied on their quality spikes for the big arcs.

She might still appear this season, but I wasn’t expecting Ahsoka to be gone this long, like not even being mentioned. It’s displeasing. The thumbnail on Disney+ has always been the poster for the final season, so I know she’s part of that.

Anyway, hopefully I’m reverse-jinxing my way into a good final stretch of the season. To be clear, I don’t think it’s been bad…it just seems like a drop-off.

Ha, you only have to wait a week or so. CW fans watching at the time they released had to wait years to find out where Ashoka was.

You may want to revisit RotS (III) somewhere around S7E8. It will really enhance your viewing of the last few episodes of the series.

And again, the Ventress/Dooku/Voss story is phenomenal if you end of deciding to go down that rabbit hole. The Maul one is more quick and action packed, which is probably why it was done as a graphic novel. There are pretty major developments for series characters in each.

I’m sure I’ll delve into books at some point. Right now there’s just so many of them and I’m not really sure what to use as an entry point.

Realistically, most of the books suck and are merely filler. Many of them aren't even connected (I don't think.) There are some exceptions, but Dark Disciple stands on it's own as it is actually made up of what was supposed to be 8 episodes of Clone Wars. It and DM: Son of Dathomir actually fill in the blanks and gaps that occurred due to the (temporary) cancellation.

Oh, and if GL/Disney = VKM, then Kathleen Kennedy is the Bruce Prichard with Dave Filoni/Jon Favreau combining to play the Paul Heyman role.

From the Wookiepedia entry on the book:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Disciple

Incidentally, I think that the moment of Ahsoka walking away was well done, but Anakin's part in it was the one thing that kind of surprised me. I'm sure it must have been deliberate for the Jedi Council's apology to Ahsoka to come across so muted - "Welp, sorry about that...the good news is that we'll let you hang with us again" - and I'm surprised that Anakin didn't get pissed at them for it, given the long-term goal of planting seeds of discontent. Instead, he just chases her down and tells her that she's messing up by walking. Not exactly the choice I would have expected.

This. Speaking as a literary enthusiast, many of the novels are also simply shoddily written.

I decided to delve into the books earlier this year, and specifically researched to find the cream of the crop. Darth Plagueis and the ROTS novelization are generally recognized to be the best. The Thrawn trilogy and Bane trilogy follow closely behind, although I think the latter is rather weak in the middle.

I liked Shatterpoint (Windu’s novel) a lot, but it really took me awhile to get into it.

I question why I even care about canon vs. non-canon, but I think I may struggle to get motivated to read Darth Plagueis since it was left out of canon by Disney.

It probably does make more sense to adopt a stance that Legends stuff is still functionally canon until such time as something in canon actually contradicts it.

Yeah, that’s basically how I operate. Most of Plagueis still fits perfectly, you just have to tweak a line or two. I can’t recommend that book enough, I’ve already reread it once.

There’s some great stuff in Legends. There’s also a lot of garbage. I completely understand Disney’s desire to weed out the nonsense. It’s clear that they intend to integrate or adapt the best parts of Legends material, especially with someone like Filoni overseeing things.