After a clone-centric interlude, we’re back with Anakin and Ahsoka in “Downfall of a Droid.”
“Trust in your friends, and they’ll have reason to trust in you.”
1. Artoo is special?
This episode put an idea in my head that I’ve never really considered before: R2-D2 isn’t just your average droid. Aside from C3PO and BB8, Artoo is the only droid we spend a lot of time with in the Star Wars films. It is hard to gauge how good someone is at a task until you see others attempting the same task. My daughter thinks I’m the best swimmer in the world because she can’t swim and I can; so, from the question of “how is R2D2 as an astromech?” never really came up.
But here, with the sadsack R3-S6 stepping on every rake and tripping over ever ottoman in his way, it begs the question: is Artoo really special? Does he possess something – can a droid be Force sensitive? – that separates him from the other droids we see? In A New Hope, Artoo is special because he doesn’t break down and have smoke billow from his openings, but could it be something more?
2. More attachments
One of the central tenets of being a Jedi, or so it seems, is a rejection of material objects, as well as anything that gives one an attachment to anything other than the Force. By mourning the loss of Artoo so deeply, we see that Anakin hasn’t quite mastered that portion of being a Jedi just quite yet. A lot of Anakin’s lack of Jedi-ness can be attributed to his late start for training and, you know, his destiny as a Sith.
This is one of the more interesting things that George Lucas built into the Jedi mythos: their utter detachment from the world. When we first met Obi-Wan and Yoda, they don’t seem cold at all. They are both compassionate and kind. But then, in the prequels, the Jedi are pretty routinely insufferable. But Anakin here is more like original trilogy Obi-Wan and Yoda than anything else. Could the Jedi have realized that, perhaps, they were too closed off?
3. Grievous is great?
Again, we hear in the introduction about how there have been a series of defeats by General Grievous, and I continue to get frustrated at this show. A commenter last week took me to task for saying that Grievous is a flunky because he had “a good plan.” A good plan doesn’t make you great! I have a good plan for me losing 30 pounds – salads for lunch, a morning run each day, healthier snacks, and more active time after work. That plan isn’t going to happen though, because I suck.
A truly interesting episode of the show would be to see the Jedi (or the Republic forces, or whatever) fall to Grievous for once. Show us his technical brilliance or incredible strength or his, I don’t know, fucking anything. Every time we see him, his promise is on display, but he never closes the deal at all. At this point, this is like seeing an advertisement for a Harlem Globetrotters game, and the poster taunting the Washington Generals’ winning streak – you just don’t buy it.
4. Poor R3
I know the show had to do a lot of heavy lifting to make Artoo look special, but R3 is the lamest droid ever here. He essentially is wearing a “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Jill Stein” pin on his armor – he’s comically bad. Again, I get why they had to do that, but subtlety isn’t the show’s strength.
5. Start of another ‘film’
This feels like the start of another trilogy of connected episodes – I do no reading past the episode I’m watching, so I really don’t know – but I find this technique fascinating. On one hand, it makes the show’s interstitial episodes feel more special and fun. But on the other, I like when television acts like television, and uses the uniqueness of its medium to its advantage, and doesn’t try to ape being film. And the ‘trilogy’ episodes are essentially a film with act breaks.
It’s not a huge problem with the show, but it does make it different than I expected it to be. In some ways, it makes it feel much smaller, as it doesn’t have as much world building and season-long storylines. Everything feels very fragmented and compartmentalized.
