After a killer three-episode arc, The Clone Wars season 2 has slowed down considerably.
1. Padme’s not a player, she just friends a lot
In “Senate Spy,” we get a rare glimpse at the inner workings on the Padme/Anakin relationship. While there is a lot to the ‘Anakin is a crazy, jealous weirdo,’ this is the first time we’ve ever seen him have actual reason to be jealous. Sure, he’s still a little nuts for being mad that his ex had a relationship before him, but you can kind of understand it as, a) he’s a Jedi, so he has no exes, and b) she’s significantly older than he is, so he’s probably a little uneasy with the idea of her boning down while he had a Padawan rat tail.
I also appreciated how the show substituted ‘friend’ for date, flirt, fuck – any action that was vaguely romantic became ‘friend.’ I mean, I get why, but it bordered on ‘smurf’ ubiquity.
This episode didn’t really have too much more going for it, but was an enjoyable bit of Anakin/Padme relationship building material. It almost – almost – gave you a glimpse into their attraction. But not quite.
2. Prequel Anakin
Due to the aformentioned jealousy, mixed with his whining over Obi-Wan ‘not being there’ for him in “Landing at Point Rain” (because, you know, his ship crashed), this was the closest that The Clone Wars Anakin has come to Prequel Anakin, aka insufferable Anakin. Throughout this series, we’ve seen Anakin be lots of things, from petty to moody to impulsive, but he hasn’t been nearly as intolerable as he was in these two episodes. Part of me is glad that the show decided to try to bridge the gap between the two interpretations; the other part of me really wishes that we could have one safe space from shitty Anakin.
3. Enjoying the kills?
If properly reading the subtext of this show, it’s easy to see that it was Lucas and co. criticizing the Jedi way of doing things, and giving us hints as to why the Jedi went extinct. To me, “Landing at Point Rain” was a fairly clear indication that the Jedi were not properly passing along their beliefs to their recruits. We see three Jedi – Ahsoka, Anakin, and Ki-Adi-Mundi – all keeping tally of their droid kills, bragging about them to one another. I know that they wouldn’t consider droids lifeform and therefore, I guess, are expendable? But still, this seems at odds with just about everything we’ve seen from ‘good’ Jedi before. One of my favorite bits of the Prequels is the Qui-Gon meditating during the delays in his battle with Darth Maul. It shows that the Jedi are most interested, at all times, in balance and peace within the Force, more so than anything else.
So while fragging droids doesn’t necessarily defeat that purpose, it would appear to me that a true Jedi, one who is balanced and reflective, wouldn’t want to destroy anything unnecessarily, nor would they brag about this. I thought that was where the final scene of the episode was going, with Obi-Wan expressing incredulity of them keeping count, but then Ki-Adi-Mundi drops his ’65, beyotch!’ in there. If the reason was to show that, ‘wow, the Jedi order had problems even before Anakin,’ then well played. But I fear it is just a bit of machismo that wasn’t needed.
4. Return to Geonosis
When I was watching “Landing at Point Rain,” at first I was amazed at how, visually, the show managed to match the tone of Attack of the Clones. Of course, then I remembered that nearly that entire movie was shot in front of a green screen, and it became a whole lot easier for them to ape the digital world in a similarly digital environment.
I also have to note that, once we hit Geonosis, I lost almost all interest in the episode. The ghost of Clones was just too strong. I found myself looking for Padme’s weird half shirt and some bad CGI faux-dinosaurs, and just cared less and less.
5. Camaraderie
I’ve always found the idea of the Jedi as soldiers a bit troubling, for a bunch of reasons. I still feel that way, but this episode offered a little more insight into their ranks and, specifically, the camaraderie between the Jedi, that I got it a little more. Again, Ki-Adi-Mundi counting dead droids didn’t exactly work for me, but the idea of there being certain things that Jedi do in battle and then talk about later was a very relatable point. This seems like the equivalent of a workplace in-joke or the sort of shared look of frustration that any co-workers of a certain length of time develop between one another. While it still seems unlike a Jedi to do it, I could see them talking about it. I hope that makes sense.
