This review is only going to be about the first fifteen
minutes or so of the episode, because that’s all I could stomach watching. I
couldn’t watch any more – it was that bad. It’s rare that I can’t finish
watching an episode of a television show if I intend to review it, but this
episode was so bad it was repulsive.
Let’s dissect this episode moment-by-moment.
Kenobi lands on a city-planet called Daiyu. It’s like
Coruscant, but not. As soon as Kenobi comes out of the spaceport terminal, he
looks around at the busy environment as though slightly scared of it all.
Already, this is bollocks. Obi-wan Kenobi has been in environments like this
for most of his life. He’s spent a huge amount of time on Coruscant; he’s been
all over the galaxy as a Jedi Knight, to countless different planets with
different peoples, cultures, and technologies. He would not be scared of a busy
street. ‘But he’s been living in isolation on Tatooine for ten years! He’s
changed!!!’, I hear the Twitterati scream. No. When you’ve had that much
experience of all these kinds of places, ten years on Tatooine is not enough to
make you scared of it all again. What is this bizarre obsession with diminished
characters that Hollywood and idiots on Twitter have nowadays? They relish
in the idea of making great characters shit. It’s grotesque. Kenobi is a Jedi
Master – he didn’t stop being that just because the Jedi Order was
disbanded. He should still be an extremely powerful Jedi. He does not have this
timidness at the end of Revenge Of The Sith; he doesn’t have it at the start of
A New Hope. This is bollocks.
Kenobi goes and asks a random person about a ship he’s tracking.
Why? Why does he go and ask this person? It isn’t apparent. And then we get
some more insanely expository dialogue – the person replies ‘You’re in Daiyu
now. All signals in or out are blocked. People like their secrets out here.’.
This is just pathetic. A real person, in this setting, would not talk like this.
This line reeks of the writers wanting to say something to the audience, but
not having the talent to do it in a naturalistic way. The line is also performed
in a way that only Hollywood actors can do – as though this one line is going
to be their big break into television, if only they can perform it with enough
over-the-top American brashness.
We see a lingering shot of a street on this planet. It
lingers too long, suggesting that this street is somehow central or important –
it’s one fucking street on a city planet – this street is not important. We see
Kenobi wandering down the street, looking at the others on it. The framing of
the shot and the primary-school-level acting of the other actors make you
painfully aware that this is just a set (somewhere in Los Angeles, I assume).
It’s a caricature of a ‘bustling street’ – makes you wonder if the writers and
directors have ever even been down a busy street. (Perhaps this is
enduring effects of America’s car-centric, non-walkable cities.) Kenobi just
wanders around – you’d have no idea he was on a time-critical mission at all.
There’s a homeless clone army veteran at the side of the
street. This allegory isn’t just on-the-nose – it’s kicking me in the head, I
collapse, unconscious, and then it’s kicking me on the ground out of baseless
spite.
A lot of people nowadays accuse television shows of being ‘political’.
Now, this isn’t really a correct use of the word ‘political’, which ought to
mean ‘having to do with polity’, where ‘polity’ means ‘the organisation and governance
of human society’. This is a television show – it has nothing to do with
organising society. But I know what these people mean – the term their looking
for is ‘social commentary’. This is social commentary – it’s making a
comment about society.
Now, I’ve written many allegorical stories in my life. In some of them the allegory is very obvious – deliberately so – and in others it’s a bit more obscure – also deliberately so. Now I would hope that my stories have never come across as preachy or patronising. (I would like to think that I could tell if that were the case, and edit that tone out, but it might be that when one is writing an allegorical story, one just can’t tell if it’s going to come across that way.) Because it is bad when stories or story elements come across as preachy. I think it’s particularly bad when the message is something that’s so obviously true (yes, it’s bad that there are so many homeless people – this isn’t a revolutionary thought), and when so little effort is put into the metaphor (I mean, here, they just have a homeless veteran in the street – that’s it – that’s the extent of the allegory – put some fucking effort in). It comes across as someone thinking they’re a genius for coming up with something everyone already knows and putting in very little thought or effort.
I think it’s fine for stories to have social commentary in
them, but if it comes across as preachy, it completely pulls you out of the
story, and you realise you’re just hearing the opinions of the writers. And I
think in order to not be preachy, it’s got to be more deftly done
than this.
We are 1:30 into the episode, and there has already been
THIS much wrong with it.
Some Stormtroopers walk along the street saying ‘Clear a
path.’. Why?
Then we get an absolutely disgusting scene. A random person
comes up to Kenobi and says ‘You wan’t some spice, old man?’. This is very
obviously a reference to the ‘deathsticks’ scene in Attack Of The Clones, but
this time, rather than Kenobi instantly telling this person to go away and
rethink their life, this person just gives him one of the substances she’s
selling – Kenobi doesn’t even agree to take it – she just puts it in his
pocket.
The sheer arrogance of the writers to do this.
Apparently they were so insulted by a scene in the prequels telling a drug
dealer to maybe stop selling that shit (I would guess because some of these
writers are obsessed with consuming a particular intoxicant themselves), that
they wanted to put in a new scene where instead Kenobi is just given some of
this shit – doesn’t even get a choice. I have had the misfortune to meet a lot
of very arrogant people in my life – I have never seen arrogance like
this. It’s pathetic, disgusting, and grotesque. To be so self-obsessed, smug,
and self-righteous that when given the opportunity to write a sequel to another
writer’s work, all they can do is think about how they can undermine and
displace what that writer did, to put their own vapid, self-centred, immoral
worldview into every corner of it. There are few things in this world that I
have been more revolted by.
We are then introduced to a fake Jedi who is some kind of
people-trafficker. This allegory is harder to not notice than a used dildo in a
public library. This scene tries to be funny, but it’s a style of humour that is
very un-Star-Wars.
Kenobi then goes through some kind of drugs factory – again,
this allegory is harder to not notice than a condom in a bride’s hair. This
scene looks more like something out of a contemporary Marvel action show than
something out of Star Wars.
Kenobi then finds his way further into the building / complex. It’s not really very clear where he is (other than a film studio somewhere in California). It’s a bit weird that the first street he tried on this city planet just happens to be the one with the building where Leia’s being kept, but that’s what happens when the writers are thinking more about shoving a message down the viewers’ throats than worldbuilding.
Kenobi is immediately found by some goons. They fight. We
see that Kenobi has gotten a bit out-of-practice. Again, what the fuck is this
obsession with diminishing characters?! This guy is a very skilled Jedi Master –
taking on two goons should be piss-easy, even after ten years. Why? Because
this guy is an incredibly skilled force user, and that doesn’t diminish with
age (see Yoda). Bizarrely, Kenobi doesn’t use the Force or his lightsaber at
any point in this fight, despite both being available.
There’s another fight. Kenobi continues not to use the Force
or his lightsaber, for no good reason. Another goon comes in; there’s some
pointless dialogue. Then the goon says ‘You’re not a Jedi anymore, Kenobi.’,
and here once again we are hearing the voice of the writers, not the characters.
The writers are thinking about Kenobi as ‘no longer being a Jedi’ – that
thought was in their head when they were writing this show. But this just shows
how utterly misguided they are. You don’t stop being a Jedi just because the
Jedi Order has been disbanded. That would be like saying you stop being a Christian
if the Vatican shut. Jediism is a way of life, and a belief system. As long as
you continue to live the Jedi way of life, or continue believing in its tenets,
you are still a Jedi.
We see a bit more of the Inquisitor – not the main one – the
other one – Reva, I think she’s called? This actress has absolutely no ability
to come across as menacing or threatening whatsoever. (And this time it can’t
be put down to bad writing – she has some very short, simple lines, that should
be easy to deliver well, but they are weak and ineffectual. This is what
happens when your understanding of evil is merely a caricature of evil.)
Kenobi finds Leia, and once they’re out in the street again,
Leia says ‘You seem kinda old and beat up.’ – once again, this is just the
thoughts of the writers. This is such basic shit – I don’t think I have ever
seen such bad writing in a television show. (I might even include the ending to
Game of Thrones in that.)
The inquisitors talk to each other for a bit – the main one
and Reva, with a few throw-away lines from the others. The whole thing comes
across like an annual review in a big corporation, not like two dark side users
talking to each other – it’s quite comical. The main inquisitor guy tells Reva
that she’s the ‘least of us’ because she ‘came from the gutter’ – for fuck’s
sake – when have force users ever cared about class? Dark side users care about
one thing: the accumulation of power for its own sake. Your status is
determined by your power, not your class. They don’t give a shit about where
you came from.
The main inquisitor guy then puts Reva on leave, promising that
HR will speak to her later.
And that’s it. That’s the first fifteen minutes. I couldn’t
watch any more, and won’t. I mean, bloody hell, almost every frame of those
fifteen minutes had an issue. It’s so bad it’s almost nauseating – I feel like
throwing up.
This show is quite possibly the worst television I have ever
seen, and I will not be watching any more of it. This isn’t Star Wars, or even
remotely connected to it. This is artistic defilement.