Star Wars: Andor 2.04 - 2.06
May. 1st, 2025 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAfter the last three eps included Space German in the terminology used by Dedra (i.e. the word "Kinderblock" which does not exist in German, but is the combination of two German words), we now meet the Space French. Vive la Resistance! Or not.
I now see the point of the episode and a half long (definitely USian) comic relief rebels from 2.01 and 2.02, because otherwise, I would be tempted to eye the presentation of the Space French rebels as naive amateurs in these episodes as the usual Anglo obsession with presenting the French as bad at fighting and in need of Anglosaxon aid. Instead of simply being well intentioned and not incompetent but simply inexperienced at rebelling because they were a wealthy core planet before things went imperial oppression shaped. And all kidding aside, production was less than subtle in making the Planet Ghorman (Disney-)France-in-Space, what with the barrets, the cafés, the language, and the result is very pretty to look and hear at and an interesting change to coding all the core planets as basically US in space. (Okay, Mon's home planet is more India in space.)( I still roll my eyes a bit abouut the nation which like nearly all European nations (and more than many) has a blood soaked history in which it was both conquerer and conquered lots and lots of times getting cast as naive artistes in fashion and cuisine in US pop culture.)
Enough about the exterior. These three episodes were more Le Carré writes Star Wars than ever, with all the spying and counter spying, everyone bugging everyone else, moles everywhere and an emphasis on the horrendous human (for lack of a better term) cost, not just in the sense of people dying. And I do appreciate that Andor might be the first incarnation of Star Wars which does and manages to do what, say, the Sequels shied away from by making Finn first a Storm Trooper without any emotional connections to other Storm Troopers and hence no emotional conflicts in fighting his old base, secondly the lone Storm Trooper not responsible for a single war crime, and thirdly someone who never had any choice in becoming a Storm Trooper to begin with. Which is to say: without prettifying the ghastliness of a fascist regime one bit, Andor doesn't let its fascists hide behind masks or presents them with grotesque exteriors to signal their evilness. Instead, they're cast looking like every day people, with every day habits. The doctor excelling at torture swipes delicious canapés at a fancy reception to eat later. Thetv holonet hosts are as mindnumbingly trivial as on current day tv. Syril's mother continues to be the well known mother from hell from everyone's jokes. Okay, Syril and Dedra in their fanatical devotion to the cause and minimal yet very effective body language are NOT types you meet every day, but all the other Imperials are, chatting away jovially while planning on genocide. Which, for me, comes far closer to the rl thing and thus makes them far, far more frightening. And one reason why Syril so far as succeeded as the GFFA's least likely mole is that the story he's selling isn't really that different from the young hangar worker Cassian had recruited in the season opener. In Andor, you can't immediately tell the villains from the heroes by the fact that the later are the attractive looking ones in who instinctively avoid doing something wrong.
Episodes 4 to 6 among other things turn the spotlight on Lonni, Luthen's mole in the ISB, still doing the good work but hating it and by doing it making himself complicit in ongoing horrors; Lonni is not played by a square jawed leading man type but by an avarage looking character actor with an unbecoming moustache, and I can see older SW work casting him as a genuine evil Imperial for just that reason. He's arguably the rebel with the most difficult and dangerous task of the show, and 2.06., in which Kleya - who also takes a well deserved turn in the spotlight - impromptu drafts him to remove the listening device while Krennic and other Imperials are just a few steps away is one of the best, most taut spy sequences the show ever did. I mean, I don't believe Lonni will survive, this show being what it is, but I hope against hope, he and his family (that both Luthen and Kleya implicitly threatened to keep him in line) both.
Cassian gets more to do than in the first three episodes, but alas what he does get to do includes again the emotional storyline of least interest to me, at least his part in it, because of course I am moved by Bix' given the narrative space to struggle with all the trauma heaped up on her in the last season and in this one instead of being peachy keen one year later. But Cassian struggling with overprotectiveness as the result? Not so miuch. Six episodes in, it feels like our title character had all his character development last season and is the least interesting character of the ensemble this season. At least to this viewer.
New Bail Organa for his cameo scene: as I am always on Team Recast over Team Drop Character or Use Creepy GCI if Actor Unavailable, I was fine with this. No offense to Jimmy Smits.
Not much Mon, but that's only fair as there was a lot of her in the first three eps, and what we do get includes the scene in the Senate where the actress does a wonderful job (again) at conveying how Mon feels seeing a democratic instution she once was proud to belong to now degraded into bootlicking spineless cheerleaders for an autocrat. (I'm sure any contemporary relevance is just a coincidence.)
Vel and Cinta: alas. They did the thing almost as surely condemming you as a character as the "one more job before retirement" speech by doing the heartfelt reconciliation of lovers before a dangerous mission. But because other than Mon and Cassian, both of whom can't die since they are in future SW installments (and Cassian not for long, ahem), EVERYONE featured in this show is more likely to die than not, I feel it does not warrant being listed as another example of Bury Your Gays.
Bix gets revenge on the torture doctor: I have mixed feelings. I mean, not in the sense that I think it's badly written. It is exactly what Bix would do, the guy who was looking forward to teaching his ghastly methods to many more people now he got a promotion certainly was a criminal of the worst kind, and I appreciate Cassian supported her by being there in the background and arranging for blowing things up, not by doing the revenge thing himself and taking away what she wanted and needed to do.
But. I have this thing where I didn't cheer when Aeryn put Crais in the torture device in s1 of Farscape, or when 24 made a cult of letting Jack Bauer torture any number of people, and where I feel uneasy when I get the impression the narrative wants us to cheer it as karma being served when the heroes torture a villain. Because torture is torture is torture. No matter how horrible a being the tortured person is. Killing Doctor Ghorst would have been one thing. (Even Bix' history with him aside, there were plenty of good reasons to do so, including him being about to inflict torture on many more people, and prison not being an option for a resistance cell.) But torturing him first the way he tortured her, that's different. And I feel stories that present this as something of a "fuck yeah!" moment do something wrong because it does have demonstrable rl consequences (see the soldiers abusing Iraqui prisoners quoting 24 back when yours truly thought it couldn't get worse than Bush II). Mockingbird might be the most often critiqued of Hunger Games novels, but I thought Suzanne Collins did something very right when making the idea to inflict on the citizens of the Capitol what they did to the Districts as the point where Coin reveals herself as a genuine villain. I cannot cheer for torture, fictional or real, and I don't like it when the narrative wants me to. Especially if the narrative otherwise prides itself in highlighting the danger of losing your humanity, see Luthen's big s1 monologue, or for that matter Saw Guerrera in these most recent episodes literally revelling in poisoning himself, in a none too subtle symbolism.
I now see the point of the episode and a half long (definitely USian) comic relief rebels from 2.01 and 2.02, because otherwise, I would be tempted to eye the presentation of the Space French rebels as naive amateurs in these episodes as the usual Anglo obsession with presenting the French as bad at fighting and in need of Anglosaxon aid. Instead of simply being well intentioned and not incompetent but simply inexperienced at rebelling because they were a wealthy core planet before things went imperial oppression shaped. And all kidding aside, production was less than subtle in making the Planet Ghorman (Disney-)France-in-Space, what with the barrets, the cafés, the language, and the result is very pretty to look and hear at and an interesting change to coding all the core planets as basically US in space. (Okay, Mon's home planet is more India in space.)( I still roll my eyes a bit abouut the nation which like nearly all European nations (and more than many) has a blood soaked history in which it was both conquerer and conquered lots and lots of times getting cast as naive artistes in fashion and cuisine in US pop culture.)
Enough about the exterior. These three episodes were more Le Carré writes Star Wars than ever, with all the spying and counter spying, everyone bugging everyone else, moles everywhere and an emphasis on the horrendous human (for lack of a better term) cost, not just in the sense of people dying. And I do appreciate that Andor might be the first incarnation of Star Wars which does and manages to do what, say, the Sequels shied away from by making Finn first a Storm Trooper without any emotional connections to other Storm Troopers and hence no emotional conflicts in fighting his old base, secondly the lone Storm Trooper not responsible for a single war crime, and thirdly someone who never had any choice in becoming a Storm Trooper to begin with. Which is to say: without prettifying the ghastliness of a fascist regime one bit, Andor doesn't let its fascists hide behind masks or presents them with grotesque exteriors to signal their evilness. Instead, they're cast looking like every day people, with every day habits. The doctor excelling at torture swipes delicious canapés at a fancy reception to eat later. The
Episodes 4 to 6 among other things turn the spotlight on Lonni, Luthen's mole in the ISB, still doing the good work but hating it and by doing it making himself complicit in ongoing horrors; Lonni is not played by a square jawed leading man type but by an avarage looking character actor with an unbecoming moustache, and I can see older SW work casting him as a genuine evil Imperial for just that reason. He's arguably the rebel with the most difficult and dangerous task of the show, and 2.06., in which Kleya - who also takes a well deserved turn in the spotlight - impromptu drafts him to remove the listening device while Krennic and other Imperials are just a few steps away is one of the best, most taut spy sequences the show ever did. I mean, I don't believe Lonni will survive, this show being what it is, but I hope against hope, he and his family (that both Luthen and Kleya implicitly threatened to keep him in line) both.
Cassian gets more to do than in the first three episodes, but alas what he does get to do includes again the emotional storyline of least interest to me, at least his part in it, because of course I am moved by Bix' given the narrative space to struggle with all the trauma heaped up on her in the last season and in this one instead of being peachy keen one year later. But Cassian struggling with overprotectiveness as the result? Not so miuch. Six episodes in, it feels like our title character had all his character development last season and is the least interesting character of the ensemble this season. At least to this viewer.
New Bail Organa for his cameo scene: as I am always on Team Recast over Team Drop Character or Use Creepy GCI if Actor Unavailable, I was fine with this. No offense to Jimmy Smits.
Not much Mon, but that's only fair as there was a lot of her in the first three eps, and what we do get includes the scene in the Senate where the actress does a wonderful job (again) at conveying how Mon feels seeing a democratic instution she once was proud to belong to now degraded into bootlicking spineless cheerleaders for an autocrat. (I'm sure any contemporary relevance is just a coincidence.)
Vel and Cinta: alas. They did the thing almost as surely condemming you as a character as the "one more job before retirement" speech by doing the heartfelt reconciliation of lovers before a dangerous mission. But because other than Mon and Cassian, both of whom can't die since they are in future SW installments (and Cassian not for long, ahem), EVERYONE featured in this show is more likely to die than not, I feel it does not warrant being listed as another example of Bury Your Gays.
Bix gets revenge on the torture doctor: I have mixed feelings. I mean, not in the sense that I think it's badly written. It is exactly what Bix would do, the guy who was looking forward to teaching his ghastly methods to many more people now he got a promotion certainly was a criminal of the worst kind, and I appreciate Cassian supported her by being there in the background and arranging for blowing things up, not by doing the revenge thing himself and taking away what she wanted and needed to do.
But. I have this thing where I didn't cheer when Aeryn put Crais in the torture device in s1 of Farscape, or when 24 made a cult of letting Jack Bauer torture any number of people, and where I feel uneasy when I get the impression the narrative wants us to cheer it as karma being served when the heroes torture a villain. Because torture is torture is torture. No matter how horrible a being the tortured person is. Killing Doctor Ghorst would have been one thing. (Even Bix' history with him aside, there were plenty of good reasons to do so, including him being about to inflict torture on many more people, and prison not being an option for a resistance cell.) But torturing him first the way he tortured her, that's different. And I feel stories that present this as something of a "fuck yeah!" moment do something wrong because it does have demonstrable rl consequences (see the soldiers abusing Iraqui prisoners quoting 24 back when yours truly thought it couldn't get worse than Bush II). Mockingbird might be the most often critiqued of Hunger Games novels, but I thought Suzanne Collins did something very right when making the idea to inflict on the citizens of the Capitol what they did to the Districts as the point where Coin reveals herself as a genuine villain. I cannot cheer for torture, fictional or real, and I don't like it when the narrative wants me to. Especially if the narrative otherwise prides itself in highlighting the danger of losing your humanity, see Luthen's big s1 monologue, or for that matter Saw Guerrera in these most recent episodes literally revelling in poisoning himself, in a none too subtle symbolism.
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Date: 2025-05-01 10:45 am (UTC)T continues to think everyone not in Rogue One will die, which would make this REALLY depressing. Everyone does die at the end of Rogue One! But it's hopeful.
The What If Resistance, But Crap plotline seems to me to be one of the few times in this show that the writing is railroading and predictable. Yes we get the point these people are too eager and untrained and they're going to be screwed over by both sides! Yes Cinta is obviously doomed, yes Luthen and Cassian wind up at odds, yes Vel is also probably doomed. Sigh.
Both the Saw and Bix plots felt necessary, but kind of thin. I can see them as A and B plots of the same episode if this had been an episodic series rather than a series of films. Both actors are great, though.
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Date: 2025-05-01 02:50 pm (UTC)Vel has a pretty good chance at surviving right now - there was no reason for her to be on the Rogue One mission, so there is no need to explain why she wasn't -, but I think Wil is toast.
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Date: 2025-05-01 11:14 pm (UTC)Rogue One
Date: 2025-05-02 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-01 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-01 11:20 pm (UTC)I think Luthen arranged the whole mission as kind of extreme therapy for Bix -- she took back her power, she got revenge, she did the classic shoot-without-looking thing on her way out. Luthen may want her in the field, or at least looking ready for it, to get Cassian's mind off protecting her, the way he wanted to protect the rebels. But if she feels ready to go but isn't really psychologically ready, that could be tragic.