Clone Wars<\/em> again. I was on a plane this weekend and in my frantic attempt to leave the state, I threw the first two episodes of season 2 onto my iPod, thinking they’d make for a decent way to kill an hour or so of the flight.<\/p>\nThey did. In fact, I was so engaged that while I didn’t finish the second episode on the plane, I did finish watching it later that night once I’d reached my destination. <\/p>\n
What is it with this show, anyway? <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s exactly the kind of expanded universe claptrap I usually hate, absolutely devoid of any real dramatic suspense by virtue of the fact that since it’s simply connecting Episode II and Episode III, nothing of real consequence can happen to anyone but the characters they’ve created solely for this series. That’s beside the fact that it also happens to be plotted like unconnected installments in a Saturday morning serial on ritalin. <\/p>\n
And yet, goddamn, it’s fun. I’m a fan of General Grievous as a crazy, dumb, virtually moustache-twirling villain, but I also really enjoy Cad Bane, the new spaghetti western bounty hunter introduced at the end of last season. It’s hard to describe an alien with tubes coming out of his neck and a Sergio Leone cowboy hat as a more “sinister” villain than previous Star Wars<\/em> baddies, but he’s got an undercurrent of menace beneath his ridiculousness that plays well in the Clone Wars<\/em> “stories,” such as they are.<\/p>\nI think the creators of Clone Wars<\/em> have finally gotten the hang of what they’re doing; it’s the cool parts of Star Wars minus the lame shit. No romance, no midicholorians, no whining Anakin. Lots of space fights, desperate rescues, and Yoda growling portentious catchphrases. <\/p>\nBest of all, it’s 22 minutes and change. I’d even watch Phantom Menace<\/em> if it were only 22 minutes of the good parts. Pod race, Darth Maul duel…I could swallow that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You kids remember Bill Murray, right? Whatever. So I started watching Clone Wars again. I was on a plane this weekend and in my frantic attempt to leave the state, I threw the first two episodes of season 2 onto my iPod, thinking they’d make for a decent way to kill an hour or so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}