Today,
I’m staying home for the teachers I had growing up and in college.
Even
though I knew Disney+ was going to get me eventually, what with all its MCU
shows coming down the pike, the reason I signed up right off the bat was due to
The Mandalorian. Fandom-wise, I may
only be mid-level when it comes to Star
Wars, but I was still excited for the show. The cast list was to die for
and promos coming out looked sharp and cool. Watching the show’s first season
was something of an unexpected experience, but I still came away having a good
time (spoilers for the big ending of episode 1, but if you’ve been on the
Internet at all since November, I’m sure you already know what that is.)
The
unnamed Mandalorian (nicknamed “Mando” by some of his associates) is a bounty
hunter, one of the best in the guild. When a contact approaches him about a
major job on offer from a very hush-hush client, the Mandalorian’s main
interest is in how much the job pays. But when he tracks down the bounty, which
he’s to bring to the client no questions asked, the Mandalorian isn’t sure
whether he can go through with it.
We’ll
get this out of the way first. As pretty much everyone knows by now, the bounty
is “the Child,” a.k.a. Baby Yoda, a.k.a. the Internet’s favorite person/puppet
and our best hope for the future. Baby Yoda is very obviously adorable and
awesome, and The Mandalorian revolves
around the tried-and-tested trope of the tough, loner warrior unexpectedly
saddled with an adorable moppet who cracks his gruff exterior. Whether he’s
chilling in his hover-carseat, toddling around, teething on a knob from the
Mandolorian’s ship, or using his immense Force abilities, Baby Yoda is utterly
lovable, and not even the Mandalorian’s mercenary philosophy or general
misanthropy can withstand the cuteness.
That
said, the show very much knows that the Mando-Baby Yoda relationship is its ace
in the hole, and as such, it can kind of coast where other things are
concerned. The first season is pretty meandering, mostly consisting of a
variety of side quests featuring the Mandalorian taking odd bounty-hunting/protection
gigs to fund his and Baby Yoda’s journey from planet to planet. There’s very
little throughline, and while things do come together a little more towards the
end, the different connective features feel a little self-conscious, like they
wrote a bunch of separate stories and then stapled them all together at the end
instead of planning it that way.
The
show does ultimately feel worthwhile to me, but some may not find Baby Yoda’s
cuteness and the fantastic production design (seriously – from a production
standpoint, this series often looks nicer to me than the new trilogy does)
enough to sustain them. A number of the more self-contained episodes start to
drag at a certain point, even though most of them clock in at under 40 minutes,
and with the more episodic nature of the season, certain episodes have a lot
more going for them than others.
Still,
we get to spend a lot of time hanging out in different locales and meet a
number of enjoyable characters along the way. My personal favorites include a retired
warrior, a local ship mechanic, and a droid that’s way too quick to resort to
self-destruct mode. It’s a neat wander through the Star Wars universe, and I’m glad to add it to the canon.
Speaking
of the aforementioned cast to die for, the episodic season structure,
unfortunately, means that most of these actors only pop up for an episode or
two at most. And so, Giancarlo Esposito, Ming-na Wen, Amy Sedaris (Princess
Carolyn!,) Taika Waititi, Omid Abtahi (Salim from American Gods,) and Nick Nolte are all great, but they also
disappear pretty quickly. Carl Weathers gets a little more to do as Greef
Karga, an old bounty-hunter associate of the Mandalorian’s, but for the most
part, the only characters we follow consistently are the Mandalorian and Baby
Yoda. As the Mandalorian, the part of that duo who isn’t played by a puppet, Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell, we hardly
knew ye) does a nice job drawing us in, even though his face is always covered
by a helmet. He does a lot with just his voice and his body language to make us
feel what the Mandalorian is thinking.
Warnings
Violence,
a few disturbing images, language, drinking, and thematic elements.
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