Andor series: observations

Yup. The Empire isn't listening to the people, and the people are sick of listening to the Empire.

I also enjoyed the scene between Syril and Meero. The black comedy was off the charts. The look on her face was hilarious. She is like a battle droid struggling to compute the very idea that someone actually wants to sacrafice themselves to something greater than their own self-interest. 

So ya. Syril is gonna be a simp for the Empire to the bitter end I think. 

I'd totally caught that!

By the way, I neglected to comment earlier on about the close-quarters scene between Meero and Karn from last week's episode. The subtext seems to playfully suggest sexual interest on Karn's part but I don't at all doubt that Karn's interest in bureaucratic integrity is 100% sincere. Brilliant and hilarious!

About this week's episode:

Not too many human beings in history can write a monologue like Skarsgård's. Major, major props.

At the very least, the language employed throughout this series has proven nearly parallel to the caliber of Lucas' work in this department; not with his trademark irony and economy, mind you, but with a distinctive humanistic heft (and no small amount of Lucas-like formalism, actually).

Oh, and for more than a moment it sounded like Snoke was on the prison intercom stoking (or snoking?) and directing the uprising. Maybe there's something profoundly meta to unpack about this but I haven't given it too much thought... yet.

Well, thank the Force -- that was a real banger.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this episode as much as I did. I didn't even pass comment on the previous one in here. I was a little disconnected from the series by the 9th episode, and I thought the series had probably, to use Ingram's wording, plateaued already. And maybe, in some way, it has. And yet...

ACTING.

This episode had some fantastic acting in it -- a quality somewhat there and yet largely missing from the last two. Of course, the series has solid acting, and the serious, nicely textured performances (along with the solid dialogue) are one of the surprising high-points of watching; yet neither of the two preceding installments were carried to great places by the acting. There weren't any standout performances lofting the previous two to a higher place; everyone was reasonably commendable (although Forest Whitaker was bloody awesome in Episode 8) and that was pretty much it. Yet BOOM. The tenth episode suddenly made it clear why Andy Serkis was cast. After finding him somewhat annoying and one-note in the previous two, I was rooted to his character in this episode and hanging on his every word, his every expression. And Stellan Skarsgård, at last, got another Triple A speech at the end (I can still hear his impassioned exclamation of "Everything!" in my head). Even the Imperial mole got to deliver a wonderful performance as Luthen addressed him through the earpiece, Morpheus-like, as he rode the Matrix-coloured elevator. Just loved the way this episode built and built to a searing conclusion between two men on a platform -- and how the mole guy never left the elevator, but was stood in place the whole time, his soul battered into submission by Luthen's (Luthor's/Lucifer's) insistent diatribe. Another sucker (like Cassian) whom Luthen has now commanded to stay the course. Oh, the rhyme-y insidiousness of it! And the nice Star Wars touch of having Luthen appear in dark robes, all the time keeping his distance from his target; estranged, if you will, on his own dark path (echoing ROTJ Luke echoing Vader), from the warmth of humanity; alien to affection and normal human sympathies; the solipsism of the lone wolf who paradoxically requires and actively seeks out dedicated allies. I can't say enough about the last (or, okay, penultimate) scene.

I also loved the prison breakout. Just before the insurrection started, the tension reached unbearable levels. The release to action was immensely satisfying and actually made me sit up in my seat. It had me gripped in ways the Aldhani heist didn't. It's funny. Maybe expectations have something to do with it. I was hoping/expecting a lot from the rebels' raid of the Imperial garrison, but it somehow felt a bit paint-by-numbers and flat-footed. Perhaps I just resonated more to a bunch of imprisoned men rising up against their wardens and torturers. The action, the chaos, everyone pumped up on adrenaline and fighting for their freedom, their right to live in the sun again, their very determination to overcome... well, it was moving. And maybe showing how illusory, how exaggerated, power structures can be. And at the center of the chaos wasn't really Diego Luna's Cassian, but Andy Serkis' Kino. That, I think, is what made it work. Seeing Serkis' Kino take the intercom in the control room, but almost crumbling, almost losing his nerve, almost giving up entirely, and then suddenly embracing his inner tiger, was stirring. A series standout. And his dynamic with Cassian, where the young, burgeoning rebel actually had a real impact on him, lighting the touchpaper of his own conscience, finally made the entire prison escapade make sense to me. Because, yes, in every escapade is the word: escape. 

Of course, this episode also landed Mon back on Coruscant with the heftiest blow yet. Basically pimp her daughter out to the son of some shady banker/fixer guy; and if she chooses not to go along, risk exposing herself and her family and crippling the nascent Rebellion for good? What a hellish choice to mull over. It is obvious Mon wants more for her daughter than the sort of arranged marriage she herself landed in; and, after all, isn't she fighting (to the detriment of her own familial relations) for freedom of conscience, freedom from tyranny; the abolition of autocracy and the restoration of democracy? It's a perverse and brilliant dilemma for her to be landed in.

No Syril and almost no Dedra in this episode, but we apparently didn't need them. When I clicked the episode, I glanced at the playback bar and I noticed this episode was the shortest one yet. Would it be flimsy and insubstantial; or would it deliver the goods in a nice lean package? Fortunately, it was the latter, and a lot of my earlier investment in the series was restored. Poor Kino saying he couldn't swim. Unless I missed it, he wasn't shown jumping into the water. So what is his fate?

I will say that, visually, as assured as this show is, it can only produce workman-like action sequences (to steal some more of Ingram's evergreen wording). There's nothing particularly wrong with that; but neither does the series show its greatest hand in the few action set-pieces it has so far deployed. Its genius lies much more in the scripting, the acting, the slow building of tension, and in murky, cloak-and-dagger intrigue. Yet it's still enough of a visual sizzler to somehow nail a Star Wars vibe in other moments, like the confrontation between Luthen and Supervisor Lonni Jung (the Imperial mole). Jung's walk through the fetid unconscious -- sorry, the lower levels of Coruscant -- was nicely directed and eye-catching, full of spy-thriller atmosphere; and the elevator design was very Star Wars. I live for that shit.

So, yeah. With Episode 10, the series kind of restored some of my original lost enthusiasm (which peaked after an early re-watch of the first three episodes and started dwindling after the heist in the sixth). Write some good speeches, give them to great actors like Serkis and Skarsgård, and sit back and revel in the results. If "Andor" was somehow able to maintain this level of intensity in every episode, it would be a televisual masterpiece. As it stands, some episodes plainly seem to hit deeper than others; even if the writing and craftmanship of the show are respectable throughout. It's consistently decent. But sometimes only decent. But when talented actors are allowed to leave a deeper impression, they seem happy to do so -- and then the show is suddenly gripping again. For better, and, in some ways, for worse, "Andor" clearly operates according to a different algorithm. Maybe it's just about able to get away with its (for me) up-down, back-and-forth nature. I'm still undecided how I really feel about it. Nevertheless, even with my outstanding reservations, this episode delivered.

In fact, I think we can rename this show, "Simping for the Empire" and it is would be highly accurate.

I enjoyed the episode (just finished watching it). However, I probably had -- or have -- similar feelings to your own. The show is impressively realised, yet stuck in its own zen shoebox reality. There isn't the same mystical charge underpinning it that you find in the other Star Wars productions, big and small, nor the same comic book energy. Also, if you are into world design and fantastic imagination, you'll soon cop to the repeated environments of "Andor"; and you become aware, for all of the shows's polish and deft use of resources, of its typical TV world frugality. We repeatedly go back to the same dour, contained settings: Andor's mother's home on Ferrix and the featureless streets outside, Luthen's shop and Mon Mothma's spacious yet-now-montone digs on Coruscant, Syril's mother's apartment also on Coruscant (like a more plush, sci-fi version of Andor's mother's home than a distinct environment unto itself), and in this episode, Cassian randomly goes back to the same apartment on Niamos and Luthen shows up again at Saw's rebel hideout on not-Yavin. After you've seen them two or three times, these locations lose their original spark and you're just back to the same limited television sets. For all of the show's adult pretensions, there is a kind of managed artifice at work. In moments, the series has some irresistible levels of tension-building; but eleven episodes in, I think it isn't judging too hardly to say it mostly coasts and seems indifferent to ascending to any kind of memorable, genre-defining climax. 

The whole problem with "Andor" can be glimpsed in micro by considering each episode individually and trying to locate a personality or defining theme of some sort. In short, there doesn't really appear to be much of either. All the episodes of "The Mandalorian" and "Obi-Wan" shine brightly in my mind. With "Andor", it's more like, "The opening episode with Cassian killing those mall cops on Blade Runner planet", erm, "The third one where he meets Luthen", "The sixth where a heist happens"; and, hmm, "Some episodes where Cassian is captured and goes to prison for a bit." It would be unfair, perhaps, to call the series boring; but the episodes themselves tend to mush together, lack an eccentric flair, often move sideways instead of skyward, and the series mostly comes across as fairly talky and coiled instead of action-packed or even just feeling like its protagonist is being put through a series of ordeals and we're seeing him profoundly changed along the way. Yes, I was hard on it, but "Obi-Wan" arguably did a great deal more with Obi-Wan/Ben than "Andor" has done with Cassian; who, yes, is meant to be the figure at the centre of the Gilroy series, but comes across as relatively flat and uninteresting next to Luthen and Mon Mothma; never mind Syril or Saw Gerrera.

Of course, this episode offered a few neat things, in reverse order of intrigue/coolness:

3) B2EMO being all sad about Maarva's death and the empathetic way Cassian's burly friend Brasso treated him in response.

2) The scene of Cassian learning about Maarva's death and the eerie beauty of the ocean around him.

1) The rather badass scene of Luthen being intercepted by that Imperial patrol ship and then getting away.

The latter was a surprisingly well-done action set-piece; which, in typical "Andor" style, relied more on tension than lasers and explosions, yet was also assured when the little burst of action finally kicked in and resolved the tension. If anything, the whole sequence felt a bit shoehorned-in by this show's standards, bearing a tonality and sleekness of style more in-keeping with "The Mandalorian" and its copious scenes of Mando getting into firefights on the ground and in his ship in pretty much every episode. Yet it also served as a reminder that Star Wars is undeniably adept at little sequences like this; and as much as we might enjoy careful character building and well-done plotting, there's still nothing quite like a little exciting pew-pew-pew to engage the inner ten-year-old in all of us and set the heart racing.

Scratch that. Flying through the Eye was a straight up religious experience.

That was a really great season. Andor is on track to become the best Star Wars series ever IMO.