God, I'm going to have sit through one more episode of this crap. I'll get more into this later, but the Onderon arc is starting to wear on me. It's just not very good. Anyway, the episode begins where we left off last week with the Onderon rebels infiltrating the capital and using guerrilla tactics on the Separatists. After attacking more droids, Steela gives a message to the people using the tried and true tactic of giant hologram to join their cause and overthrow the King Rash (who I called Young Derek Jacobi last week). King Rash is still pissed and talking over the situation with the General of his home army and Kalani, the droid general Dooku sent him last week.
The home General (who doesn't get a name so I'll call him General Moustache) seems like a nice guy, like he's with the bad guys only because he runs the army and the bad guys are in charge of the army right now. Naturally, he clashes with Kalani because Kalani works for Dooku and is therefore a huge jerk because Dooku be evil yo. Despite saying that it wasn't the case last week, King Rash still thinks the old king is running the rebels. Oh, by the way the old king's name is Dendup. Dendup. Even in the world of stupid Star Wars names, that is a stupid name.
More after the break,
Rash has Dendup brought in so he can say again that he isn't running the rebels. Rash is sick of it and finally decides to just kill him at a big public execution. The rebels catch wind of this and know that if they want their cause to succeed they'll need the old king. Steela, being smart, says they'll rescue Dendup on his way to the chopping block. But Saw, being a moron, says they should rescue him now then goes off to do it. Like I said, moron. Steela sends one of her troops to tail him. Meanwhile, Ahsoka talks with Anakin and Obi-Wan back on Coruscant where they urge her to step back from the conflict, lest the Jedi's involvement become public knowledge.
Saw manages to break into the royal palace where Dendup (it gets dumber every time I write it) is being held. He kills the one battle droid guarding him, seriously only one battle droid is watching this guy, and they have a heart-to-heart. Dendup says he wanted to remain neutral in the conflict because he thinks both the Republic and Separatists are corrupt and wanting to keep his people out of the conflict. Noble, but it does create a plot hole. Lux Bonteri, remember him?, said back in War on Two Fronts that he was helping the rebels because his dead mother was the senator from Onderon. And she was a senator in the Separatist Senate. So how could she be a senator in the Separatist Senate if the planet she represented was neutral?
At any rate, Saw gets captured because he's a moron and Kalani tortures him for information. It doesn't work so General Moustache gives him some coffee and tries to play good cop. Saw asks him what the hell, they talk ideology, blah-de-blah moving on to something interesting. The rebel troop comes back and says Saw was captured. Lux wants to rescue him but Steela says no, they need to focus on rescuing Dendup. See, told she was smart. The next day is the execution and King Rash decides to exceute Saw too. The rebels come out to the square and get their plan ready. Also Steela doesn't bother to disguise herself. Even though she's a wanted criminal. Forget what I said about her being smart. To make a long story short, they rescue the king but Rash brings out more droids and captures them but then General Moustache brings out the home army and the rebels and Dendup escape but General Moustache gets caught but Ahsoka frees him and the people of Onderon turn on King Rash. Dendup says we're getting one more goddamn episode of this. Oh, and Anakin and Obi-Wan find out Ahsoka revealed the Jedi's involvement. Oops. End episode.
Overall, this is probably the best episode so far of the Onderon arc. It found a balance of action and narrative that the other two were missing. But I am just getting sick of this. This whole rebels on a neutral planet feels like ground we've covered before. It's coming off very stale to me. Not helping is the rather one-dimensional villains. Rash feels very cliche, nothing really separating him from other jerkasses who took over from rightful king characters. And Kalani, despite a decent robot design, is indistinguishable from any other Separatist general.
Plus, there's the problem most Clone Wars multi-parts have. The individual episodes feel like separate stories, not like chapters in one overarching story. For example, General Moustache is only introduced in this episode. We've never seen him before even though he introduces another side to the antagonists. It would have been interesting to see him before and it would have strengthened the story. I think if this arc were maybe one or two episodes and more focused it would be better. If we got more of a look at our villains, round them out some more it would make for a stronger story. But as is, this arc just feels stale and dragged out.
All in all, still improving but I'll still be glad when this is over next week. Then we can move on to something fresher. Hopefully.
See you next week.
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