Image Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm
This whole quarantine business allowed my school (and homework) to end around near only 1 PM (my school ended at 12:30 PM, and my left-over work was insignificant to not even take me past 1 PM including eating lunch). This is definitely better than regular school, and if you disagree, you're lying. Just kidding. People can have varying opinions, but some "opinions" are closer to the truth for some people more than others. Some may vastly prefer regular school and its face-to-face interaction (even though I think that Hangouts chats and video calls are plenty and still make me feel as if my classmates are right here... and then again, my best friends are now either are in other classes or in schools elsewhere in New Jersey), but I don't. That is since, as different people who have had different life experiences, and gotten different things out of each of those experiences, which shapes their "opinions", which sorry Achieve3000, can still be facts but only in the minds of some people. Other kids might be bored at home, but as someone who's entire life hobbies have dominantly been trying to be productive online (blogging for six years, video editing, teaching myself to code, making art), it's a dream come true, as my quarantine bucket list probably let you know: http://www.arcabaran.com/2020/03/RJ-bucket-list-quarantine.html. My closest friends and best socializing only occurred once a month anyways, since again, the majority of my best friends (with only a few exceptions) have all moved on to different schools at this point.
Anyways, since we're on the topic of opinions, I'll go ahead and say one right now: The new episode of The Clone Wars that came out today was not the best one in the season. It wasn't better than the episode before it. Or the one before that. Or the one before that, and the one before that. So in other words, I found it to be the least good out of the entire season thus far. But it definitely wasn't bad; it was still a good episode.
Some may disagree with me, saying that the "side/filler episode" route is good for fleshing out and developing characters. I'd agree with that last part. Shows like Gravity Falls may have a lot of filler episodes, but they don't really ever waste time and actually develop characters' personalities. This episode, "Gone With a Trace", however? It introduced two new characters, and also explored Ahsoka a bit more. But as far as side episodes go, using Gravity Falls as an example (I miss and love that show so much), it is more closer to say, "Roadside Attraction" than "Northwest Mansion Mystery". The first of those I mentioned, for the 99% of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, is literally insignificant to the plot and doesn't really change anything, and unlike TCW's newest episode, actually contradicts something quite obviously done in the previous episode. The latter, also is mostly insignificant to the overarching story of the series (except for five seconds at the end that directly foreshadow the masterpiece episode to follow), but actually did flesh out two characters' arcs quite nicely.
So, to get back to talking about The Clone Wars since I got a little sidetracked in my analogies there. Basically, what I'm saying, is that the newest episode (which doesn't feature any clones... but that has nothing to do with a TCW's quality whatosever) is more filler that doesn't really develop Ahsoka's character an awful lot. But that's not a bad thing. This episode, as I saw it, was meant to be another Star Wars story where a regular person in the galaxy got the spotlight. More of a "day in the life", casual microscopic approach. Not every single Star Wars tale has to be about galaxy-changing wars and missions. This one focuses on Ahsoka, years after leaving the Jedi Order, sort of just trying to find her way in the Coruscant underworld when her speeder breaks (how exciting!) and she crashes right in the auto repair shop of a girl named Trace, who she just instantly befriends because Ahsoka is Ahsoka (as we saw, years ago, in the episode where she meets Barriss, this makes sense). She is a very friendly and social character, so this part made sense. But she hasn't really changed as a person yet (since, keep in mind, this is barely any time at all after she left the Order), other than being much more secretive about her being a Jedi since she doesn't want to draw attention to herself.
The new characters (two of them) were okay, and I think they were a good addition since they served to give us a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people in the galaxy. What do they think of this conflict, as an outsider? How do they make their living, and what (more mundane) challenges do they face? I won't spoil the point of the episode (not that it's a shocker at all), but Ahsoka teams up with one of the new characters to complete a more mundane task that slowly spirals out of control. Ahsoka, with her Jedi skills, clearly could fix the issue much more quickly if she just whipped out her two lightsabers and used the Force constantly. But she can't do that, and that may make the episode more mundane, but also adds a few interesting moments where the audience and Ahsoka know "what's up" but the other characters don't. So a neat gimmick, I guess.
What were the goods of this episode? Well, The Clone Wars quality of animation and all the technical stuff hasn't changed, even if I found this episode objectively more boring than the previous ones (even if in those, especially the first three, I couldn't always find a reason to keep keeping track of certain parts of certain battle sequences). The references to the larger world are still there, and well, it's still the The Clone Wars we all know and love. The bad sides are again, that it's purposefully more mundane, but it was clearly intentional to just focus on a small-scale thing for once. I'd still like to know more about Ahsoka's backstory without having to spend so much time on new characters first (oh cool, I get to find out what they've been up a lot but barely a second is spent on what Ahsoka has been doing all this time? Are we seriously going to need a spin-off Kenobi-like show for this?), but this still has my approval and enjoyment. I hope they don't spend more than another episode with this pace, with exciting stuff like the Siege of Mandalore (which ties right into The Mandalorian and Mando's childhood, by the way) and literally Order 66 during Revenge of the Sith(!). Overall, I'd still reccomend that if you were already watching Season 7, don't skip on this one and watch it soon. We've still got plenty of more episodes to go, and plenty of time to learn more about Ahsoka in her post-Jedi but pre-Rebel Alliance stage of life. If I were forced to give this episode a score from 1 to 100... umm, I don't know. A 80? So 4 stars.
What did you guys think of this episode if you watched it? Do you disagree with where I rank it among the other episodes released in Season 7 thus far? How is your hunkered-down life going, if that's even a thing where you live (I know I've got some readers in Antarctica, my blog stats tell me so---JK)? You can leave all of this and more in the comments section below, just make sure to stay six feet apart and wash your hands at all times! The next episode, episode 6, will release next Friday, and I'll still be in virtual school (my "last guaranteed day" of virtual school) and get to watch it early enough to be able to review it the day-of without having to blog during the evening.
Until then, this is Arca signing off. Stay healthy, and may the Force be with you! Also, Animal Crossing: New Horizons released today. Just thought that I'd mention that. Also, my little brother Onur's 11th birthday is tomorrow! These two events are possibly linked (*hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge**), and you'll hear about it more tomorrow on my blog, and Onur's blog. Yes, he has his own blog, too, and he said he's also going to make a review of this episode, here: https://omegaonix.blogspot.com/ Oh well, I already took two walks outside today (for gym class), and the pollen has started, so I'm going to use that as an excuse to continue watching Captain America: Civil War on Disney+ (I might review it eventually, so far it's quite good, and even introduces Spider-Man to the MCU, which I knew already, but I never expected the sudden execution of that idea to be this good). Yeah, this is my first time watching it in full. I tried watching a part of it on a plane flight to Turkey on Turkish Airlines (they've got a very robust movie selection, one month they literally had a promotion with Lucasfilm to have all six of the pre-2015 Star Wars movies on board at the same time, so I binged all the original trilogy), but my parents forced me to "sleep" since time zones or something. Also, I just realized that this quarantine business and the "later is now" stuff that people are saying makes this literally the perfect time to finish my Watch Later playlist on YouTube that has been accruing massively over the last year or two. That's enough rambling for one paragraph, so see you all tomorrow! Please check out my previous post if you haven't already, about me slowly descending into madness due to my curiosity about the origins of my blog logo's font: http://www.arcabaran.com/2020/03/seeing-my-blog-logos-font-in-other.html
What're you talking about, m8? This episode was better than The Garfield Show and Marques Brownley eating "Holy Mac" combined! (P.S., "Holy Mac" is way better than all of The Clone Wars, just so you know)
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