And so Mandalorian, Season 2 has begun, and it amuses me to continue to provide commentary, but only if I can spice it with bits of commentary on Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery because that will make this blog entertaining for even fewer people than it was before.
Alright, here we go, Chapter 9: “The Marshal”
The episode begins with a recap of season 1, and I have been wondering for a while why these recaps exist. Most of the people watching this show will have binge-watched Season 1 right before Season 2 started, so the purpose has been puzzling the hell out of me. It’s not like back in the day, when you needed these recaps if you started a series in the middle. I think, however, I have figured it out. I theorize, my friends, that these recaps are solely for people in relationships with a lover, a spouse, a parent, a child—someone who is a big fan and has badgered their loved one into watching a favorite show—and that loved one has no intention of watching every episode just to catch up on the story. They have reluctantly agreed to watch a single episode to find out whether or not it’s any good. The recaps, therefore, are for the poor, badgered newbies, and I just want them to know: you are seen, my friends, and this blog entry is dedicated to you!
Once the episode starts, the Mandalorian is on a new planet, and though it kind of looks like Mos Eisley, you can tell it’s not Tatooine because of all the graffiti. I suppose I could stop and try to figure out what the graffiti says, but to be honest, I don’t really care.
Star Trek Discovery premiered a couple of weeks ago, so they are on Episode 3 this week, and I can note that they have jumped forward 1000 years from the 23rd century where they began, and that means they can go to the same planets, but use all new sets and not be accused of ruining canon. Very clever, Discovery writers, very clever.
The Mandalorian goes to some kind of boxing match between two Gamorreans[1] (Jabba the Hutt employed such as guards in Return of the Jedi; they are not any more pleasant in this episode). He’s after finding some info about another Mandalorian who can supposedly help him start searching for Baby Yoda’s people, and…that makes no sense whatsoever. He’s looking for Jedi. Why isn’t he tracking mysterious sorcerers? Someone, somewhere, just wants to slow down the plot and add Boba Fett to this series. Boba Fett was kind of cool because he just nodded and never said much. I do not think familiarity will add to his coolness factor. I would rather see Sabine Wren or Ahsoka Tano, but I feel I will be disappointed, alas.
So after a betrayal and a fight scene, the Mandalorian finds out that there is rumor of another one of his…way?...on Tatooine. Also, he hangs this guy by his feet from a lamp post, shoots out the light, and leaves him to be eaten by creatures with red eyes, so that he doesn’t technically kill the guy, as he promises that he won’t die by his hand. I suppose someone thinks this is cool. I think it undermines my empathy for the character.
The fight scene, by the way, isn’t bad at all, but it is boring compared to the fight scene in Episode 2 of Star Trek Discovery where Michelle Yeoh just destroys an entire bar full of bad guys in their faux-western episode, and I am going to say it right now: I don’t care how much armor and how many little bird missiles the Mandalorian collects, Michelle Yeoh could take him down without breaking a sweat, my friends. You go watch her character and come back and tell me I’m wrong.
I’m not wrong.
Back to Tatooine, and the Mandalorian borrows a speeder bike and goes out to a miserable mining town to try to track down another Mandalorian. He rides into the town, down the main street, really slowly, while townspeople look at him silently or shut their doors like every single cowboy entering every single town in every single western ever filmed before stopping and tying up his horse…I mean bike…and going into the saloon. Ugh. Really? Of course, the person wearing Mandalorian armor is the town Marshal.
We know immediately he is not a Mandalorian because he takes off his helmet and also because it’s obviously Boba Fett’s armor, last seen canonically when he was swallowed by the Sarlacc. And this guy is not Boba Fett.
You know, the closing scene of Episode 1 of the third season of Star Trek Discovery made me tear up, not just because they hang up the Federation Flag and make an officer of this wonderfully dedicated guy whose been keeping the idea of Starfleet and the Federation going, all alone, for decades, but because that moving closing scene has three actors in it, and not a single one of them is white. Not only does Discovery repeatedly pass the Bechdel test, y’all, but it consistently passes the Vito Russo and DuVernay tests, as well, which you cannot say for the Mandalorian.
Yet. There is much we don’t know about the Mandalorian. And Baby Yoda, for that matter.[2]
The plot of this episode is that the Marshal will give Boba Fett’s armor to the Mandalorian if he helps slay a Krayt dragon. The subplot is that the Mandalorian speaks Tuskan Raider and likes their lizard dogs, so he can broker peace between the townspeople and the sandpeople (even though they prefer to kill each other) long enough to kill the dragon.
That is also the plot of the third episode of this season of Star Trek Discovery, where the Discovery crew force the government of earth and a group of raiders to figure out that they are all more or less human and can make a deal to help each other instead of blowing up ships and stealing dilithium. There are many more bombs and a dragon in the Mandalorian, but while the dragon is very, very cool, Michelle Yeoh is cooler, and when she slams a guy to the ground, pulls off his helmet, and tells everyone that “diplomacy is so slow,” everyone who has ever been in a committee meeting wants to high five her and buy her a drink.
I am not kidding. I’d really like to have a drink with Michelle Yeoh and talk about absolutely anything. I'm sure she would read this blog post and call me up right away, were it not for the coronavirus. Damn you, virus!
Of course, there is another difference between the two shows: Star Trek has this tradition of trying, no matter how batshit the plot is or awful the problem, to show Starfleet people as evolved sorts who usually try to do the right thing and bring peace, even if they talk a lot and need Michelle Yeoh to cut through the b.s. In Star Wars, diplomacy fails so often that it’s a wonder it ever works. So even though they have a plan to blow up the dragon and spend endless hours gathering explosives and drawing the dragon out of its cave and risking their lives…in the end, the Mandalorian just uses his jet pack, some bombs, and a poor, innocent bantha to fly into the dragon’s mouth and explode it from the inside which isn’t a plot point we’ve ever seen before when a hero meets a giant monster…oh, wait. Yes, we have. Many, many times.
Anyhow, Boba Fett poses in front of a landscape painting at the end of the episode, so it will satisfy the fan boys.
[1] I looked up “Gamorrean guards” on the internets because I couldn’t remember how to spell the name of their species, and what I found out is that there is a LOT of porn based on these creatures, and I really, really wish I didn’t know that.
[2] If you do not know what these tests are, google them, my friends, and then you can say you learned something from reading this blog, which is a shocking and delightful thing.
