Nov 22, 2008 02:00 PM
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San Francisco, 5:45 PM
Tue Feb 9
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It had to happen: In an attempt to use the wide spread of Star Wars characters, the latest episode of The Clone Wars abandoned Anakin, Ahsoka and the clones in favor of the characters that we really didn't want to see: C3-P0 and Jar-Jar Binks. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the episode also included the kind of political dispute that made The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones so easy to refuse. As Jar-Jar himself said, "We'sa in trouble now!"
What was most interesting about "Bombad Jedi," last night's episode of the animated series, was how true Threepio and Jar-Jar seemed to their movie versions. Unlike Obi-Wan, Yoda and, especially, Anakin, there was no sense that the characters had been simplified or changed in any way for the Cartoon Network audience - but that's almost the only plus about the otherwise disappointing episode. Again we had a Princess being captured - although she did free herself, which was a nice change - and again we had a neutral party siding with the bad guys before realizing that they'd make a terrible, terrible mistake.
Given all the slapstick humor and "Oh, Jar-Jar" eye-rolling from the other characters - "He was always such a misfit," as C3-P0 said during one of the times that they thought Jar-Jar was dead -it's clear that this episode was meant as a comedic breather between the kid version of sturm-und-drang from the other episodes, and on that level, it was probably a success; certainly, fans of the peculiar, unfunny Star Wars comedy wouldn't have been disappointed by Jar-Jar accidentally destroying his space ship, or the dumb evil droids falling for the old "hiding in a corner" escape trick. For everyone else, though, this was a half hour of throwaway television that didn't particularly excite or entertain. Better luck next time, I guess.
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
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