GRcade

Obvious and a little cliche, but still good fun.

There was some decent action to this, the fight between Mando and the shock trooper lady was fun and when they went to raid the camp. And I also loved the menace of the AT-ST, as Taf says this has been an under utilised vehicle in the series so it's nice to see it get some love!

But there are still some really big issues around the simple plausibility and logical structure of the narrative at the core of the show. The whole plot of Chapter 4 is predicated on Mando's requirement to hide himself and the kid from those who might harm them. Now ignoring the fact that we still don't really have a satisfactory justification for why Mando has upended his entire life and that of his race/tribe to protect mini Yoda, this is a pointless endeavour anyway and Mando should know this.

He knows the bounty hunters are out to get the kid (and him probably). He knows that they have beacons which can track them across space - he strawberry floating used one two episodes ago to track the kid himself FFS! He was attacked by the bounty hunters all carrying their beacons right at the end of the last episode - he KNOWS THEY ARE AFTER HIM! Why the hell has he suddenly forgotten this? "Oh yes we can hide on this planet no problem, I'm sure the interstellar tracking beacon that I know all about won't get us here!"

Give us a scene where he is trying to work out a way to block the beacons, or remove whatever mechanism they use to actually track people. Is it something in your body that the beacon locks onto? Has everyone in the empire/republic been embedded with an ID chip that the beacons are detecting? Well show us Mando trying to deactivate it or remove it or something! Just a hint that he's not a moron who keeps forgetting the very obvious way that he's always being strawberry floating found!

Also it would be nice if there were some active curiosity on display about the kid - Mando should be asking why he is important, why was he asked to get him, why was the bounty so high, what was the scientist doing to him, what were the powers he used to stop the bull-monster. Why the strawberry float is Mando not exploring this? Rescue/kidnap the kid fine, but show us the motivation why - if he were curious about the powers of the kid then that would justify his actions, but he shows no interest in exploring that.

Again - his motivations for protecting the kid are muddled, combine this with his seemingly impossible ignorance of how badly he is doing that job and then the ultimate piss-take: the fact that despite having turned his life upside down, killed a whole host of bounty hunters, uprooted all the other Mandalorians, pissed off the only high ranking or important people we know of, and travelled across a huge region of space to the arse end of nowhere all to supposedly protect this kid ... he was going to just ditch him anyway! THEY ARE TRACKING THE KID MANDO! How strawberry floating hard is it to remember that!

The whole foundation of what these first few episodes have been based on at their core just has no solidity to it and it just undermines all the other commendable parts of the show.

Also going back to the raid on the camp which as I say had a nice bit of stealth (and then not so stealth! ) action from our heroes. If they have snuck in to place one of Mando's explosive charges on the raiders camp without being detected, and their overall plan is to place one of these explosives on the AT-ST to destroy it... then why don't they just stick the explosive on the AT-ST before alerting everyone and avoid the whole strawberry floating mess in the first place?

There are also some hilarious smaller problems that keep coming up. Like in the fight with shock trooper lady which ends with them both on the floor pointing their blasters at each other - Mando's helmet visor makes it impossible for him to have actually been able to see her at this point and so as a visual it just looks ridiculous and a further reminder of how impractical such a helmet actually is. Another dent in the ability of the viewer to suspend their disbelief and invest in what is happening. Similarly about half way through the episode we have another conversation with Mando about the whole "never removing the helmet" thing where we discover that he does remove it in private, which is cool. Except then we have a camera shot where he literally removes it right in sight of a whole bunch of kids! strawberry floating hell.

There's lots to like about this show - it often has a real grounded and gritty feel to it, some of the performances are great and clearly a good amount of love has gone in to making it... but damn is it doing some stuff that makes it hard to forgive!