Kick names, take ass.

12-14-2019 2:47 pm
David: The Mandalorian
I didn’t want to fall for Disney+’s bait, but after 3 weeks of seeing The Mandalorian everywhere I finally surrendered and subscribed.

As I type this, the top post on Reddit accuses this of being a $100 million show about nothing. I disagree, but also see their perspective.

My beloved LOST (not ignoring Twin Peaks) and the modern habit of binge watching have ruined the old school serial. There’s an entire generation who don’t understand that television series didn’t used to be 10 hour movies broken up into roughly 1 hour chunks. The tail end of every episode wasn’t a cliffhanger leading directly into the next.

Have you ever tried to get a friend to start watching a show you discovered on Netflix? Inevitably you have to say something similar to, “It starts slow, but if you power through the first few episodes it really takes off.” While that type of world building is great it’s such a modern luxury. You couldn’t dangle the promise of future excitement in a weekly serial format. Episode 1 had to be great, episode 2 had to be even better. Then you had to deal with the people who missed them both and make an episode 3 that stood on its own.

Take one of my favorites from the 90s: Quantum Leap. I don’t know where in the cycle I even started watching as a kid, but I immediately picked up what was going on (it was explained word for word in the opening credits narration, but I digress). Sam wasn’t searching for some macguffin. He was just trying to complete each week’s time hopping task with the vague hope of scoring a “leap home”.

That’s kinda what we have with Mando. He’s on the run trying to protect a kid, but he’s still got to survive, and therefore earn, in this galaxy. We drop in on the more interesting escapades and enjoy the spectacle before he rides off into the sunset. We get a little Star Wars world building along the way.

And Bill Burr. Bill fucking Burr in a Star War. That was great.





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