{"id":33,"date":"2022-06-16T01:49:08","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T00:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joshtest04.wordpress.com\/2022\/06\/16\/obi-wan-episode-5\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T20:24:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T19:24:04","slug":"obi-wan-episode-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/2022\/06\/16\/obi-wan-episode-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Obi-wan (Episode 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Last time<\/a>, I talked a lot about how it wasn\u2019t going to matter how good this episode is.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Enjoyed the Vader-imagery in this opening sequence, even if the blocking on those Stormtroopers was frankly embarrassing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Heaven help us, there were at least twenty of minutes of gripping television in this. Beyond promising and into interesting\u200a\u2014\u200aeven if some of the most exhilarating moments in this and the last episode owe a little debt to the action sequences in the video game Jedi: Fallen Order. <\/em>When Obi-wan announced that he wanted to talk to Reva, I felt sure that he\u2019d read my post about Episode 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The triumph of the episode is the twin duels, Anakin versus Obi-wan and Vader versus Reva (ah, I see what they did there). In the first, the young padawan apparently overwhelms the master training him, but even a disarmed Obi-wan is skilful enough to beat Anakin. The lesson, not to become complacent and dependent on raw power, is lost on Anakin. Perhaps taking his master\u2019s instruction that \u201cthis weapon is your life\u201d too literally, he considers the disarmed Obi-wan to be a defeated Obi-wan, paralleling their eventual final showdown in A New Hope<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The opulence of the prequel Republic is represented well enough, even if we could do with a referee-droid or some such filling up the backgrounds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is a mildly fascinating and indeed uncovered thread of the two characters\u2019 relationship, left implicit in the gaps between the three prequels: how Anakin was trained, and what lessons he took from that training. Cut through the episode, the duel recalls most if not all of the grandiosity of the Jedi regime in the prequels, the distractingly shiny floor and the vague feeling of emptiness to the set minor distractions from the two characters going at it in an ivory tower overlooking the government planet. The marble floors recur in the temple massacre flashback, Anakin\u2019s practiced duelling put to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the mirror image of the Obi-wan\/Anakin fight is the Vader\/Reva fight. Vader starts with no weapon and ostensibly no power, disarms Reva, rearms Reva, and murders Reva. It\u2019s a tour-de-force and considerably more effective than Vader\u2019s lurch into slasher villain in the third episode. All Vader has is power. All Vader needs is power. What he took away from the duel with Obi-wan was that he needed to continue to have overwhelming force even when disarmed. Nothing can get in the way of using power to make the world function in an ordered and fair manner. The Inquisitors, in all their backstabbing glory, are ultimately insignificant compared to the power of the force. This is the first episode of Obi-wan<\/em> that has felt like it understands Vader as a character at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It struggles to carry in a still image but there was a real weight behind Vader in this sequence.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reva also gets a better showing here than she has done, even if her motivations continue to be contradictory and vague once we know her backstory. \u201cYou have no idea what I\u2019ve done alone\u201d is finally a banger of a threat from a character who has spoken little else, as is her sudden decision to use her lightsaber to do anything at all useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a fly in the ointment here, which is that the dramatic tension in all this is tied, in the fashion of a lead balloon, to the series\u2019 overarching indulgence into the massacre at the template and Anakin killing the younglings. This is an indigestible foodstuff. It can\u2019t be made threatening, it can\u2019t be made dramatic. The purpose it serves is to say conclusively that Anakin has lost it in a fashion that has no end, no comeback from. It would have been better to patch it and say that all the younglings in fact became grody Inquisitor types, or else avoid it entirely, rather than this dithering on it as something Anakin might get some \u2018just deserts\u2019 for; the point is that there is no amount of just desert that can make it okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The most obvious gap in the episode is the poorly exposited sequence in which Reva possibly implicitly deliberately lets Obi-wan go, where he effectively walks out of one frame in chains and appears in the next a free man who\u2019s about to board a secret second ship. The second ship subplot could be better refined than it is\u200a\u2014\u200aperhaps more plausible for Vader to be at the wrong pad entirely rather than be caught off guard by a ship that from his perspective he can probably see, but that\u2019s nit-picking. It makes a loose thematic sense though: Vader\u2019s raw power means he can miss a second ship, or not care that his new grand inquisitor is an assassin, because he\u2019s a dark wizard who you cannot kill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was almost a callback to Empire Strikes Back<\/em><\/strong> Vader catching a laser blast with his hand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Spare a thought for poor Tala, who goes out with a bang as the series\u2019 best individual contribution to the Wookiepedia character list, even if she\u2019s lumped here with more oppression of Jedi-types waffle. Why would an ex-Imperial Officer, even one turned pseudo-Nazi hunter, count the number of Imperial Officers killed? You have to believe in the possibility of redemption for Imperial Officers, you were one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Grand Inquisitor is back, and in his time off he\u2019s practised making an arch, cod-intellectual speech that doesn\u2019t suck. Good for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So where does that leave us with Obi-wan<\/em>? As I said last episode, a barnstormer of a finale will not be enough to redeem the series, and this is only just about half of one. If anything, the dense collection of actually interesting scenes in this episode continues to point in favour of this being a better movie than it is TV series. Still, it is pleasant to have got to the end of an episode not just tolerant, but eager to see more. We will see what next week brings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tatooine is so blue at this time of year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ranking, best to worst:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Flashback recap of the prequel trilogy<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Obi-wan: Episode 5<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Obi-wan: Episode 3<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Obi-wan: Episode 1<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Obi-wan: Episode 4<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Obi-wan: Episode 2<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    \n

    If you like my writing, please subscribe to my Letterboxd<\/a> reviews or watch Sixteen attempts to talk to you about \u2018Suicide Squad\u2019<\/em><\/a>, available on Youtube now. Previously I watched and wrote-up season 1 of \u2018Invincible\u2019, <\/em>in reverse order.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Last time, I talked a lot about how it wasn\u2019t going to matter how good this episode is. Heaven help us, there were at least twenty of minutes of gripping television in this. Beyond promising and into interesting\u200a\u2014\u200aeven if some of the most exhilarating moments in this and the last episode owe a little debt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,96],"tags":[45,64,49,52],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-media-criticism","tag-media-criticism","tag-obi-wan-kenobi","tag-star-wars","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}