 What's up guys and welcome to One Take. I'm Gil, here with my friend Jeremy. Say hello. Hello. And we're here to talk about the Mandalorian episode 4. This will be a full recap and review. That means it's gonna be full of spoilers, so if you haven't watched the episode yet, do that and then listen to this episode. But with that, Jeremy, what were your just high-level thoughts on the episode? I thought it was another another high-quality episode. A lot of checked all the Star Wars boxes. Another, in line with the previous ones, pretty self-contained story. We get maybe a little bit more character development than we did in old ones, but pretty very self-contained, very very satisfying. A lot of good stuff. How about you? This might be the first one where we disagree a little bit, because I actually kind of hated this episode. Interesting. And I kind of have sort of accepted that on this show we're going to have episodes like 1 and 3 where it progresses the plot in a significant way. Then you'll have episodes like episode 2 and in this episode 4 where it's a little bit more of episodic self-contained story. And I don't mind the self-contained story, but this one felt like it was so full of tropes, which I know so of the other episodes. And this one felt super rushed, which again, so have all the other episodes. But I think the difference with this one is that they tried to squeeze in a lot more story, so it felt more rushed than I'm used to. And because of that I think that puts a lot more pressure on the writing and the acting and everything to be really top-notch. And I just don't think it was. So I think some of the some of the stuff I didn't like in previous episodes just bothered me more in this episode. You know, versus previous ones where even though it felt a little rushed and it was full of tropes, the sort of simplicity of just seeing Mandalorian be a badass, baby Yoda, that kind of overpowered it and I just enjoyed it. This one, and I'll be a little nitpicky I guess during the recap, just for those reasons kind of didn't work as well for me. Yeah, I agree with you there. I mean there were, there's definitely some pacing things and there were some moments that we'll get to where I found myself going like, wait, how long did that just take or what was the time, how long have they been here, how long was, you know, I guess the training section probably was the largest part of that. Yeah, I think we have the same parts in mind I think. We'll certainly get to all that stuff. Awesome. Well, let's jump into it. Alright, I'm gonna try to take the reins here on the recap. I apologize if I took too many notes. We'll move through it. Okay, so we open in a kind of a picturesque village. There's a lot of, everyone's kind of working but they seem very happy. They're krill farming as we later find out but you know, whatever we can know that now. There's people with baskets in the water and stuff. There's a little girl trying to catch this really cool Star Wars-y looking one-eyed kind frog thing and then very quickly the scene turns. It seems to become like almost overcast kind of out of nowhere. There's laser fire everywhere and it is a, to me, super heavy like Lord of the Rings kind of vibe because this fog rolls in. Basically orcs come out of the fog. They look like people from Lord of the Rings. There's this kind of tribal horn style music playing and they basically attack the village. I specifically noted for some reason that one stabs a droid. Because that was just heartbreaking. These droids just feel like they get caught in the crossfire and they don't they don't deserve it. He didn't. It just seemed like completely gratuitous. He didn't have to. What was the droid gonna do? The fish collected, the krill collecting droid. That was gonna be that one needed to go. And then we see a woman whose name is O'Meara, but I don't think we ever hear that in the episode. I think at one point they might say her name or I might have picked it up from the closed caption. I forget. That could be. That could also be it. She and her daughter are kind of they hide. Everybody else flees or is victim to this attack and she and her daughter hide under the in the water underneath this like basket. And when I was going through this at my first watching of it, I was thinking like, is this a flashback? Is this child somehow related to the Mandalorian in some way or is the Mandalorian? And this is a some kind of precursor, even though the setting from the other flashbacks that we see looks pretty different. I don't know something about it. Yeah, I immediately thought we were seeing the purge or the great purge that kept making reference to. So I thought that at any second I was expecting giant droids to come out of the trees. And then when it was Orcs or Klattwinians. Of course. That's what I knew. Yeah, I agree. It was kind of I was I was never really positive on the tone until you know later on when they're right. See both people in the same place. So that's the open. And then we go to to space where we get another of the of the 2019 meme Lord baby Yoda right at which every scene and I guess if you if you could watch all the old Star Wars movies and they had first come out in 2019, you also would have thought there were many things that were specifically designed for Instagram likes or something like that. But this baby Yoda scene is this he just keeps hitting a button and the and the don't do it is like don't touch that it's it's very classic like parent child. I've had friends who theorize that they think that some of this meme stuff is manufactured by Disney that maybe they're getting influencers to post baby Yoda memes. I I would definitely believe that. Yeah. I would 100%. But I think I think he might have taken off even without the meddling because baby Yoda. Yeah, I agree. Baby Yoda is great. It's it's hard to there's just such an innocence about baby Yoda that it is very hard to like genuinely dislike. I think right. And by the way, I also wanted to point out just to earn some Star Wars cred. So I mentioned that those orc like aliens that attacked were clatuiniens. And we've seen a clatuini in Return of the Jedi named Barada, which is a reference to the day the Earth stood still where they were attacked where the movie is about an alien attacking and to stop the robot that was attacking you had to say clatu Barada, Nick to so clatu the name of the alien race and the name of the alien in the day that it stood still Barada, the name of the alien in Star Wars. And Nick to there was also an alien race in Return of the Jedi named Nick to Wow. Barada, not the Italian creamy cheese inside the other cheese. It was like a Russian doll of Easter eggs. One within the other with the other reference. We have to go deeper. Great. Excellent. Okay, so they're on the you know, baby Yoda's hitting the button. He then Mandalorian then basically discovers a planet and is like announcing to himself that it looks very desolate and no one's gonna find them. There's no starport on the planet. Exactly. No starport. So it looks like a great place that they can, you know, be exist on the lamb for a little bit and kind of settle down until they until they figure out what's next. Which is exactly what they attempt to do. There's a cool shot when they land that he Mandalorian tells him to basically stay exactly where he is baby Yoda don't go anywhere. He speaks very slow. It's pretty patronizing and condescending. Don't touch anything. And then there's this great shot when the door comes down and he goes to get off and when the door lowers all the way you see the baby Yoda is right next to him. Yeah. Doesn't it feel like a really bad idea by the way to leave baby Yoda unattended? Seems like a worse idea. Yeah. So I think baby Yoda had it right to be there. Hell no. I'm not staying on this ship on this planet. We don't know anything about but I'm gonna stick with you the guy with the gun. Yeah. And he knows I don't know if I'm jumping too far ahead and maybe he's out of order and screwing up. Did they have any reason to believe that the fobs were not tracking baby Yoda anymore? Because the only thing we learned from the previous episode was that literally every person that we have encountered had one of these fobs. And I guess maybe he thought it was only on that planet and Carl Weathers was the only person that was giving out those fobs. Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts on that. Well, so I think the fobs only work when you're within a certain proximity of whatever you're going after. Got it. That's why when he was going after baby Yoda, they gave him a fob and they gave him the last known location. So if you don't know what planet they're on, the fob is useless to you. Makes sense. That's that's that was my read on it. It's like a key fob in real life. Like if you have one of those to get into your apartment and someone finds yours. Exactly. I can't you know. Okay. So then they so they they leave baby Yoda's with Mandalorian. We get another kind of classic Star Wars cantina ish type scene. We see a bunch of different aliens. There is the the Loth cat that snarls at baby Yoda. Loth cats were apparently pretty all over the place in the Star Wars Rebels. Oh, okay. This was the first live action appearance. I guess live action in quotes because of CGI but of of a Loth cat. I love the idea of crossing characters over from animated to live action because I'm always so curious especially if it's if if we see it happen with a human character. It's like are you going to cast the guy you did the voice or the guy the girl did the voice for that character? Are you going to cast somebody else and how do you make it? I guess this one's easier because it's a still CGI creature but I'm curious if we see more if we're going to see more of that. Yeah. But it's cool seeing Mandalorian as he walks in. They pass by a at the time unknown woman but I think it kind of sets up right away even from the first glance. I mean, I guess if you know the actress, then you of course know that you know she's going to be prominent. He sits down with baby Yoda. The bartender person comes over and he orders some bone broth and he is trying to find out more about the woman but the bartender kind of doesn't really give anything up. He looks over again and she is no longer there. Right. Very mysterious. By the way, this is where I started to feel some of the the cracks of the episode because I thought the waitress who came over, I thought the acting was a little rough and and and some of it's not her fault like when she has to say lines like I'll throw in a flag in a Spotchka just for good measure. It's tough to sell the alien word the alien words and you know, you've got Carl Weathers doing it and he's a seasoned actor so maybe he was able to sell it a little bit better. That's when I started to worry a little bit but yeah, I'll also say I wasn't sure if we were supposed to think that like something was up with her like she knew like this is a trap Mandalorian's walking in. I gotta play it straight but I can't because I'm nervous or you know. Yeah. And then when you saw all the other villagers were also acting that way. Right. All right. There's no conspiracy. This is just you know, not the best actors or maybe not the best direction. I'm not sure. So then we do get a great Mandalorian line coming up though because when when the woman is gone, Cara Dune is her name as we later learn when she's gone, he goes up the follower flips some kind of currency to the bartender lady and says, keep an eye on the kid. Which is really cool. I thought a little corny but like awesome in a great in the way that I am finding the tone of this whole series to be. He goes outside, tracks her down, she ambushes him. They have a fight. He takes out a flamethrower at one point which seems super like he definitely would have killed her with that. And then they both kill out pull out guns and we get our second huge meme moment of the episode baby Yoda sipping the soup. Yeah. I've been seeing those memes all week. Yeah. And I have to say though, I'm a little bit sick of seeing Mandal lose a fight every episode. And I get that they're trying to establish that Cara Dune is as much of a badass as he is. I kind of wish they found a way to do it without it being at his expense just because I mean, he's like a badass character. You want him to be awesome. You want it to be believable that he's able to survive through all these kind of against the odd situations. But if every episode he loses or ties in a fight starts to kind of stretch credulity. But I did like that. I feel like in another show, he might insist on staying even though Cara's there and basically saying, hey, I found this planet first. But here, you know, he says to baby Yoda looks like this planet's taken already. Let's go. So I appreciated that. Yeah. Um, I yeah, I liked that as well. I fully agree on the fight thing. It's interesting. It's kind of like the opposite of the usual Star Wars criticism, which is like, why can this person do every single thing? You know, he said about Rey and the news. They said about kid Anakin in the prequels and the way that he kind of, you know, is untouchable. And it's almost like the opposite with this. Like, why is he so beatable in some instances? We want to believe that he's the unbeatable warrior. Why does, uh, you know, this the, uh, I can't remember the name of the thing that he has to ride in the, in the, uh, the blarg. Like, why does that? Yeah. Why does that give him such trouble? And why does he lose this fight? But then he can also take down the full thing of stormtroopers. So yeah, I see what you're saying. That there's a little kind of, yeah, they got to find that middle ground. They'll find it. Yeah. Um, so they go back in. She starts talking about her past a little bit. And then like you say, they basically, she says that she's planets taken. So he goes to leave with baby Yoda. Uh, they go back to the ship. They get approached by two villagers as they're about to leave. They basically have another, you know, like you're, like you would say another kind of side quest thing for the Mandalorian. Hey, you know, before you get out of here, a couple of these raiders, they attacked our village. We're just curl farmers. We got a, you know, uh, he originally says no, which is an interesting, I think, from a character development point of view. Cause he's like, you don't have enough money. I don't. So if you had any doubts on, oh, he, you know, he left with baby Yoda. He went back to rescue Mandalorian has gone soft. Definitely not. He's going to leave these people here to die to whatever these raiders are because they don't have enough money and it doesn't help his interest at all until they say that they're going back to the middle of nowhere, which he suddenly realizes he can use. Right. For lodging. And that, that, that was another example of, uh, the writing in this episode that kind of bothered me. Yes. Like he needs to hear, wait a minute, they live in the middle of nowhere. The whole planet is the middle of nowhere. Yeah. And do you just not realize that the concept of middle of nowhere exists? I mean, any planet you can find a location that's in the middle of nowhere. Right. You've agreed to stay because they happen to have a house there. It just felt like not enough reason for him to change his mind about leaving. He also agreed to leave because of one person in one bar. So it was kind of, it was kind of both ways there. And they go a little bit over the top two after they say middle of nowhere. He's, I'm paraphrasing, but he basically says, did you just say middle of nowhere? And they're like, yeah, we're farmers. What did you think we did? You know, we are but simple cruel farmers. Yeah. So I mean, and I think maybe I'm maybe the reason that I'm more on board with the episode than you are is because I'm just, I've just accepted that the, that's kind of, that is the, the, if there's a childish aspect to the show, it's that the storytelling part is pretty simplistic and at its worst it means they like hit you over the head with cheesy stuff or redundant stuff. But at its, at its best I guess is when you get to watch the kid kind of stuff. That's the show at its peak. Yeah, I mean to me the little cool one-liner. No, no, same for me. And I think, like I, I'm still on board with this show. I think this episode is just that the childish stuff because so much happened in this episode, it just felt like there was more of it than that I've had in the previous episodes. Alright, so they go back to the village, they stay, this is where we get our, our, you know, bigger scene with O'Mara. And right before this Mando goes and recruits Kara for help. He basically says, hey, we can get good lodging. Seems like a pretty good deal for a couple of people that are on the lam. Not, he didn't use those words. I mean basically did. So he, he goes Mandalorian and Baby Yoda get their like lodging from O'Mara. She, they kind of set up the thing. It has a super western vibe where like the gunslingers coming into town and then the like quaint person is setting, setting up the house. The daughter, he, there's this moment where O'Mara's daughter goes to peek in the doorway kind of when he's sitting there and Mandalorian like instinctively turns around and whips out a gun, which is crazy, but that's what happens and then she says, oh no, this is my, this is my daughter Winta and says to Winta that this nice man is going to help protect us from the bad ones, which is also maybe too on the nose, but I guess she's talking to a child so, so it's okay. Winta plays with Baby Yoda a little bit. And when Winta goes to leave the house with Baby Yoda, you can see Mando's concerns to let Baby Yoda stroll around town and O'Mara's like, they'll be fine. I just think that they'll be fine. Which, how does she know they'll be fine? They're getting attacked by orcs left and right. Yesterday. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. So that was one where I trusted, I think Mando's instincts were right in that scene. And then we get perhaps our most interesting background details about Mandalorian in the entire episode, where she asks a question that we addressed last week. How long has it been since you've taken that off, the helmets? And he first says yesterday. And I, my jaw dropped. Yeah. Because I was, I was going, I was researching this online and I kept googling and if you searched like, do Mandalorians and then the first suggestion, take off their helmet or how do they eat? And people are like, they take their helmet off. They just meant they don't take them off in front of other people. And I was like, I don't know about that. I interpreted it to be very literal. They never take them off. Turns out I was wrong. And then, and then we get a little more stuff. He tells her my parents were killed and the Mandalorians took care of me. And that's kind of why he, which to me kind of had the same sort of vibe as Obi-Wan saying, you know, Darth Vader killed your father, which obviously is what he meant genuinely when the movie first came out. But maybe now just in Star Wars hindsight, I hear something like that where he just vaguely says it and I'm like, I wonder if that's real or not. Right. Or, you know, I don't know. His parents, I betrayed, they went to the Empire, even though it seems like we've seen enough flashbacks and I don't think this is that kind of show where they're going to pull some crazy swerve on a backstory thing. I don't know. But did you take that to mean that he was not born into the Mandalorian culture and he was sort of adopted by Mandalorians? That's how I took it, definitely. And that's, I was theorizing, I wanted to pat myself on the back here because I was theorizing that maybe part of the title, considering the fact that there are so many Mandalorians, this is called THE Mandalorian and I think part of that might be referring to the fact that he's kind of an outsider even within the Mandalorian culture. But maybe we'll find out that it's not uncommon for people to be adopted by them or for people to move into, to basically become a Mandalorian even though you weren't born into it. Yeah, there's another quick allusion to that kind of thing when he's with the, when the guys are trying to get him to come back, when he's cleaning his ship and he's about to leave. And the guy says like, your tribe, nervously like backpedals, seemingly to not offend him because he's walking on some kind of line. But that made me think of that too, kind of like, what is Mandalorian? Is it a race? Is it a tribe? Right. You know. All I could think about in that scene was our first episode. Is it okay to call him Mando? Yeah, and I guess the, I guess it is. So then Mando and and Cara Dune go to kind of investigate what's going on. Wait, before that, after Mando explodes. Oh yeah, yeah. Hasn't taken his helmet off right away. In a window. Exactly. With kids looking at him. He hasn't taken the helmet off since he was a child. Maybe 30 years. He takes it off right in the window. Right in the window. And they're not that far away. And that bothered me. Yeah, I did write it like that and then I just skipped over it. Well, looking out a window, three question left. Yeah, so he does that. Somehow that doesn't get, no, he's otherwise cautious, pretty close to the best person. But he doesn't, doesn't care about that, I guess. So then Mandalorian and Cara Dune go to kind of investigate what's going on with the Raider group. And they find the ATST tracks. That's right. Which my familiarity with ATSTs is from a bunch of YouTube videos I've been watching recently of Force. What was the, what's the name of the new Star Wars game? Jedi Fallen Order. Yeah, yeah, where you fight ATSTs. You do, yeah. In the game they don't look very hard to defeat. I saw a video where you just kick it and it like fell off a cliff. But I guess, I guess that's kind of similar to this episode where you need something for it to fall into. Right. To defeat it. Or two logs to crush its head. Like the Ewoks do. Oh, we're turning the Jedi. Yeah. It's our ATSTs, like small versions of 8080s. Correct, the S is for Scout. Oh, okay, okay. So they're kind of the, they are the smaller ones and then the 8080s are like the big, obviously giant, the four-legged ones from, you know, a lot of places, but iconically, Battle of Hoth when the speeders wrap the toe cables around their legs and they fall over. Right. But yeah, this is probably the most intense ATSTs look is in this episode of Mandalorian, I would say, than anything. I guess other than like Battle of Hoth, when there's a million of them and they look intimidating, this one by itself looks pretty, it looks vicious. Yeah. The red eyes. The red eyes. Yeah. It moved faster than you would expect a big robot to move. It moves in a very like personified way. Like when it, you know, I mean when it eventually, I will get to it. Oh, and a quick another good one liner from Cara Dune there where she notices the tracks and she goes, this is more than I signed up for. I just thought that was the kind of a dumb, funny line. So they then go back to the town and Mandalorian just tells everyone like, yeah, you gotta leave. We can't, you can't do anything here. Very defeatist attitude. Given everything he's been through, very defeatist attitude. Yeah. Bad news. You can't live here anymore. And then Cara tries to do better, right? And tells everybody you gotta move. Everybody refuses. You know, we've been here for years. We're not leaving. Right. Yeah. And this is another kind of in line with everything else. Classic. You can't do this. Yes, we can. Yes, you can. Kind of, kind of seen. Where, you know, they, after O'Mara says that they're not leaving, Cara says they can't fight and they can't fight that thing. And Mandalorian says unless we show them how, you know. He went from 10 seconds ago. You can't live here anymore. And then when people said, we've been living here for a while, then I guess he changed his mind. Yeah. Yeah, this whole, this whole scene really didn't work for me. And this is where I don't think the villagers in general were great actors. And I think some of it is just, again, they're trying to pack so much in so you'd have to act very strongly to sell all of it. And then not only that, when they immediately go from this scene into, okay, we're going to train all of you to help fight, then we get a montage. And there's a sequence where, I think Cara asks, who here knows how to shoot? And then O'Mara looks around and slowly raises her hand. So I'm just so sick of that trope. Yeah, which is especially when there's not really a payoff to, and maybe there will be later down the line. I don't know. Maybe we'll end up seeing these characters again. But when you get that moment, your thought is like, what is your backstory? What just happened? She must not be a krill farmer. Is there something more at play? Is she the Mandalorian? Nothing came of it. The only payoff is that pot. During training, she hits a pot really well. Later on, I don't even think we see her fire her gun once. Yeah. Okay, so this is the anti-checkoffs gun principle. Right. Like you establish a thing for no reason in an episode that as we pointed out along the way here, it has some, you know, there's some pacing, not issues, but it leads to that thing where you say we get a 25-second turnaround on something going from impossible to like, wait a minute, we got this. Right. Which I don't know, maybe we didn't need that weird side plot of she has some crazy dark. Or maybe I'm wrong and there'll be three episodes from now where Mandalorians once again on his back after maybe a blarg and Karadun attack him at the same time and then they both get picked off by Omara. Yeah. And he's like, wow, you really can shoot. But I don't know, judging by how this show likes to introduce things and pay them off within 10 minutes. Yeah. And I'll just say the whole thing about it being kind of rushed, they're limiting themselves to 30-minute episodes. If you're gonna do 30-minute episodes, don't shove so much into the episode. Yeah. Oh, another thing, during the montage, remember in the montage, it might have been episode three where he has to put his ship back together. Yeah. And episode two, right? Two. Yeah. And you see the Mandalorian kind of bang his fist on the wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As if it's doing anything. There was a moment like that here where the guy's stabbing his spear and Kara's like, come on, get into it. Good training, great. Yeah, so then we get to the attack phase of it. The Mandalorian and Cara Dune go to attack the base. The plan which Kara explains right before this is that they're gonna go basically lure the ATST into a back to the village and there's gonna be a hole that it's gonna step into which will defeat it in a clever Ewok-ish kind of shenanigans way. So they go Mandalorian and Cara Dune. They first they take out these two guys sitting by a campfire classic spot for the first two guys in any kind of a take out situation. If you're a bad guy, don't sit by a campfire. It was the equivalent of like the guy smoking a cigarette like under the street light. Like you know he's the first guy gone off. He's gonna get his next nap. Can't believe I pulled guard duty again. Like that guy's gone every time. Wasn't even supposed to be here today. So they take out those two guys and then they go into this tent where they Mandalorian like plants a bomb on this center post and then they're about to leave Cara Dune whistles to signify that two guys are coming. And then they have kind of a cool fight scene. A bunch of guys keep coming. They take out two guys, two more come in. They take out two guys, two more come in. It's the slightly action movie trope thing where the bomb lasts exactly long enough for them to fight the precise number of guys that came in. Yeah. That kind of bothered me a little bit. Yeah. Because we've seen them use bombs like that. We see them use one later in the episode. Yes. Why was this one set to take like four minutes before it blew up? And also during the fight scene when they walk into this this sort of tent or something there's these vats of blue liquid and during the fight Cara grabs one of the Platwinians. It kind of shoves them into the vat and I couldn't tell it. Is that supposed to be like acid or something? Right. And then she immediately pulls them out. And I don't know if it was some kind of acid thing that harmed him. She was pretty cavalier about shoving her arms into it. And if she was just trying to drown him, he was only in there for a few seconds. Maybe it was just a shot. Maybe it was very cold. Maybe shock value. Okay. It could have been like nitro or maybe that species is allergic to water. Like some other. Famous movie villain aliens. But I didn't see any signs of that in case. Okay. So yeah, they escape the tent. It blows up as soon as they walk out because of course this is where we get our ATST crazy scary red eyes moment. Chases them through the woods. It appears to be right on their tail. Then when we cut back to the village, they have picked up a significant amount of ground on it because they get there like 30 seconds before enough for them to just be quiet. And luckily whoever trained the ATST had a shoot was probably trained by a couple of stormtroopers. Yeah. Not not very accurate. Not very accurate. And then we get kind of our our biggest indication of this weird like personification, which is probably annoying. I've said it 10 times of the ATST where it is about to fall into the trap and it like sheepishly puts its toe over if you were getting into a hot tub and it was like very hot and you were unsure of how to dip your toe in the water kind of thing, which is just a not very machine. But you don't want to get a machine wet. That's true, but it was something about the specific movement of it. I don't know. Maybe I'm just comparing it to the very stop motion looking ones of the original trilogy, which wouldn't have been able to move that way. But yeah, I mean it's clear they want this to be obviously evil if you're like a little kid that does another background of Star Wars and how do you do that? A big scary eyes and like it's dark and red and but it's cool. I mean they make it look very tough. Like it looks like it's going to be a situation for the village to try to survive this attack. So it doesn't jump into the trap. Then the Raiders come back. They're scary. There's fog everywhere. Here's the payoff to that training montage we got. Kara has to adapt her plan. She takes the pulse rifle from the Mandalorian. Says that she's got a new idea. She charges at the ATST to try to get it into the water. It's very dark in this whole scene which is I guess a way to not have to show the nitty gritty of everything that's going on. But we get some payoff of the villagers can use their spears now those two guys that we see when they go to the Mandalorian ship get their couple moments in the in the sun. And even though it was dark one thing I did see is a quick cut to a child screaming and crying which just made me wonder why do they have kids on the front line of this battle. Maybe should have left them back in the village. And there's some other kids that are there with baby Yoda kind of all like huddled up. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. A little distance would have been they shouldn't this is one instance where they shouldn't listen to baby Yoda if he's I'm coming with you. Right. This is one really you should stay behind. Yeah. 100%. So Cara Dune prevails in her plan. She goes in the water shoots the ATSD with the pulse rifle a couple of times. It falls down. Shoots it in the eye. Shoots it in the eye. That's what really got its attention to move forward. The yeah right there in that front window there the windshield. Who would have thought. Yep. It moves forward. That's what I do when I'm shot in the eye. Walk towards the thing that shot me. It falls down. It seems like it's pretty out of shape when it falls down but just to put the icing on the cake Mandalorian flies in takes what appears to be the very similar bomb to the one we saw in the tent but as you mentioned before a much quicker timer around this one like maybe five seconds. Yeah. I guess he could just be setting it. It could be like I'm assuming he sets it. Yeah. Why did he set the first one for such a long time. Anybody's guess who knows. Maybe they were going to set it and then get a new like position on the outside of the camp. So use the explosion as a distraction misdirection and get the upper hand from the other way. Maybe that's why. Well I do the intention of that explosion I think was to get the ATSD's attention. Right. So to be fair they probably did need a little bit more time to get in there plant the bomb and get some distance. Right. It just felt like we said a little bit convenient that it was just the right amount of time. Especially when everything else is so so so explained. Like he could he could have just said like I'll set the timer for this so we can get away. Like that that seems like an easy like you know we got all that information on the whistling birds from the which we didn't need. Yeah. And then when the Crattowinians attack he could be like we got to get out of here that bomb's going to blow any second. I don't know maybe that's cheesier. It feels like it's more informative but so anyway they win the everybody else was still there after the ATSD blows up retreats another fun action cliche line Mandalorian says was that the plan Cara Dune says something like that. Which was a fun one. And then the the village is saved. Main arc of episode over for now. We're back in the sunlight. Some amount of time has passed. Presumably a couple of weeks I think is what he eludes what Mandalorian says later. Yeah he has said something like we raised hell a few weeks back. Yeah which seems like a very forced line just to indicate that time has passed. I have to say that probably my I feel bad going after the show so much but probably my biggest complaint about this episode is that when they persevered when they won I just didn't care. They don't think they did enough to make me care about the villagers. They didn't do enough to make me feel like there was real danger. I think when the Crattowinians showed up and I do enjoy saying that word. Yeah. When they showed up in the first scene they did feel dangerous. They felt vicious but I never really felt that danger again in the episode. Maybe for a moment when they first wake up the ATST but other than that I never felt real peril. Yeah I mean because we don't also really learn anything as a result of that attack. Like the most things we learn from this episode are just based on you know Amara like asking him an interesting question about his background. Right. That's like the bigger picture takeaways. Yeah. Which had nothing to do with that could have just happened in the cantina from some random. Exactly and maybe if they had done more to establish any of these villagers like Amara if we learned a little bit more about her backstory maybe we would have cared a little bit more. So they're all happy Amara points out how happy Baby Yoda looks. Great moment call back to the beginning of the episode with the one-eyed frog thing where Baby Yoda catches it and goes to eat it and then the kids are kind of grossed out and he it falls out of his mouth and hops away. Then another Mandalorian character ish type reveal when he's talking to Cara Dune who says can't you why can't you just take that off? Are they going to come after you? And he says no you can just can't ever put it back on again. Right. It's like a losing your honor sort of thing. Right. Which seems in line with everything else of their of that we know of Mandalorian culture so far. Right. Like they're not I mean I was going to say they're not vindictive but that might be wrong but you know they're very honor based and you know allegiance to their the guild code and yeah I am curious if they will address the fact that we know this whole not removing your helmet thing seems like a recent development like I pointed out in a previous episode in Star Wars Rebels which takes place right before a new hope we see them walking around without their helmets but it could also be I do wonder if there are multiple tribes within the Mandalorian culture because I think there is a planet Mando right so maybe there are other tribes and they don't all follow the same culture yeah maybe this is just a more militant one where they have these very strict rules Mandalore I think is the Mandalore that's right that's right so like Helmys and and I don't know I can't think of it the Helmys and non-helmys Bearheads and they have gang fights with each other or something it's a nude face much is said to my face hell me that'll be fun maybe that'll maybe we'll get to that in a later episode so then Kara says why wouldn't he just stay there and settle down with that young widow which seemed very crass to me yeah were we supposed there was a moment there where Mando and Omera are kind of looking at each other before Omera shows up are we supposed to feel some romantic tension there it feels like a very but I guess so does the western genre felt like a very dated and problematic kind of romance yeah where he like walks in doesn't say anything she's like I made you breakfast and put some fresh towels out please save the village won't you stay you know kind of vibe also widow we didn't know anything else about that right other than that we haven't seen another parental figure true true do you think she killed her husband the only things we know about her are that she's a widow and that she can shoot it's a good thing Mando got the hell out of it because we didn't get any other background info on her other I mean I guess she was attacked which we could have gotten background info if that was a really long time ago and she was the child but what that happened 10 minutes before the episode started right yeah maybe there's some deleted scenes out there yep you heard it here first Omera killed her husband and that's why she can shoot they're setting up a villain for season two omara yeah so she she asked him to stay or she says why wouldn't he stay Kara says why wouldn't he stay he says traveling with me that's no life for a kid so he's gonna leave baby Yoda behind and he's gonna leave and then he goes and I think that's where we get our first moment where you could they cut away to the woods and we see of beeping fob right of like you know of course they need to come up with a reason that all the characters have to leave they can just stay here forever would make sense so again somehow they were they were tracked here the Mandalorian goes to tell omara that he is going to leave she tells him to stay it kind of feels like that western movie Shane where remember where like Shane after he saves the day he's gonna leave and then he keeps he comes back Shane it's kind of I thought it was gonna go that way she says you could have a good life here and she goes to take off the helmet he doesn't take it off he or he he tells her not you know he gestures not to he takes her hand or something and then and then he says I don't belong here but he does and he's pointing at Yoda and then she says I understand man that's it she was I understand and she says that she's gonna raise him on her own kind of shades of like Obi-Wan saying he'll raise Anakin that he's gonna adopt this alien child yeah that she knows nothing about other than he almost ate a frog thing but he's happy I get I understand that I do understand the vibe of it I just thought it was funny that she just flips so quickly yeah and actually who among us would not adopt baby Yoda yeah we all would we all would which by the way you can adopt your own baby Yoda in six months they're gonna have plush dolls on sale at Walmart finally wow thank you promo code one take and uh see what happens I'm not sure what'll happen we'll work on that later so then we get our second of the series gunfire swerve moment we see the scope it's locked in on baby Yoda we cut away we hear a gunshot Mandalorian says hide the kids or something whatever he says cut to the woods did the bounty hunter shoot baby Yoda no Cara doon shot the bounty hunter thank god I thought we're gonna see a decapitated baby Yoda not only is it the second gunshots swerve it's the second one with baby Yoda that's true each time we think and I and let me let me be the first to say on record here it will not be the last we're gonna get another gunshot baby Yoda swerve at some point yeah maybe the last time the reveal will be that baby Yoda had the baby Yoda shot first this was maybe the most unforgivable part of the episode for me because Mandalorian says I can't stay here because people will notice they'll come here I'm leaving baby Yoda here he knows that the if people know that he's there someone's gonna go look for him they're probably gonna have a baby Yoda fob because everyone has a baby Yoda fob irresponsible very irresponsible you know I don't know how this this bounty hunter track them down but obviously you know he won't be the last as they quickly deduce and uh and so they're on their way and then again we get a very heavily western influenced they're on the back of a you know basically a wagon caravan wagon a wooden speeder basically very tearful goodbye the daughter went to very emotional about baby Yoda going the goodbye with Omar obviously and then Kara and Mandalorian have this exchange where they both say until our paths cross again which let me think so is she another like are we going to see Kara again it is a bigger name actress kind of yeah I'm I'm very certain we're gonna see her again I'm sure we will yeah it just feels like one of those you know are we gonna see all these people again that we are we're gonna see the the Ugnod again at some point are we gonna see you know we'll probably see Carl Weathers again because just it's kind of crazy though considering we're four episodes into an eight episode season and they've set up so many different characters that I'm sure they're planning to revisit but I doubt we're gonna be able to see all of them this season right and there's other people that we still haven't seen yet that we know are in the series John Carlo Esposito yeah yeah and yeah we haven't seen him yet that was the main one I was thinking of there might be others but that was the only one I was thinking of I don't know who else is in this yeah that was that was the big one and I guess I had thought it about about Cara Dune until this episode right and I'm waiting for Obi-Wan to show up you never know you never know yeah so the villagers wave goodbye and and then we and we cut to cut to credits as as on Baby Yoda full shot Baby Yoda cut to credits right right lot of Baby Yoda this episode again like I said at the out of the gate there kind of very very self-contained except a couple select plot points where we get a little bit more about the the mandalore if you'll excuse oh nice there's probably a podcast called mandalore in where they just talk about lore if that's not taken we should we should just reserve that now and copyrighted we'll mail this podcast to ourselves and no one can let's save it on an SD card and mail it to ourselves yeah so I think I agree with your criticisms but I I don't think this episode is exceptionally more guilty of those things than any of the other ones have been to me anyway but I don't disagree with anything you said about the pacing and things being you know very quick with the this is impossible no it's not they do it right right yeah I think for me like it just felt like there was more of it but where do you think this is this is going it feels very aimless at the mandalorian right now feels very aimless where is he going I wonder is there going to be a sort of overarching plot that we really get into or is it going to be more is the next episode going to be another self-contained story you know I think at least my assumption I'm assuming most people assumed that we're going to learn a little bit more about why people are after baby Yoda and that will lead into the overarching story but sounds like that's going to be kind of the backbone that maybe not the focus of every episode yeah it just feels a little weird to have such episodic standalone driven things when the budget is so high the production value is so high they take so long to make there's only eight of them it's Star Wars right big name actors it just makes things feel like filler episodes when it's not clear and I don't know I maybe there's a part of that's like well no it's great writing because we're directionless and so is the Mandalorian so we're you know I don't know because I don't want to call it filler because I did I did like it and I do think we learned some things but when you don't know where you're going it that's what makes it feel like filler right like when you're not sure other than that his plan is just generically to get away and maybe that's hurt by by the fact that they only follow the Mandalorian maybe if we were cutting back to you know Werner Herzog plotting things would feel much more significant or you'd be going like what else is going on here either the Watchman is so heavily on my brain but where those episodes always give you the kind of Ozymandias thing at the at the back end right where you're seeing something else and it and it makes it maybe that's cheap but it it suddenly feels a lot bigger than just here's this one guy and we're not sure where he's going but I still like the the universe still feels really huge I like all the little details we're getting I think the the action is pretty good I think the show looks amazing right so well shot and everything feels really well thought out except for maybe the bigger picture plot which kind of chips away at everything else right right yeah I don't and actually on the point of following only the Mandalorian I think the opening scene of this episode might be the first scene we've had all season where Mandalorian wasn't present not that I don't think that really means a whole lot but just something I took notice of I mean he's in I think literally every scene except for that one maybe that's why I thought it felt like a flashback yeah I think we're trained to the only scenes so far that we've seen without the Mandalorian were flashbacks and they were children village people so I think we've been trained when we see a scene like the one that opened this episode to assume this is a flashback right but it's an interesting thing I wouldn't mind if we started to cut away to other characters yeah and and I wouldn't mind the quote unquote filler episodes if they were just executed a little bit better and all the things I like about this show we're here this episode but the things I don't like just for one reason or another rub me the wrong way more this episode than the previous ones but like I said definitely still on board for this show looking forward to seeing what episode five brings us will we see the Mandalorian take off his helmet in this season of the Mandalorian I was thinking no last episode after this one I think we will see it in the finale will there be any kind of a reveal to that or is it just going to be Pedro Pascal I think it's just going to be Pedro Pascal I was wondering that too and there's no reason for us to assume he's a human under there until I remember the flashbacks and I guess actually in the flashbacks we're assuming that child is him maybe that maybe there's a twist there's a child behind that child or maybe maybe maybe when the robot in episode one says species age differently that meant a little more than we thought very interesting the droid goes to shoot the kid we hear the shot ring out and it's not it's another it's Pedro Pascal shooting him yeah another false fire swerve all right I think that covers it right well thanks for listening and if you enjoyed this episode make sure to go into the Apple podcast app leave a review leave a rating and I always like to say if you listen to this that means you're awesome if you leave a rating that means you're even just a little bit more awesome if you leave a review forget about it you are top of the line one of the best people on this planet and make sure to check out youtube.com slash one take vids we'll have a link in the show notes where you can see youtube videos where we talk about the Mandalorian watchmen movies movie news and other stuff all right great subscribe you helmes you need a loincloth for your faith face nude head