The Mandalorian

the tenement stuff was temporary, kind of like a supportive housing facility for people in rehab, they even referred to him as "relapsing." i used to work as a substance abuse counselor in supportive living, and it felt very similar to that. the residents would have already gone through inpatient and generally completed a 6-9 month halfway house program. then they'd move into an apartment and were generally left to their own devices, whether that was getting a job or volunteering, working their program (12 steps or whatever they happen to be involved in to keep them sober). as a counselor i'd meet with each one once a week or so (not entirely unlike the droid he was checking in with). in the beginning of their stay i was focused on helping them with their transition, helping them get a lay of the land geographically if they were new to the area. we'd do a little bit of counseling though by the time they got to me they mostly just needed the consistency of meeting with someone, they generally had everything figured out sobriety-wise. i'd also focus a lot on hooking them up with any external programs and resources.

the timeline of it all was generally inpatient for 14-28 days, then halfway house for 6-9 months, then supportive living for 2-3 years. obviously it's a case-by-case system but that's the guideline we'd look at. anyway, my point is that it felt like dr pershing already went through the inpatient and halfway house version and he was going to be staying in the tenement and doing menial jobs for a little bit, but it was by no means permanent. i get the impression that once he "graduated" the tenement phase, he'd more or less be free to explore whatever work he was interested in. it's a little iffy on if he'd be able to go into his preferred medical field as his expertise was in cloning and that's a huge no-no in the republic. he'd have a LONG way to go before he could get approved to do anything with that.

as far as why they gave him just some low-level clerk job, there's obviously room to argue on both sides, but as per my experience with recovering addicts, they do well with basic jobs. i don't mean that as an insult about their competency, it's the opposite, in fact. generally addicts are addicts because they have a LONG string of losses that they just can't get ahead of, so giving them something simple, something quantifiable, it helps them start measuring their lives in successes instead of failure after failure. it's very much meant to be a stepping stone to better and better things. obviously we're talking about two very different situations here, addicts and people who were indoctrinated by the empire, but the psychology of working through that is pretty similar, at least as it's depicted here.

and yeah, chick did him real dirty. as soon as she popped up i was like DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYTHING SHE HAS TO SAY, SHE'S GOING TO GET YOU KILLED