The Mandalorian

Ep 4 had too many Disney ties. Settling down. Woman who has nice birthing features, hidden by clothes (tig ol bitties and big ol hips), with strong, dominant facial features. Mando just saved their village like a badass, surprised all their women's weren't chomping to mate with him like a high school musical.

Directed by: Bryce Dallas Howard.

Oh Jesus Christ, no wonder.

The reason it feels like a Star Trek episode is because it literally is. In Star Trek Enterprise, season 2, episode 6, Marauders. The crew trains and equips a deuterium colony to fight off Klingons who had been taking their deuterium.
There's similar episodes in TOS and DS9, but not nearly as verbatim.

I liked the episode just fine, but it felt a bit out of place with how the series had been going. Episodes are 41minutes, but they have 5-6 minutes of credits, so there's about 35-36 minutes of run time. There's a reason Star Trek episodes were generally 45 minutes long. Long enough for episodic plot points to play out without being a cheesy sitcom or familycom like most of the shit you see on broadcast channels. Dramas and such need 45 minute, or hour long with commercial segments. You can name dozens and dozens of examples in both categories that adhere to this mantra. They're squeezing Star Trek into an episode of Friends. It's harsh, but workable. We'd all like a lot more to chew on having to wait between each episode's airing.

Harshaw said:

I mean this type of story goes back to Seven Samurai.

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A lot of motifs are used redundantly, especially in star trek, and even between different series of trek. They could have done better here, but they went with a pretty simplified version of it wrapped in a star warsian blanket.

I'm sure we'll get there, unless it's tracking by genetics or midichlorians or some shit.

Brando said:

Are we sure this is actually good? Or is it more likely that it's just good in comparison to 30 years of complete shit? It's a pretty low bar that Favreau needs to pass to a certain extent.

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It is better than everything Star Wars since "The Empire Strikes Back."

Still, althought I liked the episode, and I like the series so far, it is neither striving for depth/complexity nor the stupid-non-stop action motifs. Honestly, one small AT-ST would have leveled the town. There could have been sacrifice (should have been). Since, although I get the plot-line-- find a way to defeat the unbeatable and train the farmers to fight (Seven Samurai), without sacrifice, it falls a little flat. Also-- it was very nice of the walker to enter the town through the little fortified region they made!

Lastly, how did Mando and Gina know each other? There was something there, wasn't there?

Look-- it is sort of satisfying to have a show with a no-lose philosophy. Okay, so it's the narrative equivalent of bubble gum, but that works for what it is.

I just watched the Korean film "I Saw the Devil." Disney has no interest in horrific gut-wrenching tension and character sacrifices. Baby Yoda is a metaphor for the show's narrative bible. Keep it cute and cuddly and simple (Although I DID hope at episode one that they were going down a dark path).