In the Flesh: Ahsoka s1e04: Fallen Jedi

“Don’t worry about me.” “I’m not. Should I be?” “What?” “Worried.” “Nope.” If the first fifteen seconds of a game of Pong, that pixel moving like molasses across the screen only to be deflected back where it came at infinitesimally greater speed, really gets your dick hard, then boy is Dave Filoni the screenwriter for you. Every conversation with even an inch of tension or character present plays out as a tedious back and forth, characters setting each other up for stock lines delivered indifferently to no real purpose but to pad out the show’s airtime, to give the actors something to do and we, the viewers, the illusion we’re watching something made with enough skill or verve to justify its own existence and our expenditure of time. It’s lifeless, joyless art, and it continues to whiff completely when it comes to action — the bread and butter of Star Wars since its inception.

Take the fight between Sabine and Shin, a rematch after Sabine’s defeat and near-death at the end of the series’ first episode. Everything’s shot at medium distance, cutting back and forth mechanically, no escalation of tension, no real sense of movement through a comprehensible space. The forest is lifeless. There’s no underbrush, no wildlife, no interaction with the environment beyond weightlessly slicing trees in half to no effect. It’s as indifferent as shots of Ahsoka and Sabine standing in a clearly digital forest glade, or the uncannily CGI-de-aged Hayden Christiansen who appears in what is presumably a dream or vision sequence at the episode’s end. Or how about Hera and her squadron flying headlong at the Eye of Sion without a plan or any attempt to fire on it, or any attempt by director Peter Ramsey to gin up a sense of disaster or of something cut dangerously close before the hyperspace ring blasts off and sends Hera’s pilots careening into each other. And at the risk of picking nits, why is Hera, a seasoned veteran, bringing her ten-year-old kid into a warzone without even a report on the lay of the land? It’s like listening to someone explain the plot of an episode inexpertly more than it is watching actual serialized television. Plodding. Procedural. Devoid of emotional color or sensation.

Ramsey does bring one thing to the mix: a handful of good-looking shots. The overhead pan from the cliffside circle of stones into the sea is bewitching, the Eye of Sion rising from the clouds exciting and menacing, and Balan destroying the map sphere by lowering his lightsaber point-first through its center is just plain cool. Is it enough to move the needle? Not really, but even if they’re buried in a sea of colorless, badly lit dross, it’s a nice change of pace to have a few images worth looking at a little more closely. Ray Stevenson and Ivanna Sakhno continue to be pretty much the only cast members with anything going on, even if the script mostly has them standing in place and glowering. Stevenson makes the most of his stock villain dialogue about serving a greater good, and his talking Sabine down from destroying the star map before its secrets are revealed plays out as genuinely believable thanks almost solely to his natural warmth and twinkling eyes. It’s not much, but it’s nice to see someone here trying.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the show being covered here wouldn't exist.