Lit Clone Wars Continuity Discussion (Spoilers Allowed)

I really enjoyed the last episode with the exception of the space battle. Visually it was very appealing but beyond that it just made no sense. On top of the easy boarding action, the Sep fleet seemed to just drop on them out of nowhere. At no point did Obi-Wan seem worried about there being a fleet near by or seem hurried as though helping the padawans had come on the heels of a retreat, then suddenly out pops Grievious. Are we supposed to believe that he spends all his days just jumping up and down hyperspace lanes looking for a weaker fleet than his own to attack? Perhaps that's why he's such a lousy general, he's actually forgotten he has other things to do beyond chancing various routes.

You really thought that Grievous was the leader of the droid armies? Just look at him.

The trick to TCW (and, frankly, a lot of SW) is the extent to which one can imagine sensible things happening just offscreen. Obi is basically the C story of that episode; the entire battle is only there to justify the younglings not getting rescued right away. Grievous' boarding seems easy because they only have like 2 minutes of screen time to show it, but there's plenty of room to assume more is happening there that the average TCW watcher doesn't need explained to them.

That's why I was okay with Onderon - the stuff we did see was kind of ridiculous, but it's easy enough to assume there's further unstated reasons for the political situation there. Even with the training stuff - for a second it seems like all they're learning is how grenades work, but then in the next episode Steela is doing crazy sniper stuff and and Saw is scaling palace walls, so I'm happy to believe there was much more work going on that we just didn't see.

So your all for telling and not showing?

On Cartoon Network? Sure. In any event, I'm making an argument for the plausibility of the stories, not the quality of the storytelling.

This is his archnemsis. Hunting him down seems like a good use of time. And why not? War is about killing the enemy - hunting down isolated enemy units is a common tactic in war.

Furthermore, one of the Clone Wars comics was all about tracking down a spy, because Grievous' ambushes of Republic fleets were too often and too close together to be random chance.

Granted he would want to hunt him down but the galaxy is a big place and to see easily happen across him seems highly unlikely. I can agree with what @CooperTFN said but what irritates me is that it would take all of a few seconds to explain it away in a brief line such as;

"Cody get to those younglings before Grievous tracks our escape route."

Or to use your example from one of the comics;

"How can he have found us already, I'm starting to think these spy rumours are true."

Not only would that latter example explain Grievous finding them (to a limit) but it would also set up the possibility of a future storyline that they can play off when brainstorming episodes. If they don't follow up on it, then it's simply a remark Obi made that at least offers something for fans to consider.

But that would defeat the whole point of the battle - Cody needs to not get to the younglings or there's no story.

Not really. Moments after he told Cody to go to the younglings Grievous turned up. That could still play out the same but with those few seconds of dialogue suggesting a plausible reason as to why Grievous just happened upon them.

Oh, I get it.

Eh.

The OS finally put up its trivia section for the last episode. I got that most of the kids were some specific animal, but Byph was eluding me. Apparently he was a tree. A very specific tree from the background of an episode last season.

THIS MAKES PERFECT SENSE, TCW. KEEP AT IT.

Having not see any episodes in this series yet, that image leads me to conclude it has jumped the shark.

That's, like, the exact opposite of what that image means. I don't see how you could even express an opinion more contrary to the truth, frankly.

.....Byph forever, yo.

Surely that ship sailed when they brought Darth Maul back.

His name is Byph?

Or when Ashoka jumped over that shark guy in the Dac Arc.

Though I figured it was a nickname, I still checked "Pete" on wookieepedia to see if he was really a SW character. What do you have against Jefferson Starship?

Oh, wait. I could answer that for you.

This can't be said enough.

To be honest, that's just an inherent weakness of the television medium. Every medium has strengths and weaknesses; for television, you of course have the advantage of visuals, but you have a rather strict time limit to meet. So, where a novel can describe everything if it wants, with TV the viewer has to assume things happen off screen, unless you want every storyline to be a long arc that shows a lot of the mundane.

But I haven't seen the episodes in question, so I don't know how it's done. I'm generally not impressed with TCW writing, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in some areas.

Bingo. It's one thing to lament that some elements aren't written better, but it's another to accuse them of inherently not making sense.

Does...does he actually have flowers growing out of his head?

Maybe I need to start watching TCW again...

This episode was sorta worth it.

Oh cool, they're doing a crossover arc with Pokemon now? Though I would have picked a cooler Gen2 monster than Sudowoodo.