Full Series The Clone Wars - 5.20 - The Wrong Jedi (Season Finale) - discussion thread

Hey, if you don't like the gaps in growth, then this shouldn't bother you any more than anything else in the show. It's something I bought into because that's what the show demanded, and I just don't take it seriously enough for that to bother me. Lots of people hadn't had dialogue for seasons at a time whose stories were then resumed at a later date. Also, lots of debatable Force stuff. More of the same. If you didn't like it by now, then it probably wasn't for you.

And the last one just isn't an argument. The lightsabers weren't a dark side thing so much as another form of rebellion against the Jedi, and lots of folks have killed innocent people for a cause they believed in... specifically, soldiers from every single conflict since the invention of the bomb.

EDIT: But, for real, yallz. I'm not trying to start something, but sometimes I feel like the complaints about this show are like saying, "Urgghhh, this Friends show is garbage! There hasn't been a single cyborg abortion, and do you honestly expect me to believe Chandler is THAT good at foosball, with those nervous shakes that seem to be early-onset Parkinson's? I don't buy it!"

The show has a certain set of parameters by now. I dunno... some might... just... not... be... fans. I don't mean Star Wars fans, but fans of this show. Usually, to me, when that happens with a show, I'm not surprised when they do something I don't like. I'm not surprised when I don't like an episode of the Big Bang Theory, because... well... I don't like the Big Bang Theory. But because it's Star Wars, it just has more clingers-on. I dunno.

 

"Completely shedding reason and logic" is a bit fanciful.

I really liked the story. I had very little idea of who Barriss was, and having since found out, I don't mind her rather uneventful EU history being changed for a much more interesting one....

Oh and ^5 to PraenomenCognomen for the Snuff Box!

 

^ Whiskeyyyyy!

And yeah, dunno how anybody expects to converse with such exaggerations to their complaints. Don't people realize that makes their points less solvent?

 

Oh, no! The sky is falling...

but that won't stop the sun from rising tomorrow, now will it?

 

I see a couple of problems with your working, here... Firstly this story was a whodunnit; overtly signposting the mystery villain's true nature ahead of time would have been contrary to its intended structure. Of course they could have gone down the Columbo route (you can draw some comparisons between Columbo's early reveal style and the PT - we all know Palps is the Big Bad) but this was more of a potboiler in the matinee style that so defined TCW. Series 5 revelled in retro mid 20th century action story tropes and I rather enjoyed it!

The detective action thriller style of the story dictated that there needed to be red herrings. I think good writing often subverts ones interpretations of a sequence of events, this story certainly did that (on multiple levels).

I think if you engage in any fiction, you're using your imagination to fill in the gaps. Good stories need good gaps. Now we can argue why we think the choice of Barriss was a good decision or not, but it seems as if you're criticising the writing for failing to spoonfeed enough exposition to ruin the story.

 

I hear you, but...
3 years without a peep and a completely-different character who returns isn't called a gap...

That's a grand canyon.

 

And once again, it's back to my original statement: It's completely par for the course. This is how the show has always worked. Lots of snapshots of different things happening across the galaxy, not a lot of character development. Some ambitions must be sacrificed to make room for others. It's a choice.

If you don't like people named Gilligan, or islands, don't watch Gilligan's Island.

 

In the same exact way veteran Tim McVeigh suddenly deciding to blow up a federal building made no sense? I don't get the desire for a morally justified bomber.

 

I hated Gilligan, but I never missed an episode... so there's that.

How long did it take for him to plan that out?

She liked red blades, not sure she could ever be justified, morally.

W/ my jokes out of the way: There are supposed to be heroes on both sides during ROTS.... so would the CIS see her in the same light as the Republic? Or, would they condone her actions and champion her cause? Maybe even bust her out of prison like they do for everyone else? Aside from setting her up to leave the Jedi/show, why frame Ahsoka? What did that accomplish, really?

Offee's rant didn't have enough meat to satisfy me... I wanted more.

#RancorBurgers

 

The thing is, S2 to S5 Barriss doesn't feel like such a leap to me. She's a meek, socially awkward religious devotee child soldier with a cold, stoic, distant mentor, she gets a glimpse of the dynamic and passionate reality inhabited by Anakin and Ahsoka, feels some jealousy/envy, develops some dark thoughts and social awareness and gets unwittingly embroiled in (what looks like) a false flag plot by Tarkin and Palpatine to a) discredit the Jedi and b) split up Anakin and Ahsoka.

I didn't feel any ownership or deep connection to her. She's not a massively memorable or iconic character (to me at least), I feel no more animosity towards the writers for rapidly developing her character than I do for similarly rapid developments of the Aristocratic Mandalorian teens or Randy. Having a different personality after 3 years of war would be the norm, I imagine. Anakin certainly had a different personality between episodes I and II, then II and III.... Kenobi was an arrogant racist in Episode 1 and matured over the whole saga... I don't accept that characters may not develop off camera. It's a bizarre expectation.

 

Strawman argument. Please stop oversimplifying things just so that you can be right. V2 specifically listed all the character development ("a meek, socially awkward religious devotee child soldier with a cold, stoic, distant mentor, she gets a glimpse of the dynamic and passionate reality inhabited by Anakin and Ahsoka, feels some jealousy/envy, develops some dark thoughts and social awareness") <-- all of which happened in the Geonosis arc, which set her up as the bomber, and he also pointed out that anything more would give the mystery away.

 

What's strawman about it? That nonsense you and the other guy posted isn't supported by what we see on screen. There is no evidence of jealousy ANYWHERE in Barriss' episodes. Even if that were the case, it's the episodes job to show this.

 

Dunno how anyone expects to converse when their posts drip with condescension.

 

Because nobody ever said that the necessary character development wasn't shown... because it was. ALL of that stuff was straight from the Geonosis arc. You can minimize it to make yourself feel correct, but it was all there. Regarding the jealousy part, there were discussions between Ahsoka and Barriss about the differences between their relationships with their masters, and I specifically remember a reaction shot of Barriss furrowing her brow and crossing her arms in response, demonstrating a point of conflict. She was dogmatic about Luminara's methods at first, but once those methods would have left her dead, then that conflict was made very obvious.

When I said "things happen off-screen," I guess I wasn't clear: the only thing left out is time passing and her thinking friggin' thoughts. There's nothing to show there. A combination of that disillusionment with her master's methods, her feeling that the Jedi should only be peacekeepers, and her brush with the dark side due to the brain worm (all of which are covered on-screen) all churns away inside her mind, and eventually, all that negativity just gives way to general opposition about the Jedi and an outsider view of their role. And by that point, you've arrived at this arc, which is laid out like a pulp mystery, so they can't risk guiding you into it.

If you guys prefer to have your intelligence insulted and have it handed to you on a platter, I'm awfully sorry to hear that, but it's a perfectly common thing in noir mysteries for internal character development to be obscured from the viewer. Things like a person going on as if nothing's wrong, but having certain feelings--as long as the events which started those gears turning is shown, WHICH, IN THE GEONOSIS ARC, THEY ABSOLUTELY WERE, because she was shown to be repressed about her situation which lead to disillusionment AND was conflicted about the position of that of the Jedi AND had a brush with the dark side in the midst of it all--it would be narratively criminal to show the rest of that development openly. She was in the first episode in the arc, and she restated her position about the role of the Jedi. That's all that's necessary. You can argue with me, but you can't argue with two centuries of detective fiction.

Once again, I am going to be condescending toward people who don't wish to communicate on fair terms. You exaggerate something to try to win an argument? That's inflammatory, and I won't accept it. No good comes of it.

 

Time for everyone to chill. And post nice.

 

"Fair terms" is a very ambiguous thing, but your stated intention to be condescending toward others is not. Please remember to play nice.

 

This thread is full of people being condescending, and a mod took part in the same. I was simply acknowledging my part in that without pointing fingers (which, yes, I am doing now, so let's hoist me up on the rack ).

Sorry guys, but I just don't like having valid points go ignored in order to keep an argument going. It's rather unsportsmanlike, when some are actually laying out the facts and others are not.

EDIT: Anyway, I guess I don't know what I'm still doing here. Thought I'd give it another go, but every time I simply agree with another person here by laying out logical facts to back them up, mine is the post that is quoted when somebody gets pissed off that somebody else actually has a decent set of data in an argument against their own opinion... before it was even an argument. Then it descends into exaggerations of relative opinions ("you're wrong because you're not right ENOUGH"), and that's that. Just not enough meaty discussion here for me... no actual back-and-forth involving tangible information, because it just descends into inflammatory arguments and getting words put in my mouth waaay too quickly. Sorry to intrude in your realm once again. Bubbye.

 

PraenomenCognomen : You don't need to leave... just lighten up a little. Everyone can get along while having these discussions.

 

Praenomen-nametoolong summed up the evidence of envy that I picked up. It's surprising those details have been overlooked by some on this board.

anakinfansince1983 (name also too long), regarding the aristos - exactly. Regarding the writers wishing to shock and create controversy - well that's part of their job description.

For me the worst thing about just about any given EU story (including, to a lesser extent, the PT) is how the scope of the story is retarded by unyielding canonical compliance. When the writers and GL decided to contradict a fairly mundane and uneventful EU timeline of an obscure character from Episode II, they knew that a section of the more fanatical fans would start burning embassies and rioting in the streets, figuratively speaking.

Just as they did when Maul came back from the dead.

Or when Lucas gave Anakin a padawan in a boob tube.

I thought bringing back Maul as a mad spider cyborg was hilariously misguided, but I was very impressed with what they did with him by the end. Ditto for Anakin's ganguro padawan - we knew from the outset that her story couldn't end well for her or Anakin, but in the end we got something more fulfilling and emotionally charged that I'd have thought possible for a Saturday morning cartoon.

The writers did a sterling job IMHO.

I predict heated debates in the DW thread when your marathon reaches the Moffat era, btw!

PraenomenCognomen - relax, they're not as mean and unhinged as they seem. Or if they are, I think they're pretty harmless.