Full Series The Bad Batch 3.13 - Into the Breach - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Another great episode good to have echo back

 

Also, why the hell were the walls in their cells made out of LEGO blocks, that can be easily removed and placed back in a matter of minutes by a literal child, while not raising any suspicion whatsoever? All those troopers, all those laser gates at the entry to the vault, and yet, they don't have simple cameras and wiretap in there. And also, that system in the wall to take samples, which is also, of course, an escape route, is awfully convenient. They have doctors and droids come in manually and take their samples manually and then leave the vault. Why do they need to do it, if they have automatic sample collection system in the walls? Very contrived, all so that Omega could show how smart she is and escape on her own. It's the second time Batch are trying to rescue her, only for her to escape on her own. And I doubt the writers will have her fail, clearly, the intention is to show how smart and capable she is. Yawn.

 

Every week is just teeth pulling slow crawl to get slightly closer to achieving the goal of saving a girl who already escaped once.

We know nothing about the villain besides “I’m setting up Palpatine’s somehow return!”

Most boring scenes imaginable of the lab and the children being tended to by the staff. “Time for your sample, Omega!” Like yes, we get it, her blood is important, you’ve already explained this twenty five times and showed the same scene of her getting pricked five other times.

This is a show that takes the most basic plot pitch imaginable (there’s an important girl! These really hard ass dudes learn to care for her!) and instead of doing literally anything with it, it’s just stretched out for fifteen episodes. Then if you point out that the show isn’t moving along at all, Twitter eats you alive and calls you media illiterate. I’ll take The Book of Boba Fett over this any day

They should have wrapped up the Omega breakout story early on and just done something actually cool with the story like “all the surviving clones learn about Project Necromancer and band together for an all out assault on Mount Tantiss” almost Battle of Endor style.

 

Or she should have never escaped in the first place. What's the point, if she's gonna get captured again a few episodes later anyway? Only Crosshair should have escaped in the third episode. Omega should have stayed behind. That would also create some serious tension and conflict between the Batchers... But this show is desperately afraid of conflict, so that is a no-no.

There also should be some kind of urgency... As it stands now, her being at Tantiss is just a minor, inconvenient nuisance. There is no sword of Damocles hanging over her head. She is not in any immediate danger. They are not going to harvest all of her biological material for experiments. She's just living there, chilling... It would be better if the Batch actually had to hurry, because otherwise, Omega might get killed. And if the threat was actually real, it would give Omega an incentive to find an escape. As it stands, it's just some game to her, because it's boring and sucks to be at the vault, and she "likes a challenge." And the Batch themselves don't seem like they are in a particular hurry. They don't seem really worried. They just do that job and go through motions.

Compare that entire thing to The Clone Wars arc, where Ahsoka was captured by the Trandoshans and was hunted for sports with other Younglings. Anakin was extremely anxious throughout the entire arc and could barely keep himself together. There was tension and stakes, since Ahsoka was actually being hunted to the death, and we actually saw one of the Younglings (a child of Ahsoka's age (!!!)) killed right in front of us, who died gasping for air in Ahsoka's arms, as the shot fired by a Trandoshan hunter pierced her lungs. We saw Trandoshans having heads and skins and other trophies of various species. So we got the idea of what will happen to Ahsoka if she fails, and if Anakin fails to come in time. There was a real danger there. With Omega and Tantiss... there is nothing. They are just sampled and imprisoned in boring conditions. That's it. No urgency, no stakes, no tension. And given that Omega had already escaped once, and can do so again, it just nullifies any remaining stakes, unless she fails, gets captured and punished - which I honestly doubt.

This show and Rebels are really overrated in my mind. Although, unlike Bad Batch, Rebels had characters that aren't one-dimensional caricatures, even though I find Ezra, Sabine, Zeb and Chopper insanely annoying and lame. And its fans are really, really overzealous, and treat it as this perfect thing, the best Star Wars thing to ever grace us. "DON'T YOU DARE TALKING BAD ABOUT REBELS! IT'S LITERALLY PERFECT! THERE WAS NO FILLER, YOU SEE, SPACE WHALES CAME BACK IN THE FINALE!!11"
But yeah, Twitter is a dumpster, and it's just people thirsting over clones and anyone hugging or accidentally touching, lol. It's the new tumblr.

 

I really think Star Wars animation is missing the spark of The Clone Wars. You just never really knew what you were getting from episode to episode and if you found one arc particularly boring, you’d have the next arc with a fresh batch of characters/location/conflict. And the stakes really were there. I’m tired of everyone shooting at each other with stun bolts on this show.

Also why I brought up The Book of Boba Fett. Yes, there were some baffling creative choices with the show. Yes, it suddenly becomes Mandalorian 2.5 halfway through. And I think the show definitely suffered from COVID (empty streets devoid of extras), but it was a bold show in many respects.

 

Welcome to Filoni's Endless Playhouse. Endless padding. Endless budget on nothing.

Look forward to endless repetition of the same plot beats in his current and future shows for all time, while everyone claps and cheers for his genius.

'Is that...IS THAT A HECKIN' MORTIS REFERENCE??????'

 

Exactly.

Having plenty of build up is part of what made Andor so great. Slowing ratcheting the tension with a stealth op like this before things go loud the next two episodes works rather well in my opinion.

If anything, I think Bad Batch could have used some more build up to certain things - for instance, more scenes of Pabu actually building relationships with the locals to increase the effect when the empire does arrive. Still, with so many six to eight episode shows around I am grateful we were able to get as much bad batch as we have.

 

There’s a difference between being slow and methodical and just being nothingsauce.

Andor had scenes of a guy eating cereal with his mother that were more engaging than 20 minutes of “snooping around an imperial base to get the thing to do the next thing”.

Andor had this absurdist level of comedy that was woven into the dark storyline and was written and shot in a way that kept things moving along and was filled to the brim with interesting dialogue. This is not that. And I’m not going to try to rationalize it as “it’s for kids!”, because I do think they’re really trying to go for the adult fanbase with this one. If anything, the show should be cheesier and have more of a 90’s TMNT/Street Sharks except in Star Wars vibe.

 

I get what you are saying, but I see the difference in Andor build up, that has plenty of interesting dialogue, character work, development and themes, and The Bad Batch "build up", which is just the characters doing perfunctory actions and moving from point A to B, because the plot needs them to be at point C by episode 15, while occasionally throwing out hollow one-liners. There is no substance there, no character work, no development. It's just the plot moving by 1% each episode: they break out Rampart, they sneak onto the ship and hyperspace jump to Tantiss. 99% of the episode, however, is pew pew pew and one-liners. That's it. There is nothing more to say about the last two episodes. There is nothing really to discuss or speculate. We are all waiting for the finale, where the important stuff will actually happen. Until then, there is not much to chew on, sadly. The problem isn't the build up episodes, but the utter lack of substance in the vast majority of this show's episodes.

 

This week our heroes have to infiltrate an Imperial Base.
That's new.

I can't even remember what for. When are they gonna get on and tell whatever story it is they want to tell?

 

I'm sad to say this, but the only thing saving the last two episodes for me is Rampart's involvement. I didn't even like him all that much when he was the main villain, but right now he at least brings something fresh to the show.

Oh, and it's nice to have Echo back I guess. I will laugh so hard if they kill him off in the finale after giving him 5 minutes of usefulness.

 

I was wondering the same thing. My guess is that she's with Phee, to keep her safe.

 

Maybe they both will arrive on Tantiss with Rex's forces, when the BB will provide him with coordinates.

 

Okay, so while I'm more than happy to let this show cook, I'd genuinely love to see that. She could copy the example set by Omega's determination to rescue her fellow Clones and set all the other hounds loose, rallying them against their captors!

 

I don't feel like pacing is a problem in this show. This show does suffer from being unable to live up to The Clone Wars, a GOAT impossible for it to live up to. So it sticks closer to being like the Mandalorian. It's written like the Mandalorian a show that is slow most of the time but with solid action where it needs it. Safe since it's also very difficult to live up to Andor. I think seasons 1 and 3 are largely solid. Season 2 was meh. I think that season suffered a lot from executive meddling and got neutered somewhere in its production. I can only speculate why. I think it had something to do with either Kenobi or Andor. Season 3 naturally has issues because of that. I'm going to see how The Bad Batch holds up in a rewatch I'll start probably this weekend ahead of the finale. I'm not sure how long it will take to rewatch.

They are telling the story of how the hell The Bad Batch tries to rescue Omega when her escape plan with the kids from Tantiss blows up. I think that's awesome. They aren't just going to get a random Big Damn Heroes entrance just in the nick of time which is a Star Wars staple. When they get there they've worked for it. Don't worry, I'm sure Rex and Phee will pick up the slack there. The Bad Batch is putting the work in on-screen to find a way to Tantiss as fast as possible. The Bad Batch went back to the abandoned Kaminoan facility from season one. Going back to the same place where the rescue attempt Fennic argued with Wrecker they failed doesn't foreshadow a good rescue this time. They didn't even get there until after everything had already happened. That's foreshadowing.

Omega escaped once already this season because she is the main character. She needed to be with the group for the development of the Mcell plot. Now that she has been captured again there is urgency Omega is in immediate mortal danger like they should have already been there to rescue her yesterday. In the shot of Hunter's face as he is about to dock the shuttle to the ship going to Tantiss he has the most desperate, pleading yet badass look on his face all at once. Like please Force Gods let this work. I'm coming Omega and Hemlock has ****ing hell to pay." I love it.

Ok, I do have to call BS on The Bad Batch just painting their armor black and walking in there like some sort of Special Ops group. I guess this is a case of very few in the Empire have seen The Bad Batch's armor. At least that part of the plan didn't work since the Imperial Officer who stopped them the first time came back to question them. The real stars of this episode were Echo and Rampart. Lol, I've missed his attitude and he was giving that to Rampart constantly. When Rampart was like "Call me Sir" and Echo replied, "I don't think so." was gold. Glad Echo had a chance to be an MVP for an episode and I didn't get any real sense his demise is imminent. Rampart is a coward though. If Hemlock (Or Palpatine himself) offers him anything or if he gets a chance to trip them up. He'll take it and run. I think that's how he's going to go out. I would like to see either Crosshair or Echo buy him tickets.

 

I wanted to die when Omega said with the most pompous grin imaginable “I’m going to break out again” like it was a massive mic drop from the writers. Imagine Cassian Andor has to break out of the same prison again in the same season. Or Princess Leia needing to be saved twice from the same inquisitor in a three episode span. Oh wait…

 

I’m of the opinion that the “It’s for kids” argument has a place, but only if you’re making a show meant specifically for really young kids/universal audiences (ex. the excellent 1990's Moomin) because then you actually do have to limit your choice of content as oppose to shows for young kids where you have the range of content and you just have to think about how you convey said content. That is really the only application of the "It's for kids" reasoning that I consider valid.

Despite how people often seem amazed at the content in some shows and wonder how they could be considered kids' shows (ex. TCW) most kids' shows have always had content like that and kids don't batter an eye at it.

If you’re making a show where you chose to have a group of people get shot and burned alive on the insistance of a character who later returns to a protagonist role with the good guys, you absolutely can’t use the "It's for kids" argument because you introduced those elements and played them completely straight (as oppose to the Amazing World of Gumball where the main characters repeatedly murder people and it's played for laughs because it's comedy show; the tone is consistent about that fact so the audience is as well)




This was a really roundabout way of saying that I agree with you except for the part about them trying to go for the adult fanbase; I think they are legitimately trying to go for both kids and adults (like the Mandalorian's demographic) but they're terrible at balancing the tone so you have super-serious story elements (ex. Crosshair's murder moment) paired with simplistic storytelling and character-work.

 

I still don’t understand how the Batch attached to the Science vessel without them knowing. I know they disabled the proximity sensors or whatever but how do you not notice a ship flying super close to you and then latching onto your hull like a lamprey?

 

^ Because that's what the script says.

 

A fairly good episode. Seems like the 99 crew is headed in the right direction after all. Omega already has an escape plan in the works; taking the rest of the kidnapped kids with her. Hunter and the others reunite on some platform in the sky. That wasn't Bespin, was it? The use of Rampart to infiltrate an Imperial base is curious. Wouldn't they have files on him having been imprisoned?

 

I gave it an 8/10. Nothing significantly memorable about this episode, but it was still fairly good.

 

and they're still walking weird. what's that all about?

 

it was ****ing ridiculous.

 

Can someone direct me to the actual fan forum?

I get not liking something but there’s been like three positive posts in here and endless droning on about nitpicks.

It was a fine episode and will be far better as part of a binge watch obviously but we are now ready to press go on the finale, it’s totally ok for a show to breathe before that happens. Everyone is now in their starting positions for all the craziness to begin.

I still think the clones are coming, the fact Echo is back ensures that to me, they will be the cavalry that destroys Tantiss, saves whoever is saved but it likely will come at great cost.

I enjoyed this ep for what it was always hoi g to be - set up for the finale. Rampart was once again great.