Boba Fett S1E6: No Boba Fett, Again

[canyonwalker]

Last night we watched S1E6 of The Book of Boba Fett. The episode is entitled "From the Desert Comes a Stranger", but it might as well be entitled "The Mandalorian S3E2" or "Boba Fett Writes a Book About Somebody Else". In this episode, like in the previous, the title character basically doesn't appear. He's on screen for all of one scene, where he speaks, I think, two throwaway lines. Space Orc #2 has a bigger part in this episode than Fett.

Seriously, what's with this? This kind of situation, where a TV show nominally about one character (Boba Fett) gets taken over by stories about another character halfway through the season, usually indicates a major production problem. Like, the star had a bad motorcycle accident and couldn't film scenes for 3 months, or had a big fight with the director and walked off the set, or died. Yet the takeover storyline with Din Djarin of The Mandalorian is just so good that it doesn't seem plausible it's anything less than Plan A.

In this episode, which is effectively S3E2 of The Mandalorian, we see:

• Din Djarin goes to visit Grogu, under Luke Skywalker's tutelage. Djarin wants to give him a small gift, some kind of Mandalorian armor made of Beshkar steel.
• Skywalker trains Grogu in a series of exercises that are an amusing fan-service reversal of how Yoda trained Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back.
• Another Jedi, the gal with the head-tentacles we saw somewhere in season 2 of The Mandalorian, intercepts Djarin and warns that if Grogu sees him, Grogu may choose friendship with him and abandon his Jedi training. (This aligns with what The Armorer told Djarin in the previous episode, that Jedi must renounce all attachments.) Djarin leaves the armor with her to pass to Grogu and departs the planet.
• Marshal Cobb Vanth, another character on Tatooine from The Mandalorian, tangles with Pyke drug traders expanding into his territory. Djarin later tries to hire Vanth and his underlings to fight for Boba Fett. Key people in town are opposed to fighting someone else's fight.

And, of course, the titular character of this episode:



I practically LOLed when I saw this scene begin because it's such a trope of classic Western movies: the tall, thin stranger dressed in a long coat and broad brimmed hat, walks purposefully in from the empty desert. I swear I could practically hear the space-spurs clanking at his heels.

Such clearly Western tropes are another way in which season 1 of TBoBF is effectively becoming season 3 of The Mandalorian. Recall that Mando was basically a Space Western. It made extensive use of these tropes, particularly in early episodes. While it was fresh there it feels too derivative here. It feels like TBoBF was trying to become its own show but the writers gave up after 4 episodes.

Of course, with how the writers of this show were struggling for traction until they added Mando to the story, it might as well be called:



Update: Read how Episode 7 finishes a stumbling season with a crap-tastic *plop*. 😡