The Mandalorian [No Spoilers]
Jan. 15th, 2021 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI don't watch much TV. I got out of the habit of watching hours per day when I went to college. I remember my first semester at school I watched all of 2 hours— and all of it on the last night before going home after final exams. I was bored and my friends had all left. Now I average maybe two hours per week. And there have been stretches of a month or longer when I've watched nothing.
My last drought of TV watching ended when I got lured in to watch a bunch of seasons of Avengers animated shows Hawk was chewing through. With those finished we decided finally to take the plunge on The Mandalorian.
Tonight we watched eps. 1-4 of the first season. A few non-spoiler observations:
BTW, I know we're late to the party with watching The Mandalorian. The first season was released just over a year ago, and the second season is out now, too. But that's a good thing because it means there's more we can binge-watch. That part above where I said I average 2 hours/week of TV watching? With 2020s streaming that takes the form of me ignoring TV for 6-8 weeks at a time and then watching 20 hours of a great series in 1-2 weeks.
My last drought of TV watching ended when I got lured in to watch a bunch of seasons of Avengers animated shows Hawk was chewing through. With those finished we decided finally to take the plunge on The Mandalorian.
Tonight we watched eps. 1-4 of the first season. A few non-spoiler observations:
- From the opening scene this is immediately recognizable as Star Wars— but the small screen version of it. Instead of massive star cruisers and legions of stormtroopers it's rust-bucket ships and backwater worlds. It's like the setting of the first reel of the original movie.
- Thematically, the series is a Space Western. The title character, the Mandalorian, is reminiscent of various Clint Eastwood characters, and the setups for several scenes had me chuckling about which spaghetti westerns they were cribbing from.
- In this setting the Empire has fallen and the Republic is ineffectual. That combines with what I wrote in the previous two points to create a rich and varied tapestry. At the fringes of the galaxy there are twists and turns around every corner. And with little in the way of a central power, the writers can create a tight narrative focused on a few characters and local challenges. (See also: reason #2 why the prequels sucked.)
BTW, I know we're late to the party with watching The Mandalorian. The first season was released just over a year ago, and the second season is out now, too. But that's a good thing because it means there's more we can binge-watch. That part above where I said I average 2 hours/week of TV watching? With 2020s streaming that takes the form of me ignoring TV for 6-8 weeks at a time and then watching 20 hours of a great series in 1-2 weeks.
