{"id":38271,"date":"2020-08-24T06:30:24","date_gmt":"2020-08-23T18:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=38271"},"modified":"2020-08-23T21:48:58","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T09:48:58","slug":"what-im-watching-the-mandalorian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2020\/08\/24\/what-im-watching-the-mandalorian\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’m Watching: “The Mandalorian”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Subtitle:<\/strong> Great visuals and I really love the idea<\/em> of the series, but…<\/p>\n

…am I allowed to say, “meh”?<\/p>\n

I certainly didn’t hate the eight-part first season, but I found it pretty bog-standard viewing fare. The “defend the village” episode (4: [official title] Sanctuary) was pretty much lifted straight from the Seven Samurai<\/em> playbook, and there’s a nigh-identical episode, storyline fundamentals-wise, in Merlin<\/em>, as I recall…<\/p>\n

I found the characters largely “by the numbers”, too, so it’s probably not surprising my enthusiasm failed to fire. :-\/<\/p>\n

Slight Spoiler Alert:<\/strong> (So Read No More if you’re concerned.)<\/span><\/p>\n

My “oh-no-oo” moment, both as a viewer and writer myself, concerns the final episode and the helmet (of secrecy.) The whole point of Mandalorians is that they don’t take their helmets off, so if it’s going to happen at all it should happen early on.<\/p>\n

Imho, this is not so much to show that the taboo isn’t absolute (although that does rather immediately undermine the show’s whole premise), but once the ‘intergalactic man of mystery’ mojo has been built, viewers will also build their own (probably strong, if unconscious) picture of what’s behind the mask. So if the mask is removed in the final episode (the ‘slight spoiler’ is that yes, it is\/was) the viewer is almost bound to feel let down.<\/p>\n

I definitely did, anyway. I also felt that the unmasking wasn’t necessary, despite the plot rationale being OK, because the narrative could still play out but have the helmet removal occur off-camera. (Sort of like an “in-chapter break” in a book.) In that way you maintain your mystery, which is kind of the whole point of the Mandalorian (and Mandalorians generally) yanno…<\/p>\n

And by way of resting my case, Judge Dredd never<\/em> takes off his helmet: in the graphic novels anyway, which are the only true and right Judge Dredd, with none of this Hollywood movie malarkey…<\/p>\n

\"\"

Yep, there is a Season 2 — & again, those visuals are great!<\/p><\/div>\n

In terms of whether I’d watch more, it is<\/em> part of the\u00a0 Stars Wars ‘verse, of which I am<\/em> a died-in-the-wool fan (from way back.) So I won’t write future seasons off my watchlist altogether, but I won’t be finger-tapping for it to start and it’s unlikely to be top of the viewing list when it does arrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Subtitle: Great visuals and I really love the idea of the series, but… …am I allowed to say, “meh”? I certainly didn’t hate the eight-part first season, but I found it pretty bog-standard viewing fare. The “defend the village” episode (4: [official title] Sanctuary) was pretty much lifted straight from the Seven Samurai playbook, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38271"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38283,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38271\/revisions\/38283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}