1x05 Practice Makes Perfect

[7.5/10] This felt like a straight up The Clone Wars episode. You’ve got Anakin teaching Ahsoka a lesson, with some encouragement from Obi-Wan and help from the likes of Rex, Jesse, and other familiar clone troopers. The other episodes of Tales of the Jedi so far have felt like glimpses of corners of the Star Wars saga we’ve never gotten to see before. But this one feels a little more like gap-filling a nostalgia bait for TCW fans.

But you know what? I am a TCW fan, so it worked on me! While there’s a certain sports movie story shape to this one, I like the central concept of Anakin thinking that traditional Jedi tests are too staid and predictable, and so wanting to shape something more realistic and challenging for his pupil. It’s true to form for Anakin, and his color-outside-the-lines mentality.

Forcing Ahsoka to square off against Clone Troopers with their blasters set on stun serves both purposes. To Anakin’s point, troopers are less predictable than droids. And it also speaks to a certain resilience necessary in battle. Ahsoka is out for long periods of time when stunned, but has to keep getting up and keep fighting, another skill that’s important for actual battles.

What I like most about this one is that it puts the audience in the same position as Ahsoka emotionally. We feel her frustration at this seemingly impossible exercise with the endless rhythm of Anakin’s repeated “Again”s. We feel her pain when she’s stunned and passes out again and again, tumbling like a wounded gazelle each time she gets back to us. This is a deliberately frustrating task, one that requires determination and balance the whole way through.

And yet, there’s a strong emotional turning point. When Ashoka questions the utility of the test, Anakin explains that he wants it to be challenging, because it will make her better, prepare her for what’s really out there, and that he knows she can do it. It’s tough love, the kind that’s hard to watch in places, but one that evinces a sense of faith for Anakin in his padawan. So when we see it work, when we see Ahsoka succeeding now and in the future, while an older Anakin looks on in approval, it’s an affirmation of both student and teacher, and a heartening one at that.

Then comes the gut punch. In hindsight, I should have seen it coming that this training would be important when, as in the end of The Clone Wars seventh season, Ahsoka has to fight off the clones who’s chips have been activated. It’s a dark note to end on. There’s grim poetry to the fact that the friends helping her become better would turn on her, and force her to use those skills she learned in that training session for real. But like so much, it adds to the tragedy and irony of the Prequel Era story, where it’s the very skills Ahsoka’s master taught her that allow her to survive the hell his master hath wrought.

Visually, there’s some neat elements here too. However much Anakin may turn his nose up at the official training session, the balletic grace and impact with which Ashoka moves versus the ball droids is impressive and visually arresting. Watching her slice through big laser light donuts makes for some damn cool visuals too. The repetitious nature of the stuns and blackouts sells the tough consequences of this intense training session. And not for nothing, this could just be the power of suggestion, but I feel like they tweaked Ahsoka’s design slightly to make her look more like Rosario Dawson.

Overall, more so than any of the other shorts, this one seems tailor-made for anyone who misses The Clone Wars. (Hell, we even have a cameo from Caleb Dume for Rebels fans.) That makes it arguably the least adventurous of these outings, but also one that will resonate with anyone who’s been watching the story of Anakin and Ahsoka’s mentorship for years.