Compared to previous episodes, this episode is not bad, but still dumbly written.
As usual, a supposedly professional team of mercenaries turns out to be incompetent just-for-laugh bollocks, as shown by one person destroying a droid for fun in a ship they know are extremely guarded by, well, droid's connectivity. And no one seems to be troubled with that. Apparently recklessness and naivety are traits commonly shared by supposedly 'fighters' in this show - we've seen people ranging from bounty hunters, ex-rebel shock trooper, and even the Mando himself, who consistently failed to notice obvious traps (eps 5), wasted their time for overly convoluted plans (eps 4), or simply appeared to took the same marksmanship class as stormtroopers (eps 3 & 5).
Oddly, for a ship supposedly to be extremely secure, barely any droids patrol the ship. Even when the ship was on full emergency alert. The droids conveniently only appear as distraction as the plot needs it; for a heist/rescue episode, this leaves no stake on breaching the ship at all.
Speaking of stake, the characters also consistently make questionable decisions. Despite knowing they are limited on time, they just waste it for squabbling between themselves, hunting for each other down to the last of it, instead of focusing on running away from the ship.
But the worst offender is our titular character.
The Mando turns out to be a Disneyfied, Sunday morning, family-friendly bounty hunter, as he refuses to hurt people from New Republic but oddly has no qualms killing/hurting people who happen to be on the side of other factions (stormtroopers, bandits, fellow professionals, or even just a person who happens to have a huge debt - eps. 1).
It appears that the "hunting" in bounty hunting is only legitimate, as long as it doesn't involve one of the "good guys". Good guys according to who? No in-universe explanation is given except that according to Disney, New Republic must be the good guys. This show seems to be the opposite of Star Wars: The Old Republic (the online game, not the single player RPG): where the game aligns bounty hunter in the "evil" faction just because Boba Fett worked for the Empire, this show aligns bounty hunter in the "good" faction just because Mando is the protagonist.
The Mando also always consistently failed to realize that leaving Baby Yoda alone always means a bad thing. I mean, this is his damn third time doing that.
That being said, the action is quite well-done. The Twi'lek girl is choreographed nicely. The Mando has some cool action with his gears. The ending has some tense, though the last order from Ran feels a bit cheap. Unfortunately, those still can't save the episode from its below-average screen writing.
Oh, boy... Never liked those particular thropes. Either it the thropes hater in me talking or it's truly first objectively bad episode.
Well, at least now newbee Han has a whole crew to run with... and after Mando turning into Batman - Newbee is definitely alive in some dumpster)
The show still can end strong overall through: 4 great ones, 1 mediocre and only 1 bad so far. Here's hoping couple of just good ones left.
A very entertaining episode, as usual. The great action made up for a slow start. Baby Yoda playing and seek was cute too.
Where did all the production-value go?
The first two episodes dragged me into the world of Star Wars, but after that it‘s all down hill to me. Acting just meh, almost no good looking alien races anymore, heck even the droid from this episode was a pesky human in a bad costume. Just as bad as both of those Twi‘leks and the horned guy - bad actors in bad makeup. I really hope they fix this soon.
The good about this episode: The New Republic is very serious about law and order, we get to see Twi'leks again, a very unrecognizable Clancy Brown and the cameos of David Filoni and the directors of all the previous episodes as X-Wing pilots. Also, we now get an idea how hyperspace navigation in the Star Wars universe is all bout. The ending with the 3 baddies on the cell alive made this episode very kid friendly, and I don't mind that. The bad about this episode: Zero planning for the prison break, and it shows. The Twi'lek make-up looks very cheap and the acting of both of actors is uneven. The X-Wings arrive more than 20 minutes after the beacon is activated. So, no troops?. Nobody is driving the prison ship anymore, so I guess that it's a death sentence for everyone aboard that ship when they run out of air, water and food, unless somebody gets to them.
This is the first episode for me when the show has lost its shine. I adored the first three episodes and thought episodes 4 and 5 were okay, but man, this one was just terrible.
There are a few reasons I can think of:
The overarching plot has taken a backseat. Episodes 1-4 felt connected by the Mandalorian's quest for redemption through his care for the Child. Episode 4 still felt connected to that overarching goal, but with the last two episodes, we're just watching a "job of the week" conceit that neither moves the characters nor the plot forward. It's basically filler at this point.
Bad Western tropes. While I loved the initial "Western in space" feel of the early episodes, the show was still coming up with its own genre conventions and telling an original story. With episode 6, we're getting a pretty crappy heist gone bad story whose only claim to originality is being set in the Star Wars universe. All the turns were painfully predictable and dictated by the tropes of the genre rather than the characters themselves.
Bad acting. The Twi'leks and the horned guy were just awful. The dialogue was bad, but the way they hammed it up was just painful to watch. Watching the Twi'lek girl hiss at the horned guy felt like watching D&D players hamming it up on game night.
Bad writing. The whole thing was just so unbelievable, from the predictable turns to the way Mando eventually betrays his employer using the beacon to somehow trick a bunch of X-Wings from murdering the station. Not a lot of it made any sense. There's, like, six different shots of the droid hunting down Baby Yoda on the ship that add absolutely NOTHING to the story and just go on forever.
It's not that I don't still look forward to new episodes, but with episode 6, The Mandalorian has gone from "must-watch" to "flawed but watchable." It's the kind of drop you'd expect between seasons 1 and 4, not across a short self-contained season, and it's a damn shame.
It feels like some doctor who episode with cheesy non-believable villains.
Interesting that the episode has an average 8/10 rating but most of the comments come from people rating this less than that. It's almost as if the 'hate' Star Wars is getting these days is from a vocal minority and not the view of the fanbase as a whole.
Sure Burg was an all-brawn-and-no-brain cliché, but still had personality. Anyone saying the production quality was bad clearly doesn't have eyes and anyone who doesn't understand why he didn't kill clearly doesn't have ears, because Mando's code in that regard is very clear.
This show is so much fun. It's like all the Star Wars books and computer games I played as a teenager come to life. Each episode is a mini adventure for me to get caught up in, borrowing from different genres, and it's a delightful escape every week. I'm looking forward to the main narrative progressing but in the meantime these standalone episodes are a joy.
I think i understand why most of the recent shows end up being boring and bad (Like as an example, Titans and now, the last 3 episodes of The Mandalorian). Most of this shows seem to focus more on making more seasons and earning money by it, than really making a good story that follows a line and end a part of it in a season. Firstly, the show seemed like it was going to be about the mistery of Baby Yoda, but the last episodes have been really useless to the plot and seem to lead nowhere. Thats why The boys is one of the best shows recently for me, because there is a story, there are no useless episodes like in the mandolorian, or in Titans. My only wish is this to get better in the next episodes.
[8.2/10] Man this one is cool. I’ll admit, there’s a bit of an odd tone to it, where on the one hand it seems to want to be deathly serious about things like not killing civilians and adds real stakes when Baby Yoda is in peril, but then you have Clancy Brown(!) and Natalia Tena(!) chewing scenery like this is a high class episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, so I don’t quite know how to take it. But despite that tonal wobbliness, it’s a visually thrilling episode that plays tension and action to the hilt.
The tension is incredible. Just the scene with Mando and his fellow criminals hanging out on the ship before they wait for the prison transport already feels like a powder keg that could go off at any minute. And that’s before Mayfeld picks up frickin’ Baby Yoda and the ship starts to rumble and shake coming out of hyperspace! There’s tons of tension in the scene where a Mexican standoff takes place over whether to kill the single human New Republic operator on the prison ship, which legitimately feels like it could break out into blaster fire, until it’s expertly punctured by Xi’an’s blades. And Zero going after Baby Yoda throughout the ship had me on the edge of my seat, even though I consciously knew that the rules of TV say that the mercenary droid wasn’t going to be able to catch him.
It was also an outstanding episode for action. Mando going against the warden droids on his own, whether taking on a mass of them in the hallway or wrangling one from inside a cell had a sort of kinetic excitement that stands down. The same goes for his fight with Burg, whose imperviousness to Mando’s usual tricks makes him a formidable opponent, who requires Mando to get creative and poses a threat in a way no other combatant can. Even just the production design here, with the wagon wheel design of cell doors and red lights holding steady or flashing added extra flavor to each encounter, especially the strobe stalking between Mando and Mayfeld in the final reel.
I was also a big fan of the little touches this one included, some for character, some just enjoyable bits for nerds like me. I appreciate the writing and performance of Mayfeld, who seems like a douchebag from the word go, something that’s reinforced over and over. The way he and the others casually disrespect Mando’s beliefs, the way he makes fun of Gungan speech, the way he just handles Baby Yoda all tell you that this guy’s an asshole long before he and his cohort turn on Mando. The show sets up that betrayal emotionally and in terms of personality, right down to Mayfeld holding back the others while Mando fights the warden droids. That actually helps the backstabbing here, because you can’t tell whether Mayfeld and his crew actively hate Mando or whether he’s just a jerk.
But then there’s little things only dorks would appreciate, like the fact that Matt Lanter (who played Anakin in the Clone Wars series) played the human that gets wasted by Xi’an, or that the New Republic fighter pilots who take down Malk’s space station are played by Dave Filoni, Deborah Chow, and Rick Famuyima, three directors and creative voices for the series. I like the world building in the glimpses of what we see here, from the prisoners behind bars on the prison transport to Zero (Richard Ayoade!) and our getting to see another competent bounty droid in action.
The story’s also paced well. It’s a pretty standard heist/rescue type deal, but the band of thieves conceit works well as The Mandalorian continues its genre-hopping excitement. The shift from “here’s the job” to the twists once they actually get to the prison ship, to the turn when Mando goes from hunted to hunter, all work well, particularly with the proverbial ticking clock in the form of Zero going after Baby Yoda. And the story reveals some nice character in Mando, who is still not a clear good guy, but who doesn't want to kill a random civilian, and who still is a man of his word who does the job and delivers Qin back to Malk, only to play the sort of badass loophole and “turnabout is fair play” twist on his “honor” when he sics the New Republic fleet on his former running buddy.
Overall, this is a distinctive episode of the show to be sure. At times it felt more like an episode of Star Trek (more hand to hand combat than usual) or even Suicide Squad (bunch of bad guys go on a mission together) than it did a piece of Star Wars. But that’s cool! It’s fun to see this show stretching its wings and delivering some of the coolest genre television around right now.
I love practical make-up and budget things, X-Wings gave me goosebumbs, unlike other comments I think it's a great Star Wars episode, It shows us post-empire era great!
Worst episode of the season. Casting Richard Ayoeda could have made for an interesting guest character and another idiosyncratic droid personality to add to Star Wars canon, but alas, the script has a bad case of 2010s "Vicious and stupid character syndrome" making all the guest characters both unlikable and uninteresting, which also characterizes the script in general. This is made all the worse by the cheap and silly fake-out when the motely band of vicious idiots are shown to magically still be alive, Mando having spared their wasted plot points for revisitation later , something I have no interest in exploring later.
But getting to the characters, okay, you have a barbarian trope Devarronian, fine; that's a potentially fun if shallow trope that is tonally "a Wookie, but ~evil~ and looks like Satan" . But what is with his Twi'lek ex and her fang display? Did Favreau mix up Twi'leks with Togruta? Or is that just an affectation of her "psycho" trope?
Also, it's damned high time they actually put the proper effects work into Twi'leks. Chalky makeup and obvious rubber headpieces are not cutting it. Just apply a little bit of Phantom Menace or Hellboy type effects to properly 'skin' the vibrant and exotic skin tones with subsurface scattering and reflections like real skin, and animate the head tails realistically, and you've finally got a believable Twi'lek. This tech is over 20 years old, would have to be applied only sparingly to how it was used in other Star Wars and 100s of TV shows and films since.
Bill Burr is not a fucking actor. This whole episode was just shitty characters and silly cameos. The cameos were cute, but show exactly the low caliber of entertainment that this series is content to rest at in between peaks of exciting fun and MCU character moments which are superficially satisfying, but lack real weight.
YOU SON OF A B***H IM IN!
Yeah, that felt like a fever dream and not like an actual episode. That was probably some of the worst TV I've seen in a long time. Poorly executed, acted, the budget was nonexistent, I have no idea why this needs to exist in the star wars universe.
Did NOT expect a Moss-droid. Unfortunately that kind of took me out of the story a little as I kept thinking about IT Crowd.
I like the anthology-style nature of this series unlike a lot of people. Gives me a Saturday morning serial vibe. I enjoyed this mix of characters, the setting and the plot, but I appreciate the variation each episode to keep things fresh!
The actors who played Twi'lek’s were awful. Bill Burr was awful as well. What with the acting and casting? But overall the episode was good.
There was no doubt (from the beginning) that Mando was going to have to deal with those bad guys. I'm a little disappointed that Bill Burr, Clancy Brown and the purple chick ended up alive. This is not the A-Team. Keeping them alive makes the whole thing harder to do. Also it seemed a little rushed.
Still it was a good episode overall and a lot of fun. Even baby Yoda on the ship was amusing.
Just for background, the first two episodes got five stars, the second two episodes got four stars, and then this one I gave three stars.
I enjoyed the episode well enough to stick around and watch more. But I really get pissed off when he leaves the ship with baby Yoda aboard and the ramp down. In this case, when he was on someone else’s ship, the dangers were geometrically increased that there could be a problem. He’s being a bad baby Yoda caretaker.
It's completely fine, though it has it's fair share of issues. Rick Famuyiwa makes the smart decision to make it light and relatively tongue-in-cheek, which was a smart decision as this premise is yet another detour. Thankfullly, unlike the last episode, the guest characters are much more entertaining. Their unlikability is almost part of the joke this time around, even if the odd casting choices (particularly Bill Burr) makes them stand out more then they should.
Once the episode gets to it's slasher movie inspired second half though it becomes nearly fantastic. The editing and score are magnificent, with one sequence in particular bringing to mind the best of Halloween in terms of it's buildup. Inconsequential and mostly disposable, but fun.
As much as I still like the show in general I am beginning to get a little concerned. This was the second episode in a row where the plot doesn't seem to have any meaning other than to deliver some action. Which was OK but those other characters were really dumb and not very exciting. And the droids on that barge reminded me a lot of Cylons. Throwing in things from the original trillogy like little roling droids (do the have a designation ?) and X-wings just doesn't cut it any longer. Now there are just two more episodes and I have a feeling they will leave us with a major cliffhanger.
7.5/10
So Good
How horrible and
Unlikeable was that
Squad, they just took
the piss all the way
through, they were all
Super super annoying
and disrespectful.
Mando should have put
down each and everyone
of them for good.
Mando was a complete
Badass on that station
though and when he was
on the hunt was awesome,
The cinematography was
Fantastic.
Love how Mando
Gives baby Yoda that
ball now no arguments lol.
Mando Rewatch
That was the biggest F You ever at the end of the episode.
You can tell that an episode was more or less filler when the recaps on the next show have little to no clips from the previous one. Who knows if we'll ever see Bill Burr and his merry band of misfits again - I'm betting against it - but this episode had some witty, if inconsequential, banter between Xi'an, Mayfield, the hulked out old devil dude - Xi'an and her brother apparently have a history with Mando, which we didn't know about until just now and may not hear more about again - and the episode had some good action throughout, so it gets a tepid thumbs up. As with almost every Star Wars movie, the director is having Pedro Pascal talk like a goddamn emotionless automaton. I realize Mandalorians are stoics or something, but stoic doesn't mean emotionless and personality-less. In any case, the acting so far has been hit or miss, which isn't entirely on Pascal. He's a good actor. I just mean because of the stylistic choices of the character, the surrounding cast outshines him more times than not, and the dialogue-heavy scenes with Mando sometimes reach snooze levels. Frankly, the best things about the show so far have been sleek look and feel of the cinematography and the drawings at the end of each episode, which serve to kind of "immortalize" certain key moments, which was a nice touch.
This episode was rather pointless and I found it very boring, it only improved in the end when it turned out that Mandalorian outwitted his antagonists. It made no sense for Mandalorian to help these criminals in their heist as they constantly laughed at him and ridiculed him, they behaved as if they really despised him from the very beginning and later tried to kill him. The worst thing though was the droid hunting for the baby who was left alone on the ship. I wonder why didn't Mandalorian consider that using the ship during the heist might endanger the baby as he would be staying on board? What would have happened to the baby had Mandalorian been killed? He should have thought about these issues before taking the job bit he didn't and why? The heist itself wasn't logical at all, especially as the twenty minutes left to being boarded by the security ships seemed to stretch infinitely. The criminals were all really irritating, particularly the ex-girlfriend, who in fact hated Mandalorian. It was a very disappointing episode after the first three or so which concentrated on building the relationship between Mandalorian and the baby and doing it quite well. I think they should concentrate more on depicting that relationship rather than copy-paste fight sequences. I am not a Star Wars fan but I really liked the first three episodes of the show, after that it sadly went slowly downhill.
There’s extreme irony in me not loving every prior episode of this show and me really enjoying this one when it seems most people feel the opposite.
This episode seems to finally embrace the serialized nature of the plot and is fun as hell.
I saw a pink Twi-Lek and was like "Hey, a pink Twi-Lek! I think I'm going to like this woman; she seems sort of cool." Turns out she's the least likeable yet the most memorable out of an entire crew of unlikeable bandits. I understand that they're supposed to be criminals, but these people really grated on me UNTIL...
...the second half of the episode which delivered on choreography, lighting, and mood. Thoroughly enjoyable third act; well done. I just wish I could have liked the crew.
Mando teams up with four criminals named Xi'an (his ex), Zero a droid, Berg and Mayfeld to rescue someone but they have their own plans and this episode is full of betrayals that one can expect from the series though the action was a bit lacklustre and it wasn't as exciting as the previous ones.
LOVED THIS EPISODE JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER'S
10/10
LOVED THE DIFFERENT LOCATION ONCE AGAIN, IT'S AWESOME HOW THEY KEEP IT FRESH AND MOVING, CHARACTERS WERE INTERESTING AND INTRIGUED ME, I WAS JUST WAITING FOR THEM TO SCREW US OVER AND FOR MANDO TO OUT FOX THEM, ALWAYS AWESOME TO SEE IN ACTION, NEVER EVER GETS OLD. HE WAS AN ABSOLUTE BOSS WITH THEM DROIDS I MIGHT ADD. GAVE ME GOOSEBUMPS.
BILL BURR IS A POOR MANS SIMON PEGG, LOVE SIMON HATED BILL, WITH THAT BEING SAID BABY YODA WAS AWESOME, THIS EPISODE HAD EVERYTHING, INCLUDING
LAUGHS WHERE LAUGHS ARE MEANT TO BE, WITH AMAZING ACTION AWESOME PACING ALONG WITH GOOD TWISTS.
THIS SHOW IS A MASTERPIECE AND I LOVE IT 3000
well done, once again.
Not the best episode ... I hope it will be better next
Pretty good “self-contained” story, I had fun watching this space heist episode. “I told you it was a bad idea”. Hahaha. The blaster stand off felt like an homage for Clint Eastwood’s movie: The Good, the Bald and the Mandalorian.
You'd think that by now people would realize this is a procedural. It's an adventure-of-the-week type of series. The overall story does not matter. What is it, anyways?
I'm loving all of the director's cameo in this show.
Probably the funnest of the last 3 stand-alone episodes. And while I still prefer an overarching series, rather than these self contained stories as of late, I can't deny how fun this was. Bill Burr steals the episode of course, but the rest of the rather star-studded outing were no slouch either
I’m starting to think Baby Yoda can move really fast. Like older Yoda secretly could. Which is why he disappeared off the guy who holding him hostage last week. When Mando shot him.
This week he got around pretty quick when playing hide and seek with a bad guy.
The heist themed/doublecross position of this episode was perfect and cinematic in every way. The classic Star Wars visual and sound effects were perfectly integrated. Interesting addition of characters although we will never probably see them again. I'm really enjoying this fresh perspective of the Star Wars universe.
Shout by mirrorskinVIP 10BlockedParent2019-12-14T14:26:18Z
So now we get to see Daleks and Harley Quinn.