1x02 Fighter Flight

7.1/10. Another good-not-great one. Zeb as Ezra's surrogate big brother works as a framework for the episode, and while it's a little hoary, the pair's misadventures through trying to get a meiloorun fruit and ending up hijacking a tie-fighter in the process is enjoyable enough. There's some fun set pieces (the original escape in the tie fighter and the villager rescue), and it succeeds as an immediate resolution to Ezra saving Zeb's life and being kind of a butt about it afterwards, albeit a little too tidily. Everything is set up well enough, from their initial bristling at one another to the local villagers to Ezra struggling to use his force-lifting powers. It just feels like a startlingly standard story with a pretty generic arc for the two characters. I enjoyed side bits like Kanan and Hera playing surrogate mom and dad or Sabine having an art moment well enough too, but it just seems kind of insubstantial.

It's obviously too early to make any big judgments, but it's hard not to compare this show to The Clone Wars since I just finished its predecessor series. It's funny, in many ways, Rebels is much better out of the gate that The Clone Wars was. While some of the designs are funky here or there, the animation is crisp and fluid and there's a lot of visual flair thus far. On top of that, the show seems to have preemptively adopted the J.J. Abrams "Is this delightful?" approach to Star Wars. And there's a Whedon-esque vibe to the crew of The Ghost, with playful quippiness and found families intersection with world-ranging threats. But somehow, Rebels just feels less substantial so far. It's charming in its way, and it hits the right beats, but there was a gravity to the events of The Clone Wars that just hasn't reached Rebels yet. I suppose it deserves a lot more time to get there, given how rocky The Clone Wars' could be as a series, especially in its early going.