[4.8/10] Oh boy! A droid episode! Nobody ever tires of those! Ugh.
This, frankly, feels like a breather before we get to the fireworks of the season’s endgame, and while a comedy episode or sidestory can be a fun diversion before you dive headlong into spectacle and drama, this was not Rebels’s finest hour.
As I always seem to say, there’s some merit in the idea of Chopper being compromised and controlled by an enemy agent, causing our heroes problem. And the fact that AP-5 and Hera recognized something was up because Chopper was being nice is a fun gag.
But man, the AP-5 & Chopper routine is much better as a side dish than as a main course. I generally like AP-5, but there was just too much of his superior, perpetually annoyed demeanor to swallow here. And while there was a gonzo brilliance to him singing in space and being happy in solitude only to sort resign himself in a dejected fashion when being rescued, it’s still tonally weird stuff.
The episode was mostly just kind of dull when it wasn’t dragging out the Chopper reveal. Seeing a “controller” hooked up like Lobot and calculating odds was a minor bit of excitement, but eh. The end result was such a “we’ll just reverse the polarity” solution to the problem that seems like it shouldn’t work.
Overall, this is one of the lower points for Rebels. Even prior droid-focused episodes tend to a least be light enough to be entertaining in a silly way. This one just kind of persisted until it finished.
If I ignore the reverse-the-feed-and-overload-their-power-systems solution, and even with AP-5's overdoing the arrogant monologuing, it was a fun diversion before the madness heats up next ep. ;-)
Yeah, well, you can't expect greatness all the time and this one I would categorize as skippable.
I do like Chopper at times but since they paired him up with AP it felt too much like trying to recreate R2 / 3PO. And that it sure doesn't. Then there is the full Disney towards the end and I was like wtf happens here. It didn't even worked well as a try at comedy.
Let's say this episode was ordered by mistake and leave it at that.
It was all going so well, and then AP-5 started singing.
7.5/10
What a team xD
I was a bit surprised that the troopers ignored the results of the scanner or at least didn't notice that Chopper didn't get a green light. Surely the scanners aren't just for that remote ship?
That PC-7 droid xD: "I understand."
AP-5 really had some good insights/quotes:
AP-5 was quite smart to figure out that Chopper got compromised though :) The empire has no idea how much personality some of the Rebels' droids have!
"Well, I hate to say I told you so."
"They wanna mess with my droid, they're gonna pay for it!" - Hera was so angry ("Oh oh, Hera's mad.")
AP-5' calm space voyage was brilliant though! :D
I'm glad that Hera's plan worked out but apparently the Empire really cannot design reasonable electrical systems sometimes... That attack wouldn't be a thing with any remotely reasonable circuit design.
When you google 'filler episode', this is the first result.
AP-5 Singing. Most excellent!
Shout by CVIP 3BlockedParent2023-03-18T13:08:13Z— updated 2024-01-31T15:36:51Z
I saw the hate for this and thought I'd skip it but it autoplayed and I just stuck with it. I did enjoy it. I don't mind the R2D2/C3PO stuff as it's more like "Marvin the Paranoid Android" and I don't mind it. Why not?
The episode was a 6/10 for a filler. The ending with the feedback was extremely stupid but everything with Chopper and AP5 I loved. The song was.... very unexpected, but I really enjoy AP5.