THE CLONE WARS SEASON 1 OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

Before diving into the recaps and reactions for Season 2, I wanted to do a kind of big pcture survey of the first season of The Clone Wars. Honestly, I find this somewhat hard to do because, I mean, it's fine. Sometimes really fun, sometimes utterly inessential. I can understand why some people love it, and I can also understand why The Clone Wars isn't quite held in as high regard as the live action movies or even some of the old non-canonical Expanded Universe novels and whatnot. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I regret having embarked on this mad quest to consume all of it, but I also have not yet had the experience of my mind being blown or wondering why it took me so long to get around to this.

Some key takeaways:

The battle droids always get the biggest laughs from me. Something about the default personality of the clankers and their reactions really tickles my particular sense of humor. I think there's something transcendantly absurd about the fact that the show, on a narrative level, treats the battle droids as both the enemy who can be given no quarter and disposable automatons who should engender no sympathy, and all the characters within the show, Separatists and Jedi alike, feel the same way. And yet! The battle droids are often depicted as having independent thughts and emotional reactions, capable of being surprised, feeling fear, etc. They get surprised by explosions and fear being disintegrated, which turns the horrors of war into slapstick comedy. The show plays it all for laughs and it shouldn't work but somehow it does, far more than Jar Jar's buffoonery or C-3PO's foppishness. Maybe I'm a terrible person for laughing at the self-aware suffering of the battle droids, but there it is.

The war never makes much sense, certainly not as a moral imperative. This is somewhat a carryover from Attack of the Clones itself, but I don't think it's ever adequately explained why it's so bad that the Separatists want to separate from the Republic. On the one hand, just let them go! The Republic is 10,000 planets or something and has clearly gotten so large and unwieldy that governance has ground to a halt and and bureaucratic paralysis has taken hold. Self-determination is a noble thing and if the Nemoidians want to go it alone and no longer be part of the Republic apparatus, I would think that would be fine? On the other hand, I can come up with some plausible reasons why it would be worth fighting over - every planet that leaves the Republic presumably disrupts some complex, interdependent system the Republic relies on, but the show never bothers to give examples explaining whether those disruptions are inconveniences for the wealthy core worlds or actual disasters that cost people's lives. The Separatists are never presented as being conquerors, or enslavers, or exploiters. The main reason given for stopping the Separatists is to preserve the Republic at any cost, which is pretty hollow. Maybe by expecting more I'm putting too much burden on a kids' show, I don't know.

One of my biggest questions: did Palpatine always intend the Republic to win, minus the Jedi? Or did he think things might go either way and it didn't matter, as long as he was on top in the end? Can it actually be the case that he just wanted to become Sith emperor with a powerful Sith apprentice at his side, and once Anakin got discovered by Qui-Gon he had to manufacture an entire war just to stall for time until Anakin could be seduced to the Dark Side? Is that why Palpatine so often seems to play both sides against the other into stalemate, so he can keep working on winning the real prize of Anakin's allegiance while everyone else is distracted?

Finally, as I've said before, Ahsoka is one of the best additions and best parts, period, of The Clone Wars. And there's not nearly enough of her in Season 1! I know she becomes more and more central as the series goes along, so I will anticipate that with pleasure.

All in all, I look forward to Season 2 and beyond. I'm sure Season 1 was a learning process and things will keep building and getting better. Dave Filoni certainly built a fine reputation for himself, and if I don't think he's quite earned it yet given where I am in the saga, I can chalk that up to The Clone Wars still getting its bearings and figuring out what it wants to be and what it is capable of. On we go!