Andor: Well that Surprised Me

 

Finally some Star Wars in the damn TV show

So to fill out a Saturday night, I went ahead and binged season 2 of the show. My summation of Andor during the first season was something like, "A World War Two movie with androids but made in Albania".  It wasn't Star Wars but it was influenced by the makers of that movie franchise as much as it was a homage to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in fashion tastes. Then there were the prison episodes, which weren't as much The Grand Illusion (1937) as they wanted to be, so they ended up being like sitting in prison while watching them. Boy did the spaceships, prison breaks, and battle scenes suck. While I love a good kepi or toupee, I was not impressed with my first take of the show.

The opening of season 2, which figured almost nothing but a TIE fighter then, elsewhere, a princess's wedding plans, caught my attention. It was 8pm when I started. I promised to work a few hours the next day. I did not mind staying up to after 3am watching it. Okay. Okay. I had no where to be until after noon. Still I was caught up and swept away into the story.

 The hat collection was put into the back ground, but the 40s Italian naval uniforms made up for it. Both yarns were tying disparate parts of the narrative together showing the fiber and composition of Star War's  rebellious bits and pieces. The interactions of the Characters were full of their personal opinions and could be judged as right or wrong, but we, as the viewer, were privy to background information that showed them to be handling what they were given not paths that they were following. Friends warned me about the pacing of the first episodes, but slow presentations don't bug me in film and TV-- it kind of makes the media worth watching compared to most its content.

By the end of the shows, I'd given up on looking for where the influences were from or what Easter Eggs were there for fandom. I wanted to see where the Characters, the surviving ones, were going. Knowing that this is the prequel to Rogue One, it's all a half-hearted tragedy. I still won't mind making a long weekend of this series, Rogue One, and Star Wars (the movie) a future event. Lucas's prequels don't make me want to do that sort of thing.

A King Kong of a TV mini-series. A Godzilla of a Star Wars prequel.