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Whoa welcome back to it could happen here? A podcast about you know it happening here, which is what we what we all you know we know what's happening.
Yeah, well, and the it being rebellion in the here being a galaxy far far away, and then now being long long ago for this episode.
Yeah we are. These are our May Day episodes. And nothing could make more sense on May Day than talking about and or the new season of the show and Or if you're not familiar with and Or it is a Star Wars show, and if you don't like Star Wars, or you just don't like the Disney Star Wars, if you've not enjoyed a Star Wars since you were six.
This is not that kind of thing. This is a treatise on how revolutions do, can and should work, written by people who have a deep of knowledge, including a degree of on the ground knowledge of what some of this looks like. And it is an immensely important piece of media to be getting out right now. And we'll start by saying Disney evil, bad corporation. I'm not saying pay them for Disney plus Torrents exist.
Yeah, raise the black flag, Raise raise the black flag once again.
I don't care how you get this. And you know what I'll say this, I suspect the people making and Or don't really care how you get this. This has been the most financially successful show and generations. Fuck it. Get it like, don't don't pay Disney money if you don't want to. I have no issue with that. I don't know whose login I'm using it. I haven't for years. Garrison can vouch for that. Just just watch it.
Be like Cassie and Or and Liberate and Or season two from from Disney, and watch it however however you feel comfortable doing so.
Yeah, yeah, use your.
F movie is use your here's your what? Yeah.
This is a podcast about the current season of and Or, which is coming out in three episode blocks every Tuesday. The second three episodes, we're now up to six episodes, came out yesterday as we record this Tuesday of this week, and there's two more weeks of and Or coming. So this episode we're going to be talking about episodes one through three. We should probably start with a little If
you haven't watched it, go watch it. Just watch season one and then you know you can watch season two and listen along with us if you're not, if you're a crazy person who's not going to do that will summarize season one for you, which is that there's this guy who grew up on a planet that was destroyed
by the Empire. He essentially like lived as a hunter gatherer until you know, the war came to him and he was forced out of his home and grows up very angry, is taken in by some people who are kind of like petty criminals and petty almost petty rebels, you know, but not in the rebel alliance sense, just and that well, we're going to commit some crimes around
the edges and try to get by. And the show is about this guy getting inducted into a revolutionary organization run by a man named Luthan that is that is simultaneously very centralized around him and also very decentralized, and that it's primarily him arming and getting information and attempting to direct cells that are themselves autonomous and often in conflict with each other, which is very realistic to how things like this start. On a historical level, everything that's
happening in and Or is based in real history. Tony Gilroy, who is the showrunner has stated that the kind of bank robbing years of Joseph Stalin were one influence behind this, But there are a lot you can see and in fact there's a little bit of Portland at the end of season one. There's a number of things that have influenced this show, a lot of moments in history the IRA. Some of the IRA.
Like post al Qaeda, like prison and Yes, resistance rebellion, Yes, for how terrorist cells like form underneath.
And also very explicitly he talks about this in an interview like the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan. Is an influence on how on how this one?
Yes was an influence on this Yes. So that's all to set this up. We're now going to talk about what happens in episodes one, two, and three of season two. You want to summarize them, gear.
Yeah, let's start with the first episode. So undercover rebel agent Cassian Andor steals in experimental tie Avenger, crashes it on a jungle planet and then finds himself in a sectarian split between this other rebel cell who just had like a DISASTERUS operation.
Their leader got killed, so no one's really sure who should be running things.
They capture Cassian because they think he's an Imperial pilot, and he tries to negotiate with them as their infighting continues. Meanwhile, Imperial intelligence agents converge to develop a plan on how to squash potential resistance on the planet Gorman as they plan to extract calkite minerals from the planet's core, potentially endangering the stability of the planet.
To build a dust star. By the way, yes, to build a dust star.
Yeah, So what's happening is these minerals are necessary to collect the system that makes the death Stars big planet destroying gun work. But at this point basically no one knows that, and the Imperial like intelligence Yeah, and they're being told that it's part of an energy independence project.
Mon Mathma, the senator from Tandrella who eventually becomes a rebel leader in the Star Wars movies, is helping to plan the Traadcath wedding for her daughter against Mathema's own wishes, and she runs into some difficulties with someone who helped her clean up some of her financial blemishes to help finance the rebellion. So this is most of what happens in this first episode, we have some of some of Andor's previous comrades and planet Ferriks are on this like
farming planet and they're nervous about potential inspection. So I guess specifically, do you have anything we want to talk about on this first episode?
Yes, I want to talk about the scene where they talk about clearing out Gorman, because when they talk about mining it for this mineral that's necessary to make the Death Star, they're talking about basically doing deep fracking at the core of the planet that is going to make it uninhabitable, right Like, they're basically tearing out the core of this world that produces high quality textiles, right Like, it's famous kind of a luxury goods exporter. That's really
all they make. There's these spiders there that make a nice kind of silk. That's what the planet does. And it's got this population of people who are used to being given a lot of autonomy because they make very this nice, this like luxury product that all they're rich people like, right so that the folks running there are public and in the early years when there was still more they're a public The Empire was still more on their republican side. Still people didn't want to talk with
them too much because they make a luxury good. Right. There was a massacre there kind of early on in the Empire, when Tark and the target yeah, landed a cruiser on a bunch of protesters, killing them. But other
than that, it's been pretty quiet for a while. There is like a small and not super competent or armed rebel cell starting up on the planet, and they have this big meeting the Empire does where everybody gathers at a castle with the guy who's in charge of building the Death Star to talk about how to clear off
this planet. The meeting itself and this part of the episode is based off of the Vonse Conference, which was a conference held in nineteen forty two by Reinhart Heidrich and kind of managed by Adolf Eichman to plan the holocaust. This is where they actually sat down and talked about how are we going to build death camps, how are the death camps going to operate, how will we evacuate people to the death camps? All of that. Right, there was a meeting. A bunch of guys showed up. There
are minutes of the meeting. Tony has stated, if you've watched there's a great TV movie it's like twenty years old at this point called Conspiracy. It stars Kenneth Brannaw as Reinhard Heydrich, who is the architect who was like the guy running the Holocaust. Initially it's stars Stanley Tucci as Adolph Eichman, an incredible iikman by the way, And this scene is deeply influenced by that movie. Right. There was another German movie also that, like the movie with Brannaw,
was based off of. But but Tony Gilroy has said that movie was an influence and that this is based on the Bonse conference, and there's a couple of lines that are almost word for word. One of the big differences is there's a point at which they bring in a couple of PR agents who are outside of the empire. That's like an outside PR corporation and arm. Yeah. Well, I think they're an outside contractor who does marketing normally and is doing propaganda if I'm remembering right.
I thinky're part of the Ministry of Enlightenment, is what they call it.
Yeah, yeah, crediful name they have. They have some of the best bits, yes, from this meeting.
Their job is to put out propaganda that makes the Gorman's look arrogant and unloyal and bad to everyone else, so that when they're massacred, no one will care. Yeah.
Quote, hasn't there always been something a little arrogant about the gour Yeah, very good.
It's it's very good.
Yeah.
They're talking about how they like create false news stories and like influence public opinion to be weaponized in favor of the imperial project, the Ministry of Enlightenment. Stuff is very good. The other line I really like is from Dedra, one of the main characters from like the previous season, who has this like female isb agent and.
She's sort of being made the aikman of the the Gorman Project.
And like she talks with a chronic Ben Mendelssohn's character, like about how propaganda really only gets you so far, and instead what they will need to need to work on is actually like controlling the Gorman resistance from the inside, Like you need to count on rebels to do like
the wrong thing at the right time. So about like like like astroturfing some kind of insurgency that can actually in the end service the Empire's interests, and like this is what she's talking about for her project being is actually like helping to influence the way that the resistance operates on the planet instead of just just focusing on like public opinion and propaganda and like military might.
Yeah.
What I really appreciate about this scene is the degree to which it shows Number One, how information is siloed in a situation like this, how people are on a need like this room is informed at the start. Whoever, your bosses, if they're not in the room, they don't know about this. Yeah, and you don't tell them, Like we do not want the tightest of closed services. We are doing a genocide and we're not talking about it to other people.
They report directly to the Emperor. No other people beneath the emperor knows what's happening. Yeah, and even the Emperor doesn't really know all of the details at this point.
Like yeah, and this is like like the people are cutting out, like like they're cutting out, like the Rector of Imperial of the ISP, like they're cutting out the Director of Imperial intelligeny're cutting off, like grabbing off Tarkin, like they're cutting out, Like the most important people in Star Wars have no idea, Like it's not even clear to be the Vader. I mean, Vader probably knows, but there's no fucking mention of him at all either.
Yeah, he can read mine, so I assume he's been able to like glean some things. But yes, he's.
Not not involved in any of this shit because he's not a Dutch star guy.
Yeah, and again, this isn't like a massive population, so they're viewing this primarily as like a pr problem. So both you need to get out messaging that these people are arrogant and bad so that nobody supports them when we start killing them, and we need a terror cell that can be trusted to carry out attacks against the empire that will justify what we need to do, right, So that that's the point of this meeting. It's very
well shot, it's very well done. There's a lot of understanding of like just history in it that I appreciated as a Holocaust nerd. That's a bad way to frame it, but.
Yeah, that is a bad way to frame it. Yeah, Nope, nope, nope.
Anyway, No, if you've watched these episodes and you loved them and you found that scene chilling, go watch Conspiracy with Kenneth Brannaw and Stanley Tucci. Oh, the Tuc, the Tuc, the twoch playing Iikman Garrison.
Damn.
Alright, let's go on a break and then come back to talk about episode two.
Yeah, we're back.
Did you guys know, Uh, Stanley Tucci super pro Palestine.
That's cool.
Oh nice with an actor like that that I've really enjoyed. I always am like white knuckling it if I when I decided to google that, and I was pleasantly surprised with the Tuc. All right, that's what I got here.
Let's do Episode two.
The Empire arrives on this farming planet to complete inspections on Coruscant. Our little slimy weasel Sarril Karn keeps rising through the the Imperial ladder at the Bureau of Standards. Man Mathma's financial schemes to help secretly fund the rebellion start coming undone as one of her like backers or like the.
Guy who's moving the money around for her.
Yet he's helping her wash her money.
One of her collaborators, take Kola, starts to kind of back out or ask for ask for some assistance, and is getting a erratic in his behavior as he's going through a divorce.
And is making kind of vague threats about well, maybe I'll talk to someone about what I know, right.
Yeah, if I if I don't get something out of this relationship, I might be forced to do something else to ensure like my safety and financial security. Meanwhile, Cassian is still on this jungle planet, held captive by these by these sectarian leftists, start firing at each other and totally totally break down.
Literal circular firing squad. It's beautiful.
They go full, they go full Red.
Army, Japanese Red Army, thank you very much.
Japanese Red Army, and Cassie and barely barely escapes over the course of this like multi day like conflict with the U, with the remnants of this rebellion cell, let's talk a little bit about this uh leftist infighting plot point.
Yeah, this is something something I've never actually really seemed to pick it in you kind of like mainstream media thing, which is something that that happens in real movements, which is that when when movements suffer serious setbacks or when you know, and we see this more commonly in real life, when sort of like you know, the tide of a movement falls and everything starts falling apart. And these are people who just got absolutely obliterated in a battle, of
their leaders dead, a bunch of their comrades died. One of the things that happens is in this is that this is when the this is when social movements evolve into infighting, you know. And this, this is what was happening inside of like the American Left roughly from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty four was you got you got this giant, really vicious cycle of infighting. Because this is this what happens when there's no longer a threat to hold. They've one together, and people have this tendency
to because they've just lost. Right, everyone's trying to process the emotions of their defeat, of like the really serious psychological damage that they've suffered. Like in these battles, people lash out at each other because it's easier than trying to fight an enemy that has just defeated you. And you know, there's a complicating factor in this, which is that, like you know, these are also the periods when like rapists tend to get rean out right and when like
abusers in the scene tend to get ran out. But on the other hand, Yeah, it turns into these really really nasty sort of sometimes just sectarians. Sometimes they're just sort of like, you know.
I never liked this guy. People are getting in trouble for being bad. I'm going to just accuse this guy of some.
Shit personality conflicts stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
And this is something that happens like every time there's a cycle. I mean I remember this God like, I mean you see this shit and scenes are like from like like two thousand, like thirteen fourteen, there was like a huge cycle of this. We're kind of cycles of this like twenty nineteen when things were kind of falling apart. As Occupy isis, this is just like something that's a reality of social movements that you don't ever really see
to pick it. And the everything I think is fascinating about it is because and Or is the person who's watching it right, Andor has no idea what the fuck is going on with the Chulton Amax of this group.
No, no, my pay is famous.
Yeah, he knows who like the leader is because Luthern's team has been like supplying them with weapons. Yeah, but they don't know about like the internal structures of these groups for like OPSEC reason no.
And the leader's dead, like the leader got killed in this ambush rights. You hear about her. She's named in the first season my Pay. She's one of when when Forrest Whitaker in season one gives that very famous rant where he's talking about all because he's the anarchist militant leader and he's talking about all the different groups set Separati galaxy, they're lost, all of them, clarity of purpose.
He talks. He names my Pay along with the other different So she's clearly a fairly well known I think she's a republic restorationist kind of person, So basically a social democrat militant leader and her group's just gotten fucked and she is dead, so he knows of them, but he doesn't know them.
Yeah, and because of that, you get you get, you get you get two things at the same time that I think are both really important. One is that you get to see what this kind of like infighting looks like, right like like actually depicting television. You get to see what happens when when movements fail and when people start to invite. In two, you get to see what it looks like from the outside from Andrew's perspective where he's looking at these people, He's like, what the fuck is
wrong with you people? All of you guys are clowns.
These are fucking children, Like I'm doing a serious job.
Yeah, And this is also a thing that you get. This is a real movement dynamic where it's like, you know, you're watching people who after twenty twenty or something, you know, you've been through your first movement and you're in your first movement psycho collapse, right, you've been doing this, and I'm like, you know, if you're doing this for like a fucking decade and you're watching all of these people do this shit again, and it's just like, oh god,
fucking damn it. Like the kids are like, you know, they haven't been to this before. It's really traumatic, and they're doing all this like completely incomprehensible bullshit, which is also like on the outside, if you look into this as someone who's not part of one of these scenes and you're seeing all this drama, it's just like, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Like why are you doing this? And the fact that you're getting all of this like you know, fucking Disney Show is fascinating.
It's why I mean, and it shows the depth of knowledge and the ya the sheer amount of understanding that the people writing this have of how movements go. Again, it's granular, and it's to a degree like based in some real experiences that some people on this team have had, Like you don't understand stuff like this otherwise.
And as this group is like interrogating Cassie and try to trying to figure out who he is, Like they keep trying to dig into like what rebel group Cassiine is like a part of, and like who he's working with, and he's like refusing to give them this information because that's good security culture. And they're like, but you know who we work with and he's like, yeah, you shouldn't have told me yet, shouldn't have said that that was bad, very very good stuff.
And it's God it starts, you know, we didn't say this with with episode one. Episode one starts with another beautiful Cassian speech when he's because he's he's infiltrating as a tie fighter pilot this base where he's stealing an experimental craft and there's a young woman there who's like a technician who is his in right and who's clearly just made her break with the Empire, and she like meets him briefly. She's like, sorry, I know, I'm not supposed to look at you. I'm not supposed to talk
to you, and he like grabs me. He's like, no, this is what it's all about, is the moment of connection between us where we both after all of like this being frightened and alone in the dark, were together and we know that we're doing something. This is what every this is, this is everything, and this is the moment you find yourself.
Yeah, yeah, from yourself and this is an everything that that That was the moment in this season where I was like, oh, okay, so the people are it's still the same people. It's like these are people who are just of the left in a way that you don't really ever see even with like old communists who are
writing stuff. It's like I have given this speech to people, yeah, like dozens and dozens of times, like this is the thing that if you do this work, like you have literally given this speech to a new person about like yeah, yeah, like this is the reason where and like it's just fucking I'm just like my mind is blown that this shit is just like appearing in mass media where people who aren't from these movements are just like encountering this.
And the reason why again when I say and Or is like historically profitable. After the first season, every year afterwards, for a couple of years, the number of people watching it increased, which by which I mean each year after it came out, more people watched it than had watched it in the year it came out. And that doesn't happen to TV. Yeah, it simply is not how television works, which is why Disney was like, here is a quarter of a billion dollars make and Or season two.
Man, this is the first time Star Wars has like visually looked good in like a decade.
Yeah, oh my god, and it looks incredible.
It looks gorgeous, gorgeous.
There's so many super long like tracking shots this season where they're going through like massive sets. Yeah, with all like like singular like one takes, and like you know, all the previous Star Wars shows are filmed on these like digital sound stages with like you know, led screen backgrounds, but like you cannot achieve this level of like in real life like fidelity on like a digital background screen.
Like these are huge sets, Like specifically the Chandrilla set is like massive as you walk around like modern Mathma's like senate estate or whatever for this for this tradcath wedding that we'll talk more about in the next episode. Yeah, just like really really like excellent craftsmanship going into this.
Yeah, just beautiful. Okay, speaking of beautiful set design. All right, we're back.
Let's talk about the finale of this little three episode arc. Cassian's trying to contact Lutheran and learns that his friends on the farming planet are actually being subject to some kind of imperial inspection. He's advised to not go there, but of course he does anyway to check on his friends as his Star Wars tradition a lah Luke skywalker. In episode five, people on this planet are trying to evade this inspection by forging emergency work orders, but their
scheme falls apart. They might have been rated out by one of the top guys running the silo, and imperial officers arrest and interrogate.
People for not having proper work visas.
Yeah, and the people on this planet are Cassian's friends from season one who he lived with, like the guy who was effectively his big brother.
Brasso.
Yeah, Brasso, the guy who hits the cop with the brick in the finale season one.
Your goddamn righty Brick's a cop. And then Bicks, who is his girlfriend partner type person kind of off and on, and then because of her connections to him, gets horribly tortured in season one.
Yeah, and as well as young terrorist Willem, who throws a pipe bomb into a crowd of stormtroopers in the finale of season one. So these three are in hiding on this farm planet and are now in trouble because these Imperial Inspections and immigration officers are are on their tail. On Triandrilla, Man Mathma talks to Luthen, who's there for for work because he's like he's like an he's like
an artifact, like a dealer. But she tells Luthen that the guy that that they were working with to to help Man Mathma secretly fund the rebellion is showing some erratic behavior and and and may and may need to be like, you know, bribed to keep quiet. Luthen, being smart and serious, knows that no, no, no, no no, you cannot simply bribe this man into silence. This man needs to get taken out right now. You need to close this.
He brought in the cops like he brought him the fucking cops like he brought He has to die. That's the way these.
Threatening to snitch. He This guy needs to get dealt with immediately. The other plot point that I don't think we'll have much talk about but is very excellent. Our slimy weasel Cyril Carn and his new abusive girlfriend Dedra have have Cyril's wonderful mother over for dinner in just a fantastic, fantastically uncomfortable seed. In less happy occurrences, as the Imperial officers investigate and search this farming planet, one of them tries to sexually assault Bix inside their little
r V home. Bix kills him, and eventually and Or arrives with a tie. Avenger takes out this this Imperial battalion and Bix and and Or and the Kid are able to escape, and Brasso unfortunately dies in a high speed speeder chase.
He dies. It's it's it's an under It's like a believable move. Someone would make it under fire, But like man, there's tall fucking grass. Just drop go to the ground. Don't get on a motorbike while you're above the fucking crops, like get on the ground.
High stressful environment.
Rights.
It sucks, but it's but it's really people.
Do stuff like that all the time in gunfights. Yes, So it's it's one of those where I was like no, but also like, yep, that that's what happens. Yeah.
One of the things that isn't really being talked about with the show, but I think it is actually is very important, is that it is absolutely unflinching in his depiction of patriarchy, Like I mean there's you know, there's this sort of obvious, horrifying scene of like this ice guy. I mean increasingly over over the course of this thing, like just going from like hey, if you like date me, you can not get deported because we have to maintain the I know you're illegal, and that's.
Fine, and we know we need a bunch of you. We're not here to arrest everyone, right because we need the crops from this planet. But I am going to arrest some people, and I can make sure it's not you if you go on a quote unquote date.
With me, yeah, and then you know, and it's just an escortates from there is just straight up like sexual assault, right, and this is really really I mean obviously it's jarring because it's you know, like it's an on screenscript depiction of a tempto sexual assault and then she like does
a fight and she kills them, right. But this was also very very jarring to a lot of people because people are very and this is a Star Wars thing too, they are very used to seeing fascism depicted through its own self perception.
Right.
People are very very used to seeing fascism as something that is strong, that is ordered, as discipline that is dangerous. And the problem is the reality of fascism is that, like a lot of it is just a bunch of
tipshit rapists who are like pretending to be those guys. Yeah, and you know, and this is one of the things Andrew has always been very very good at is you saw this last season right with Withddra who is her thing is that she is, you know, of the very common American archetype of the cop who breaks all the
rules to get the job done. And then you know, and then like that that's how she first is first introduced, and then you see what that actually looks like in public, which is you know, she is just straight up torturing bis with like the screams of an entire the desk room of an entire species. And that's in season one. Yeah, yeah,
that's the season one. And and what's powerful about this is something and Er also does int of the prison break episodes, is like this this fascist self perception, right of this sort of strong ordered, discipline, unified thing that is just propaganda. They are not actually like that behind the scenes, right, It's just these fucking incredibly violent, like
petty losers doing this fucking shit. And then you know, I mean the other thing about about the sort of patriarchy side is that you see this on the other side with with mon Mathma's like, you know, her sort of like money cleaner, who's who's what her old friends take Coleman like like literally is is demanding that like mo Mathma have sex with him in order for him
to keep keep doing this money washing shit. And this is also something you see in movements all the time, which is like guys with resources using their access to resources to force themselves on women, like in the movements and this, and you know, and there's there's like A third dynamic here with with take homa, which is like another thing you see all the time in movements is guy going through a divorce who goes completely off the fucking rails and starts doing shit that dangers everyone and
you know, starts doing sort of like weird predatory shit, and I think, I don't know, there just hasn't been much analysis of like, yeah, this is these are all ways things like if you have been in movements, you have experienced patriarchy and all of these ways. You have experienced cops doing shit to you, you have experienced stuff from inside the movement.
Fuck. A big part of how the major Greens organizations that were dismantling the Green Scare were taken down was through members of these different groups who had been doing direct action who were misogynists.
Right.
That is always an easy, easy way to break into and shatter a movement is find the guy who's got that going on about him and turn him.
Yeah, and you know, and you have that on one hand. On the other hand, with like the cops, this is like a very very common like cops just like sexually assaulting people for fun. It's like a thing that they do all the fucking time. And same thing with ice, because I mean this is obviously like o't think you say like this is this is just literally one to
one they're doing ice raids and Star Wars. Yeah, and the heroes are the people who like and or coming back with a tie fighter blowing them up right, like you know.
Yeah.
Also I do want to on someone landa know, I do want to point out that like this show also quietly has had like the most realistic lesbian relationship in all of Star Wars, and this season is like, oh, someone on this crew is a lesbian because they have depicted my culture perfectly, which is h the you know, Okay, so like the rich girl lesbian and the like broke non white like gorilla lesbian who came from nothing, his family was killed by the Empire, get together as an
intense item dread in operation and then the moment the operation is over there broke girl was like, fuck, this was a bad idea. And now they keep running into each other in movement things that are like they're sort of avoiding each other, and one of them is still the perfect in fiction to lesbian culture. Incredible. No notes loved the lesbian rebels. I'm happy for them.
Oh incredible, Yeah, it's it's it's beautiful stuff. The quality of the writing, like everyone was worried who loved and or season one? Like well fuck, how could it? How could they possibly? How can they possibly compare with Season one? And uh, it's just getting better. It's just they did it again somehow, you crazy bastards. You did it again.
The thing I want to close on was with this wedding, which is there's a bunch of really fascinating things about it. One is that okay, so on the very nonsubtle level, like they are cutting back and forth between everyone dancing to this like sort of tech upbeat techno thing, Like they're cutting back and forth between like mon Mathma dancing at this wedding, and like the ice raid that's happening, which is like, you know, this is the level of political subtlety that you need to be working on with
the American people. You have to just be like I'm hammering you over the head with the point which is like all of you motherfuckers are going to brunch and like, yeah, the ice rays are happening.
Well, that is an aspect. I think it also proves there you can operate in that zone because men Mouthma is still a very important figure.
Yes, starting is not just a useless lib, right, she's critical.
And you have someone like like Lucian who can put on nice clothes, can can do this persona and extract intel at this party In one in one of the previous episodes, he's like talking with this guy who introduces his son who is in the Imperial Navy, and he was talking about like like like a like a recent operation on a planet, and Luten was like, oh, really tell me more, and like it's like you can, you can. You can still extract information at these like places where
power is like flaunted and exchanged. Yes they are still bad, but if you are like an aspiring rebel, yeah you can use these places to your advantage. But no, there absolutely still is this is this juxta position of yeah, this like you know riotous party with with like this horrific ice raid and yeah, the material conditions in these
people's lives is very different. Even even if mont Mathma's doing good stuff still as like an Imperial senator, her everyday life is very different to complete someone who's having to hide from like ice agents.
Now.
The other thing though, that is going on in this scene. It's not purely these are the wealthy partying as these nightmare raids go down. The other thing that's going on is mon Mathma is emotionally accepting this guy who was was my lover for a long time and who is a dear friend of mine is going to be killed. And I have accepted the necessity. And the only thing for me to do right now is to get so drunk that I can't feel it.
Yeah, is to do drugs, wreck drink.
And that's how you exist under like the horrific conditions that the Empire forces you to live under.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's this fascinating thing. And I know this especially watching back season one. If you look at it, if you go back and watch those scenes and you look at the way it's lit. You look at the way that there's just the stark like white light coming through the windows. This is not how it's lit in season one, right, This is a very deliberate choice. Almost everyone else who does this scene would do this sort of like warm, rich, like golden lighting, because that's like that's how you do
these sort of like fancy wedding things. And this the way that it is lit is the same way that they're lighting all of the like like the stark white imperial corridors, and there's this very you know, and so like like it's working on like all of these sort of like levels of like like visual metaphor of of all of this just like oh yeah, this is also imperial space, right, and everyone here is operating either like regardless of what side they're on, they're operating like in
imperial terrain in this sort of like thing. As Asma Motha also was just dealing with like her kid becoming a tradcath and like trying to talk her kid out of being a tradcat or a kid. FU share at her for being like, hey, maybe you shouldn't do this like weird marriage thing when you're like a child, like
twelve year old marriage. Yea, yeah, yeah, I think I think the place I want to end on is there was a really interesting thing where like the Disney account like just posted a video like I think it was on Twitter that was just one the like one hour
of monthmaed dancing. Yeah, And there was like a fascinating reaction to this of like like cause on the one hand, there's like always people like who I know, Victoria Zeller, who's a trans writer who I follow, who probably we're talking to on the show at some point soon I had this thing, but like, oh yeah, like there are also there's just gonna be weddings that are like based on this chenduline wedding thing, and like in like two or three years, we're gonna be seeing this And there's
just interesting dynamic where like on the one hand you have the people who were just completely focused on the aesthetic, and then the other hand you have the people who were like, oh yeah, I like this is this is fucking me getting just absolutely fucked up as like all of the fucking horrors play out around us and having to like deal with and fight all the fucking horrors while like all of the people around me are just
like kind of just completely checked out. And I thought it was just like fascinating watching that sort of play out on social media and on in real life like this, you know, they're being very very literal about how it works, and it's working. I'm seeing people do it.
Yeah.
The last thing I do want to mention is just a big shout out to Cyril. To Cyril Karn's Italian Jewish mother.
Yeah, oh yeah, the best, the best villain in Star Wars. Darth Vader ain't got shit.
Not nearly as scary as Cerrel Krn's mother.
No, I would take him in a fight over her any day.
How However, one of the interesting parts about this little like like dinner party is how Cyril Krn's like FBI agent abusive girlfriend. The moment Cyril is out of the room, she like takes control of this mother, using like all of her like imperial interrogation and like intimidation tactics, and it's like, no, no, no, you don't understand how this relationship is going to go. I am in charge here.
I will dictate when Cyril can see how. I will dictate how your relationship with your son is going to go, because like Cyril is like my pet, like I run everything and things will go according to my wishes.
See. I had a very different interpretation of that really, because number one, she is not on board she's going to be doing part of the Gorman genocide. She doesn't like the plan, she doesn't like that she's involved. This is not what she wants to be doing. She wants to be hunting Luth yes, I agreed, And I think part of it is that she doesn't like and I think this will become increasingly clear she's not thrilled that Cyril's going to get involved in this shit because it's
dangerous what I thought they were kind of showing. We've been seeing her like abuse him. I don't think we've seen her be mean to him other than like initially when that before they were dating, she didn't take him seriously until she saved her life.
Well, I know he's like a weird stalker beforehand, he is.
A little bit of a stock and.
She is, like I think you can absolutely interpret some of some of her behavior as like a degree of like emotionally.
Abu says fascist couple before their dating.
Yeah, maybe I don't know fascist for fascist couple.
I think there's elements and including like the earlier scene of them in the apartment, where like both of them are like very uncomfortable around each other.
They're awkward people, but like they're I one of the things I appreciated about this is that like she is a monster. We see her doing exclusively evil things, and then Cyril, because his mom is so cruel to him, does the most relatable thing anyone does in this show and goes and lies down on his bed and has
a panic attack in the middle of their dinner. And that's when she and that's when she says, look, bitch, this is how shit's and she's being a good girlfriend in that moment, she's getting his mom off his back.
I definitely interpret this scene differently. She did also threaten to arrest his uncle, like.
She does threaten to send his uncle to forever jail. Yeah, no, I can see how you would read it that way. I think I definitely do interpret this scene a little bit differ. Yeah, And I think the beauty of good writing is this ability to look at this relationship in multiple ways.
What I like about the way The Empire is written is that they're not caricatures, but not in a way where they're being like, well, the Empire's got a point, but in the way that like, yeah, these are people, and I understand how folks, why folks would want to be a part of this system outside of just like the cruelty that it does. Like Partigaz, who is like the leader of the ISB section that we're watching, is a really good boss. He listens to his subordinates. He
tells them when their ideas suck. He does not spare their feelings, but he's he rewards initiative and he's willing to like be proven wrong or argued with, Like when people are forceful against him and make a good point, He's like, all right, well let's try it. And I love showcasing that in the same way that like, if you talk to people who worked for, like work for companies like Raytheon, they'll be like, yeah, it was a nightmare evil that we were making, and like a very
healthy working environment. And that is often the case with some of the most evil organizations on the planet, Like people who are very good at managing people often wind up Like That's what makes fascist systems so dangerous. It's not that everyone in this is incompetent. It's that there are sometimes people who are very good organizers and very competent leaders who wind up in these systems, and that's part of what allows the evil to happen.
The point of Android, the point of Star Wars is that also you could out organize them and beat them.
So message of hope, yes, yes, I mean fundamentally the show is very hopeful because the empire. Number one, we know the empire falls, but number two we're seeing we're seeing like why right, which is this attempt to control everything that inevitably creates more fires than you can put out.
Yeah.
The tighter they hold their grip, the more systems will slip through their fingers. Yeah, yep, which is the line from the theory twin in season one.
Yeah.
And I think what makes androwsist is this, This does fill in this gap of like when we jump into like a new hope, you have this fully like complete like rebel alliance, right. It is It is an alliance of different rebel cells that have come together to do like like a large scale military action. It takes a lot of build up to get an alliance of rebel cells, a whole bunch of like individual like rebel terrorist cells
have usually have a very hard time working with each other. Yes, and it's very hard forget them to coordinate and and or is the story of watching these like many different cells slowly start to figure out that maybe it would make more sense if we work together instead of just doing random small crimes and like hits on individual planets or imperial processing plants. The ability to see these cells come together is what makes I think and Or so special.
And and for the rest of the season, we're going to move forward a year at a time, all the way up to the beginning of Rogue. More than we do have the like the completed Rebel Alliance. So I am I'm excited to watch that that development.
Yep, all right, well, see you next week.
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