Eric, your Friday High Five was a blast! The Deadrock D&D campaign inspired by Deadwood sounds absolutely thrilling. Your blend of nostalgia with The Legend of Zelda brought back so many fond memories. The Acolyte review was insightful, balancing praise and critique perfectly. I loved your take on Obi-Wan Kenobi, capturing the essence of his character.
I feel very similarly about The Acolyte. I wanted to love it...and at the end just feel kinda bummed about it.
There's so much that's great about it! I love everything about The Stranger. I love Master Sol. Wookie Jedi and strange Force stuff and so many neat inclusions from Legends and getting to see more of the Sith's point of view.
But like you said, I just don't think the show succeeded at pulling it all together. And the "mystery" and the middle of the show of what really happened on Brendok wasn't all that satisfying when all the pieces were on the table. Just mostly sad for all involved, but not really *compelling.*
Imo, its problems are mostly what I would call 'formative stage S1 problems,' which is something every series, even the best ones, undergo as they are made. Like, typically, during the first season the makers of a series need time to figure out what show they're actually making. What's the tone? What are the character dynamics? What storylines and relationships work? What doesn't work? What needs fixing?
What's unfortunate about the streaming era, with its shortened seasons, is that shows no longer have time to get great. They no longer get the number of episodes they need to work out all the kinks and become their best selves. Heck, I remember some dramas from the 2000s that didn't become truly great until S2 or S3, even if they had 13 episodes per season.
All of which is a way of saying that I wish The Acolyte had more episodes and I have little doubt it could become a legitimately great series in its second season.
Partner and I are just working through The Acolyte now, I think we're 3 episodes in? I've seen some spoilers on Tiktok b/c apparently all the official channels think that everyone has watched their show 0.3sec after the final episode drops, but we're loving it so far. I think it's suffering from (not in your case) the typical hate that a lot of Star Wars gets from its most vocal "fans" that make me wonder if they're actually fans (reeee women centered in a story, reee complicated morality 🙄). I'll weigh in on the directionless story thing once we've seen the end (but I think I trust your opinions in general).
One critique I've heard is that modern Star Wars is now made by people who were fans of Star Wars growing up, rather than people who were fans of other things and are bringing those influences to make Star Wars like George Lucas did, so it's all just more of the same and more lore drops for the future.
2008 - 2019 was prime time for expanded universe interconnectivity and stories arcing over a 22-movie series, and now it seems everything thinks they need to do that because Marvel made so much money pioneering it. They fail to learn the lesson from what happened to Marvel after that success. But as Marvel and Star Wars are owned by the same people, you'd think that least *they* would know better. Reminds me of my main issue with the Picard series: 'stop trying to be epic and try to tell a good, contained story'.
I just finished watching it, so maybe my thoughts aren't quite fully formed yet, but I liked it, despite some unresolved arcs (mostly re: Vernestra). That's okay, though, as they probably left those threads open for future seasons, which, given the review bombing, we may not get. I think episode 5 was my favourite, where the person with the red lightsaber was revealed.
My main critique or thing that I found a little confusing is that the Jedi seemed, for lack of a better word, weak. I'm not sure if that's a lore thing that I'm missing, or if it was meant to be that way, but it seemed like they weren't that powerful, couldn't sense there were people on the planet, couldn't save someone from falling off a walkway, and just in general weren't that in touch with the force around them. Seemed a bit weird, but maybe they were trying to normalize the Jedi, so that not every one of them was a super powerful all knowing, all sensing being (which would be pretty boring and there'd be no stakes ever).
Overall I give it a solid 8/10. It was more interesting than Obi-Wan and justified its length more, and the 30 min episodes were nicer, I think.
I’m going to have to add that Deadwood book to my TBR pile. I recently rewatched the show again—it never gets old, but I always find a few choice curses woven into my daily discourse.
Eric, your Friday High Five was a blast! The Deadrock D&D campaign inspired by Deadwood sounds absolutely thrilling. Your blend of nostalgia with The Legend of Zelda brought back so many fond memories. The Acolyte review was insightful, balancing praise and critique perfectly. I loved your take on Obi-Wan Kenobi, capturing the essence of his character.
Thanks much, Jon! 😀
Obi-wan, Ashoka, The Acolyte. Rough group to accept for the Gen X’ers.
At least we have Andor..
I feel very similarly about The Acolyte. I wanted to love it...and at the end just feel kinda bummed about it.
There's so much that's great about it! I love everything about The Stranger. I love Master Sol. Wookie Jedi and strange Force stuff and so many neat inclusions from Legends and getting to see more of the Sith's point of view.
But like you said, I just don't think the show succeeded at pulling it all together. And the "mystery" and the middle of the show of what really happened on Brendok wasn't all that satisfying when all the pieces were on the table. Just mostly sad for all involved, but not really *compelling.*
💯 It felt like a lot of build up and intrigue about something that was rather over hyped.
I f-ing love The Acolyte, warts and all.
Imo, its problems are mostly what I would call 'formative stage S1 problems,' which is something every series, even the best ones, undergo as they are made. Like, typically, during the first season the makers of a series need time to figure out what show they're actually making. What's the tone? What are the character dynamics? What storylines and relationships work? What doesn't work? What needs fixing?
What's unfortunate about the streaming era, with its shortened seasons, is that shows no longer have time to get great. They no longer get the number of episodes they need to work out all the kinks and become their best selves. Heck, I remember some dramas from the 2000s that didn't become truly great until S2 or S3, even if they had 13 episodes per season.
All of which is a way of saying that I wish The Acolyte had more episodes and I have little doubt it could become a legitimately great series in its second season.
I think you're onto something. Andor was an anomaly in that it had 12 episodes, many an hour in length. Turned out pretty well.
Partner and I are just working through The Acolyte now, I think we're 3 episodes in? I've seen some spoilers on Tiktok b/c apparently all the official channels think that everyone has watched their show 0.3sec after the final episode drops, but we're loving it so far. I think it's suffering from (not in your case) the typical hate that a lot of Star Wars gets from its most vocal "fans" that make me wonder if they're actually fans (reeee women centered in a story, reee complicated morality 🙄). I'll weigh in on the directionless story thing once we've seen the end (but I think I trust your opinions in general).
One critique I've heard is that modern Star Wars is now made by people who were fans of Star Wars growing up, rather than people who were fans of other things and are bringing those influences to make Star Wars like George Lucas did, so it's all just more of the same and more lore drops for the future.
2008 - 2019 was prime time for expanded universe interconnectivity and stories arcing over a 22-movie series, and now it seems everything thinks they need to do that because Marvel made so much money pioneering it. They fail to learn the lesson from what happened to Marvel after that success. But as Marvel and Star Wars are owned by the same people, you'd think that least *they* would know better. Reminds me of my main issue with the Picard series: 'stop trying to be epic and try to tell a good, contained story'.
I'm curious to hear what you think when you finish The Acolyte. Episode 3 was the best one imo. It's solidly okay but didn't deliver on it's promise.
I just finished watching it, so maybe my thoughts aren't quite fully formed yet, but I liked it, despite some unresolved arcs (mostly re: Vernestra). That's okay, though, as they probably left those threads open for future seasons, which, given the review bombing, we may not get. I think episode 5 was my favourite, where the person with the red lightsaber was revealed.
My main critique or thing that I found a little confusing is that the Jedi seemed, for lack of a better word, weak. I'm not sure if that's a lore thing that I'm missing, or if it was meant to be that way, but it seemed like they weren't that powerful, couldn't sense there were people on the planet, couldn't save someone from falling off a walkway, and just in general weren't that in touch with the force around them. Seemed a bit weird, but maybe they were trying to normalize the Jedi, so that not every one of them was a super powerful all knowing, all sensing being (which would be pretty boring and there'd be no stakes ever).
Overall I give it a solid 8/10. It was more interesting than Obi-Wan and justified its length more, and the 30 min episodes were nicer, I think.
I’m going to have to add that Deadwood book to my TBR pile. I recently rewatched the show again—it never gets old, but I always find a few choice curses woven into my daily discourse.
It's poetry in motion!
I'm gonna fly solo on this effort but I'd love to read yours if you write it!