The Clone Wars - Mercy Mission

[Staff]

The Clone Wars continues Friday with Mercy Mission.

After groundquakes have devastated the planet Aleen, a Republic relief effort arrives, including the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO. When the native Aleena's pleas go unheard, it becomes the duty of the droids to embark on a surreal journey through Aleen's subterranean world to save the planet.

Check out the preview clip featuring Commander Wolffe and C-3PO
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Permalink: http://www.fbtb.net/2011/10/04/the-clone-wars-mercy-mission/

[Blacknight]

Well I guess that was the best episode so far this season - which really isn't saying much. It started off well with a mystery that didn't involve the Separatists for once, Commander Wolfe is pretty cool, those little aliens are cute and you feel sorry for them, and adventures with C3PO and R2-D2 is usually amusing because they're great characters.

But then it just literally fell off the cliff into Disney silly land when the butterfly frog Princess appeared. What a ridiculous character spouting english riddles like Gollum (this, immediately following the LoTR talking trees just screams creative bankruptcy).

And really, we're supposed to believe that this entire planet's ecological, geological and political problems could be created by one little manhole cover being ajar? Like really, all those super earthquakes haven't opened up any other chasms, pits or holes in the planet's crust that could let in surface air? It's just that one little hole that's a problem, and a few dozen of the little aliens couldn't hold their breath for the 10 minutes it would take to push the manhole back into place (in real life just look at the sacrifice those nuclear workers in Japan made to contain the damage)??

It just stretches one's suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point - unless they're under 8 years old. I think each episode this season is going to make me revise my estimate for the target audience of this season down another year. It's just getting insulting to watch. The brain cells, they're dying with each minute that passes so I have to come write a rant here every time to regain my capacity to think.

[StoutFiles]

This is a kids show for kids. Hoping for some logic and sensible characters is a waste of time.

[cas]

Why is too much to ask for logic in a story? So what if it's a "kids" show. The message I'm getting from television shows like this is kids today are incredibly dense and far to stupid to understand anything deeper than water vapor. But, you're right Stout, it is a waste of time and that is depressing.

[Blacknight]

I don't buy that it's a show exclusively targeted at kids. There are a lot of frightening, questionable and even sexually eyebrow raising scenes in this show (e.g. Jabba dancer scene last season), along with plenty of violence, torture, murder and dark themes. Maybe that stuff is considered A-okay for kids shows nowdays, but I have to grimace a bit if that's the case. Beyond that, some of the ads on Starwars.com, the conventions, and even some of the collectibles based on this show seem to be targeted at adult Star Wars enthusiasts/ fanboys/collectors/whatever as well. There's also the little matter that the prequel trilogy suffered from some of the same logic holes and no one can say it wasn't written for an older audience.

I thought all Star Wars media was supposed to "timelessly appeal to all audiences". That's how they frequently market Star Wars anyway. In short, saying it's "just a kid's show" is an easy co-out to downplay the show's failings. I just blame inexcusably poor, lazy writing.

[volumex]

Look, the writing teams change, so somebody got a shot at a new direction and maybe missed the mark on the mature side, but its all fantasy so it has involve some not so cool stuff, look at our planet... and this real life!

[Oky Wan Kenobi]

This is a kids show for kids. Hoping for some logic and sensible characters is a waste of time.

You do realize that you just insulted every child on earth, right? Why is it that people always assume that a kids show should have low standards? I think it's quite the contrary. Children should grow up with quality shows that are both entertaining and educational, and yes, that includes learning logic and dealing with sensible characters. It's this kind of attitude that produces all the low-quality shows these days.

That said, I agree with Blacknight; I don't think it's supposed to be a show exclusively for kids, just like most of the SW franchise. Hence all the cheesy inclusions of OT quotes and characters.

Sorry for the rant. I miss the cartoons of the '90s. Those had some real quality...

[StoutFiles]

This is a kids show for kids. Hoping for some logic and sensible characters is a waste of time.

You do realize that you just insulted every child on earth, right? Why is it that people always assume that a kids show should have low standards? I think it's quite the contrary. Children should grow up with quality shows that are both entertaining and educational, and yes, that includes learning logic and dealing with sensible characters. It's this kind of attitude that produces all the low-quality shows these days.

That said, I agree with Blacknight; I don't think it's supposed to be a show exclusively for kids, just like most of the SW franchise. Hence all the cheesy inclusions of OT quotes and characters.

Sorry for the rant. I miss the cartoons of the '90s. Those had some real quality...

Why would I insult children? Cartoons are hardly educational once you get past Nick Jr., but mostly mindless entertainment with as much laughs or explosions as you can cram in. That isn't a knock on kids, they deserve a break from 8 hours of school. Let them have their fun, but don't watch their shows and expect to be enlightened when you do. A good cartoon will at best make some references to adult works for the adults (Pumba makes a Sidney Poitier joke in Lion King that blew past me till much later in life) but no, cartoons are for kids as they should be. Even worse are the kid shows where they seemingly live in their own apartments and basically do whatever they want, parents are either nit around or minor obstacles to avoid. I'll take cartoons over that crap any day.

Have you ever gone back and watched a 90's cartoon? I have, memories age well but reliving them doesn't. The majority of them are awful dribble. A few hold up, but mostly because they were produced by Warner Brothers, who made the real standard of cartoons back in the olden days. Nostalgia is a tricky thing, but trust me, what you thought was good was probably not. The sad thing is CW is being seen as somewhat awful right now instead of years down the road because they've ran out of usuable material and are now throwing the characters in any wacky situation they can think of and SW is being diluted because of it. It would be fine since it's for kids but by giving the show a high canon ranking and forcing adults to acknowledge its events is unfair since the show seems like it's written by a group of kids and one adult who loves senate proceedings.

[mr_joshua]

Cartoon or not, what drove me nuts was the lack of continuity between the cartoon and the Lego figures; specifically set 7964. I am completely peeved now (mostly because my son is more peeved) that Lego could not make sure the 'wolfpack' minifigs accurately represented what would be on screen! I get that making a new helmet mold for Cdr. Wolffe would cost more, but they could have at least made them both utilize the existing phase2 helmets. All I had to say after I watched yet another painful episode, was thanks Lego, thanks for the nice printed helmet on the WRONG HELMETS!

On a bright side, my kids enjoyed actually seeing a few clones in this episode of 'Clone' wars. It was beginning to feel like the Jedi/Gungan/Senate wars...and not the clone wars.

[Oky Wan Kenobi]

Have you ever gone back and watched a 90's cartoon? I have, memories age well but reliving them doesn't. The majority of them are awful dribble. A few hold up, but mostly because they were produced by Warner Brothers, who made the real standard of cartoons back in the olden days. Nostalgia is a tricky thing, but trust me, what you thought was good was probably not.

Yes, I have. In fact, that's nearly all I have been watching lately since there's hardly anything watchable on TV these days. And I gotta say, shows like DuckTales, TaleSpin, Rescue Rangers, Batman:TAS, Spider Man:TAS, etc. all still hold up extremely well, perhaps even better. Those shows had superb animation, excellent writing, good values, and were tons of fun to watch for the whole family. They may seem a bit corny now, but they are still far better than anything that's being produced nowadays (except Avatar).

Cartoon or not, what drove me nuts was the lack of continuity between the cartoon and the Lego figures; specifically set 7964. I am completely peeved now (mostly because my son is more peeved) that Lego could not make sure the 'wolfpack' minifigs accurately represented what would be on screen! I get that making a new helmet mold for Cdr. Wolffe would cost more, but they could have at least made them both utilize the existing phase2 helmets. All I had to say after I watched yet another painful episode, was thanks Lego, thanks for the nice printed helmet on the WRONG HELMETS!

Uhm, actually those are accurate. Up until this episode, Wolfpack has always worn phase 1 armor.

[buriedbybricks]

I'd also like to add Gargoyles, The Tick and X-men to the list of quality 90's cartoons for humour, heart and great writing. I could add a lot more, but these are real stand outs and I watch these and many, many others all the time.

More on topic, this episode was a huge let down. They could have done so much more with the story, but chose to phone it in. When they solved the problem by kicking the cork in the hole, my son looked at me and said "that's it?".
So, yeah an insult to the intelligence of a four year old.

[fallenangel327]

You do realize that you just insulted every child on earth, right? Why is it that people always assume that a kids show should have low standards? I think it's quite the contrary. Children should grow up with quality shows that are both entertaining and educational, and yes, that includes learning logic and dealing with sensible characters. It's this kind of attitude that produces all the low-quality shows these days.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death:

“Television ... serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse – news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion – and turns them into entertainment packages.”

“Education philosophers... have argued that there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories ... [t]elevision offers a delicious and, as I have said, original alternative to all this.”

Postman makes it quite clear that shows feigning educational merit are detrimental to discourse as it exists today and that it best fulfills its ultimate objective – entertainment – when it presents us with rubbish. We should not expect television to benefit us in the realm of education - we have schools for that. Nor should we expect it to demonstrate logic or good characterization - we have literature for that.