The Meh-dalorian

The Mandalorian, Episodes 1 and 2.
A Nerds who Read TV Review by Michael Isenberg.

It’s hard to warm to a guy with a mask on. So much of our brains are wired for recognizing and responding to faces, that when we don’t get one, it’s difficult to make an emotional connection (with the possible exception of fear).

So if you’re going to have a main character who never takes his mask off, as is the case for the Mandalorian, then he better have something to compensate. Give him some memorable lines to say or some awesome superpowers. Or both at the same time. Remember when Darth Vader force choked that one guy and said, "Apology accepted?" That was bad-ass. Sadly, with the Mandalorian, all we get is blah-ass.

Disney's space western, The Manalorian, premiered this week to launch their new streaming channel, “Disney Plus.” Pedro Pascal plays the title character. The series is definitely set in the Star Wars universe, and fans will see much that is familiar: Boba Fett armor, bizarre CGI creatures, the Force, stormtroopers. Although, since this takes place after the events of Return of the Jedi, the stormtroopers have seen better days.

The first episode is rather paint-by-numbers, the sort of formulaic thing an unimaginative writer would come up with. We first see the protagonist bring in a run-of-the-mill suspect. There’s a bit of action, but mainly the sequence exists to establish who the Mandalorian is—a bounty hunter. Then he meets with the boss guy to get his main assignment, a higher value target. After a stop with the equipment guy to get his armor upgraded, it’s off to the desolate planet Arvala-7 for the mission to begin in earnest. It was a great formula when James Bond started it, almost sixty years ago, but it’s been done.

Given that it’s the first episode of a series, rather than a movie, there’s one more element to the formula. It has to end with a cliffhanger, in order to hook the viewers so they'll watch the second episode. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t say much about the cliffhanger. Just that if you’ve seen The Clone Wars, you’ve seen it already.

Episode 2 is the Mandalorian’s effort to get off Arvala-7 with his bounty. He is hindered by a Crawling Fortress full of Jawas who stripped his ship while he was off doing Episode 1 things. Now he’s stuck there unless he gets the parts back. There’s one twist toward the middle, which you will see coming a mile away. There are some beautiful desert landscapes as the Mandalorian makes his way across Arvala-7, and also a fair amount of action. I like action scenes—I rarely want to watch a show that doesn’t have some. But they’re no substitute for being invested in the main character.

I did like one of the other characters—the Ugnaught Kuiil, played by Nick Nolte. Something about this character just works. Not sure whether it's the grumpy frown, the gravelly voice, the gentle humor, or the Rocky the Flying Squirrel helmet and goggles. We’ve seen his species before—they were the pig-like creatures who were the worker bees of Cloud City in Empire. The ones who tried to melt down C-3PO. Kuiil came to such a barren planet as Arvala-7 in order to find independence as a vapor farmer. “I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.” And he has a great catchphrase, “I have spoken,” which he is able to pull off without sounding like a dick. Sadly, Episode 2 ends with the Mandalorian saying goodbye to him and flying off into space, so I’m not sure if he’s going to be back in future episodes.

The ending of Episode 2 wrapped everything up rather nicely—no cliffhanger to entice me to Episode 3. I’m undecided whether to cancel my subscription to Disney Plus when the free trial ends, or keep it to see more of The Mandalorian (Yeah, I know. There are other things on there. But that's a whole 'nother discussion). On the one hand, while not a great series so far, it’s not bad either. Kind of meh. Might be worth watching if there’s nothing else on. On the other hand, if I really want a space western, I could just re-watch Firefly.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Photo credit(s): Forbes, Screen Rants, fb.com/tarryk.