He kills those guards, then kind of just wanders around aimlessly with the vague goal of selling something, then he agrees to escape with that old guy who only speaks in catchphrases and sound bites, then he finally accidentally walks into a pretty good spy story. Don’t get me wrong, once it really got going I enjoyed watching it, but the whole first part of the series was like a chore I had to endure to see why people were saying the show was so good.
He was running away. There are three beats. Cass is a street rat, a gambler. When he gets in trouble he lies and runs away aimlessly. Second beat, he is a rebellion pawn, a mercenary. He does things for money. He still wants to run away, but now he has an aim of exploiting the rebellion for personal gain, he’s learned focus. Third beat is rebel spy Cass. He has felt first hand the oppression and evil schemes of the empire. He loses a loved one due to the empire and now, instead of running away, as old Cass would’ve done. He is ready to face the empire and act, he’s acquired purpose and conviction. The third arc makes no sense and is not compelling in the slightest without the first and second arcs.
So your take is that it’s just a poorly written story that’s overly reliant on an excessively drawn out and tedious prologue? That sounds like we’re in agreement! I understand why all the things that happen at the beginning of the story are there, I just don’t understand why they took 4 full episodes to tell us 20 minutes worth of backstory. It feels like they didn’t have enough written to fill 12 episodes so someone panicked and just dragged it out as long as possible.
He kills those guards, then kind of just wanders around aimlessly with the vague goal of selling something, then he agrees to escape with that old guy who only speaks in catchphrases and sound bites, then he finally accidentally walks into a pretty good spy story. Don’t get me wrong, once it really got going I enjoyed watching it, but the whole first part of the series was like a chore I had to endure to see why people were saying the show was so good.
He was running away. There are three beats. Cass is a street rat, a gambler. When he gets in trouble he lies and runs away aimlessly. Second beat, he is a rebellion pawn, a mercenary. He does things for money. He still wants to run away, but now he has an aim of exploiting the rebellion for personal gain, he’s learned focus. Third beat is rebel spy Cass. He has felt first hand the oppression and evil schemes of the empire. He loses a loved one due to the empire and now, instead of running away, as old Cass would’ve done. He is ready to face the empire and act, he’s acquired purpose and conviction. The third arc makes no sense and is not compelling in the slightest without the first and second arcs.
So your take is that it’s just a poorly written story that’s overly reliant on an excessively drawn out and tedious prologue? That sounds like we’re in agreement! I understand why all the things that happen at the beginning of the story are there, I just don’t understand why they took 4 full episodes to tell us 20 minutes worth of backstory. It feels like they didn’t have enough written to fill 12 episodes so someone panicked and just dragged it out as long as possible.