The Wild West in Space: The Mandalorian

I'm aware that everyone has been talking about this since the first episode aired, but here at Bathory's Closet I review seasons, not episodes. That way you get a bit of hindsight. So: The Mandalorian: great first episode, good droid design, poor intermittent characters and episodes, picked up again at the end.

Those are  my feelings in a nutshell. Yes, Baby Yoda is super cute, but more importantly, it's sort of a game-changer to have a Yoda, which raises all kinds of questions that I hope this show will eventually answer about yodas, their powers, their numbers, and how/what this little mind-bender has survived.

I say Western because that's how the majority of the show was structured - with these episodic adventures and episodic characters. Towards the end, we see the reason for that, as all these parties come together for season finale and a dramatic confrontation with the vestiges of the Empire seeking out the yodaling, but actually watching the show was not all that exciting in the middle, because many of those episodes didn't appreciably further the plot, or maintain the tension from the first episodes revelations. The writers saved me from boredom in the last two episodes, but then that makes three total that were well-written and well-executed. Not...great.

Especially when you consider that this was the only original content that was launched with the Disney+ service, which is attempting to be competitive with Netflix and the like, which, I will add, also released high-profile genre programming: The Witcher. And that, my friends, was damn near perfect. More on that in a minute. In the meantime though, hopefully Disney will realize its mistake of thinking name recognition is enough in the streaming content game, and of hyping a service and a bunch of shows (ahem, Marvel) that aren't even close to being ready. Because that's my real problem with The Mandalorian. It just wasn't enough. It wasn't a strong enough showing for a Disney launch. My hope is that they too recognize this. In the words of the immortal Xena: "Don't be sorry, Gabrielle. Just improve."

K Rating: 3/5