Week 12 - Saleucami Arc, Lightsaber Lost

This is probably the best episode for Grievous, this or perhaps Massacre.

The Deserter is very different from the previous episode, where Rex really wasn’t even a key player. The strange thing is, the continuation of the last episode gets kind of lost in this one with Grievous’ escape just kinda feeling like a distraction from what we care about. Cut Lawquane is a really interesting character, and probably the most unique clone we see on the show. I definitely would have liked him to show up again at some point. The whole set up is really cool and it’s a really different kind of conflict for Rex, someone who had seemed pretty two dimensional up to this point. The battle at the end is really tense. It makes it seem like Cut will die but I’m glad they don’t go with that. Another thing, but it seems strange Cut would recognize Commando Droids after only fighting in the First Battle of Geonosis. I really like this episode. 8/10

I need to catch up... I’ve been kinda sick for most of this week and most of what I have been watching was the League of Legends World championships...

I need to catch up too, but I was swamped with work the past week. Hopefully I can during this weekend.

After rating these two episodes though, part of me is thinking I might've started a little too generous with my ratings. Even though I've only awarded two 9/10s, I've done a lot of 8/10s and 8.5/10s, so it might get tricky with most of the best arcs still to come. I may have to go back and readjust some of them to make it more accurate.

Watching Grievous Intrigue now revealed my opinion of it hasn't changed: it's still boss. The new ships introduced are cool, more Jedi are around and Grievous is actually made a threat, though as a character he's still super undercooked and it's such a shame we never ever got an episode that properly fleshed him out, or at least explain why he's so evil for the sake of being evil (I know there's EU media that tells exactly why, but you'd think the show would actually use some of it). This episode kinda feels like a season premiere in the way its presented. Everything just feels a bit more polished than usual, from the battles (okay, Koth got his ass handed to him a bit too easily methinks), to the score, to the cinematography. Just an excellent entry.

Deserter's pretty good, but a bit weaker. As nice as it is to finally see the clones more... developed in how they talk to each other I still don't really quite connect with them fully. Probably thanks to the time constraints. Shame, because Spider's right: Cut's the type of character that really should be looked into a bit more. It's why I wish they sort of made a spiritual sequel to this that had Darmen and Omega Squad from those Republic Commando novels starring. Y'know, sort of reveal another part of that thread. Still, what we got was good. I even found the battle droids more fun than usual here.

The plot of Lightsaber Lost is really dumb... And what was the deal with those two chicks did they kill Ione's boyfriend? Why did they want a lightsaber? Very weird... I suspect they just wanted to show off Coruscant but they could've come up with a little better story to do so. But it was good seeing the underworld I think it was the first time we got a good look. They came a long way from the underworld scene in TCW movie

Grievous Intrigue is a great episode and probably top 3 of season 2. They actually make Grievous a super competent villain in this episode, unfortunately he’s still surrounded by droids who are a lot less effective. But it’s easy to get a sense of how many Jedi he probably kills off screen, Lair of Grievous supports that as well.

Also it’s kind of funny how it’s less than a year after AOTC and Kenobi and Anakin have become so much more powerful. Although I guess they are fighting a lot more now days. But given how strong Luke becomes in a short amount of time, I guess it’s not unreasonable.

Anyways this episode gets a very solid 9/10.

I do always wonder what makes some of these planets important though... Mygeto, Felucia and Saleucami were all major battlefields throughout the Clone Wars. Mygeeto makes sense because it’s a mining world that helps finance the Munns of Munnilist but the other ones seem kind of irrelevant.

Lightsaber Lost is dull but seeing the underworld was interesting, so many aliens as well, although many were reused models from previous episodes. In fact I think they completely ran out of budget at the end because out of 4 kids they reused the same species twice... and usually Yoda would teach more then 4 kids as well.

Not much to say about this episode, cool underworld stuff, I’m sure you could find tons of cameos and Easter eggs in there. But overall not much point either, I’m going to say 4/10

I have here the ones you didn’t rate: redirect.viglink.com/?key=c1cdf22cfdb6719d2f056213f6dd4bd2&u=https%3A//docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ano1pq9JYILdO4PS7RLpRLuSbJeRo535G1mCLE595Vw/edit%23gid%3D0

Kinda random but wouldn't it have been good to have Rex go back to Saleucami after the war ends? I could just picture in the aftermath of Order 66, him being welcomed back there and getting a happy ending.

Maybe those actually are Cut's kids but they inherited his growth acceleration.