Ariel: Okay, we definitely love Star Wars, and we also mostly love the Clone Wars cartoon, but we watched a couple of them today that we hadn't seen before and ... what?!?
Sasha: There are good episodes of the Clone Wars, and there are okay episodes of the Clone Wars. And then there are these episodes.
Ariel: Everybody better put their spoiler blankets on if they haven't watched the Clone Wars yet and don't want to know about these freak-o episodes we just watched.
Sasha: Yeah, because maybe people don't want it ruined ahead of time that they're about to see something weird and confusing and also ... really pretty dumb.
Ariel: But if you do want it spoiled so you can skip them, definitely don't put your spoiler blankets over your heads!
Sasha: Right, you won't want to miss this one if you would rather miss bad episodes of this show.
Ariel: Which is not most episodes ... overall it's really good.
Sasha: Except sometimes ...
Ariel: It's like this.
Sasha: So should we tell people why we watched these episodes?
Ariel: Sure! It's because we've been watching Ahsoka --
Sasha: Which is so good.
Ariel: SO good!!!
Sasha: Especially the one last night.
Ariel: OMG.
Sasha: No spoilers about that one, but it's the reason we watched these other ones.
Ariel: Yeah, at the end of last week's episode, something happened that I thought, Oh, that's like those episodes from Star Wars Rebels. But then our boyfriend heard --
Sasha: And we shouldn't have listened to him!
Ariel: But we did, and what he heard was, people were thinking maybe instead of being something like those Rebels episodes, what was going on was something like these the Clone Wars episodes.
Sasha: Big reveal! Everybody who's been waiting on the edge of their seat to find out which episodes we're talking about, it's the "Mortis" episodes.
Ariel: Don't be fooled by how "Mortis" sounds! The only "more" about these episodes is that they're way more weirder and kookoo-dumb than most of the show.
Sasha: Well, there are also more of them than there should have been.
Ariel: That's true! They should have been called "Lessthis" because less of them would have been better.
Sasha: Although to be fair, we only watched 2 of the 3 episodes.
Ariel: Did we do that to be fair?
Sasha: No, I was being fair by admitting we didn't watch them all.
Ariel: Oh, good, because I was sure it was because we ran out of time before episode 5 of Ahsoka.
Sasha: Right. Anyway, I'm ready to be a little less fair and a little more gripey about these episodes.
Ariel: Great! My first gripe is, nothing makes any sense! Like, I literally can't remember anything that happens or that anyone does that makes sense.
Sasha: I know! They go to answer a distress signal and when they get there, the ship full of clone troopers they were supposed to meet up with isn't there. But they can talk to them on the radio, and they say, "No, we're here, you're not here." Which is very mysterious and everything, except ... why were they going to meet up with the ship full of clones in the first place? There's a distress call using a code thousands of years old ... what do you need a bunch of clones for? Why can't the three Jedi just investigate for a while themselves and call for help if they need it?
Ariel: I know, right? At first I thought, well, maybe they're worried it's a trap so they'll need backup. But if they're worried it's a trap, why not meet up first and go together? It pretty much felt like the whole reason they needed to meet up was so it could be mysterious that they weren't able to meet up even though they were both at the meet-up spot.
Sasha: Exactly. And then this weird diamond-shaped thing shows up and sucks their shuttle in and they end up meeting a super-tall glowing chick who says she'd better take them to her father. So they follow her but pretty much ask almost no questions about what's going on at all.
Ariel: And she's not interested in talking to them either! Pretty soon we find out she and her father and her brother have been inside this diamondmajig for thousands of years, and she's not like, "Wow! People! How's it going outside? Do they still do pod racing and stuff?"
Sasha: Nope. She really seems like she's there just to lead them toward the father, while they take in the sights and say things like, "Do you notice how as the day goes by, the seasons are changing with the time of day?"
Ariel: Which I was like, "No, I did not notice that!" And I didn't even notice it after they said it. I guess maybe it was supposed to be spring in the morning and then it was summer in the afternoon? Only spring and summer don't look all that different, especially when you're walking through a whole bunch of different landscapes with different plants.
Sasha: I know, and they're just walking along talking to each other and she's mostly ignoring them up until the point when a cliff collapses and cuts her and Teen Hotty off from Sexy Jesus and Snips Ahoyka.
Ariel: Hmf. It's kinda interrupting, but you know, I don't think Teen Hotty is still a teen anymore, and Sexy Jesus cut his hair so he doesn't look all that Jesus-y any more. So it's more like the Hotty Formerly Known as Teen and Sexy Ex-Jesus.
Sasha: Both kind of a mouthful. Maybe we can think of something shorter to call them?
Ariel: Or we could just drop a bunch of the letters, like, Hot-For-Kno-Tee and Sex-Ex-Jess.
Sasha: I kind of like the sound of Hotfer Notee, but I'm not sold on Sex-Ex-Jess. It doesn't really roll off my tongue that well.
Ariel: Haha, that's what she said! But seriously, how about just ... Exy Jesus instead of Sexy Jesus.
Sasha: Sure. Anyway, as soon as it's just Hotfer Notee and the tall glowy chick on one side of the landslide and Exy Jesus and Snips Ahoyka on the other, Glow Chick says she has to go get her father instead of taking Hotfer Notee to her father, and that Hotfer Notee needs to stay right in that spot.
Ariel: I'm like, "What?" Instead of the two of them doing a one-way trip, she's going to make a two-way trip instead and bring her father back?
Sasha: It made even less sense when we found out later on she's got incredibly powerful Force powers and can turn into a giant griffin that can totally pick a person up like a doll.
Ariel: I know! Why didn't she just fly around the rockslide, pick up Exy Jesus and Snips Ahoyka, and then they could all hurry to the father together?
Sasha: Nope, she's all, "You guys stay right here even though something obviously super-dangerous just happened out of nowhere. I'll keep walking toward my father even though I can totally fly ten times faster."
Ariel: "Definitely don't use your Jedi powers to jump over the rockslide or climb around!"
Sasha: And so then instead of listening to her, Hotfer Notee chases after her while the other two head back to their ship.
Ariel: Which of course isn't there when they get to the spot they left it. Because ...
Sasha: Because that lets Glow Chick's brother show up and be all menacing and tell them they'd better find shelter. Apparently the weather gets really bad around here at night.
Ariel: Luckily, there's a cave right there.
Sasha: First sign we've seen of caves, and there just happens to be one exactly where they need it to get out of the terrible rain and get stuck somewhere with nothing to do but have Force visions.
Ariel: Like Exy Jesus seeing the main character from Star Wars Episode I – Attack of Nothing, Just an Hour and a Half of Space Politics Plus a Cute Kid and Hilarious Fart Joke Rabbit-Frog Dude Followed by One Holy Moly Kick-Ass Fight Scene and the Main Character Dies.
Sasha: Why Gone.
Ariel: That's him! And he shows up and is all like, "Hey, Exy Jesus, did you train that slave kid like I asked?" And Exy Jesus pulls out his lightsaber and is like, "Dude, what are you doing here?" And Why Gone says, "You know, just because." And Exy Jesus says, "I don't understand," and puts away his lightsaber again.
Sasha: Exy Jesus keeps not understanding sh*t in these episodes.
Ariel: It doesn't help that every time someone who might explain something shows up, they just say a bunch of gobbledegook.
Sasha: Right, like Hotfer Notee gets to this monastery and finds Glow Chick's dad and asks him a bunch of questions and the clearest answer he gets is, "Oh, man, it's getting late. You should check out our guest room and get some shuteye."
Ariel: And Hotfer Notee just shrugs and is like, "Okay. Probably I'm gonna have some messed up dreams or something, but I guess I'll take that over trying to keep asking you questions and getting a whole lot of nothing."
Sasha: And then sure enough, he has a dream where his mom shows up and says she's got a secret to tell him, but then doesn't tell him squat.
Ariel: Also, Snips Ahoyka has a dream of her future self saying a bunch of stuff, only she basically tells Future Her she doesn't believe any of it and get stuffed.
Sasha: What's weirdest is that Future Her keeps asking her questions and telling her to do things like she doesn't already know what happened to Past Her while she was on this diamondy planet thing.
Ariel: Lucky for us, Exy Jesus wakes her up before we have to listen to too much of that.
Sasha: It's like the writer thought, "Damn, if this dream goes on any longer, I'll have to write something into it that makes sense and actually tells the characters something."
Ariel: Or he was like, "Dang, running out of time in this episode and I still have to write a big showdown scene where nothing is actually accomplished because there's still two more episodes to go in this story."
Sasha: Oh, man. That showdown.
Ariel: Uh-huh. So after Glow Chick told them not to go anywhere and Glow Chick's brother --
Sasha: Glow-Bro. I mean, he doesn't glow, but I think that's a pretty good name.
Ariel: It makes as much sense as anything in these episodes. Anywhow, after she told them not to go anywhere and he told them they'd better find cover, now in the morning the two of them show up and grab Exy Jesus and Snips Ahoyka and fly them right to the Father's monastery where there's a big arena with a fancy symbol-y pattern on the ground and each of these Force Kids lands in a matching part of the symbol on opposite sides of the arena, still holding the Jedi prisoner, while Hotfer Notee and the Father are standing in the middle so the Father can say, "Now you've got to pass a test to show you're the Chosen One. I've told my kids to kill your friends, and you can only save one. Which one are you going to save?"
Sasha: And weirdly, nobody is like, "Hey, why do you guys have this big arena here when there are only three of you on the whole planet?"
Ariel: It's literally like nobody making the show thought for even half a second, "So what do these super-powerful Force people DO on this planet when they're not randomly messing with passing Jedi?"
Sasha: It should have been a big hint early on when they couldn't even be bothered to give the characters names.
Ariel: Anyway, Hotfer Notee gets all pissed and raises his hands and uses the Force to make the sky and stars spin around and then to lift Glow Chick and Glow Bro up in the air and smash them to the ground, which somehow defeats them even though they're super-incredibly powerful and getting smashed to the ground doesn't even knock them unconscious.
Sasha: And then we get to the dumbest, weirdest, craziest thing in the whole episode!
Ariel: I know! The Father is all, "You have passed my test and proven that you're the Chosen One! This is so great, because now you can take my place and stay on this planet forever and keep my kids imprisoned and in balance so one of them doesn't beat the other, especially Glow Bro, who is getting pretty effed up with the Dark Side."
Sasha: Who would say yes to that offer? I mean, there's like, zero incentive for Hotfer Notee to do that.
Ariel: I mean, if he trusts the Father, he ought to be pretty worried that Glow Bro will get loose and do a bunch of bad Dark Side stuff to the universe. But why would he trust the Father when the guy has been a total jerk-bag to him the whole time?
Sasha: And even if he thinks the Father is being honest, why would he trust that he actually knows what he's talking about? Basically every decision the Father has made is kookoo and hasn't worked, so why would Hotfer Notee think following the dude's plan would be a good idea?
Ariel: By the end of the episode, my brain hurt so much.
Sasha: Mine too.
Ariel: I feel a little better now after talking about it, though.
Sasha: Better enough to get right into talking about the second episode?
Ariel: Oh no! Don't remind me that there was a second episode!
Sasha: Sorry. I'd like to forget about it too.
Ariel: Let's wrap this one up now, then.
Sasha: Deal.
Ariel and Sasha: Bye, everybody!
