It’s a bit of a mixed bag on today’s edition of the Hondo Caravan.  We’ve got one more episode in the Youngling arc, an arc that makes me want to take a nap, and then the return of the Brothers Sith.  Buckle in, kids.  It’s going to be a gif filled ride.

A Necessary Bond
Turns out there’s more bad news, folks.  Ahsoka and the Younglings didn’t escape quite yet.  Apparently they haven’t even made it back to the ship yet.  It gets worse.  You’d think that getting to the ship would be the hard part.  Instead, merely getting on the ship is tricky especially when it appears to be crashing and burning.

In the previous episode, Obi-Wan was off fighting Separatist forces led by General Grievous.  At the time, it felt like a superfluous plot line to just have Obi-Wan in an episode again.  In this episode though, the Separatists invade Hondo’s planet and take possession of it.  Apparently Dooku did not take too kindly to Hondo taking him prisoner a few seasons ago.  Ooo.  Grievous just tossed Hondo across the room to the floor.  I can hear Jawa James shouting ‘Nooooooooo!’ from the past all the way across the country.  As expected, some of Hondo’s pirate underlings have seen the light and have agreed to work together with the Jedi to get out of this sticky situation.

“I may be a pirate but I do not like taking children into battle.”  I’m just going to leave that quote from Hondo there with no extra commentary.  I bet you can figure out the quiet and pent up rant there all on your own.

I must admit, these kids are pretty good for never having used these lightsabers before.  Obviously, this means something will happen to one of them.  I also really appreciate the strange sort of friendship that seems to have sprung up between Hondo and Katooni.  I’ve got head canon: Hondo’s going to somehow save her from Order 66 and she’ll become a pirate.  She’s too cute to die, okay?

I’m fairly sure it wasn’t the intention but every time Grievous does the four/six legged crab scuttle, I laugh hysterically.  You know what else makes me laugh hysterically?  Hondo verbally tallying up his bill for saving the Jedi Younglings to Obi-Wan.

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It’s an extra long post today as the Season Five discs are supersized.  It’s even an supersized Hondo week as I attempt to watch the entire season before Season Six drops on Friday.  Can I do it?  Will the Hondo Caravan beat me?  Place your bets now!

A War on Two Fronts
This is the episode where we finally get to visit Onderon and I could not be more excited.  It’s one of the planets that I really loved visiting in the Knights of the Old Republic games.  Getting to see it approximately 3000 years later is really neat especially since we get to see Iziz and the jungles and the giant winged beasts.  The animation and the background sounds are amazing because it feels like it’s right out of the game albeit with better graphics.

The Jedi have finally come to Onderon because they see the rebels here as a good potential weapon against the Separatists as they can distract and force them to split their forces.  That means Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka, and Rex are there to teach the rebels better techniques to combat the droids and to make them a more effective fighting group.  So yeah.  It’s exactly like this:

(Except Anakin keeps his shirt on.)

Of course, their training comes to an end when the droids find their hidden base and attack.  Instead of letting the Jedi cover their retreat, they take the lessons learned and fight back and even win!  The Jedi should write a handbook: How To Train A Rebel Group In Seven Days.

There is also the obligatory subplot with the romance between Ahsoka and Lux.  It’s… sweet in its own way but I’m not going to sit here and ship them.  Actually, out of these characters, I’m way more interested in Steela and watching her kick butt with her blaster rifle.

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It’s a bit of a mixed bag of plot lines as Season 4 wraps up.  Obi-Wan’s undercover work from the last disc continues, Asajj Ventress returns, and… well… so does someone else.  I bet you can guess who.

The Box
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
(I have no idea.  I just wanted to ask that.)

Okay Kenobi: I’m seeing a small flaw in your plan of going to Serenno.  Just a tiny one.  It involves you being face to face with Count Dooku.  You don’t think that he might, oh you know, recognize your Force presence?

“Wrong to deceive you, it was.”  “A powerful Jedi you are yet unpredictable and dangerous you can be to both your friends and enemies.”  Your turn, Yoda.  CLEARLY you recognize that Anakin is not the most stable of Jedi AND YET YOU WENT THROUGH WITH THIS PLAN ANYWAYS?

I’m getting the feeling that Cad Bane was strongly influenced by Captain Barbossa given his obsession with getting the best/biggest hat.

Turns out that it’s not what in the box but rather ‘Who will make it out of the box?’ that’s the real question here.  My bet was that it would be Obi-Wan and Cad Bane.  This is the problem with the Dark Side: their quest to figure out who’s Top Dog basically involves killing everyone else.  This is not the best way to encourage growth.  Unsurprisingly, they both made it along with a few others.

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I feel like I should say this right off the bat: this is a disc of episodes in which people make really stupid decisions.  Like… really stupid.  But it’s okay.  Our heroes survive.  More or less.  We pick up with the story arc from the last episode of the previous disc which means… slavers.

Slaves of the Republic
I love this episode purely because it’s the reason why we get to hear Obi-Wan use the words ‘High Class Scum’ and also because Ahsoka got to throw some subtle shade at Anakin about him not being very convincing as a Master.

I would “never” question the wisdom or the judgment of the Jedi Council in all their… uhh… wisdom but could they really not find anyone better to send on this mission than Anakin Skywalker?  Why on earth would you put a former slave on a mission to a planet full of slavers?  Anakin is far from being the calmest Jedi out there and putting him into an emotionally charged situation like this is just plain stupid.

And while I’m on the subject on ranting, why did it have to be Ahsoka who was put into the slave girl role?  More specifically: why does it have to be the show’s lone female lead who is put into a slave girl outfit?  So help me, this had best not happen in Rebels too.

At least we got a fun parallel to Return of the Jedi with Artoo tossing lightsabers to the Jedi on command.  At least.

Other things happened in this episode such as the plan failing miserably but I’m honestly too off put by Ahsoka being dressed up as a slave girl and the Jedi Council putting Anakin into a situation like this to have really took notice.

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Did the antagonistic title get your attention?  Did it?  Sensationalist journalism, folks!  Actually, I jest.  The title does tie in though because wow do we have a sorry excuse for a Jedi in these episodes but I’ll stop there.  Wouldn’t want to give away the arc too much now would I?

Darkness on Umbara
This is possibly one of the more battle heavy episodes I’ve seen.  I think the first 10 minutes or so were almost all action?  Episodes with this much fighting stand out to me for some reason.  It’s fun getting to see them fighting the war and to see more of how Anakin’s battalion in particular works.

Okay, this replacement Jedi general?  Pong Krell?  He’s a real ass.  Something bad had best happen to him by the end of the arc.  Alternatively, he will not be one I will be sorry to see Order 66-ed.  Honestly, you’d think that a Jedi could at least manage to use a trooper’s name.  Every time he used Rex’s number instead of his name, I wanted to punch him in the face.  I’m surprised Rex didn’t punch him, honestly.

Krell was put in charge Anakin’s battalion because Palpatine had recalled him back to Coruscant.  This has a very fishy smell to it.  Why would the Chancellor just pull one of his Generals back before a big battle?  Sometimes, it surprises me that no one realized that Palpatine was evil before he went all crazy lightsaber Sith.

Seriously.  Someone remove Krell from command.  His plans are bad.  You know nothing, Pong Krell.

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Season Four!  Can you believe we’re already here?  I certainly can’t.  The good news is that it’s off to a crazy good start with a trio of episodes set on Mon Calamari and some excellent animation and design.  But what will the rest of the season bring?

Water War
I can’t even begin to describe how much I love that they’re showing the Mon Calamari Senate in an underwater forum.  It seems such an obvious choice but oh man am I glad that they followed through.  I also love that they used the Mon Calamari/Quarren quarrel for this episode.  It’s great when they pull things from the Expanded Universe.  Honestly, all of the animation and design for this planet is fantastically done.  It’s so cool looking and different that you can’t help but pay more attention to the episode.  It’s a great opening for Season Four.

The episode does make me wonder how the Mon Calamari and Quarren’s biology works.  More specifically, I’m wondering their respiratory systems are set up since they seem to have no trouble going from water to oxygen.

Also?  The Mon Calamari prince is so cute and tiny and cute.

Obviously negotiations are short (did you see what I did there?) and it turns into an all out underwater battle which is really just an excuse for some more cool thing… well, everything.  Of course, this got followed up by the Separatists have some crazy new weapon that’s clearly tailor made for this world.

Something that’s always intrigued me has been the use of a lightsaber under water.  I’m no engineer or mechanic or any vaguely sciency person but I’m wondering if they really should be able to function.  Apparently this episode is making me wonder about a lot of science related things today.

Also, shirtless Kit Fitso.  That’s a thing that happened in this episode.  Thought I should mention it.

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The good news is that I’ve recovered from that bad taste Mortis left in my mouth.  The bad news is that I am somehow already at the end of Season Three.  How on earth did that already happen?  Well, I guess that’s only really bad news depending on your point of view and whether you wanted these posts to go on forever or not.

The Citadel
Is this the episode that made the internet scream about continuity and Even Piell?  I feel like it’s going to be judging from the previous clip.  No really.  I’m kinda excited to see this happen.  It’s much more fun to observe these things when I’m not invested in the outcome.

Anakin Skywalker.  You have a lot of bad ideas but this one probably takes the cake.  Carbon freezing your team so you can sneak into the Citadel without any life signs being detected is a TERRIBLE idea.  (And yes, all the tongue-in-cheek references to Empire Strikes Back were amusing but that’s really not the point here.)  This is going to go badly.  It must go badly.  If this idea works, I’m going to be really disappointed.

It didn’t go badly.  They didn’t even get hibernation sickness.  This is not fair.

At least he’s getting his comeuppance with Ahsoka sneaking onto the mission.  At least.  You’d think he would’ve learned that ‘do as I say, not as I do’ doesn’t work very well but nooooo.

I definitely need to give this episode applause for surprising me in a way that I absolutely did not expect.  It turns out that Tarkin is the Captain in question here.  I didn’t expect him to show up here.  Well done, show, well done.

And now the group is splitting up to try and make it out of the Citadel which OBVIOUSLY means that we’re about to end an episode.  I’ll admit it: I’m intrigued to see what happens in the next one.  Good thing I don’t even have to wait.

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