Obi-Wan Kenobi (Disney+ spoilers)

General Discussion
#41

Ah, I see my mistake. I read what you said as “I don’t see that anything could not make sense” as opposed to what you actually said, which is “I don’t see anything in this situation which doesn’t.”

This is either irrelevant, or you’re applying that to me. In which case, you are either willfully blind/very forgetful or are simply trying to shut me up by lumping me in with “bad people.” I’m inclined to believe each latter point, but am willing to be dissuaded.

I love Star Wars, which means I want what is best for Star Wars, which is good Star Wars. I’ve been very disappointed as of late. I’m passionate about stories; they’ve been important to me from the moment I gained sentience, and have at no point in my life been more important than they are now.

When I watch shows, I am analyzing the stories and the writing. Generally speaking, what is done right is less important than what is done wrong, because in large part the point of excellent writing is to make itself invisible. You want to be wrapped up in the story, not in the writing. Thus, when bad writing shows itself, it is more noticeable than the good writing.

There have been several things in this show which I found extremely off-putting, usually coming at a time when I thought the show was about out of a bumpy stretch. I really enjoyed the second episode—until several things jolted me out of that. Then there are various patterns that have started to become exceedingly apparent in the writing of virtually all contemporary Star Wars shows, such as accelerated payoff to items seeded earlier. That’s sloppy, cheaty writing, as if they were told “make sure you introduce items to the plot which then show up later, you’ll look like genius!” and assumed that five minutes was long enough to wait, and the subtlety of introduction was irrelevant.

When it appears to me that writers are making cheap shortcuts, bending “the rules” to solve their way out of story issues, or just writing sloppily, it irks me because it is bad writing. It is worth discussing issues in writing or story, because not only does it provide interesting fodder for discussion but can inform people about what not to do in their stories, or about how to improve writing more generally. It creates thought.

#42

Not what I meant. (Well, not entirely, anyway.) But, I can see where that impression could come from (and it probably wasn’t helped by having just run into a wall of “Diznee Stur Wurz bad! Kathleen Kennedy just incompetent secretary credited as producer” nonsense, coloring my own attitude, and for that, I can only apologize). At the same time, I hope you can take a similar step back and see how one might perceive your posts on new episodes can at least lead to that impression: a lot of, “Here’s a lot of detailed complaints…oh, and that thing over there was kinda cool.” Which…if it’s a genuine reaction, then fair. But at the same time, it can seem to be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as if you’re going into each new entry sitting down and saying, “Well…let’s see how bad this one sucks.” Maybe that’s an incorrect impression on my part. Maybe it’s somewhat accurate, but unconscious on your part. Maybe somewhere in between.

As a lifelong fan of (among other things) DC’s comics, the vast majority of the current film & TV content based on those books is…um…decidedly not what I want to see for these characters. So, I’ve got a choice: just spend time and effort to watch the ones that look like they’ll actually engage and entertain me, or watch it all, most of it through gritted teeth and expectations to be disappointed. And when I do the latter, it’s always a miserable experience. Sure, it lets me discuss what I don’t like about them, but I frankly just got tired of hate-watching.

#43

Episode 4.

Yay! I really liked this one too (surprised?).

Reva’s motivation is slowly being revealed, there’s an internal conflict of some kind that’s somewhat reminiscent of Kylo Ren, this “temptation of the light”, while she’s obviously trying as hard as she can to be dark side and gain power… but it doesn’t seem, yet, as a heartfelt desire for power, more a duty and assumed desire. I like this, it’s well-written and well-acted, but it is hard kind of character to portray properly. She’s a kind of hypocritical evildoer that doesn’t really feel it, but wants to or thinks that she feels it, that she wants it (because she feels obligated to)… yet she carries the scars from the past with her, similarly to Kenobi and Ben Solo, she is not able to let go (light side) or let it consume her (dark side), she’s on the brink of either, tormented as she doesn’t quite manage to internalise it and let it (use it to) feed her anger and power… it’s cool, very Star Wars, very Forcey, and authentic (in that Star Wars way of authenticity). She obviously seems to believe in the Empire … but that is despite what it stands for, and because she tells herself (like she tells Leia) that she was left or betrayed - presumably by the Jedi or someone else who was important to her… this is playing lip-service or just repeating what whoever turned her towards the dark side said.

The tomb in the castle… pretty dark… did I see Tera Sinube there? Or just someone that looked like him? Either way, pretty dark, and also gives further implications about the Final Order and the cloning of Palpsyboi. All of these ‘ambered’ Jedi, probably dead, but seemingly caught in this amber at the moment of defeat (if not death). … reminds me of that old show; Fringe. I wonder why they’re all there … to be revived and train inquisitors? For Vader to have fun with? Or are they just on display, in a sort of perverted mausoleum?

Leia is awesome again, showing her mettle quite well, strong will, and intelligence. Yes. We see who she’ll become, I like that. She now has good reasons for establishing and working for and with the Rebellion, she’s witnessed and been subjected to their authoritarian and fascist whims personally, in addition to all the other suffering she has seen, and probably will see more of over the nest two episodes.

May we perhaps see Quinlan in the next or last episode? Or some other known (named) Jedi? Or do you think we’ll only see Kenobi, and perhaps some unknown Jedi to be cut down?

This episode was really, really, cool. It shows both the power of the Empire, but also its incompetencies among the grunts and elites both - so much for a philosophy and company policy based on power-hungry individuals and backstabbing…

The infiltration reminded me about a lot of Star Wars sessions I’ve run over the years. The prison break is always fun - and usually ends along the same lines, with just barely getting away, losing someone while being walk-chased by a red lightsaber wielding evildoer. Classic. Very Star Wars.

It was also nice to see Kenobi starting to pick up his skills again, getting slightly better at the deflecting and using the Force. Pretty cool. He’s another character that is, or was, on the brink, but still a bit stuck on letting go, but getting there … I really like it. He’s developing from the beaten man he apparently became during the 10 years on Tatooine, I really like that. We can sort of see the tiniest and earliest of signs that he will develop into Alec Guinness’ Kenobi. It’s very well done.

#44

Yes, that is a genuine reaction.

I didn’t have the expectation of terribleness until this episode (and how was it ever rewarded!), although I had low hopes from past experience. However, in spite of my low hopes, I still wanted to like it. I just am not going to blind myself in order to like it, and once things start going wrong it becomes harder and harder to give the benefit of the doubt (the early parts of episode 2 are a good example).

It may not seem like it, but I always try to give things a charitable (but accurate) read. If there’s something in the story I don’t like, maybe it’ll be remedied later on. That’s why I haven’t mentioned multiple broader story points I don’t like, since I don’t know if my complaints will be remedied. Just about everything I’ve mentioned has been a self-contained anecdote, or representative of a pattern, not so much the broader story.

#45

As for my manifold complaints about this episode, because I found nothing redeeming about it except… Revok? Revam? The big black guy. He was cool. Changed his mind a bit too quickly for my tastes, but meh.

I’ll spare you a diatribe partly to spare the time it would take to type it all out, and so will address a few key points, although it will still be lengthy:

They just randomly have intel on the Fortress Inquisitorious?

Their T-47 “cargo carriers” are militarized? You know that isn’t stock, right? They had to go to the effort of mounting those blaster cannons? (Also, hurray for randomly exploding crates)

The Fortress Inquisitorious is made partially submerged, but doesn’t have watertight doors?

Stormtroopers, even those trained to guard prisons, evidently received no police training, and aren’t even familiar with the concept of weapon retention.

So… the Inquisitors, who as a large part of their job hunt Force-sensitive children, bring Leia to their lair, interrogate her, use THE FORCE on her, but don’t notice that she’s Force sensitive? Possible, but really hard to believe when you’ve already stretched the Bail connection to the point where it broke like a rubberband five minutes ago and is still ricocheting around the room like a blaster bolt in a trash compactor. Did I just simile a simile? Yes. Sue me.

The chief security officer is not only guarding the gate himself for some reason, but is sheepish enough to stand down without any evidence of what the out-of-place officer in front of him is saying? Either he’s been so intimidated by inquisitors for blocking their “special guests” that he pees himself at the sight of someone without proper clearance, or he needs a different job. He probably needs that anyway.

On that topic, she goes AWOL, and no one said “I wonder what happened to the officer who was with the patrol that all got shot in the back while responding to the appearance of a Jedi?” Not even to say “Keep an eye out for this hero of the Empire who was kidnapped by an evil Jedi”? At least Reva (mostly) didn’t believe her.

Imperials are the most unobservant cadre of people in the known galaxy.

Finally, and perhaps most stupidly, Reva claims she “let them escape” after putting a tracker on the ship via Lola. WHY??? YOU HAD THEM! If you aren’t just lying to Vader to save face, then you could have interrogated them for the information. It’d have been far less chancy. If it was simply a contingency plan, then that was good, if showing a lack of confidence. But, I have to ask: How did Leia get Lola back? Or if she had her the whole time, when did Reva “infect” Lola?

Too much teleportation. Whether in the last episode where Reva just skips ahead of Leia with no apparent explanation, or here where… officer lady, whatever her name is, suddenly appears at the doors of Leia’s torture chamber, and then they suddenly appear somewhere else, just in time for Obi-Wan to suddenly appear within the chamber while the others aren’t close enough to react… At the very least, it’s extremely unclear and confusing timing. I totally understand the idea of skipping around so you don’t just show characters walking down hallways, but just like with the “shortcuts” I was complaining about earlier (see Obi-Wan entering the drug lab, or heck, the torture chamber), it’s a tool that can be used very badly. Here, I think it was used pretty badly.

Part of it is also that they “split the party.” It’ll always be hard to skip the walking when you have a second timeline going on simultaneously.

Last thing I want to mention is that the “corpses” in the “tomb” part of the Fortress Inquisitorious look very un-corpselike. In Rebels, if memory serves, they had Luminara’s shriveled corpse in a very similar containment. The Force vision when they first looked through the window was of a cell, with a living Luminara. Not life-like, but actually living and moving. Wouldn’t these just be preserved corpses?

I did appreciate the Easter egg with the inclusion of Tera Sinube. He actually did look like a corpse, but I think that’s just his usual mode of being.

#46

At this point, I think we’d have seen them. We’ve got two episodes left to deal with Reva and have the final re-rematch with Vader. Another Jedi riding in at the last minute to help would - to me, anyway - feel a bit out of place. I think, instead, what we’ll see is some sort of semi-redemption of Reva, immediately followed by her being killed by either the Grand Inquisitor or (more likely) Vader in episode 5’s cliffhanger, leaving all the room in the finale for Obi-Wan and Vader.

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#47

Wasn’t Quinlan the first person you see in the tombs? It wasnt very clear, but the hair style really fits.

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#48

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, the Path helps Jedi, and Quinlan helps out now and then … so it could be justified, but I think you’re close to how it’s going to play out. I’d just love to see Quinlan in live-action (again), this time actually doing something. :sweat_smile: :grimacing:

#49

I got that feeling too, but I didn’t see enough details, and Kenobi didn’t react more to one in particular, which would be weird if one of them was Quinlan, considering the mentioning of Quinlan in a previous episode. But. … I may be wrong.

#50

If it was Quinlan, I’d have recognized him, unless he’s changed his appearance enough that his appearance in the tombs wouldn’t be recognizable. Beyond the hair, he also has a distinctive yellow tattoo across his face related to the culture of his homeworld.

#51

I’ve been hoping to love it. Perhaps I set the standards too high for myself? It just seems to be “ok”. During these few episodes, it just seems something is slightly off. Is it the writing? Is it the directing? There isn’t one big thing I can point my finger at, it’s kinda the death of a thousand cuts I guess. Every scene seems to have not quite the right feel to it. It’s almost like it’s the rough draft and dress rehearsals we are seeing before someone has said, “Wait we gotta change this, it’s not foreboding enough”, or “Wait he could just walk around that gate, we need to have some higher and closer walls”, or “She should have said I’m your ‘Superior Officer’ not your ‘Commanding Officer’ since that means something totally different and thus non-sensical for the scene”. There’s just so many little things throughout that doesn’t bring it above, “just ok” for me. Perhaps it was too high hopes or perhaps it was the quality of Mando/Boba that makes Obi meh in comparison?

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#52

Look at 18:55 the first wide shot of the tomb. On the left is a guy with dreadlocks. You indeed don’t see a yellow stripe, but from the angle and with the orange glow it would be hard to see. Also, Kenobi is completely on the other side of the room, I don’t think he actually goes passed all the containers. But yeah, definitely not sure

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#53

Pretty sure it’s just a guy with dreads. Face and body shape aren’t even right, although who knows with how they’ve translated animated characters to live action before (*cough* Grand Inquisitor *cough* Fifth Brother *cough* *cough*).

#54

I was about to say :smile:

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#55

I do like the Purge troopers. Just wish we got more screen time with them.

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#56

This one was much better, though not without its share of flaws.
(Yikes, this is long. Sorry about that…)

First, the good. There’s actually enough of it for me to make a section dedicated to its acknowledgement:

Vader acted appropriately like Vader, and the fight scene with Reva was excellent, although Vader’s saber work actually detracted from the fight for me, since it didn’t look very good. It was sloppy and ineffective, without looking like he was holding back. There were also a couple oddly choreographed moves. But all in all, that sequence with Vader was miles better than his previous appearances (I am a little confused about the second transport, but whatever. Wish we could’ve seen the pilot of the first transport, like maybe the T-47 pilot from the previous episode. Would’ve been a cool sacrifice story).

I still really like Roken (bowcaster=awesome, hope he has an automatic recocker) and Haja (totally not baby-sitter material, Obi-Wan why?). They are the best of the side characters, at least in that they have far fewer plotholes associated with them.

They killed off a named character! Two, even! Actually, I’m not sure the loader had a name. I’d say three and dance on her grave, but I don’t think Reva is dead and will show up on Tatooine for some reason. Otherwise, why have that end scene (and uh, why was the holomessenger there?).

Leia’a “I’ll need a ladder” is actually a good line, and a good example of Leia being Leia, rather than Leia just being a brat. Her writing has improved since the first episodes, not that it was a high bar.

The confrontation between Reva, Vader, and the Grand Inquisitor could have been better, but it was excellent (don’t worry, I won’t say “not a high bar” again) and I enjoyed it.

Now the bad:
They arrive back, and there’s no mention or acknowledgement of the T-47 pilot? No next of kin? If they wanted to make us feel something for him, they should’ve at least done that. Now it just looks like nobody cares about him.

The lightsaber combat… was unfortunately not as good as I’d hoped. Much better than earlier in the show, but I can’t stand the camera cheats. Notice how every time they do some dangerous spin or Anakin draws up for a huge slash the camera zooms in on a single person? That’s because if it gave you a full view, you’d see that [character] left himself open for a killing blow. It shows not only that they wrote in some very bad tactics, with characters leaving themselves open, but that they knew they were bad and didn’t care, choosing to hide them instead.

As an example of more narrative cheating, Kenobi escapes his cuffs and defeats the stormtroopers… how? Oh, just because. But you don’t need to see it, just believe it.

Even more, they talk about how Reva “hid among the dead bodies,” but how in all of Corellia’s nine hecks did she manage to escape and hide in dead bodies? Based on the flashback, she was standing right across from Vader as he strode down the hall towards her. In order for her to escape, she would’ve had to have a scene like Leia’s chase scene where the three thugs acted like a dad teasingly chasing his toddler. The speech and the flashback were totally incongruous. Now, Vader knowing that she was alive makes sense and is a good way to cover it, but why would he pass her by and how would it be believable not just for Reva (young kids can delude themselves about how well they are hidden), but for the clones? That is where it would work much better in a non-visual medium, where the scene is left to the imagination (though you cannot over-rely on that either, or the same cheating is an issue).

But Reva’s motivation and her actions don’t make much sense. I get the idea of “I hate Vader, want to kill him; I hate Kenobi for training Vader, want to kill him first,” but she’s done a whole lot of what she’s mad at Vader for. They can salvage this if they have her make some speech justifying this at some point (“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”), but my hopes are not high. I expect them to ignore it. That is what they seem to have done so far in the Kenobi “surrender” scene. And then why send him back into the building with only two stormtrooper guards, who have proven they can’t even hold an ordinary woman?

Militarily speaking, the stormtroopers shouldn’t be standing in parade ground formation. They did it in Mandalorian, but I interpreted it there as an intimidation tactic, although tactically stupid. Even moreso in a breaching situation when you don’t really know what’s on the other side of that door, pointed your direction the moment you break through. The breaching gun was cool, if apparently radically ineffective, but why? Reva breaks in in about three seconds. If she was going to do that the whole time and was concerned about Obi-Wan stalling for time, why? And if Tala had the thermal detonator, why didn’t she use it then, when all the troopers were clustered together? She should’ve, and that’s why you don’t stand in parade formation when breaching. Breaching is one of the most dangerous military actions you can undertake. We actually see this quite well in A New Hope, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Also, the writers don’t understand volume of fire, or cover, and Reva really didn’t need to repeatedly scream “FIRE!!!” when there isn’t even any competing noise. A single “open fire” spoken in a level, authoritative tone, perhaps with a small flick/point of the fingers would carry far more gravity. I can picture it in her voice, with mannerisms expressed elsewhere, and it would actually be quite good.

Obi-Wan totally cheated to win that sparring match. If it was a “real” fight and Anakin was trying to win by killing Obi-Wan, he’d be dead. Like very dead. Drawn and quartered dead. They again cheat by not showing him get out of the situation. Magically there’s separation and Anakin is off-balance.

One final complaint: Three times that I can think of, they have done something very camera-obvious to unnecessarily telegraph something to the viewers. The first was Obi-Wan flashing the lightsaber while walking through the not-TSA; we could’ve understood he had his lightsaber with your making it so obvious. The second was Leia peeking out from under the trenchcoat; we could’ve understood Leia was hiding under his coat without you spelling it out for us. The third was Leia holding up the red thing so it was precisely in the center of the camera frame “look, see! Red!” I swear, it’s like a Dora the Explorer episode. We would’ve seen the red even if she just lifted and moved it ordinarily. The telegraphing is either poorly thought-out or they think the audience is too stupid to understand without it.

There are several more minor things (e.g. why hadn’t they boarded the ship? It’s their one chance anyway), but that’s about it.

I just want to mention that they managed to make me correct on every point of that prediction, even the ones I thought were contradictory. Maybe I was only half-right on the Grand Inquisitor bit, but it’s somewhat ambiguous as to how much they knew and when.

However, I want to discuss redemption: Redemption does not come from doing something good, it comes from atoning for wrongs. Ends do not justify the means. If the idea here is that she receives redemption for past wrongs by attempting to kill Vader, then I will simply chalk it up to Hollywood’s screwy moral compass. The person who becomes a monster in pursuit of a monster is still a monster; redemption comes by acknowledgement, remorse, and atonement for the wrongs, not by killing the hunted monster. In some cases, atonement is not possible, but that does not void the need for acknowledgement and remorse. That is where the Christian ideas of sacrificial atonement, mercy, and grace come into play.

Sadly, I think they missed a chance to make Reva’s story morally/philosophically interesting and compelling, with her either justifying past wrongs and showing herself a villain, or coming to grips with them and having to decide whether they were worth it or not.

#57

Obi-Wan handed it to Haja with his saber when he turned himself in. There was a later shot of it being dropped by Haja as they all ran to the ship.

It’s almost like…a (literal - she’s 10) child of privilege has seen some…stuff, and progressed as a result. Character arcs…such crazy things.

Yeah…pretty much. No problem with it here…“Hey, look. Obi-Wan’s good at this stuff. It’s almost like he’s been doing it his whole life.” ;)

Which is exactly what Obi-Wan used to get her to buy into his plan…

Show, don’t tell. What we’ve seen accomplishes exactly that. We don’t need her to soliloquize over it.

Unless we think the audience is that dumb.

Especially when one of your next “negatives” expressly ends with:

Spell some things out for the audience, and it’s bad writing because the audience can’t be that dumb; don’t spell some things out, and it’s bad writing because the audience must need these things explicitly stated. It’s the Great Bartholomew Jojo Simpson Paradox: Well, you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.

I’ve been using the terms “redemption” and “redemption arc” for her, myself, but - speaking only for myself - I’ve been using it as a shorthand as much as anything else, not expecting her to make it out of the series alive. I didn’t think she’d actually redeem herself so much as…not even “switch sides,” really, but pull the trigger on taking the opportunity to take her revenge on Vader/Anakin.

Now that we’re heading into the finale, I think that line about revenge being a motivation to survive will reflect back not only on Reva’s survival of Order 66, but carry her on to Tatooine, where she’ll see Luke as an opportunity to inflict pain and revenge upon both Obi-Wan and Vader simultaneously, and may lead to something that I thought might be a long shot but could patch the issue of Lucas forgetting Obi-Wan gave Luke Anakin’s saber in the original when making Revenge of the Sith, and including a literal pick-up shot of Kenobi grabbing the saber on Mustafar: Vader may learn that Luke exists, and that he’s being kept out of the way and safe by Obi-Wan. One last bit of humanity, and (somehow) seeing that Obi-Wan has his own saber, telling him some variation of, “Keep him safe. Keep him away from all of this. When he’s old enough, give him my lightsaber and tell him about me. But not…this. Tell him about Anakin.”

ETA: That would, however, introduce yet another instance of the tv/movie entries invalidating some of the printed stories, since the initial Darth Vader comic included an arc of Vader tracking down information about who hid Luke away from him for all those years, leading back to the Lars homestead. (Same storyline that introduced Doctor Aphra.)

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#58

I knew he’d handed it, but I didn’t see it drop.

Taken in concert with the many other examples of cheating, I cannot extend the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t shown just because Obi-Wan is expected to be good at escaping.

Was Colonel Jessup’s speech in A Few Good Men showing or telling?

Refresher

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know – that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

“Telling” doesn’t mean talking, nor is it universally bad. If it did and was, then silent movies were the apex of cinema. Even the words they used were shown! A speech like this shows a lot. I was using the term “speech” loosely in regards to Reva, but there are a multitude of ways in which they could deal with the matter without some long-winded soliloquy.

At this point, they’ve pretty much ignored what Reva has done in the past, unless I’m forgetting something. The focus has all been on what she wants to do to Kenobi and Vader. We can see that she has become the monster she hated, but the show currently has not shown us that she sees that, or that Obi-Wan sees it, or that anybody in the show or in the production team cares. What I take away from the show is that we’re supposed to pity Reva because of her experience in the temple, no deeper point about what happened afterward. Just the general implication that she did “what she had to do” to take on Vader/Obi-Wan.

If she were to actually grapple with it, choose to embrace the evil or reject it, it would be much better all around. An interplay between two characters, such as in the case of A Few Good Men, is an excellent medium to bring that about.

There is such a thing called degree. There is a time and a place for showing, and a time and a place for telling. Either must be done correctly, and in the proper context. For it to be true that they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t, then I would have to object if they didn’t show the lightsaber, if they didn’t show Leia, and if they didn’t obviously point out the red thingy. And would I? No.

The way I see a redemption arc is to redeem the character in the eyes of the audience, taking “bad guy” to “good guy,” or at least “sympathetic gray character” (personally, I reject the idea of a “gray” character, but that’s a whole other discussion).

Ideally, such a redemption arc should actually feature a moral redemption of the character. In the case of Vader, he fell to evil, embraced it, and committed horrible atrocities. In the end, his compassion for his son overcomes the evil and he rejects it, embracing what good he had left and, I assume, regretting what evil he had done, then atoning as much as he can by sacrificing himself to end the evil he helped perpetuate. It’s a lacking comparison because the aftermath of the “decision point” is so abbreviated, but he chooses to sacrifice himself for good, rejecting evil. Presumably, an understanding of the wrong of that evil is implicit in that decision.

#59

Why does she have to “grapple with it,” though? She has become what she hated enough to want revenge…and doesn’t seem to care. The focus is on what she wants to do to Kenobi and Vader because, after all these years, that’s all that’s left of her. I don’t think we’re supposed to pity her at all, let alone because of her experience in the temple, except perhaps in the most literal of terms. We’re not supposed to sympathize with her, root for her, anything like that…simply understand, “Oh…that’s what broke her.”

You totally lost me here. Could be on my end, but I don’t really get what you’re trying to say with this.

I don’t disagree with your view of a “redemption arc.” What you’re responding to is me saying that I think some (because I’m one who’s been doing this) have been using it as a shorthand for saying we thought Reva would turn on Vader…to do (or, at least, try to do) the right thing, even if for all the wrong reasons. (And, let’s face it, if taking Vader out is that “right thing,” then we knew she had to fail at it.) A clumsy, inaccurate shorthand, most definitely. But, given what information we had when it started being used, an understandable shorthand - since she didn’t appear to be one of the Inquisitors by the time Rebels takes place, the possibility of an actual redemption arc could have been on the table, but that doesn’t appear to be the case going into the finale. (If anything, I get the sense that we could ultimately see Kenobi and Vader working together to stop her from killing young Luke.)

So, yeah…misapplication of “redemption arc,” which hopefully won’t go the way of “plot hole” being stretched so far out of shape that it’s come to mean, “Something someone didn’t like.”

#60

“She… grapple with it” was imprecise language on my part, although it got to part of what I meant. I’d have no problem with her saying “I don’t care” and embracing the evil casually. However, it isn’t addressed to any extent in the show. Perhaps something breaks in the next episode, perhaps not, but there were a few times in the show where I wanted to see Kenobi say something like “You’ve done the same,” or something to that effect. It pushes the focus more intensely on the character (who actually got a chance to be interesting this episode), and forces the question on her. Her answer, or the difficulty of her answer, isn’t my point. It’s that the entire topic is ignored.

…I have no idea what you don’t understand. “Showing” and “telling” cannot be simplified to “good/bad.” They are both tools, one more subtle and the other more obvious. However, one takes more effort and typically time, while the other is a shortcut that is often appropriate.

They are appropriate in different situations, and the same sentence can be appropriate in some situations and not in others, context dependent.

If your confusion was over my refutation of your Bart Simpson quote, then I don’t know what else to tell you. If they were really in that situation, then either way they did a given situation, I would be against it. But I’m not.

It’s as if I said “Please paint the house green” and you painted it yellow. I say “That’s yellow! I wanted green.” So then you paint it blue. I say “That’s blue!” and you say “Well looks like I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t.” No, you just need to get the mix right. Being too far to one extreme doesn’t mean that you can’t also go too far to the other extreme.

However, my contention isn’t that they’re doing too much “showing” and not enough “telling” regarding Reva, but that I don’t think they’re doing enough of either.

Generally speaking, in a text medium like a book, telling is summarization (“it made her sad”), while showing is a way to depict what is happening (“she sniffed and swiped at her nose, struggling to get control of her voice”).

In an A/V medium, the lines become much more blurry. Generally speaking, “telling” is exposition (not all exposition is bad) or visual telegraphing, e.g. Obi-Wan lifting his robe to show the lightsaber. “Showing” would be depiction. For example, Obi-Wan retrieving his lightsaber from the desert. That depicts what happened, and now as he boards the shuttle we can presume he still has the lightsaber.

Again, not all “showing” is good, not all “telling” is bad. I suppose there’s really a third category, and I guess we can call that needless repetition. We know Obi-Wan has retrieved his lightsaber, we saw that, to then make sure we get an eyeful on it, and then zoom in on it just to make sure we get the message, is needless repetition. They’re just trying to make sure we understand that he has the lightsaber.

But as with all literary axioms, it is hard to define because you can always find something to say “well this is like that, but it’s good” and think you’ve poked a hole in the rule. But that’s because repetition, telling, and showing are all tools. The problem is when they are misused, and there are no handy one-size-fits-all solutions to judge what will or won’t be proper in a universal case.

Well, that’s a problem for me, because I take words for their meanings. It’s hard to communicate when the definitions of words are different than their intended meanings.

I understand your intention, but I don’t know that I’ve heard anyone put it that way. Perhaps simply because I took the word “redemption” literally all the times I heard it.

The closest I’ve come to encountering this would be someone having preconceived notions, gleaned from various sources and thought to be canon, violated. I certainly never use it that way. A plot hole is an error in the story which creates contradictions, continuity errors, or other abnormalities. Some plot holes just need to be filled with more information, while others are irreconcilable without retcon gymnastics only doped-up Russians could manage, or doped-up viewers could believe (I’m making no attribution of either to anything).

It is also possible to be wrong about a plothole; sometimes people simply don’t see or understand something, and through confusion believe the viewed item is in error. Assuming bad motivation is usually an unhealthy way to proceed.

Ugh, I hope not. If that happened, why would Vader just leave Luke on Tatooine? To swoop in later and take him as an apprentice under Sidious’s nose at a later date? Why would he leave him under the care of Obi-Wan, who he could expect would train Luke to oppose him? Star Wars has enough questionable elements without further convoluting the story.