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As if having to pay back a heavy balance for a few episodes of Clone Wars airing up here a week ahead of when they first appeared on Cartoon Network, there was a long wait before I was able to see the final episodes of the second season. I suppose I could have made more of an effort and plumbed into devious areas to track them down, but for some reason wasn't quite compelled to do so. (Whatever the reason was, it doesn't seem to have been standing on principles, what with all the anime "fansubs" I was piling up while waiting for the final Clone Wars episodes...) Nevertheless, the season ended well for me, and now I've got the chance to set down some general reflections I've been mulling over for a while.
There might even have been a little concern on my part as the second season approached. For all I know, this is just an unfortunate byproduct of never quite keeping up very well with "domestic" television, but I seem to have formed the impression that the first season of a show captivates an enthusiastic fandom, but then, as the differences between what those fans convinced themselves the show was "really" all about and what the creators are actually getting on screen begin to pile up, things can sour quite fast... With that in mind, then, I might have picked up on an official comment or two and been a little concerned that all of a sudden, some switch would be flipped and I would start getting the same somehow wrong impression from Anakin as I wound up getting with the initial "drawn animation" "micro-series," that every effort was being made to show him as "dangerous" and just plain unpleasant... (This, I suppose, leads to irritation on my part whenever someone dismisses the computer-animated series and holds up the "drawn" series in the next breath, with an equal lack of specifics.) I might be able to wonder why I'm such a stickler on this point beyond, perhaps, it seeming one facet of a general hostility I set myself against. As soon as we were past the opening episodes, though, and some specific last worries evaporated with the triumphant showing of "Senate Spy" (at the very least one of my favourite episodes of the season), I was feeling fine. However, it does seem at least some people who had taken whatever Karen Traviss had written about the Mandalorians to heart wound up finding a reason to sour... Still, I have wondered myself if one day I'll have to admit the whole thing was "conditionally canonical" for me.
Much was made about "bounty hunters" as the season got under way (and, of course, it wrapped up with them too), but for me a defining feature of the season may have been "movie homages." Of course, they often had to be pointed out to me, but even so I still managed to find them amusing. It might be possible, though, that some of them and some other developments gave a sense of building episodes around one-of-a-kind, never-before-experienced novelties, something I do tend to associate with certain other science fiction series... However, the characters do seem to remain themselves even in the midst of that sort of thing, and that helps a good bit for me. With the second season of Clone Wars wrapped up, I'm wondering what the third will hold, but also aware I might be better able to get back to watching the episodes of the first season.
There might even have been a little concern on my part as the second season approached. For all I know, this is just an unfortunate byproduct of never quite keeping up very well with "domestic" television, but I seem to have formed the impression that the first season of a show captivates an enthusiastic fandom, but then, as the differences between what those fans convinced themselves the show was "really" all about and what the creators are actually getting on screen begin to pile up, things can sour quite fast... With that in mind, then, I might have picked up on an official comment or two and been a little concerned that all of a sudden, some switch would be flipped and I would start getting the same somehow wrong impression from Anakin as I wound up getting with the initial "drawn animation" "micro-series," that every effort was being made to show him as "dangerous" and just plain unpleasant... (This, I suppose, leads to irritation on my part whenever someone dismisses the computer-animated series and holds up the "drawn" series in the next breath, with an equal lack of specifics.) I might be able to wonder why I'm such a stickler on this point beyond, perhaps, it seeming one facet of a general hostility I set myself against. As soon as we were past the opening episodes, though, and some specific last worries evaporated with the triumphant showing of "Senate Spy" (at the very least one of my favourite episodes of the season), I was feeling fine. However, it does seem at least some people who had taken whatever Karen Traviss had written about the Mandalorians to heart wound up finding a reason to sour... Still, I have wondered myself if one day I'll have to admit the whole thing was "conditionally canonical" for me.
Much was made about "bounty hunters" as the season got under way (and, of course, it wrapped up with them too), but for me a defining feature of the season may have been "movie homages." Of course, they often had to be pointed out to me, but even so I still managed to find them amusing. It might be possible, though, that some of them and some other developments gave a sense of building episodes around one-of-a-kind, never-before-experienced novelties, something I do tend to associate with certain other science fiction series... However, the characters do seem to remain themselves even in the midst of that sort of thing, and that helps a good bit for me. With the second season of Clone Wars wrapped up, I'm wondering what the third will hold, but also aware I might be better able to get back to watching the episodes of the first season.