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Tales of the Underworld 1×04-1×06 Full Reaction

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Thomas Corp

No worries that you got spoiled by who the star of this arc is. Drama was brought in this arc. Much like the Ventress arc, this Cad Bane arc is very character focused. Naturally, you’re down for that. And this arc, of course, has the stronger Ennio Morricone feel to the music. The theme that Cad is given here feeling very much like Ennio. Quite the delight to see your surprise that we see Cad as a kid. Good window into his upbringing where he was always in the mindset that he’s got to keep one jump ahead of the slowpokes, one skip ahead of his doom. Next time, he’s going to use a nom de plume, just as you called. Things do pick up in interest when we meet Lazlo, who is very much like that guy in the beginning of Last Crusade, albeit villainous inspiration he gives to young Colby, rather than heroic inspiration like Indiana Jones received. Good point on how judging by the amount of Turkish delight that the boys were given, that a belly ache would be the result. But then again, with Duros anatomy, maybe that’s not a concern. You speak well how this is a familiar tale, yet it’s told very well here. The boys are separated, Colby goes with Lazlo, “And so it begins!”, like you said. The arc being presented in stages is great. The second stage being where Cad more comes into his own, further demonstrated by his being voiced by Corey Burton once again, and Corey pitches his voice higher initially, and progresses to the distinctive growl. Makes get a great big smile to hear you say that you are vibing with the hat, the music, and everything. His quest for revenge comes at great cost. He burns the candy shop a la Cortez sinking his ships. Poetic, as you say. You feel for Niro who wants the peaceful resolution, yet his partner isn’t in the charitable mood. Love Cad’s moment of, “You a policeman? Well done. The mayor will go to your funeral.” Things got chaotic and reaches a grey end with Arin at least assures that Cad is not killed. The third episode is the big highlight. You had the observation that obviously, this whole arc would have the western vibe, me, I got to the third and final episode of the arc, and delight sunk in when realizing that we were getting a High Noon episode, which is pretty fitting as Cad is, as we’ve been saying for years, Lee Van Cleef in Star Wars. High Noon was Lee’s film debut, AND his character had the name of Jack Colby, hence Cad’s name of Colby here. Fantastic. I spent a bit of the episode just humming the Dimitri Tiomkin score. How I wished we could have the big dramatic cue that culminated in the super dramatic shot of the one dreaded chair, which has gained the reputation of being one of the scariest pieces of furniture in cinema, if not the scariest. Which it is. Gets a good laugh, you expressing annoyance at the allusion to the tea without actually spilling the aforementioned tea. And when the tea is spilled, loved the reaction you had to that. You feel for Niro having to face his old friend turned mortal adversary. He has to face Cad by himself. And the deputy already took a powder. Not helping is that the deputy picked the wrong week to quit smoking. And drinking. And amphetamines. And sniffing glue. Why he chose to go cold turkey like that all at once is anyone’s guess, you know, besides the fact that it’s funny as hell. Yeah, the final confrontation was something. Sad to see Niro die. And then the reveal that Isaac is Cad’s boy. There are a few pieces of foreshadowing, a big one being that you see Arin place her hand on her stomach in a very conspicuous manner. You missed all that, but I love that you missed it, as one of your strengths as a reactor, Jess, is how you just plunge yourself into the stories, and go for the ride. You don’t pick at every single tiny little detail as you watch. It makes your reactions special. It does hit you when Cad realizes about his son, and just leaves him behind. The tea was indeed piping hot on this side of the galaxy, as you so delightfully describe. Thus concludes the show, and your reactions to it. They were well worth the wait, your reactions. I appreciate how you favor quality of your reactions. Now plays the waiting game for the next Tales series. You want Tales of the Droids, and you ask what we’d like to see. I’ll take Tales of the Sith myself. I know that you’d be all for Tales of the Droids, and I would endorse that for you. The droids in question should be HK-47, that’s my favorite droid, and we’ll get some good 3PO focus for you, Jess. You acknowledge that perhaps nobody except you wants Tales of the Droids. Makes you feel any better, my brother would pay serious cold hard cash money for Tales of the Podracers, and he freely admits that there’s little to no market for that, but he’s foaming at the mouth for that. In any event, your reactions to Tales of the Underworld were just very lovely, Jess, thank you so much.

Ryan

I didn't have high hopes at the start of this one, which just brought to mind Patton Oswalt's bit from right after the prequels: "I don't care about the childhoods of every single character! Just let me love the things that I love!" I really didn't want some reveal that Cad Bane is the way he is because his father would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark or whatever, and it's not for nothing that my single favorite one of these is Wilson Fisk, precisely because they resisted putting any kind of twist to it so you're just left thinking "Yeah, that's pretty much the childhood I'd expect a guy like this to have had." But surprise surprise, they actually pull it off beautifully. A.J. LoCascio is instantly believable as someone who could grow into Corey Burton's voice (and very much preferable to Corey doing some kind of falsetto), and it strikes the perfect balance between him being a more innocent kid but with very definite seeds of how he could grow into the person we know, actually coming off very much as the darker possibility for Ezra Bridger. He steals only what he can't afford, and that's everything. In just a few minutes we actually grow to really care about his friendship with Niro so that it hurts when they're split up. After that beginning, my expectation was that at some point Bane would betray Lazlo and take his stuff to announce he was now running the gang, but what we get instead is a lot more interesting. Corey perfectly sells a less experienced Bane whose voice gradually hardens into the one we know, culminating in that bone-chilling "It will be." Niro now being a cop is a bit easy to see coming, but that doesn't stop this from being an immediately engaging dynamic, aided by how we know it'll go to hell and the only question is just how bad that will be. I also appreciate that it's left to our imaginations how Niro went from being arrested to this, someone who can say "Maybe ideals have ceased to exist. Maybe they're outmoded like oil lamps and horse cars. But they're mine, and I'm stuck with them." But all that's just a buildup for part three, where there's indeed such a strong western vibe that I'm surprised no one ever says "I'm your huckleberry." And you can practically hear the title of the worst episode of The Prisoner as soon as the possibility is raised of Bane coming back to settle things with Niro. And through the whole thing we get a demonstration of how, easy as it is to mock the dreaded "As you know" writing crutch, it can be pretty darn frustrating when characters just keep talking around something they don't have to say explicitly because everyone already knows about it. I figured out Arin had married him and had died, but the final reveal really knocked my socks off, all the more powerful for how they trusted us to get it from a line as simple as "Not everything" with nothing spelling it out further. And this is exactly the right kind of retcon, adding more nuance to what we knew before without taking anything away, as suddenly it's a lot more resonant that Bane would later take on a surrogate son who ended up having more of a conscience than him, and ultimately killed him because of that. I really hope this is the last we see of Isaac too; just let us suppose he lived out his days totally normally, because that's the best way to escape his father's legacy. I'd very much be down for a Tales of the Clones which would let them knock off a couple more of the stories they didn't get to put in Clone Wars. Or Tales of the Rebels, with stuff like more of what Trace and Rafa's show would have been like before Filoni decided to do The Bad Batch instead, Biggs going from Imperial pilot to rebel, or just getting to see the moment when Mon is forced to realize her days of wearing such awesome outfits are over.

Ryan

I envy anyone who can hear "And so it begins" without automatically adding in their head "There is a hole in your mind." And candy shops being destroyed are probably forever just going to link to Anora for me now. Given almost everything we've seen of the New Republic, I wouldn't be surprised at all if sometime there's a scene of people furiously shouting in the distance, to which someone says "The mayor's here." Off topic, I just found out there's a documentary about Rutger Hauer coming out, made by his goddaughter. And the title alone got me crying a bit: Like Tears in Rain.

Thomas Corp

I mean, Patton is right that we don’t NEED the childhood of every character. And yes, we don’t need some grand reveal that Cad’s dad was the sort of man who would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. Yes, Kingpin’s backstory in the MCU is refreshingly straightforward, and has that “Yeah, that’s pretty much the childhood I'd expect a guy like this to have had.” energy to it. One thing I love about the Emperor is that the one time that anyone’s tackled his youth, it looks like something out of The Omen. Showcasing that the man was always simply a creation. A gifted improviser. One who always lacked a conscience, and it never troubled him, even when he was young. In this situation with Cad, the backstory given is very well done. Has that right Aladdin feel of, as you say, “a more innocent kid but with very definite seeds of how he could grow into the person we know”, and it is a path that Ezra could have taken. The friendship he has with Niro is developed very well with minimal time. I prefer the route that was taken with Lazlo. Corey does show how he is one of the best with his voicework here as Cad. True, though it is easy to predict Niro will be the cop, as that’s often how these stories go, they present it in a very engaging way, leaving you with the question of how it’ll all go to hell. The question of the precise Manhattan Melodrama that led to how Niro has gotten to the point where he is would be a great story for a later time; maybe we could get a book about that. Everyone was very much no daisy at all by leaving the one line out. Good tie to the Prisoner title, by the way. The “As you know” trope is rightly mocked when done so poorly. I do really like it when used well like in Fargo where Showalter and Grimsrud run through the scheme when meeting with Jerry even though they’ve already been told the scheme, largely for clarity. Or in A Few Good Men how Jessup brings up his and Markinson’s shared history as a way to illustrate a point. Here, it clearly got to Jess a little, the reluctance to outright speak of the specifics of the tea. One highlight is discovering how Cad’s free due to a technicality. So, technicalities were how the Old Republic operated compared to how the New Republic would likely have given Cad the trial that would “end in a stern talking-to and their being set free” as you described Dedra’s assessment of it in your Dedra fanfic. I had a LONG and hard Palpatine cackle at that part, I loved it so much. The pieces of what happened with Arin are fairly easy to deduce, yet the execution of the revelations do hit hard. The reveal about Cad’s son does add so much more weight to his relationship with Boba. Shared thing of just hoping Isaac lives a normal life from then on, and we just never see him again. Maybe somewhere down the line, we get a quick thing of Cad learning his son became like a mayor or governor or some other pezzonovante on the planet, but that’s all we get of the character hence. Tales of the Clones would be grand. Tales of the Rebels, likewise, would be grand. Rafa and Trace would be fun to have more of them. The mention of Biggs makes me think Tales of Rogue Squadron could be something, and my brother would LIVE for that one. Those Rogue Squadron books were the ones that he dove into the most years back; he’d go through like one a week. I’d be down for that show too. Getting to see the moment when Mon is forced to realize her days of wearing such awesome outfits are over would be a very painful thing to see, but I’ll be here for it. Still want scenes between her and the Emperor, particularly whilst we are still blessed to have Ian with us and able to still play the Emperor. But yeah, the realization of the tragedy of the sartorial downgrade would be one hell of a scene that I’m sure that Jess would have a STRONG reaction to.