Andor: Anti-f*scist Art

[00:00] Hello, I'm tired you guys.

[00:04] Those Asimov videos took way longer than I thought they were going to

[00:08] take so I thought to myself, I'll take it easy for once.

[00:12] I'll make a nice, short, and sweet little Star Wars video and look where we are.

[00:18] Don't look at the time code, don't worry.

[00:21] It's still a video essay that I meticulously

[00:22] scripted because I don't know how to do anything else.

[00:25] I'm Sage, by the way. I make the videos but I don't

[00:27] usually appear in them. Do I look good?

[00:29] Is that what all the comments are going to be about?

[00:31] I guess it doesn't matter if I look good,

[00:32] what matters is that I'm cozy during the filming of the video.

[00:36] A while back my Internet friend and host of Beyond The Screenplay, Tricia Aurand,

[00:40] made this fun little timeline of Star Wars media in order of release

[00:43] terming the current era as the franchise era exhaustive period because

[00:47] the glut of Star Wars media over the last few years has truly felt

[00:50] exhausting, but also it's felt exhausting in exactly the same ways,

[00:55] which is what makes it an era that we can put a box around

[00:57] and notice what makes it different from what came before

[01:00] and also from what's happening now because with

[01:03] the release of Andor the exhaustive period is over.

[01:06] I really think when we look back and try to define this era of Star Wars,

[01:09] Andor is going to be an inflection point.

[01:12] There will be a pre-Andor which we can call the Andor Era because he was a part of it and

[01:18] there will be a post-Andor which we can call

[01:20] the Andor Era because he's the best part of it.

[01:24] It's up to me to contemporaneously and preemptively define

[01:27] what both represent because I've deemed myself in charge of this.

[01:31] You can just do that on the Internet.

[01:33] It's an endless game of dibs.

[01:35] What qualities define each period and which is better?

[01:39] Andor and/or Andor?

[01:42] There's three trends that Star Wars was settling into that I want to talk about,

[01:46] trends that Andor is a departure from.

[01:48] These are how it uses fan service,

[01:50] the filmmaking craft on display,

[01:52] and the extent to which they engage with political themes.

[01:58] What happens when a story becomes so self-referential

[02:02] that it ceases to have a self to reference?

[02:05] What happens when an [inaudible] rose finishes eating itself?

[02:09] The pre-Andor Disney era of Star Wars was, in my opinion,

[02:12] disappearing into its own love of a particular splice of Star Wars.

[02:16] I watched the Obi-Wan show this summer out of

[02:19] some morbid curiosity because I really didn't enjoy my time with the Boba Fett show.

[02:23] Obi-Wan is at least a much more coherently structured story

[02:27] but it also suffers from the same fixation on fan surface,

[02:30] a myopic focus on the same three or four characters

[02:33] whose relationships cannot fundamentally

[02:35] change because of the weight of the canon surrounding them.

[02:38] The few relationships that are allowed to be

[02:40] dynamic are retreads of relationships we've seen before.

[02:43] An old guy has to take care of a kid,

[02:46] a bad guy has a redemption arc.

[02:48] The ground is so well-trod it's a highway.

[02:50] Fan service is great marketing, but it is also constricting.

[02:55] Let's take a look at the second season of The Mandalorian.

[02:57] It's a fun, little adventure with

[02:59] a really phenomenal ending before they undid it in the next show.

[03:02] But looking back on it, it seems entirely designed

[03:05] as a way to link together as many cameos as possible.

[03:08] The characters run into Bo-Katan which leads them to Ahsoka,

[03:11] who talks about Thrawn and then they run into Boba Fett

[03:14] and the whole thing ends with Luke Skywalker saving the day.

[03:17] Nearly every single episode has the feel of being designed

[03:20] backwards from the intent of incorporating all of these cameos.

[03:24] It gets stale to the point that Pedro Pascal actually did need to clarify that, yes,

[03:29] Season 3 would include new faces.

[03:32] What other franchise would ever need to clarify that?

[03:35] I promise there will indeed be flippering moments of time in the next season

[03:39] that don't feel like completely cynical retreads of previous stories.

[03:42] The Mandalorian himself then entered the pantheon of cameos

[03:45] by basically hijacking the last two episodes of the Boba Fett show.

[03:48] By that point, the story structure of that show was already irrevocably broken with

[03:52] overlong flashbacks that were more interesting than the main story

[03:55] but sapped any forward momentum that the main story could have built.

[03:59] It's welcome reprieve to have Mando show

[04:01] up, but that's not to the show's credit that it was

[04:03] so uninteresting and shallow that it needed to be

[04:05] rescued by a different popular helmeted guy.

[04:07] By the end of the show, all that's left is watching

[04:09] a sequel's character fight a prequelish robot while in

[04:12] original's character rides an

[04:13] original's monster and then fights an animated show character.

[04:17] The metaphor of a child smashing his toys together is

[04:19] overused in criticism but how else do you even describe this?

[04:22] But you know at least those are characters.

[04:24] The worst is when Star Wars and its fans fetishize props.

[04:28] I feel like I'm living in a bizarre world when I see people talking about

[04:31] nostalgic callbacks and references to props and sets in these shows.

[04:35] Look at this article which is about how in an episode

[04:38] of the Boba Fett show The Mandalorian holds up a pipe

[04:41] and you see that's the same pipe that Han uses in the garbage compactors scene.

[04:49] If references to other Star Wars media wasn't enough,

[04:52] Obi-Wan takes the self-referentiality of the franchise to

[04:56] a new meta-level in its finale right here.

[05:00] Hello there.

[05:01] Now, if you're a normal person you just heard a guy say a totally innocuous phrase.

[05:05] But if you're terminally online,

[05:06] is that still going to be a phrase of Twitter, guys?

[05:08] Are you following me on Twitter?

[05:09] But if you're terminally online, then you know it's not just a greeting.

[05:12] See, back in 1976, Obi-Wan said,

[05:16] Hello there.

[05:17] Then I guess as a reference to that,

[05:18] in 2005, Obi-Wan said,

[05:21] Hello there.

[05:22] For a few years nobody cared.

[05:24] But then the Internet decided that

[05:25] literally every frame and pixel of the prequel trilogy was worthy of

[05:28] its own meme so in Obi-Wan when a scene dramatically ends with him saying,

[05:32] "Hello there."

[05:32] It's not just a reference to this and this but to all of these,

[05:36] which is what makes this what TV Tropes calls and ascended meme for when the creators of

[05:40] a work recognize and incorporate memes of that work in future installments.

[05:45] But it's a bad name because memes should not ascend,

[05:48] memes should sit down in the mud where they belong.

[05:50] The better term coined by my friend, Patrick H. Willems,

[05:52] is juggernauting, named after this moment in X-Men 3.

[05:56] I'm the Juggernaut bitch.

[05:58] What's most annoying about this moment to me isn't its existence but its placement.

[06:02] It's the last line of a scene in

[06:04] the last episode that is supposed to bring emotional closure to the story.

[06:09] Obi-Wan finally gets to talk to Luke.

[06:11] I should be feeling things here, but I can't because they're

[06:15] too eager to wink and nod at me to sell the moment on its own merit.

[06:19] By the term Obi-Wan ended I was really asking myself,

[06:22] what are we doing here?

[06:24] Really, is this the fate of Star Wars,

[06:26] an endless recursive loop of the same symbols repeated forever and ever into infinity?

[06:30] But then Andor happened.

[06:38] We didn't do anything that was fan service.

[06:41] The mandate in the very beginning was that it would be as

[06:43] absolutely non-cynical as it could possibly be,

[06:46] that the show would just be real and honest.

[06:52] That's from the showrunner of Andor, Tony Gilroy.

[06:56] Boy, did they deliver on this.

[06:58] Andor is absolutely in the spirit of

[07:01] Star Wars without just reproducing what Star Wars was.

[07:04] Once again, we go to Coruscant, but it's different.

[07:07] Fascism has stripped the beauty of the planet and made it a drab

[07:11] nightmare of endless stone corridors and eerily pristine boardrooms.

[07:15] Ferrix evokes the griminess of Tatooine, but is colder and distinct.

[07:19] One of the few times it has a reference to

[07:21] other Star Wars is when the fasci, boot-licking cop,

[07:25] I'm going to say fascism a lot in this video,

[07:27] so take a drink or whatever,

[07:29] loses his job and is reduced to living with his mother where he drinks blue milk.

[07:34] It's a punishment.

[07:36] Drinking blue milk is a punishment for this character.

[07:40] The show is so bereft of this fan service that

[07:43] the entire media ecosystem built up around pointing at Easter eggs and saying,

[07:47] "Did you catch that?"

[07:49] was so absolutely starving for

[07:50] sweet sweet hashtag content that they were reduced to this.

[07:54] Did you catch this Star Wars Easter egg in the latest episode of Andorra,

[07:57] we can see clearly that the ISP is recording this conversation.

[08:00] We know this because of these space surveillance cameras.

[08:03] Han, Luke, and Chewie blasted a bunch of identical-looking cameras when they

[08:06] storm the detention block of the original Death Star in a new hope.

[08:09] Is a silly thing to harp on,

[08:10] but you're not supposed to catch this as a reference.

[08:14] The point of them here is so your brain instantly

[08:16] groks that you're looking at an imperial location,

[08:18] so that you can then pay attention to the scene at hand.

[08:22] You're forgetting to do the important part or maybe you're not. I don't know you.

[08:26] I also think the fact that Andor doesn't have to spend time on Easter eggs or

[08:29] fan service allows the writers to get really creative with world-building.

[08:33] It doesn't rely on previous media,

[08:35] so it has to create environments that are unique and interesting themselves.

[08:40] I love the introduction to Ferrix where we see

[08:42] this place where the workers all hang their work gloves

[08:45] on the wall outside the building which immediately tells us this is a community.

[08:50] They can hang their stuff up outside because they know no one is going to steal them.

[08:54] That's a setup for the big moment later where the community engages in

[08:57] a collective act of civil disobedience to

[09:00] provide cover for those escaping the authorities.

[09:03] They just put all these clever little twists on things that we're familiar with.

[09:06] Instead of it just being a clock tower,

[09:09] there's a guy who's having the best time of his life,

[09:12] like playing the bell drums.

[09:17] In this scene, a character is tortured.

[09:20] But instead of being tortured in the way we've

[09:22] seen people be tortured in Star Wars before,

[09:24] they invent a completely unique and interesting way of doing a scene like that,

[09:28] which will make a chill run down your spine.

[09:30] There's a three-episode prisoner arc on the show.

[09:33] If the only locations that existed in

[09:35] Star Wars were the ones we see in the movies and shows,

[09:38] then this would be a universe that is like 30 percent prisons.

[09:41] It's like a space America.

[09:43] But instead of just being a prison or instead of

[09:45] sending him to a prison we've seen before,

[09:47] they decide to invent the most sinister and unsettling place imaginable.

[09:53] In this prison, the prisoners aren't allowed to wear shoes.

[09:55] The way they are controlled is through electroshocks from the floor.

[09:59] The guards all have these boots that negate the shock,

[10:02] and this means that it's a prison without bars.

[10:05] But one where you are more policed under penalty of violence than any other.

[10:09] It's a brilliant obstacle for the characters to overcome that I haven't seen done before.

[10:14] There's a quote that has stuck in my mind forever from

[10:15] JJ Abrams about his approach to the Force Awakens,

[10:18] where he says, "I tried to focus on things that I find inspiring about cinema."

[10:22] I ask questions like, "How do we make this movie delightful?

[10:25] That was really the only requirement Larry and I impose on each other.

[10:28] The movie needed to be delightful."

[10:30] The Force Awakens is delightful in a lot of ways,

[10:33] but one of the main ways is because it is indulgent with its nostalgia.

[10:37] But in the seven years since that movie in

[10:39] a media landscape that aches to be as pleasantly nostalgic as the Force Awakens was,

[10:43] what I've realized, is that delightful is torturous, but torturous delightful.

[10:50] How do you know about me?

[10:52] I was hoping for more relaxed conversation,

[10:55] but you're right, we don't have time.

[10:57] I think what Andor does best is tension.

[10:59] Tension inquires the audience to have

[11:01] a clear understanding of the dangers that are present in the story.

[11:04] Think about how many Star Wars scenes you've watched,

[11:06] where the characters are running down a hallway or something,

[11:10] a couple of Storm Troopers appear, they blast them.

[11:12] This is action, but there's not that much tension. They blast them.

[11:15] It's like the action equivalent of a jump scare.

[11:18] Has its uses, but it's easy.

[11:20] They blast them. To paraphrase Alfred Hitchcock,

[11:22] if you have a bomb go off in a scene, sure,

[11:25] that'll surprise the audience for a second. But that's it.

[11:28] But if instead, you tell the audience there is a bomb in the scene,

[11:31] then they're going to anticipate it going off.

[11:33] That's going to create tension for as long as you want.

[11:36] Episode 3 of Andor is a masterclass in this.

[11:39] In this episode, there are exactly 14 goons,

[11:42] no more, no less.

[11:43] We see all of them early on.

[11:45] There are two officers and the rest are subordinates.

[11:47] When they reach Ferrix,

[11:48] two of them stay with Andor's surrogate mother.

[11:50] The rest break into three teams of four and try to

[11:52] converge on the warehouse where they know Andor is.

[11:54] The huge chunk of this episode is just a conversation between two characters.

[11:57] But because we know the Corpos are on their way,

[11:59] the tension escalates with each passing moment.

[12:02] It's a simple technique, but it's done so well here.

[12:05] We also have a clear understanding of who is with who and where everyone is.

[12:08] One team arrests Bix,

[12:09] Andor's friend, so they start moving towards the warehouse.

[12:12] The team with the officers gets delayed,

[12:14] which means we know that in the firefight,

[12:16] Andor's up against four guys from the third team.

[12:19] Because we know all this, we can literally count the kills

[12:21] during this fight and know whether or not they're in danger.

[12:24] One dies in the first explosion then one gets killed by the chains,

[12:30] which is an excellent element of this fight, by the way.

[12:34] It just adds a dynamic to the action that

[12:35] makes it more interesting than a simple shootout.

[12:37] Finally, Luthen shoots a third guy.

[12:41] For a second we think that maybe they're safe, but then, wait no, there were

[12:45] four guys so maybe two of them died in the explosion and we only saw one.

[12:49] Don't go for it, Andor. Bam.

[12:51] Fourth guy starts shooting. The tension is kept throughout the scene.

[12:55] You can apply this to the other arcs in the show as well.

[12:57] The Aldhani heist and the prison escape.

[12:59] They both establish how many bad guys there are.

[13:02] That's why the only keep a 40-man regimen in the Garrison.

[13:04] How many guards on each level?

[13:07] Never more than 12.

[13:09] Then put the characters' intense scenes anticipating

[13:12] the danger and only then does the blasting start.

[13:17] Across the board the craft on display in the show goes really above and beyond,

[13:22] which is notable because the Star Wars TV shows were starting to look a little cheap.

[13:26] Sure, The Mandalorian came out of nowhere and

[13:28] basically invented an entirely new way to do

[13:31] CGI by using this new technology called The Volume rather than using a green screen.

[13:37] They surround the actor with LED screens that project a pre-made digital environment,

[13:41] which is a wonderful piece of technology that

[13:43] is an update on one of the oldest special effects.

[13:47] It never stops being funny to me, though,

[13:49] that they invented all of this because

[13:50] the Mandalorian wears this big, shiny helmet which was

[13:54] reflecting the green from the green screens so they

[13:57] needed to create the actual environment so that the colors were reflecting right.

[14:01] Now this technology is being used on every major production to good and ill effect.

[14:07] Well, every major production except for freaking Andor which

[14:10] built these immaculate real sets which feel extremely grimey and lived in.

[14:14] The Mandalorian looks pretty good but Boba Fett and Obi-Wan were inconsistent.

[14:19] Don't get me wrong, both them look pretty good for television but every once in a while

[14:23] there's an issue like shots where their compositing looks fake,

[14:27] CG characters are never completely convincing either,

[14:30] a problem Andor avoids rather than solves because it has almost no alien characters,

[14:34] really just those two dogs on Ferrix.

[14:36] A bigger issue for me is the choreography of

[14:39] the action scenes like this one with Boba that is very

[14:43] clunky or this speeder bike chase that feels like it's going on

[14:46] forever and that they're all only moving at 10 miles an hour.

[14:49] Worst offender is the forest chase with Leia,

[14:51] where these mercenaries keep failing to catch her because they

[14:54] keep incompetently running into trees and falling down.

[14:57] How are you this bad at this?

[14:59] Just catch her. She's nine years.

[15:00] Generally, I was also just a little disappointed by the depiction of Jabba's Palace and

[15:03] the other locations where the crime bosses hang out in the Boba Fett show.

[15:07] Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi was smoke-filled,

[15:09] had tons of weird alien extras and harsh moody lighting.

[15:13] To see it rendered with flat TV lighting is a shame.

[15:16] Sets on Obi-Wan sometimes felt

[15:18] small scale too like this gate crossing scene where Obi-Wan

[15:21] spends all his time frantically shooting this gate

[15:23] open even though there's plenty of room to walk around.

[15:26] The big, dumb fun reason to watch the show was to see Anakin and Obi-Wan fight again.

[15:31] A shame both of their fights are so under-lit

[15:33] it's basically impossible to see what's happening.

[15:35] It's criminal to film this at night.

[15:37] Both scenes get the honorary long night award for worst lighting of the year.

[15:42] Look, a lot of people put a lot of work into

[15:44] these shows to make them look as good as they

[15:46] do and far be it from me to critique the work of

[15:48] thousands of hardworking individuals but please,

[15:50] can one of you just walk across the line and ask the crew of Andor what they're doing

[15:53] different because Andor has been absolutely impeccable.

[15:55] It's not just the reliance on practical effects either,

[15:57] the CG has been just as impressive.

[16:00] Everything just clicks on this show. You know

[16:02] I could forgive all of these shows for these problems if I felt they had

[16:05] the writing to back it up but at the end of the day they're not really about much.

[16:10] Let's talk about the boogie man of the Star Wars fandom, politics.

[16:14] During the release of Obi-Wan the Star Wars franchise made a few headlines

[16:17] by actively pushing back against the toxicity within its own fandom.

[16:20] After the premier episode, actress,

[16:22] Moses Ingram posted a series of Instagram stories

[16:24] sharing some of the racist abuse she received for staring on the show,

[16:28] something that was not a new experience for a person of color appearing in this series.

[16:32] What was new was that Star Wars made an official statement pushing back against it.

[16:36] On May 31st they tweeted,

[16:38] we are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to

[16:39] the Star Wars family and excited for Reva's story to unfold.

[16:43] If anyone intends to make her feel in any way

[16:45] unwelcome we have only one thing to say, we resist.

[16:48] There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy,

[16:52] don't choose to be racist.

[16:54] Around the same time Star Wars also advertised the cover

[16:57] for a newly released comic book, Bounty Hunters 24.

[17:01] The cover featured two lesbian characters in

[17:03] a modified version of the Star Wars logo which included the Pride Flag.

[17:06] Predictably, someone wrote,

[17:08] don't make Star Wars political.

[17:10] A little less predictably though,

[17:12] Star Wars made a solid reply: 1,

[17:15] queer characters existing isn't political;

[17:18] 2, Star Wars is literally our name.

[17:20] Looking at these two moments in isolation we can applaud

[17:23] Star Wars for doing something about the rampant racism and homophobia

[17:27] in their audience, but yes, even though this is

[17:29] a calculated business decision and

[17:30] not evidence that the Disney Corporation possesses a conscience,

[17:33] it's still good that they think that this is the way to handle this.

[17:37] But at the same time,

[17:39] it'd be nice if the movies and TV shows they were making actually back this up.

[17:43] Because in the pre-end toward Disney era,

[17:45] there was a noticeable and exhausting trend of sidestepping any kind of politics at all,

[17:50] with exactly one exception we can't talk about for reasons.

[17:53] Force Awakens thrust viewers into

[17:54] a three-way political conflict where we barely understand two of the factions.

[17:58] Though the we do understand does at least have something to say

[18:01] about the resurgence of Naziism through the radicalization of the youth,

[18:05] that was prescient at the dawn of the Alt-Right when this movie came out in 2015.

[18:10] I challenge anyone though to find

[18:11] a coherent political theme or even idea in Rise of Skywalker.

[18:14] I'll mail you a plaque that reads,

[18:16] "congrats on wasting your finite existence".

[18:18] That movie also spends a third of its runtime ensuring

[18:21] the Chinese sensors that all of its lead characters are indeed straight.

[18:25] Pretty funny for them to say this weird and hypocritical times we live in.

[18:29] The Han Solo movie has a pretty fun ramp,

[18:31] but it also has a droid character whose desire for liberation is mocked as annoying.

[18:35] She's a woke robot activist.

[18:37] Ha ha ha, it's lazy.

[18:39] Bad. I'm not a huge fan of [inaudible] ,

[18:41] but at least it can hang its hat on themes of

[18:43] self-sacrifice for a cause and inspiring hope.

[18:46] Then came the TV shows,

[18:47] which have mostly been ciphers.

[18:48] The political state of the galaxy is a distant backdrop in these shows,

[18:52] and making any kind of statement beyond fascism bad is pretty much unthinkable.

[18:57] The Mandalorian takes place during a time when democracy is rebuilding itself,

[19:01] but the new republic is only a minor presence in the story.

[19:03] The one interesting moment Obi-Wan had in

[19:06] this respect is when he and Leia get picked up by

[19:08] a truck driver and it turns out he's a mega Republican, a MAGAlien.

[19:14] The scene is a fun little observation on the mundanity of evil,

[19:17] but it's pretty isolated from the rest of the show.

[19:19] There's definite sense in the Disney era thus far that they want to

[19:22] cut the sharp edges off of the Star Wars franchise.

[19:25] They want it to be easily marketable and inoffensive.

[19:27] That's the priority.

[19:29] Political themes will always alienate some portion of the audience.

[19:31] They occasionally let one of their projects go this route,

[19:34] but it's measured so that it doesn't overtake the image of the brand.

[19:37] This is all pretty strange given that this is, you know, Star Wars.

[19:42] This all comes from movies that came out just a few years after the Vietnam War ended,

[19:45] and had the audacity and balls to make

[19:48] the colonial imperial genocidal power that conquers the world

[19:51] with the use of stormtroopers being manned entirely by people with British accents,

[19:55] while the rebels use guerrilla tactics and fight in the jungle.

[19:58] George Lucas, the original Chad,

[20:00] has flat out said that he works at the Viet Cong.

[20:02] You did something very interesting with Star Wars, if you think about it.

[20:06] The good guys are the rebels.

[20:07] They're using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized empire.

[20:12] I think we call those guys terrorists today.

[20:14] We call them Mujahideen.

[20:16] We call them Al-Qaeda.

[20:17] When I did it, they were Viet Cong.

[20:19] Exactly. Were you thinking of that at the time?

[20:22] Yes.

[20:23] His prequel trilogy, which I can't believe I have to come out on here,

[20:26] the Internet, and talk about positively,

[20:28] were about how democracies are infiltrated by demagogues.

[20:31] How the anxieties of young men who are confused about

[20:33] their place in the world can be manipulated by lying, powerful,

[20:36] hungry ghouls who want to use them to tear down

[20:38] institutions and ended it with the hero turning into a villain

[20:41] by quoting one of the most famous lines from one of

[20:43] the most famous speeches of the sitting president of

[20:46] the United States at the time shortly after 9/11.

[20:48] If you're not with me,

[20:51] then you're my enemy.

[20:53] Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists.

[21:10] But when I say a story is political,

[21:13] I definitely mean it in a different way than the bozos

[21:16] that whine about their favorite franchises having gay people in them.

[21:19] What I mean by it is a story that has something to say about the moment we're in,

[21:22] and that says it with every tool of storytelling at its disposal.

[21:25] But even stories that don't have that much disabled social systems are

[21:28] not completely bereft of some political message.

[21:31] Look at the Mandalorian,

[21:32] 95 percent of that show is Mando hugging Grogu.

[21:35] I'd say that fatherhood is it central theme,

[21:37] but that's not, not political.

[21:39] Fatherhood is necessarily a statement about gender roles.

[21:41] It just doesn't feel,

[21:43] "political" to most audiences,

[21:45] because it more or less abides by the dominant ideology.

[21:49] Listen, I know Baby Yoda is cute,

[21:51] but you have to pay attention to what I'm saying.

[21:53] You can't get distracted by it.

[21:55] What's really at issue for me isn't the presence of something political,

[21:58] but whether what's being looked at is actually controversial and interesting.

[22:02] Whether it has the courage to explore topics where there is push-back.

[22:06] That's what I feel these other shows are hesitant to do,

[22:08] but which Andor embraces fully.

[22:10] Yeah, I know Clone Wars exists too.

[22:12] I did watch all of it recently though,

[22:14] and I am going to make a video about it that will be exclusive on Patreon.

[22:17] If you want to hear all my extremely pedantic thoughts about that,

[22:20] you can pledge at a five-dollar tier.

[22:22] There are some other things going on at the Patreon too.

[22:24] You can watch the final cut of my big one-hour foundation video,

[22:27] which is the true conclusion to my I, Robot video.

[22:30] Personally, I think it's my best work.

[22:31] I also recently made a little ramble about The Batman.

[22:34] I had some thoughts about the editing.

[22:36] That's going to stay a Patreon and exclusive though,

[22:38] and I am going to be making more regular exclusive content like that for Patreon,

[22:42] so that the only way to get all of my delicious little thoughts about

[22:45] the world is to go and support me on patreon.com/justright.

[22:48] But seriously though, this video is about to get into

[22:51] some topics that we'll probably get this video demonetized.

[22:54] If you're a fan of my general ability to survive on the Internet,

[22:57] or survive in general,

[22:58] now would be a good time to join.

[22:59] So fascist. Andor is

[23:08] the most overtly political piece of Star Wars media ever.

[23:11] The commentary bleeds into just about every aspect of the show.

[23:15] Literally from the first sequence where

[23:18] our Latino protagonist is hassled by some rental cops over his papers.

[23:22] Broadly speaking, the show is anti-imperialism and anti-fascism,

[23:26] but the backdrop of each of its arcs interrogates

[23:28] one of the pillars of how those systems operate.

[23:32] Capitalism, colonialism and the prison labor system.

[23:35] In the first arc, Andor is getting hunted down by the corporate police,

[23:39] but which see themselves as an arm of imperial authority.

[23:42] Culprit tactical forces are the empire's first-line of defense.

[23:46] This is such an interesting decision because we're used to

[23:49] the goons in a Star Wars story being stormtroopers,

[23:53] soldiers for an obviously evil empire that explicitly resembles the Nazis.

[23:58] This means the audience has no problem with

[24:01] seeing them killed in droves by the good guys.

[24:03] We're not meant to see Luke Skywalker as committing

[24:06] an immoral act when he blows up the Death Star and murders a gazillion space Nazis,

[24:11] because their space Nazis.

[24:13] In making Andor's opponent in this arc, police officers,

[24:16] the mobility of the violence is made grayer to a degree.

[24:19] It transfers our antipathy towards the empire onto representatives of capitalism,

[24:25] equating them as at least in this case,

[24:27] being in service of the same injustice.

[24:30] That is a bold political statement to be making when the

[24:32] [inaudible] the police movement is very present.

[24:35] Fascism has no coherent or consistent economic principles.

[24:39] It aligns itself with whatever forces it needs to to retain power and thus,

[24:43] it has a long and convoluted history with capitalism.

[24:46] But what I think is being touched on here is the tendency of

[24:48] capitalists to support fascist regimes.

[24:51] In Italy, in 1922,

[24:53] it was the strength of trade unions and socialist

[24:56] agitation which terrified the upper and middle classes.

[24:59] They feared a revolution would disrupt their position in the social hierarchy,

[25:03] which is what led to the king empowering

[25:04] the fascist movement and putting Mussolini into power.

[25:07] Fascist governments also tend to privatized

[25:09] state-owned enterprises in order to entice the support of the wealthy.

[25:14] Mussolini, for instance, privatized life insurance,

[25:16] among a lot of other stuff.

[25:18] I start with touches on some of this across the animated series and in the prequels

[25:21] as Emperor Palpatine brings various corporations under his control,

[25:25] like the banking clan.

[25:26] But just because corporations might support a fascist regime,

[25:29] the irony is that that does not guarantee their safety or

[25:33] autonomy within it as they can be nationalized whenever it suits the government.

[25:37] In Andor, the Preox-Morlana

[25:38] corporate authority has autonomy from the empire.

[25:41] But as soon as they screw up,

[25:43] the empire comes in and puts them under direct imperial control.

[25:47] You've rang the final bell on corporate independence.

[25:49] As of this morning,

[25:51] the Morlana system is under permanent imperial authority.

[25:55] This arc also includes flashbacks to Andor's childhood on a planet called Kenari,

[26:01] which was the location of Republic corporate mining operations and where

[26:05] an industrial disaster during the imperial era

[26:08] led to it becoming a toxic planet and abandoned.

[26:11] The politics of this arc has undertones of anti-capitalism that are so strong.

[26:15] There just tones.

[26:18] The second arc is set on a planet suffering under imperial colonization.

[26:22] We learned that there used to be thousands of settlements,

[26:25] but that then the Empire came along and forcefully relocated everyone

[26:29] into cities where the people could be put to work for the empire.

[26:33] $40,000 Aldhanis all across the highlands,

[26:37] they were here for centuries.

[26:40] But it only took the empire a decade to clear them out.

[26:43] Kill them.

[26:45] No, drove them South.

[26:48] As an enterprise zone in the lowlands.

[26:51] We're shown repeatedly that the empire has no respect for the cultures it suppresses.

[26:56] The Aldhani have a sacred temple on the river here that

[26:59] the imperial troopers use as target practice.

[27:02] Target practice?

[27:04] That temple was on a river that the Aldhani considered sacred,

[27:08] but which the empire dammed up so that they could use the caves for storage.

[27:12] The leader of the garrison,

[27:14] a guy perfectly named Jayhold.

[27:16] If you ever make a con line for Aldhani,

[27:17] I hope the word for douche bag is Jayhold.

[27:20] Mr. Jayhold constantly expresses his racist disdain for the local population,

[27:24] deeming them lesser people who are simple-minded and who smell bad.

[27:27] The Dhanis, they're a simple people.

[27:30] They breed a sad combination of traits that

[27:33] make them particularly vulnerable to manipulation.

[27:36] We tried goat hides for a three-year lease,

[27:39] so it didn't smell so badly, it might be amusing Come on

[27:41] [inaudible] The Dhanis have a rough appetite for fragrance.

[27:45] Yes, I've been bored.

[27:46] He's not the only one.

[27:48] How many did you think we'll have tomorrow?

[27:50] I don't know. It was less than 100 last time.

[27:54] Still enough to smell them, right?

[27:57] The tactics Mr. Jay hold

[27:59] here uses to control the Dhani population,

[28:02] relying more on soft power than they do outright force.

[28:05] For instance, he wants the smallest number of them to come to

[28:09] the ceremony where they observe this astronomical phenomenon known as The Eye.

[28:13] A ceremony that holds cultural and religious value to them.

[28:17] We offer them transport because we know they will refuse,

[28:19] but that along the way we've placed a series of comfort units.

[28:23] Shelters and taverns with cheap local beverages.

[28:27] Quite predictably, what began as 500 pilgrims at the bottom

[28:32] has already dwindled down to, where are now, lieutenant?

[28:35] We counted 60 last night, sir.

[28:37] It's a plot point that is deliberately evocative of the long history of

[28:42] European colonizers using alcohol to

[28:45] their advantage when negotiating and trading with Native Americans.

[28:49] Between this, the use of relocation and

[28:51] the destruction and degradation of significant religious locations,

[28:54] what this arc of the show depicts is the definition of cultural genocide.

[28:58] We never see an act of

[28:59] explicit on-screen violence committed by the empire against the Aldhani,

[29:02] but the threat of violence and the policies they imposed are meant to destroy

[29:06] Aldhani culture so that the remnants of

[29:08] their society are malleable to the project of imperialism.

[29:11] This is part of what makes the ending of this arc so cathartic.

[29:15] The heroes use the ceremony around the eye as their means of sneaking into

[29:19] the garrison and then they use the media shower itself to cover their escape.

[29:23] Effectively using something of cultural importance to the Aldhani as

[29:28] the means by which they achieve victory over the empire and symbolically liberation.

[29:33] This sequence is glorious, and that is,

[29:36] I believe the intended message of the sequence,

[29:38] because in the very next episode, this scene happens.

[29:41] The use of any local custom, festival,

[29:44] or tradition as cover

[29:46] the rebel activity will trigger permanent revocation of imperial tolerance.

[29:54] This show was made by the Disney Corporation,

[29:57] a show about the tactics of cultural genocide.

[30:00] The Disney Corporation.

[30:02] You're watching Disney Channel.

[30:04] What I find brilliant about this show is that it

[30:07] managed to do a few other prequels are capable of doing.

[30:10] It takes a story where we as the audience already know how things will end.

[30:13] We know that Andor will become a rebel and

[30:15] that he will die to help destroy the Death Star,

[30:17] which will eventually lead to the fall of the Galactic Empire.

[30:19] Which means that in this show,

[30:21] the opponent is an entity that cannot be defeated.

[30:24] Which means the stakes of the story can never be will Andor

[30:27] defeat the empire because we already know what the answer is there.

[30:31] Instead, the story has to completely invest in the more subtle ideas of

[30:35] how does a person become a rebel and what is the cost of fighting a rebellion?

[30:41] I think those two questions are at the heart of the show,

[30:44] and unlike every other piece of Star Wars media,

[30:47] it takes a lot of time and struggle to answer those questions.

[30:51] Usually in a Star Wars story,

[30:52] becoming a rebel part is pretty straightforward.

[30:56] Oh, your aunt and uncle got burning naked in the barn.

[30:58] Well, sucks to be you kiddo.

[31:00] Here's a blaster. Even with characters like Han and Finn,

[31:04] who take a little more to come around to the cause,

[31:07] it's usually a pretty simple reason.

[31:09] My friends are rebels and I like my friends.

[31:12] With Andor, his entire story in this first season

[31:15] has to be about his gradual radicalization to the side of the rebellion.

[31:18] A path that is not straight or simple,

[31:21] which is what makes it feel much more real, grounded,

[31:23] effective, visceral, and other good words.

[31:26] In its first three episode arc,

[31:28] Andor is on the edge of poverty at all times and lives just outside the law.

[31:33] He has anti-imperial sentiment.

[31:35] They're so fat and satisfied.

[31:37] They can't imagine it.

[31:39] They can't imagine what?

[31:41] That someone like me would ever get inside their house.

[31:44] But his outlets to channel that rage are limited.

[31:46] He works as a thief and takes advantage of the hubris

[31:49] of the empire so that he can get by financially.

[31:51] But being anti-empire does not necessarily make someone pro-revolution.

[31:55] Luthen can train him to use guerrilla tactics.

[31:58] Never carry anything you don't control.

[32:00] But that doesn't mean Andor believes in the fight.

[32:02] His lack of commitment is what comes under

[32:04] the microscope in the second arc of the series.

[32:06] I think it's all useless.

[32:08] Better to spit in their food and steal they drinks.

[32:11] It's better to live. Better to eat,

[32:15] sleep, do what you want. You don't know me.

[32:18] Here, he joins a small band of rebels who are

[32:20] planning a heist that will help fund the rebellion.

[32:23] The minute Andor arrives,

[32:24] he comes under suspicion from most of the rebels who do not trust him.

[32:28] They shouldn't trust him.

[32:30] These episodes contrast him with two other characters, Nemik and Skeen.

[32:35] Nemik, who of course fills the obligatory rebel role of little dude with weird hat and

[32:39] some ideas about stuff is selfless and a true believer in the cause.

[32:44] Nemik's a surprise.

[32:46] He's green, but he's all in, he's a true believer.

[32:48] Meanwhile, Skeen is just out for himself and doesn't care about the revolution.

[32:52] Another rebellion for you.

[32:54] I'm a rebel, it's just me against everybody else?

[33:01] During this arc, Andor is smacked dab in the middle of them, Andor between them.

[33:05] My man Nemik has a manifesto you see and

[33:08] takes every opportunity to educate the rebels around him.

[33:10] They can all see the injustices of the empire,

[33:12] but it's Nemik who's documenting it and analyzing their tactics.

[33:16] We've been relying on imperial tech and we've made ourselves vulnerable.

[33:19] It's a growing list of things we've known and forgotten things they pushed

[33:22] us to forget, things like freedom.

[33:25] It's so confusing, isn't it?

[33:26] So much going wrong, so much to say and all of it happening so quickly.

[33:29] The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to

[33:31] understand it and that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine.

[33:34] It's easier to hide behind faulty atrocities than a single incident.

[33:38] This scene is so cool.

[33:41] There's a moment here where Nemik equates his manifesto

[33:44] with the navigational tool he and Andor are talking about earlier.

[33:47] Fresh inspiration, now two seemingly random objects and yet this charts an astral path,

[33:51] this maps the trail a political consciousness.

[33:53] Both systems based on truth,

[33:54] both navigating to clear and achievable outcomes.

[33:56] In other words, you can't just win a rebellion with physical tools,

[34:00] tools like the ones that Andor used to steal and/or sell.

[34:03] You need some way to interpret the miasma

[34:06] of events caused in the wake of a fascist regime coming to power.

[34:09] A means to understand how they take power and keep it.

[34:12] Because that understanding is truly what would keep the rebels

[34:15] committed to their cause and capable of changing the system.

[34:18] But Andor isn't ready to listen.

[34:20] As in the first arc,

[34:22] Andor only knows he doesn't like the empire.

[34:25] I like to hear what Clem believes.

[34:29] I know what I'm against.

[34:31] But it's an untempered feeling.

[34:33] He's not truly committed.

[34:34] There's a great way this is visually communicated.

[34:37] The scene starts with Nemik walking into camp with milk and

[34:40] the camera intentionally begins the scene with it in the center of frame,

[34:44] subtly telling us to pay attention to the milk.

[34:46] Pay attention to the milk, boys.

[34:47] At the start of the scene, Nemik pours Andor a drink.

[34:49] At the end, this happens.

[34:51] Busy day, come finish your milk.

[34:56] Andor isn't ready to listen to Nemik so he doesn't

[35:00] drink the milk that Nemik gave him. Nice touches

[35:03] abound in this series.

[35:04] Here's another, Andor uses a different name in

[35:06] each arc and in this one he goes by his adopted father's name,

[35:10] Clem, who we learned was executed by the Empire.

[35:13] We see a flashback of this later where Clem was trying

[35:16] to stop people from protesting the empire.

[35:18] But because of some bad timing,

[35:20] they assume that he was the one that was rebelling and that's why he dies.

[35:24] Andor, going by the name Clem here tells us

[35:26] that he is learning the lesson of his father,

[35:28] which is bluntly, don't rebel.

[35:31] Contrasted with Nemik is that other guy in the scene whose name is Skeen,

[35:35] which makes this a Skeen scene.

[35:37] Skeen is extremely skeptical of everyone else's motivations because

[35:41] his biggest worry is that everyone is as selfish and immoral as he is.

[35:45] Nemik is an optimist,

[35:46] an idealist who sees the best in everyone. Andor shows up out of nowhere and Nemik is

[35:51] the only person who for no apparent reason

[35:52] completely trusts that Andor is a rebel at heart.

[35:56] He's committed. I'm feeling that. I want to.

[36:00] Feel what?

[36:01] His belief in the cause.

[36:04] When it comes down to it. That's all I need to know.

[36:06] That's his blind spot.

[36:08] This is a character that's introduced to us sleeping on the job.

[36:11] He's got a great handle on the politics of the rebellion,

[36:14] but not on the people.

[36:15] He's too trusting, then there's Skeen who suspects the worst of everyone.

[36:18] Fall asleep on watch, they're going to put your head on a pike for a laugh.

[36:22] Sorry.

[36:22] At the end of the arc Skeen makes a pitch to

[36:24] Andor, they've just gotten away with the money they were

[36:26] stealing and they have this chance to betray

[36:28] the two surviving rebels, take the ship, split the winnings.

[36:32] Skeen feels that he can convince Andor of this because they

[36:35] have the same suspicions about other people,

[36:37] because they both grew up impoverished.

[36:39] You're not here to save anybody, but yourself.

[36:43] I saw the first minute you came into camp, you're just like me,

[36:47] we are born in the hole and all we know is climbing over somebody else to get out.

[36:50] Andor shoots him immediately.

[36:52] Which isn't just him killing a bad guy,

[36:54] but rejecting that part of his own personality,

[36:57] his fear that everyone will betray him.

[36:59] Because the stuff that's Skeen was saying is the same stuff that we'd

[37:02] expect from Andor earlier in the show.

[37:05] But at the same time that this happens,

[37:06] Nemik dies from wounds.

[37:08] He took on the mission and wills his manifesto to Andor.

[37:11] Andor becomes less motivated by selfishness,

[37:13] but in that same moment he also loses

[37:16] the direct revolutionary figure in Nemik

[37:18] who is pushing him towards genuine radicalization.

[37:21] He has the tools to get there himself in the form of the manifesto.

[37:25] But not the will.

[37:26] Which brings us to the third arc.

[37:28] Fascism is a prison. Look at that,

[37:31] a new shot. The next batch of episodes are the best of the bunch, best of the year.

[37:35] Can't say enough good about them.

[37:36] Because in addition to having one of the most interesting locations and

[37:39] compelling supporting characters in any piece of Star Wars media ever.

[37:42] This is where the questions of how does someone become

[37:44] a rebel and what does it cost come to full fruition.

[37:47] At the start of the arc, I think audiences are

[37:49] probably a little surprised by where we find Andor.

[37:52] I definitely thought that the next episode would

[37:54] open with him reading next book and it'd be like,

[37:57] "Okay, he has a revolutionary mindset now,"

[37:59] instead we see and are going in the complete opposite direction. After

[38:03] the nearly botched Aldhani heist where almost everyone on the team died,

[38:07] he pretty reasonably wants nothing to do with the war.

[38:10] A lot of movies and TV shows tried to pull off a beat in

[38:12] the story known as the Refusal of The Call,

[38:14] because that's what Joseph Campbell told them to do.

[38:16] But it can often feel like just ticking a box off of a list.

[38:19] Like we need the character to say no to the adventure for

[38:21] 0.5 seconds because that will make them more relatable.

[38:23] But these stories aren't really interested in the psychology of reluctance.

[38:27] But in the story where the main arc is about radicalization,

[38:30] about a man gaining political consciousness.

[38:32] It's reluctance and apathy and fear that are the central obstacles.

[38:37] Andor is given so many chances to be part of the rebellion but keeps refusing them.

[38:40] The story has to keep hammering at his reasons for saying no,

[38:44] because reluctance is the impulse to just go along,

[38:47] to get along to not stick your neck out, to play it safe,

[38:50] because we don't want to lose anything.

[38:51] We don't want to risk anything. Andor doesn't, it's fear.

[38:55] He's finally got the resources he needs to liberate himself from the cycles of

[38:58] poverty that he was stuck in and to escape the eye of the empire.

[39:02] He wants to bring the handful of people he loves with

[39:04] him and live out a quiet and peaceful life.

[39:06] Just like he said at the beginning of the second arc.

[39:08] It's better to live. Better to eat,

[39:12] sleep, do what you want.

[39:14] The point of these episodes is to say,

[39:16] no, you can't do that.

[39:18] You can't just free yourself from your own chains.

[39:20] You've got a free everybody from their chains as well.

[39:23] Because so long as one person is oppressed,

[39:25] we are all oppressed.

[39:26] The fight doesn't stop until the system of oppression is torn down and replaced,

[39:30] really channeling my inner Nemik today. Throughout the show, Andor's

[39:34] most consistent observation about

[39:36] the empire is that their comfort is what makes them weak.

[39:39] He says some form of it in every arc.

[39:42] They're so fat and satisfied.

[39:44] They can't imagine it.

[39:46] Can't imagine what?

[39:48] That someone like me would ever get inside their house.

[39:51] Well, you have right? The empire doesn't play by the rules.

[39:55] How am I wrong?

[40:01] They don't care enough to learn.

[40:04] You think they're listening. You think they care enough to make an effort.

[40:09] Like you would know.

[40:11] I know this, they don't need to care.

[40:14] All they need to do is turn this floor on twice a day and keep their numbers rolling.

[40:18] His observations are apt,

[40:20] but there's also an element of projection to

[40:22] them because if Andor was a member of the empire,

[40:25] that's how he would act.

[40:27] If he was comfortable, he wouldn't worry about the details.

[40:29] Comfort is what he wants,

[40:31] but the empire won't let him have it.

[40:33] Andor was trying to enjoy his life when,

[40:35] for basically no reason at all,

[40:36] he gets abducted by the state and thrown into a prison

[40:38] where he is forced to do manual labor for the empire.

[40:41] Suddenly the tables are turned in this series because up until this point it has been

[40:46] other characters who have been trying to radicalize

[40:48] Andor so that he will help them pull off the rebellion.

[40:51] Luthen has tried to give him the tools and

[40:53] the gorilla strategies that he needs to physically fight the empire.

[40:56] Nemik has tried to instill in him a political consciousness so

[41:00] that he can intellectually parse the oppressive tactics of the empire.

[41:03] But up until this point, both have failed,

[41:05] but nothing will radicalize someone faster than when they are put into

[41:08] a position where they need to convince someone else to join them.

[41:11] In the imperial prison, Andor is put under the control of Kino;

[41:14] another prisoner who is in charge of one of the rooms where

[41:17] the prisoners are making something rather.

[41:20] In the first episode here, Kino feels like a character we've met a million times before;

[41:24] the hard-ass prison/military guy who yells orders at the hero and we

[41:29] assume that he's going to be the main obstacle

[41:32] for Andor to overcome in order to escape the prison.

[41:35] But when I say obstacle,

[41:36] you think Kino is going to be the guy they're going to have to

[41:39] distract or sneak around while they pull off the plan,

[41:43] instead, Kino is the obstacle in the sense that

[41:45] Andor has to convince him to join the escape attempt.

[41:48] He has to convince Kino to rebel.

[41:51] There's a whole episode where Andor is just

[41:53] relentlessly trying to turn Kino's mind toward resistance,

[41:57] but Kino won't have it.

[41:58] You want out of here alive,

[41:59] turn that part of your mind off.

[42:02] Kino just wants to keep his head down,

[42:03] serve out the remainder of his sentence and leave.

[42:06] But then he finds out that there is no escaping from the prison.

[42:09] That once his sentence is up,

[42:11] they're just going to transfer him to

[42:12] a different prison and keep shuffling him around until he's dead.

[42:16] He is confronted with the knowledge that he is going to die

[42:19] in this prison and that's what convinces him to step up.

[42:23] How many guards on each level?

[42:26] Never more than 12.

[42:29] This setting is so potent.

[42:32] It's constructed as a metaphor for all life under a totalitarian regime

[42:37] because the defining quality of that kind of regime is that everywhere becomes a prison.

[42:41] Your body is under constant surveillance and control,

[42:44] your labor is coerced,

[42:46] you are physically punished for disobedience,

[42:48] and there's no escape because wherever you go is just another part of the prison,

[42:52] a labyrinth of oppression designed to keep you in chains.

[42:56] Knowing that, the only option becomes to resist,

[43:00] even if it means you won't survive the effort because like Kino says,

[43:03] there is only one way out.

[43:06] Kino knows he probably won't survive.

[43:08] But I'm going to assume I'm already dead.

[43:11] I think he's aware that the prison is surrounded by

[43:13] water and that even if he manages to coordinate a prison break,

[43:17] he might be able to free everyone else,

[43:19] but he will probably drown or be recaptured and executed.

[43:22] He does all of this with that in the back of his mind because he's doing in

[43:26] real-time what Luthen is describing in another part of this episode,

[43:30] that he has been forced to sacrifice everything to fight the empire,

[43:34] even though he knows he won't be able to enjoy the post empire period.

[43:38] I burned my decency for someone else's future.

[43:41] I burned my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see.

[43:45] Everyone is Moses in this episode;

[43:48] leading others to a promised land they cannot enjoy themselves.

[43:51] That's what rebelling costs and why we're also afraid to be the one that stands up.

[43:54] It's why the story has to be about Andor becoming a rebel,

[43:57] even though he explicitly and repeatedly shows that he does not want to be part of it.

[44:02] Because the people doing this work aren't going to see the fruits of this labor,

[44:06] they have to do it for the singular reason that it is immoral to do nothing.

[44:10] He knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel,

[44:15] and when the day comes and those two pull together,

[44:18] he will be an unstoppable force for good.

[44:21] This show takes the process of radicalization seriously and every part of it is

[44:25] a nuanced argument for the necessity of revolution when faced with authoritarianism,

[44:30] and/or totalitarianism, and/or fascism.

[44:33] That's just Andor's arc on this show.

[44:35] There are also plot lines exploring

[44:37] the factional infighting that revolutions must overcome to build a cohesive movement,

[44:42] help those within the political elite or needed to coordinate resistance efforts,

[44:46] the intricacies of a fascist bureaucracy,

[44:49] and a pair of queer characters who have an actual real relationship instead of

[44:53] something that can be excised for China

[44:55] in less time it takes me to write my YouTube titles.

[44:58] Rarely have I seen a piece of pop culture that is such a thorough critique of

[45:01] so many different interlocking systems of control in such an efficient and measured way.

[45:07] I never expected the Star Wars franchise to be

[45:08] capable of doing something like this again.

[45:10] Andor was a show that I had zero excitement for going into its premiere,

[45:13] but it has surprised me at every turn.

[45:15] It's not just good for its franchise or its genre,

[45:18] but some of the best TV this year.

[45:22] Thanks for watching everybody and a big thank you to

[45:25] my patrons for supporting me on Patreon,

[45:28] including Mike Moss and dogbestdog.

[45:30] If you want to support the show and get your name in the credits,

[45:32] just go to patreon.com/justright.

[45:35] Also, I just want to acknowledge everyone who came in after the I, Robot video.

[45:39] We doubled the Patreon,

[45:41] so thank you for that. Keep writing everyone.

[46:23] It's not just fun and/or political,

[46:26] it's not one or the other,

[46:28] it's both and;

[46:31] the other guys that helped destroy a Death Star, the Bothans.

[46:38] Many Bothans died to bring us this information.