Day (The Acolyte - S01E04) - Live Action Series

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Could this be a splinter order? Or something worse?  SPOILERS.

WHAT. THE. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU....

Another week, another episode of The Acolyte, the new episode is titled "Day" for no apparent reason, but whatever. Mae and Not Ezra Miller fly to the planet the wookiee is on in his self-imposed exile because Mae wants to kill him of course. Meanwhile on Coruscant female Not Yoda, Sol and a few assorted Jedi Masters debate Mae and where and from whom she could have learned her skills. And you know who's part of this discussion group? Ki-Adi-Mundi. Who, until now, was at best a little toddler around that time. But now he's a fully grown adult. Whatever. I can overlook this. What I cannot overlook is the fact that Ki-Adi-Mundi is privy to what is going on, that someone trained in the Force, but not by a Jedi, is killing Jedi. Some other Jedi Master even asks if this could be "something worse". Ki-Adi-Mundi, the guy who about 90 years later or so had the audacity to lie to High Council when he boldly claimed the Sith had not been seen for a millennium... Whose idea was it to include Ki-Adi-Mundi here??? Are we to believe he a) forgot about it all b) never added 1 and 1 together and is dumb as a pile of bricks c) signed an NDA and swore a blood oath never to talk about any of the events? Or did he think to himself, well dark side lesbian space witches maybe are not Sith really, even if they use a red lightsaber, use the dark side and killed all those Jedi.... or will we find out how the Sith somehow addled his mind? AHHHHHHHHH! Who writes this? Vernestra whatever her last name is decides that they will not inform the High Council, which is this show's lame excuse for Yoda never knowing anything. In short, she performs a Holdo maneuver (not revealing anything). So the Jedi are all hush hush now, I want to stop watching already....

WHAT. THE. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.........

Osha is on Coruscant. She just met her dead (presumed) sister who is not dead at all. And of course she decides she wants nothing to do with it and wants to leave. She does not care. Yes, very believable character arc. But since the secret Jedi cabal has decided to investigate the matter and to track down Mae and find her master Sol wants Osha on the team. Somehwat reluctantly she joins the team. They suppose the wookiee will be the next target, they know where he went to about a year ago and fly there. But here's the thing: on Sol's team is Plo-Effing-Koon. Yes, yes, it could be a random Jedi who just looks like Plo-Koon. I guess some folks even still believe in the tooth fairy. WHO WROTE THIS? Since Sol and his entire team will encounter Smilo Ren towards the end of the episode, a person clad all in black, with a ridiculous helmet and wielding a red lightsaber it means Plo Koon saw the Sith (dark sider, it's the same really) in the flesh... he too is on the High Council nine decades later and he NEVER felt he may share his scary encounter with that red lightsaber wielding maniac to anyone? Did he sign the same NDA as Ki-Adi-Mundi? Will this show have the audacity to imply both Jedi were somehow corrupted by the Sith (without their knowledge) and worked from the inside to pull the wool over the Jedi's eyes? WHO WROTE THIS?

The Fellowship of the Force

I really want to stop watching now... whatever... Sol and his Fellowship of the Ring arrive on the planet, they find out where the wookiee is who has not been in contact with anyone for a year or so. They make their way to his last known location. Meanwhile Mae and Not Ezra Miller are also on their way to the wookiee when Mae, just like that, decides she no longer wants to do this. She does not want to kill the wookiee, she does not want to do any of this, she wants to quit, give herself up to the Jedi and hope they'll be lenient with her when she tells them all she knows. Huh? WHAT? Did I fall asleep and miss about two hours of character arc? WHO WROTE THIS???????? This is the most random thing probably ever in Star Wars, and Star Wars had some really random things before. What kind of a character arc is this? ATTACK ME WITH ALL YOUR STRENGHT!!!! Three days later: NAH! What? I mean, you CAN do that, with a proper character arc. This is like Darth Vader randomly deciding out of nowhere at the beginning of Return of the Jedi that he wants to join Luke and fight the Emperor... just like that. Okay.... where are my sedatives!!!!! 

Someone killed Harry (of the Henderson's)... oh noooo

Mae traps Not Ezra Miller and wants to go to the wookiee and surrender herself. But oh no... someone already killed him... he was killed by a lightsaber. What happened to the entire "you must kill the Jedi without a weapon!" and Mae's revenge quest? Sure, yes, we just abandoned all that out of nowhere... yes, I know what they are aiming for here, they are literally copy pasting the Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader redemption arc but forgot to write 75% of his story and went straight from "KILL KILL KILL" to "I am a good girl now". WHO WROTE THIS???????????????????.

The most ridiculous mask in Star Wars ever

Anyway, Mae gets all scared, she senses the presence of her mysterious master... meanwhile Sol and his merry band have found Mae. They used some tracker being. And I will lose a quick word about certain YouTubers... they droned on and on about "custom pronouns", when all that ever happens in this episode is that Osha asks if he is a "he" or "they" and then he is consistently referred to as a "he" in the entire episode. Yet those same folks conveniently never even felt it was more important to mention that Ki Effing Adi Mundi and Plo Koon are in this and witness the events that unfold and the lore implications! Did Disney troll reviewers and send them a different cut of the episode?????????

Bestest Sith evar!

Anyway, Smilo Ren ignites the red saber, Yord, who is probably retarded in a very special way, goes all space cop and actually utters the lines "Identify yourself! Stand down!". WHO. WROTE. THIS??????? For some weird reason Smilo Ren does not react at all to Yord (this is sarcasm), ignites the saber, all the Jedi ignite their sabers and Smilo Ren casually force pushes Osha and eight Jedi ... fade to black. What a stunning cliffhanger! Oh, and Sol promises Osha to tell her everything about the dead lesbian space witches and how they died... woohooo. The reveal about the full story will certainly be stunning and will certainly not paint the Jedi as the bad guys here.

Before anyone claims this may have been just some other dude of the same race....

What did I just watch?

Ok, the good things... the episode is very short, 28 minutes excluding credits and the episode recap. Things look mostly reasonably pretty, but the Jedi temple set looks really, really off and cheap for some reason.

Really... who wrote this? And why? How can anyone justify having Ki-Adi-Mundi and Plo Koon being part of all this? Oh sure, you can come up with any BS reason for them to never even breathe a word about anything to anyone later. Mind wipe. They are secretly controlled by the Sith. They suffer from dementia. Vernestra Whatever made them sign an NDA in blood and made them pinky swear on top of it. Whatever reason it is, it will be terrible and nonsense.

I am not a fan AT ALL of the hush hush Jedi in this. So not only are they overconfident, arrogant, kind of stupid, they now also keep important, super important things from each other because of "politics". I do not care if this may be kind of realistic, we talk about the Jedi, the shining beacons of hope in the galaxy, maybe flawed in the prequels, but never like that. I do not want the Jedi to be like this and I vehememtly oppose the implications here. Star Wars is a space fairytale and moral relativism has no place in Star Wars. The person who wrote this does not get Star Wars at all.

Mae's character arc is a joke. She goes from "Attack me with all your strength" to "I don't want to play with the Sith anymore" just like this. While the basic idea, meeting her sister she believed to be dead, is a good reason for Mae to change her mind you NEED TO PROPERLY EXPLORE THIS. Vader did not randomly join Luke early in Return of the Jedi because he had met him on Bespin. It does not make sense like that! This is all super rushed and the way it is written is just farcical and nonsensical. Again: who wrote this? Who saw the script and greenlit it?

The acting... sorry, Amandla Stenberg, you either cannot act or the director told you to be as bland, flat and unemotive as possible, unless they tell you to REALLY emote, then you mug your way through a scene like when you encounter Smilo Ren. The way she delivers her dialogue is amateurish. Flat. Boring. Sleep inducing. The Sol actor may be an actually great actor, but he really struggles with the English language and it really seems he learned his lines phonetically, therefore his line delivery sounds a bit stilted and the accent is really distracting. Couldn't they have hired ANYONE who can speak English? Or maybe they could have dubbed Sol in post. Sol is the only actor in this I kind of like, but seeing him struggle with the pronounciation is borderline painful.

But most puzzling... all the lore implications. Why? And again, I do not care what kind of BS reason they will come up with why Ki-Adi-Mundi and Plo Koon never shared any of the things they saw and heard and encountered to anyone. If this is all about the Sith somehow infiltrating the Jedi by whatever means it is not a story I want to see. We do not need this story. The prequels provided us with all the info we needed. The Jedi are a bit complacent and overconfident, Palpatine works in the shadows and is super smart and manages to hide all his activities and his strong presence in the Force even. This is all we ever needed. No explanation is necessary. If this show is all about how Smilo Ren actually did all the groundwork for Palpatine they will diminish only his achievements. Again, they already demolished Anakin so I would not be surprised if they reveal the lesbian space boss witch is behind it all really and the thread is just better!

Mae's and Osha's arcs... who wrote this? So Osha meets her sister she believed to be dead... and wants nothing to do with tracking her down or maybe turning her to the light side. She wants to take her leave instead. She truly is the anti Luke of this series. Who would act like this???? Mae on the other hand changes moods just like that and suddenly decides she no longer wants to be evil. Just like that. No warning, no character development, Just "because". Is this supposed to be a display of female capriciousness or is that just more legendary bad writing? Did someone get writing advice from Rian Johnson? Did someone accidentally cut 20 minutes of character development in the editing room and no one noticed it? Who approved this? According to reports Kathleen Kennedy actually cried when she read the script. I also cry when I watch this. Only for very different reasons. Kennedy greenlit this... Filoni was Headland's mentor and he too approved all this, since he's basically been the Chief Creative Officer for years now, even if his title was only updated a short while ago. WHAT. THE. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.......

If this was the first Star Wars ever it would maybe be "average", at best, it is not "horrible" if seen in isolation, just badly acted nonsense with comical character arcs. Since this has to juggle almost five decades of canon and what most fans want the Jedi to be and believe the Jedi are and since it also has to align with The Phantom Menace this is the worst piece of Star Wars on Disney+ by a wide margin.

I mean, picture this.... opening scene Return of the Jedi. Vader on the Death Star II and he randomly decides he no longer wants to be evil and decides to join his son instead. Audiences would have been "WTF???!?!?!?!?!". We get this literally here in The Acolyte. They spent 180 million on THIS? Someone was paid for writing this story? And everyone at Lucasfilm was.... "Stunning! Brave! Creative!"?

Or picture this... closing scene of The Empire Strikes Back. Luke tells Leia that he has no interest in confronting his father who is not dead after all... he wants to quit and become a moisture farmer instead, so byeeeeeeee... the audience would have certainly been impressed by the clever subversion here... right? RIGHT? Or maybe they would have demolished the theater and would have shown up at Lucas' home with torches and pitchforks. Probably the latter. Just a hunch. Osha's arc is exactly like that. WHO WROTE THIS AND WHO PAID THEM MONEY FOR THAT?

I want to stop watching this travesty and this is the first time ever I have felt like this about a Star Wars series. Apart from being boring it's nonsensical, Character arcs are nonsense. Acting is atrocious. Dialogue is amateurish. I do not care who Smilo Ren is or why Ki-Adi-Mundi and Plo Koon conspired to never tell anyone on the High Council about any of this or if hypnotoad made them all forget about it. Make it stop, please!

My advice, watch a show like Severance. You can thank me later. Severance is a spritual successor to LOST in the best possible manner. It has a really great mystery, great acting, a plot that will keep you guessing, a sweet gay romance subplot, a very interesting romance between a man and woman, it is filmed beautifully and often looks like an actual movie (think Andor). Watch this. And if you enjoy The Acolyte or this episode I envy you. I hate not liking Star Wars. But I can only take so much nonsense. I was able to forgive slowmo Vespa chases, fan film level of Kenobi fighiting Vader in a quarry, Lil Leia outrunning adults, hiding Lil Leia under a coat, Kenobi not easily walking around a laser barrier, Boba Fett needing a nap every 20 minutes and being the only crime lord in history to never commit any crimes, Sabine and Reva shrugging off major lightsaber penetration through the torso and everyone forgiving Sabine for starting a massive galactic war that will kill billions potentially, just so she can say "hello" to Ezra, or Baylan randomly sending Shin on her way... but this... this, for me, is the straw on the camel's back. Enough is enough. This needs to stop NOW! Nothing makes sense. No future episode will ever retroactively turn this into Shakespeare. And if you did love it... please explain what is great about all this.

Ok, until next week then... Unless I decide I've had enough. Not sure yet.

0.5 Holocrons. This was an insult. At least it was swift, short and not needlessly long. Thank you for that, I guess.