Zero Friends Again(Skeleton Crew - S01E06) - Live Action

Discuss the latest Chapter! (Discussion)

How come I'm always wrong about who's the good guy? SPOILERS.

KB needs a Windows update?

Skeleton Crew had no holiday break and even released an episode on New Year's Eve. I am not sure how much sense that makes since people are often busy with many other things around that time. But maybe they have more than enough downtime in the following days to finally watch the episode. The somewhat peculiar timing is also responsible for the later than usual review. The next episode review should be on schedule again, which means next Wednesday.

Not a good guy?

"Zero Friends Again" is in many ways a transitional episode, the episode that is paving the way for the finale, only two more episodes to go after this one. So the main task of the episode is to move all the chess pieces around. Jod and the kids have parted ways in the previous episode, after he dueled Fern for the role of captain. The kids activated a hatch and this dropped them onto a garbage chute and the kids slide all the way down to the snowy surface of the spa planet. Jod meanwhile emerges with all the plunder he can carry from the depths of the spa, only to be first greeted by the spa employees... and then by Brutus and his pirates who were, as you may remember, tipped off by the disgruntled bounty hunter Jod once double crossed.

Jod is put on trial

"Zero Friends Again" is the first Skeleton Crew episode with a proper A, B and even C plot. Jod gets captured by the pirates and we get to see his trial. Jod, the smooth talker that he is, convinces the pirates that it may be better not to throw him out of an airlock and good old Brutus is certainly a good first mate, or so Jod argues, but not really captain material. But Jod is, at least according to Jod himself, and Jod, to save his skin, tells the pirates about the Old Republic mint on At Attin. It is still not explained why OR credits would be so much more valuable. As mentioned previously my best guess is that the OR credits are made from some valuable material like gold whereas the New Republic credits may no longer use any valuable materials, think "gold standard" or "gold dollar". But this is just my own theory, the show has not told us yet why everyone is so keen on getting their hands on Old Republic credits.

Field repairs are needed

We follow Jod's trial uninterrupted, but after Jod smooth talks his way out of certain death and philosophizing about that hunger he has always felt, a hunger that can finally be stilled by getting to the mint, the focus is back on the kids again. The four friends are having an argument on how to best proceed. Fern wants to climb back up to the spa, a perilous undertaking, to reach the ship. KB and Wim disagree though. Wim has found seemingly friendly "trash crab" creatures that chime "follow" and Wim believes it may be a lot better to find an adult or anyone really on the surface who can help them get back to the spa again which is up on a mountain and, as mentioned, not reasily reached, climbing all the way up is not easy. After some arguing it is decided that the kids split up, Fern and Neel will try to climb back to the spa. Wim and KB will follow the crabs.

Mountaineering for beginners

We soon learn why KB disagreed with her best friend Fern about how to proceed. She had briefly blacked out after the trip down the garbage chute... but her problems are not resolved. She never would have been physically able to climb back up. We learn eventually that KB had an accident a while ago, an accident that required extensive surgery, apparently, to the point KB needed to get cybernetic implants that sit deep inside her brain stem, something that explains her somewhat peculiar behavior. KB basically stops being able to move and needs Wim to repair her implant which requires a replacement part. The next bit is a bit silly, since Wim has to basically forge a new part on the fly, but he eventually manages to repair KB's implant in time before she would sustain real damage or even die. In this segment Skeleton Crew also decides to have a few heartfelt messages about how to treat people with disabilities. Skeleton Crew is not really about messages, mostly about fun and adventure, but like any good kids movie or show some messages are usually included. And here we learn that KB's very best friend, Fern, apparently acts as if KB is just the KB of old, without the injury and disability. And while you often hear that you should treat disabled people like everyone else it is of course wrong to treat them as if they are not disabled, they are though, they have a disability. The message here is not heavy handed, no one spells out anything and the audience is supposed to draw their own conclusions, but it is obvious that Skeleton Crew wants the audience to learn that yes, you should not treat disabled people differently, but that pretending their disability does not exist is still wrong and that you have to accept the reality that a disabled person may not be able to do everything a non-disabled person can do. Which doesn't mean you treat them differently, but you have to account for the disability.

Child eating monsters....

After this short heartfeld interlude and a nice character moment for KB, who didn't really have her spotlight before, it's back to the usual fun and adventure routine. Wim and KB follow the crabs to the destination once KB is all patched up... and it turns out the cutesy, tiny crabs have a ginormous very hungry mamma crab... and the tiny crabs merely wanted to lure the kids to their demise... they are supposed to be dinner! Wim has a funny moment of self-realization as he admits that he is just too trusting of folks and that he was wrong about Jod and now the crabs.

Happy reunion

Fern and Neel meanwhile climb up a really long ladder and Neel is having problems, he is the overweight kid after all. But Fern eventually spots a rope and ties it around their waists, so that Neel doesn't need to be afraid of falling all the way down anymore. But before the two can make it to the top they see how some kind of unmanned trash tug boats secure their ship with cables and then begin to fly away, the Onyx Cinder is considered trash and is therefore supposed to be tugged away to the enormous landfill (the spa planet has a serious trash problem!). Fern acts quickly and she and Neel jump on one of the tug barges as they fly by and Fern (do not ask) finds a joystick override and tries to steer the tug boat... which works, to a degree... and as luck would have it Fern steers (tumbles) the tug boat and with it their ship right next to Wim and KB, the chaos after landing (more like crashing) prevents the evil crab monster from eating everyone. And the kids quickly board the ship to be safe again and to fly back to At Attin. KB has the coordinates stored.

Ship eating monsters...

But the adventure is not over yet... because a giant trash eating recycling machine thingy is about to eat the Onyx Cinder. The kids first have to figure out how to even launch the ship, but they have watched SM-33  fly it and quickly figure out how to launch the engines. But it's too late, the Onyx Cinder is already in the maw of the ship eating garbage recycling machine and its "teeth" are already deeply embedded in the hull, preventing the ship from taking off.

A beautiful butterly!

That is when the kids remember that one ominous button in the cockpit they were told never ever ever to touch. But when a giant trash eating recycling monster machine is about to eat your ship and therefore you, who is inside the ship, what other options do you have? So the button is pressed! And we learn that the Onyx Cinder is anything but a flying piece of junk. The hull was just a disguise, made to look the ship old and decrepit and in disrepair. The button triggers a series of small explosions that allow the real Onyx Cinder to emerge from its camouflage and the real Onyx Cinder is a sleek and elegant ship. The kids punch it in and fly away! Off to next week's adventure!

"Zero Friends Again" while not the highlight of the season, the previous episode has that title for now, was still a really fun episode. It had all! Drama with Jod and his pirate trial! Child eating monster crabs! Ship eating monster recycling machines! Drama among the kids! Character development for all the child characters. it was good to see that the kids have all their own personalities and weaknesses (not just in this episode), in modern parlance Fern is not a "girlboss", even if she sometimes behaves like one, but she's shown to be insecure, even wrong about things... and here she's shown to be stubborn, but also caring, when she tries her best to help Neel climb up to the spa. And we also learn, through KB, that Fern was deeply affected by her best friend's accident, to the point she pretends everything is still the same, because she may not be able to cope with it all otherwise. KB and Fern will have to chat about it all eventually, but that may happen off camera. I have to say that the kids here are certainly the best child characters in Star Wars ever, they really managed to recapture the essence of all the great child characters from any of the old Amblin movies! The acting is also pretty good, kudos to the directors who managed to get the kids to act like, well, kids, believable and likable. In fact, this episode was directed by Bryce Dallas Howard who did a really good job here once again, especially since this is the episode with a few more character moments than usual, so the director is more important than usual even, because it was not all just fun, action and adventure. I still wonder then why she has not been offered a Star Wars movie yet.
There was not one boring minute here. But that is also owed to the fact that the episode, with all the fluff removed, was shockingly short: just 26 minutes effective running time. I truly wonder why Disney or Lucasfilm release such short episodes. Why even bother? At best Skeleton Crew is a four part miniseries. But ideally it would have been one 2 1/2 hour movie which is certainly easily achievable if you remove all the fluff like the bizarre side plot about the kids recruited as soldiers for a suicide mission. With such a short episode you may as well not bother with a weekly release schedule at all and just wait until all episodes have dropped to watch the entire "series" in one 4 1/2 hour session, basically one lazy weekend afternoon. Skeleton Crew, which is a lot of fun and really good adventure, is just not a proper series, almost none of the shows on Disney+ are actual shows, they are all movies stretched out thin, but Skeleton Crew is very blatantly a movie artificially cut up into chunks so Disney can have new content for six or seven weeks. I can understand why Disney would want that, but it hurts the show.

That being said the 26 minutes were a lot of fun, a lot of things happened too for such a short running time and the writers even managed to have a nice character moment between all the child and ship eating monsters.

I would also like to comment the decision by the showrunners not to (as of now) make Jod all about redemption and becoming a Jedi again. He almost certainly is an Order 66 survivor who was a padawan when he had to learn to survive on his own. But he's too far down the rabbit hole of survival at all costs and good old greed to suddenly become Obi-Wan 2.0 again after decades of not being a Jedi. Jod is more like Long John Silver from Treasure Island, not necessarily outright evil (he would certainly not murder the kids, even if he threatened Fern with a knife), but he prioritizes his own needs and money over everything else. In a previous episode we already learned that Jod subscribes to a twisted version of the "no attachments" rule the old Jedi order felt was right and necessary. So it will be interesting to see where his journey will take him. I still think there is a small chance Wim and his unwavering belief in Jedi may cause a change of heart in Jod, but I believe it's more likely he will not become the hero, he may help the kids and the people on At Attin against the other pirates, out of self interest (more plunder for him) but he will probably get his hands on some Old Republic credits and then make for a swift exit (or at least he will try, he may get captured for a season 2 that will never happen unfortunately). But we'll see! Skeleton Crew is one of the few Star Wars shows where it's not blatantly obvious how it will all end. We also have to solve the mystery of At Attin and why it's a dystopian hellhole that is only a good place to live on if you merely scratch the surface. And then there's the issue of Captain Rennod whose face we don't know... which almost certainly has reasons. In short: I am looking forward to the conclusion! It's profoundly sad and tragic that one of the best Star Wars shows Lucasfilm has produced (I rank it just below The Mandalorian and Andor, but it is greatly superior to anything else) is mostly ignored. I suppose previous shows did some lasting damage. And Lucasfilm should be extremely worried that even something everyone likes, everyone meaning the people who watch it, fails to gain any traction with the more casual fans and viewers. Also, they should rethink their marketing. The trailer was not good. At all. I had serious misgivings after the trailer.

Anyway... your own personal enjoyment should not depend on what other people think or how many people watch something. "Zero Friends Again" was yet another very solid Skeleton Crew episode, which had a bit of everything. Comedy, drama, action, adventure, lots of fun and even meaningful character moments. It truly is excellent family entertainment, something old and young can enjoy. So if you still haven't given it a chance... give Skeleton Crew a try at least. Maybe wait until all episodes are available and binge the whole thing. It really is the´best Star Wars since Andor and in some ways even superior if you felt Andor lacked that sense of fun and adventure.