Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Clone Wars catchup with episodes 2×14 and 2×15. We continued to focus on Mandalore as we saw how the Senate wanted to “help” the planet going forward. It was a slightly odd argument as the republic looked to almost force in peacekeeping forces against the Duchess’s wishes. The issue was whether or not the republic involvement would make Death Watch more active and dangerous. So can you really put in a “peace keeping” force if they are going to be the reason for the violence. But then again, how peacefully actually is it already?

Now I enjoyed the story well enough, but I felt whole thing had a bit of a plot hole. Why didn’t that assassin just kill the Duchess. They were trying to last episode so it’s not like killing her is off the table. It would surely just have saved everyone some time. Unless Dooku has now gained more say and wants the republic to become involved to further the Separatist agenda…damn politics. It just felt the Duchess had a bit of a lucky escape once it came down to things.

The Duchess-Obi Wan relationship had been built up over the last couple of episodes, meaning that the writers could now use it as they wished without having to put too much focus on it. Obi Wan was able to act as a mediator of sorts and having the back story between them means that her opening up to him does not feel as forced. They could have easily done this story (and this arc) with Obi Wan and the duchess having no prior history and him still giving the same advice. It just wouldn’t have felt as natural and would have just been more the case of the Jedi just getting involved and forcing their opinion to everything that goes on.

The next episode was one that I didn’t really enjoy all that much. For a murder mystery I found it slightly dull. That may have been due to the absence of many of the more interesting characters, and leaving us with Padme to lead the episode. Now there are parts of the Padme character that I really like and I do appreciate her importance to the wider saga, but it just feels a tad unnecessary to have her keep being put in the position to carry episodes of the show on her shoulders. Surely she is nobodies favourite character.

The twist was alright although you could kind of guess it once she was attacked but not killed like the others. A similar thing happened on another show I was watching so maybe that’s what put the thought into my head, but it wasn’t that much of a surprise. The actual argument over whether more troops would escalate the war or help to end it quicker was an interesting one , and felt like it had built upon the arguments for peace that the previous Mandalore episodes had built up. The show tackles these topics of war quite well and this episode was another good example of that. Moving into the latter part of the season now and I hope that this is the last meh episode we get. It was fine, but the episodes this season have got on the whole better so this one kind of stood out as a result of its mediocrity.

DD Rating: (14) 7.5/10 (15) 5/10