Do politics dictate how the characters in Cassian's personal orbit feel about him and vice versa?

I mean, yes, absolutely. Politics is the driving factor for Luthen even forming a relationship with him in the first place. Politics decided he was of lower class and is probably the only reason he knows Bix at all. To acknowledge that doesn't take away his agency in actually taking the step to form those connections. Him killing those two cops is politics--they were in a position of authority in that society and thought they could bully him. That's politics! Andor, the show, is absolutely interested in that dynamic. Not to the exclusion of good characters and telling a good story, but you can see that exploration of society everywhere in the show.

[Emphasis mine] I won't edit out the parts of your post I don't address explicitly. I responded after watching the third episode where Luthen knew Cassian for five minutes, so when I said personal orbit, I meant his pre-established relationships--why did people care about him? Why did he care about people? For that matter, we know Luthen is part of the rebellion, who are fighting against the political regime, but what makes him want to? That's beyond politics, and that's what is interesting.

I find [saying politics is behind every aspect of human experience] a very sad and narrow way to view the human condition--a view that denies individual agency (along with much else that makes us human).

I think that's silly, honestly. Our human condition, even on an individual level, is massively determined by the politics of our society and it's structure.

It's silly if you interpret the human condition to mean the opposite of what it's widely understood to mean--it's not the specific conditions in which an individual lives. And I'm not going to touch "structure" again--I find that word represents an unfalsifiable abstraction--it's a conversation ender.

That doesn't erase our own agency in determining our lives and shaping who we are, but it's an inescapable fact of life, and to pretend like our agency isn't at least somewhat determined by our place in that society is naive.

Which is it, massively determined or somewhat determined? I'm always want to hear others' opinions (and yours are always interesting), and I'm even more interested in how you come to them, and how you believe the world operates, and this post is enlightening. You give a lot of agency to politics and not a lot of people (Cassian didn't meet Bix--politics decided that Cassian could meet Bix). I think you have a much more deterministic outlook than I do, and that's probably why we find ourselves talking past one another. If we were talking about psychology, I suspect you're more Freudian, and I'm more Alderian, and that's okay.

I think you're making it something much more insidious than it actually is when I say something is "political." You're looking at that word through too much of a modern twitter lens or something, I think.

Twitter? Nah, never touch the stuff. Rots the brain.

Andor seems undeniably interested in the politics of Star Wars (even outside the obvious of Mon Mothma being a major character). Star Wars has always been about the little guy taking on the big empire, but this is the first time it feels like it's really examining what the politics (both large and small, general and capital P) mean for the average person in the galaxy. We've seen countless Stormtroopers killed on screen, but this is the first time we've seen two random cops killed for being dickheads (while also managing to make one of them at least very slightly sympathetic).

I agree with what you say, I just don't label so much of it as politics. This is the first time I've seen this level of complexity and realism in Star Wars.

We've gone from Greedo retroactively shooting first so that Han isn't the bad guy or something to Andor murdering cops in the back alley. Then we get the supervisor of those cops understanding exactly what happened and trying to get it covered up just so the Empire doesn't come in full force and really take over the sector.

I know, right? Isn't it great?

Yes, like all good stories, this one is about characters and their relationships, but Andor is absolutely interested in exploring how characters live within and are shaped by the politics and society of that galaxy. That it can do both successfully is a testament to how good the show is.

Yes. The story matters most, though, and stories are about people taking action, perhaps despite having been "shaped."

Honestly, I think part of my pushback is not against you, but against people who view their entertainment as good only if it confirms their views. I think more and more people think that way, and you end up with mediocre, predictable art, like "Vice" or "God's Not Dead." The good stuff broadens our views, and the top tier stuff challenges our views by presenting a world nearly as complex as own, which is always more complex than we otherwise could have imagined. I don't know where Andor will land, but I've got high hopes.