Tom Bissell -> Andor (Off-Topic)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, 21:46 (2 days ago) @ Coaxkez

I’ve totally missed the boat on this show. The critical reception is through the roof and word-of-mouth from all my favorite Star Wars nerds is equally adulatory. The last big Star Wars phenomenon I got into was The Mandalorian, which was excellent, but I kind of lost track of it after the second season and haven’t circled back to get caught up again.

I did watch the Boba Fett show they made, which was not great (and was not so much a Boba Fett show as it was The Mandalorian Season 2.5), but at this point, I haven’t been subscribed to Disney+ for years so I’ve honestly lost track of what they’re even doing.

Call me a kid at heart, but I still prefer the stuff they were doing in animation, namely The Clone Wars & Rebels. (The Bad Batch looks interesting, but again, I haven’t been subscribed to Disney+ for years.)

I was 13 when Star Wars came out. Loved it more than anything. Same with Empire. By the time Return had come out, I was starting to see (and not like) the juvenile aspect of Star Wars. After Lucas became a father in 1981, I think he started thinking of Star Wars as primarily children's entertainment, and I've not cared for much after the original trilogy. Didn't like the prequels. Thought The Force Awakens was good, but just a retread of the first movie. Rogue One had a grittier, more realistic tone, and I liked it more. The Mandalorian was a pretty good space western, but the absolute best episode was when Bill Burr went off on their fascist asses (I'm foreshadowing my last paragraph). I couldn't make it through five minutes of their other shows until Andor, I thought they were so bad. I've never seen anything animated. It's not the animation, but the content. I loved the first season of Arcane, for instance, but I've never seen anything to indicate that the animated Star Wars stuff approaches that level. It is for kids, right? No offense to you, but I'm just not interested. For one thing, it holds no sentimental value for me at all.

Andor is something else entirely. It's not for anyone who wants or expects their Star Wars to appeal to their inner kid. The worst thing about it is that it's Star Wars, and has all the associations of Star Wars. It has much more in common with The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, or especially John LeCarre novels. It's a savvy exploration of authoritarianism informed by a knowledge of history, human behavior and relationships, and how rebellions are born. If someone wants lightsabers, it's not their show, but it is S-tier television, straight up.