I didn’t mind the lack of recap in Res Dogs, but that’s probably because I checked the show cast right at the beginning to remind myself who Maximus, Irene, etc. were. But I do that often in this show at the start of a new season, when I can’t quite remember which elders are related to which kids.
I don’t know how representative my parents are of the average Disney + viewer, but I do know if they had turned on Ahsoka and been greeted with an animated recap, they’d have said “I didn’t know this was a show for kids” and turned it off. They’re part of what I’d guess is a not-insignificant subset of TV viewers who still see animation as immediately signaling that they’re watching a show made with children in mind. I even had to reassure them that the Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover would become live action after a few minutes because they’d have been likely to nope right out of it. I can just picture the meetings at Lucasfilm debating whether the additional context from a “previously on” is worth opening in a different medium and potentially turning off some viewers.
Yeah, that’s why I ultimately landed on using a diegetic bit of exposition up front, but I get they wanted to start with the Raiders riff and action scene.
I've been hesitant to jump into Ahsoka precisely because I haven't watched Clone Wars and Rebels, even if I am up to date on most other Star Wars canon. The Game of Thrones comp actually helps - I watched that show before ever reading a page of the books, so thinking of Rebels as source material being adapted here instead of mandatory content that you must watch first makes the idea of jumping in much less daunting.
Yep, it's very much like Game of Thrones. People complained back then in a similar way, but it honestly took a few episodes for me to figure out the world and who everyone was. I like it when a show doesn't talk down to its audience, and that's how it feels with Ahsoka so far. If people have seen the animated series', I'm sure that gives them a certain additional understanding of the plot, but I haven't seen them and I didn't have a hard time figuring out who people were and what they are trying to do.
Well so far Ahsoka is pretty bad. I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's bad because I didn't do the homework because otherwise ....
Ashoka would probably work better as animated series. While it may not have drawn in as many viewers, since many still view animation as kids stuff, it would have made it clear that this is a follow-up to Rebels.
According to rumors, Ahsoka was originally intended to be animated but switched mediums following the success of Mandalorian.
I'm nope-ing right out of “Ahsoka” Dave Filoni’s involvement was enough to make me apprehensive about it, and it sounds like my fears have been confirmed in the reviews I've read. To me, the main difference between what Ahsoka is doing and what Reservation Dogs did, is that Dave Filoni is so fixated on canon, which makes it nearly impossible for an episode or a series to stand on its own.
I thought “House Made of Bongs” worked perfectly fine on its own. Does it matter if it doesn't answer some specific question in the show? Probably not. I really like the main characters on the show, but it’s sort of refreshing that they are willing to tell the stories they want to tell, regardless of how much people want to see Cheese each week. Maybe this one is an ’80s TV style spinoff episode :)
Obiwan carried over the Inquisitors from one of the animated series, if I'm not mistaken. And the events surrounding those characters seemed to have much less impact for someone with no previous exposure to them (me).
Okay, fair point on the Inquisitors, but that wasn’t really plot and character driven, given that they invented Reva’s arc for the series. They may have cribbed from the animated canon, but they paid no mind to it.
I haven't watched Ahsoka yet because I knew I had some catching up to do, and found it interesting that D+ curated a number of Ahsoka backstory episodes from The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, and Boba Fett that you can all watch in order to get caught up (which I am doing). So maybe that was their solution to the "no animated recap" situation? I also hope that Our Flag Means Death is on your fall schedule now that they announced the October release date for s2!
Yes, on the banner scroll up above--they have a set of curated episodes for each show, and when you click through, it takes you to the list of episodes.
Oh, hmm, I haven't made it to Rebels yet, but with The Clone Wars episodes, it did suggest the next curated episode to me (I find D+'s autoplay rather clunky, so I often hit "back" to manually hit play on the "up next" episode, but IDK if that would make any difference here).
I really didn't mind the lack of "previously on" stuff for Ahsoka, despite never having seen the animated series', because the opening crawl helped to establish what kind of Star Wars story this would be. The opening crawl has always been used as a bit of a recap and stage-setting, even for things that never appeared on screen, and part of the fun of Star Wars to me has been how it often just throws you into the middle of a story and you're expected to keep up. The original trilogy always had important events that happened off-screen between movies, and were just barely mentioned in the opening crawl, and that was part of the charm, creating a sense of mystery as you tried to figure out what was going on, and filling in the blanks with your imagination. Sure, it helped that I know Thrawn from the now-non-canon original trilogy of books about him, but I didn't know most of the characters or what happened to Ezra, but why would I need to know that? The hologram of Ezra tells you all you need to know, that he was very important to Sabine and the others, that he sacrificed himself somehow to defeat Thrawn, but it's also clear that no one saw him or Thrawn die, otherwise they wouldn't be searching for him.
Anyway, this feels like much ado about nothing, people complaining about the show following in the long tradition of serialized storytelling where you are thrown into the middle of a story without spending time on exposition or recaps or flashbacks. I think it's a good way to tell a story.
I think that’s a healthy perspective, and one that I honestly think a lot of offline viewers would have worked fine with.
But the demo discussing this, here and elsewhere, are online enough to know that there’s this other text out there, and I think that contributes to the frustrations.
This is different. You're talking about films referring to events that happened before the time period the films cover or in between films but are never actually portrayed on screen.
So? Can't I just pretend there wasn't any animated series? I'm saying I didn't think it mattered in this case whether you've seen them or not. At least I didn't find it to be a problem.
It's different than basically requiring having seen some earlier thing to understand the current thing. An actual filmed/animated depiction with all kinds of detail exists which makes it way more complicated than a couple lines of dialogue saying something called "the clone wars" happened once or whatever. Also, it's human nature to feel like you missed out if it's something you could've seen versus characters talking about something only happened offscreen
What was it about the first two episodes of Ahsoka, exactly, that made you feel like the animated series' were "required" viewing?
Here are all the key plot points (spoiler alert) that are clear just from watching the episodes, without having done any research:
--The opening crawl establishes that it takes place after the original trilogy, that Ahsoka is a former Jedi, that she is searching for a Grand Admiral that went missing, and is looking for a map that will show where he is, and that she got that information from an imperial woman who was captured.
--There is a mural dedication scene, and on that mural is a group of people and droids that are pretty obviously important to the story.
--Ahsoka meets with several of the people in the mural, and it's obvious that they share a lot of history together, but that there is a lot of tension between Ahsoka and Sabine.
--Later they establish that Sabine was Ahsoka's apprentice at one time, that Sabine is not very skilled in the force but can wield a lightsaber, and that they had a falling out.
--The holo recording of Ezra makes it pretty obvious that he was part of their crew at one point, and he sacrificed himself to stop Thrawn, but it's also clear from the episode that Ahsoka thinks he might still be alive, since she believes Thrawn to be alive.
--There are a few Sith-like bad guys who board a ship and free the imperial lady who knows about Thrawn.
--Ahsoka finds the map, tries to stop the bad guys from getting a hyper-drive, etc.
--There are a couple fun droids that are also part of the gang.
What about this requires any prior knowledge of the animated series? What am I missing, exactly? I've had the experience of watching a show that had "required viewing" and was incomprehensible without it, but this show is very clear so far.
I think this is a case where people on the internet want to be spoon-fed all the information and lore, or feel FOMO if they know that a prior story exists in the world, but instead of just deciding to either catch up with those prior stories or accepting that it's not necessary, they complain. But imagine if they did a long "previously on" recap, or had a long exposition scene, or a longer crawl explaining more things...people would then accuse Disney of spoon-feeding them and condescending to them.
Look, YouTube exists, and I'm sure there are plenty of annoying "explainer" videos that recap all the animated series backstory in 20 minutes. But none of that is necessary when a story is well--told, providing all the context you need to know naturally, through the story. Things like the opening crawl, the mural, characters establishing their relationship through dialogue and, you know, acting...that's all you need. And I think these episodes did a great job of doing so.
FOMO is a choice, you can choose to feel it or not. And if you feel it so badly, just watch the animated series! They exist. But this notion that it's required viewing is just not true in my opinion.
Frankly for me it's not FOMO it's the fact that I didn't think these two episodes were very good and I was hoping it was because of missing the context of Rebels/Clone Wars/whatever else. You've worked very hard to convince me that this isn't the case and there's nothing more than meets the eye to what I saw. In this case I'm forced to conclude that the show is just bad. Something tells me that wasn't the outcome you were hoping for though
Having jumped into some comic book storylines part way I’m used to it. Definitely helps though that I often have prior knowledge of the characters. Plus, writers were good about continuing stories while also being aware that some people would be coming in mid-story arc.
Something that just struck me reading this, re: Ahsoka, is that the “timeline” is messy on Star Wars these days. Having watched Rebels, and Mando, I still had to be “Ok, so this is post-Return of the Jedi but pre-Force Awakens, and these characters have history spanning the prequel trilogy through the Empire’s defeat...”
A diagetic opening for it -- they even had Lothal’s anniversary celebration thingy! -- both explaining where we are in Star Wars and the relevant Rebels details would’ve worked. Specially with Clancy Brown delivering it, what a voice.
On Reservoir Dogs though, I’m fine as is. Even without picking up the context and connections, this is a show that you take episode by episode (hence why recapping is though, as mentioned elsewhere in Episodic Medium), and there’s something to be gained even without connecting things. The characters and relationships felt lived in, and it being the final season, it adds to the meta level of “we won’t see our main crew again, but there have been many like it and there’ll be more” which I always enjoy as shows wrap things up.
Had a relative who thought Mandalorian was a prequel because everyone called Grogu Baby Yoda. It wasn’t until the end of Season 2 when a certain character showed up that he realized when the show took place.
Oh boy, you are speaking my language this week, as someone who was going to watch Ahsoka until multiple people confirmed it was basically a fifth season of Rebels, so I'm just going to get around to watching Clone Wars and Rebels now because clearly that homework is gonna be necessary or at least relevant for an indeterminate number of shows Filoni does, and as someone who watched "House Made of Bongs" thinking it was about random unconnected characters before reading a piece online that explained who the fuck everyone was.
Time to write about "previously on" without referencing Rick and Morty's offshoot character "Previous Leon" 😅
I think that it needs to be done very carefully, if at all, to catch viewers up. When it happens on Only Murders in the Building, for example, they sort of ham-fist the important lines of dialogue and character beats that will be relevant for this upcoming episode, but it does sort of kill any kind of thoughtful viewing/speculating that can be done in between episodes for this show, when the mystery is sort of the whole point. Shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul could get away with amazing "previously on" segments, because Gilligan took the time to build a world and slowly, carefully lay down the plot points that would become relevant later on.
Basically, you need to trust your audience and be patient enough to construct your world/characters appropriately in order for "previously on"s not to just throw up some important plot shit from prior episodes that will matter for this current episode. They should be HINTS of what will happen, not spoonfuls of exposition dumps.
I didn’t mind the lack of recap in Res Dogs, but that’s probably because I checked the show cast right at the beginning to remind myself who Maximus, Irene, etc. were. But I do that often in this show at the start of a new season, when I can’t quite remember which elders are related to which kids.
I don’t know how representative my parents are of the average Disney + viewer, but I do know if they had turned on Ahsoka and been greeted with an animated recap, they’d have said “I didn’t know this was a show for kids” and turned it off. They’re part of what I’d guess is a not-insignificant subset of TV viewers who still see animation as immediately signaling that they’re watching a show made with children in mind. I even had to reassure them that the Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover would become live action after a few minutes because they’d have been likely to nope right out of it. I can just picture the meetings at Lucasfilm debating whether the additional context from a “previously on” is worth opening in a different medium and potentially turning off some viewers.
Yeah, that’s why I ultimately landed on using a diegetic bit of exposition up front, but I get they wanted to start with the Raiders riff and action scene.
I've been hesitant to jump into Ahsoka precisely because I haven't watched Clone Wars and Rebels, even if I am up to date on most other Star Wars canon. The Game of Thrones comp actually helps - I watched that show before ever reading a page of the books, so thinking of Rebels as source material being adapted here instead of mandatory content that you must watch first makes the idea of jumping in much less daunting.
Yep, it's very much like Game of Thrones. People complained back then in a similar way, but it honestly took a few episodes for me to figure out the world and who everyone was. I like it when a show doesn't talk down to its audience, and that's how it feels with Ahsoka so far. If people have seen the animated series', I'm sure that gives them a certain additional understanding of the plot, but I haven't seen them and I didn't have a hard time figuring out who people were and what they are trying to do.
Well so far Ahsoka is pretty bad. I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's bad because I didn't do the homework because otherwise ....
Ashoka would probably work better as animated series. While it may not have drawn in as many viewers, since many still view animation as kids stuff, it would have made it clear that this is a follow-up to Rebels.
According to rumors, Ahsoka was originally intended to be animated but switched mediums following the success of Mandalorian.
https://insidethemagic.net/2021/01/star-wars-rebels-sequel-rwb1/
I'm nope-ing right out of “Ahsoka” Dave Filoni’s involvement was enough to make me apprehensive about it, and it sounds like my fears have been confirmed in the reviews I've read. To me, the main difference between what Ahsoka is doing and what Reservation Dogs did, is that Dave Filoni is so fixated on canon, which makes it nearly impossible for an episode or a series to stand on its own.
I thought “House Made of Bongs” worked perfectly fine on its own. Does it matter if it doesn't answer some specific question in the show? Probably not. I really like the main characters on the show, but it’s sort of refreshing that they are willing to tell the stories they want to tell, regardless of how much people want to see Cheese each week. Maybe this one is an ’80s TV style spinoff episode :)
Obiwan carried over the Inquisitors from one of the animated series, if I'm not mistaken. And the events surrounding those characters seemed to have much less impact for someone with no previous exposure to them (me).
Okay, fair point on the Inquisitors, but that wasn’t really plot and character driven, given that they invented Reva’s arc for the series. They may have cribbed from the animated canon, but they paid no mind to it.
For me, it was mostly the attempted murder of the Grand Inquisitor. It seemed like they wanted it to a big moment. It didn't carry a lot of weight.
I haven't watched Ahsoka yet because I knew I had some catching up to do, and found it interesting that D+ curated a number of Ahsoka backstory episodes from The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, and Boba Fett that you can all watch in order to get caught up (which I am doing). So maybe that was their solution to the "no animated recap" situation? I also hope that Our Flag Means Death is on your fall schedule now that they announced the October release date for s2!
Where was that curated set of episodes? On the banner scroll, or buried?
Yes, on the banner scroll up above--they have a set of curated episodes for each show, and when you click through, it takes you to the list of episodes.
Ah, there it is on the homepage—an interesting approach, although a bit of a passive one.
Yeah, you definitely need to pay attention. Since I specifically opened D+ for Ahsoka, it caught my eye immediately.
I also noticed that it doesn’t function as an actual playlist - when I went to next episode, it just played the next episode of Rebels.
Oh, hmm, I haven't made it to Rebels yet, but with The Clone Wars episodes, it did suggest the next curated episode to me (I find D+'s autoplay rather clunky, so I often hit "back" to manually hit play on the "up next" episode, but IDK if that would make any difference here).
I really didn't mind the lack of "previously on" stuff for Ahsoka, despite never having seen the animated series', because the opening crawl helped to establish what kind of Star Wars story this would be. The opening crawl has always been used as a bit of a recap and stage-setting, even for things that never appeared on screen, and part of the fun of Star Wars to me has been how it often just throws you into the middle of a story and you're expected to keep up. The original trilogy always had important events that happened off-screen between movies, and were just barely mentioned in the opening crawl, and that was part of the charm, creating a sense of mystery as you tried to figure out what was going on, and filling in the blanks with your imagination. Sure, it helped that I know Thrawn from the now-non-canon original trilogy of books about him, but I didn't know most of the characters or what happened to Ezra, but why would I need to know that? The hologram of Ezra tells you all you need to know, that he was very important to Sabine and the others, that he sacrificed himself somehow to defeat Thrawn, but it's also clear that no one saw him or Thrawn die, otherwise they wouldn't be searching for him.
Anyway, this feels like much ado about nothing, people complaining about the show following in the long tradition of serialized storytelling where you are thrown into the middle of a story without spending time on exposition or recaps or flashbacks. I think it's a good way to tell a story.
I think that’s a healthy perspective, and one that I honestly think a lot of offline viewers would have worked fine with.
But the demo discussing this, here and elsewhere, are online enough to know that there’s this other text out there, and I think that contributes to the frustrations.
I agree, but I guess I put more of the blame on "internet culture" than on Disney, in this particular case.
This is different. You're talking about films referring to events that happened before the time period the films cover or in between films but are never actually portrayed on screen.
So? Can't I just pretend there wasn't any animated series? I'm saying I didn't think it mattered in this case whether you've seen them or not. At least I didn't find it to be a problem.
It's different than basically requiring having seen some earlier thing to understand the current thing. An actual filmed/animated depiction with all kinds of detail exists which makes it way more complicated than a couple lines of dialogue saying something called "the clone wars" happened once or whatever. Also, it's human nature to feel like you missed out if it's something you could've seen versus characters talking about something only happened offscreen
What was it about the first two episodes of Ahsoka, exactly, that made you feel like the animated series' were "required" viewing?
Here are all the key plot points (spoiler alert) that are clear just from watching the episodes, without having done any research:
--The opening crawl establishes that it takes place after the original trilogy, that Ahsoka is a former Jedi, that she is searching for a Grand Admiral that went missing, and is looking for a map that will show where he is, and that she got that information from an imperial woman who was captured.
--There is a mural dedication scene, and on that mural is a group of people and droids that are pretty obviously important to the story.
--Ahsoka meets with several of the people in the mural, and it's obvious that they share a lot of history together, but that there is a lot of tension between Ahsoka and Sabine.
--Later they establish that Sabine was Ahsoka's apprentice at one time, that Sabine is not very skilled in the force but can wield a lightsaber, and that they had a falling out.
--The holo recording of Ezra makes it pretty obvious that he was part of their crew at one point, and he sacrificed himself to stop Thrawn, but it's also clear from the episode that Ahsoka thinks he might still be alive, since she believes Thrawn to be alive.
--There are a few Sith-like bad guys who board a ship and free the imperial lady who knows about Thrawn.
--Ahsoka finds the map, tries to stop the bad guys from getting a hyper-drive, etc.
--There are a couple fun droids that are also part of the gang.
What about this requires any prior knowledge of the animated series? What am I missing, exactly? I've had the experience of watching a show that had "required viewing" and was incomprehensible without it, but this show is very clear so far.
I think this is a case where people on the internet want to be spoon-fed all the information and lore, or feel FOMO if they know that a prior story exists in the world, but instead of just deciding to either catch up with those prior stories or accepting that it's not necessary, they complain. But imagine if they did a long "previously on" recap, or had a long exposition scene, or a longer crawl explaining more things...people would then accuse Disney of spoon-feeding them and condescending to them.
Look, YouTube exists, and I'm sure there are plenty of annoying "explainer" videos that recap all the animated series backstory in 20 minutes. But none of that is necessary when a story is well--told, providing all the context you need to know naturally, through the story. Things like the opening crawl, the mural, characters establishing their relationship through dialogue and, you know, acting...that's all you need. And I think these episodes did a great job of doing so.
FOMO is a choice, you can choose to feel it or not. And if you feel it so badly, just watch the animated series! They exist. But this notion that it's required viewing is just not true in my opinion.
Frankly for me it's not FOMO it's the fact that I didn't think these two episodes were very good and I was hoping it was because of missing the context of Rebels/Clone Wars/whatever else. You've worked very hard to convince me that this isn't the case and there's nothing more than meets the eye to what I saw. In this case I'm forced to conclude that the show is just bad. Something tells me that wasn't the outcome you were hoping for though
Having jumped into some comic book storylines part way I’m used to it. Definitely helps though that I often have prior knowledge of the characters. Plus, writers were good about continuing stories while also being aware that some people would be coming in mid-story arc.
Something that just struck me reading this, re: Ahsoka, is that the “timeline” is messy on Star Wars these days. Having watched Rebels, and Mando, I still had to be “Ok, so this is post-Return of the Jedi but pre-Force Awakens, and these characters have history spanning the prequel trilogy through the Empire’s defeat...”
A diagetic opening for it -- they even had Lothal’s anniversary celebration thingy! -- both explaining where we are in Star Wars and the relevant Rebels details would’ve worked. Specially with Clancy Brown delivering it, what a voice.
On Reservoir Dogs though, I’m fine as is. Even without picking up the context and connections, this is a show that you take episode by episode (hence why recapping is though, as mentioned elsewhere in Episodic Medium), and there’s something to be gained even without connecting things. The characters and relationships felt lived in, and it being the final season, it adds to the meta level of “we won’t see our main crew again, but there have been many like it and there’ll be more” which I always enjoy as shows wrap things up.
Had a relative who thought Mandalorian was a prequel because everyone called Grogu Baby Yoda. It wasn’t until the end of Season 2 when a certain character showed up that he realized when the show took place.
Oh boy, you are speaking my language this week, as someone who was going to watch Ahsoka until multiple people confirmed it was basically a fifth season of Rebels, so I'm just going to get around to watching Clone Wars and Rebels now because clearly that homework is gonna be necessary or at least relevant for an indeterminate number of shows Filoni does, and as someone who watched "House Made of Bongs" thinking it was about random unconnected characters before reading a piece online that explained who the fuck everyone was.
Time to write about "previously on" without referencing Rick and Morty's offshoot character "Previous Leon" 😅
I think that it needs to be done very carefully, if at all, to catch viewers up. When it happens on Only Murders in the Building, for example, they sort of ham-fist the important lines of dialogue and character beats that will be relevant for this upcoming episode, but it does sort of kill any kind of thoughtful viewing/speculating that can be done in between episodes for this show, when the mystery is sort of the whole point. Shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul could get away with amazing "previously on" segments, because Gilligan took the time to build a world and slowly, carefully lay down the plot points that would become relevant later on.
Basically, you need to trust your audience and be patient enough to construct your world/characters appropriately in order for "previously on"s not to just throw up some important plot shit from prior episodes that will matter for this current episode. They should be HINTS of what will happen, not spoonfuls of exposition dumps.
I'm not finding Ahsoka "nonsense" but pretty damn close as someone who hasn't done the homework