E7 -- another "setup" episode. I feel like Bix is getting sidelined a lot, she's failing the Bechdel test repeatedly now and only exists to reflect on Cassian.
I liked the heartfelt apology/admiration from the one senator to Mon.
so it's clear now (and was kind of postulated earlier) that, while the Empire was looking for alternatives, they've been allowing a rebel presence to flourish on Ghorman so that
It looks like Cyril has either been kept in the dark or assumes too much about the Empire's belief in Order to understand all the chaos it is permitting to ultimately serve its own ends. In this, Dedra is definitely the more complex / flexible thinker. I like how she's trying to both protect yet divert Cyril (to keep him from screwing things up) by appealing to their relationship. It doesn't mean she doesn't mean it, but she's again using it as a tool to achieve a goal as well.
Nice to see the hotel clerk again. There are small pockets of resistance -- official or personal -- scattered throughout the empire.
I should have mentioned how great it is to see Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) again; he doesn't appear a lot, but he seems more intimidating and domineering than he did in Rogue One. Only Mon seems formidable enough on his level to spar with him, but he kind of brushes it all aside as beneath his time.
It has been great. Very much "how do people get involved in a rebellion and how does a rebellion start" thing, not a SW thing.
I thought the motivation by early rebels to make life worse for everyone, by causing authoritarian overreach, fascinating. Most people would rather have comfortable lives, even if restricted by government (ex. China and other places). Give them entertainment and food (aka bread and circuses) and they will put up with tyranny.
This show explains how people mostly sleepwalk through life, and accept the unacceptable because it is easy.
And then the costs, the sacrifices necessary to actually move forward. We know Andor dies in the Rogue One, but how does he and others get to that point.
And for would be dictators, be more careful of those that would pacify with distraction and full bellies than openly repressive, because the pacifiers can keep control and get people to follow for "safety".
Sometimes it is the comfort, other times it is the lack of clarity -- no roadmaps of how to achieve one's ends, even if one were to rebel -- and the sense of feeling like a raindrop falling on a continent and how much sacrifice an individual could make without being able to even make the bare granite notice.
Rogue One is like a convergence of all possible resistance, in that one concrete act of stealing plans by the only person capable of recognizing the plans for what they are, perfectly synchronized into a killshot on the Empire. Most of the resistance and resistance operatives were not so fortunate in having a specific and potent goal defined for them, it was like finding small stress points to hammer pitons into -- at huge personal risk or cost -- wondering which ones would trigger a more massive faultline to emerge .
The more I learn about Andor the more I get interested in watching it. Ive been doing research into it before I watch it. What I have seen thus far has impressed and intrigued me. It looks like a very timely series. Which I appreciate.
At times it can now feel a little too "on the nose," but there's a lot of stuff happening that seems to reflect exactly what is going on in the United States right now -- which is just sick, because the scripts were written and filmed before the current administration came into office.
