4x06 Nomad Droids

4.8/10. Really the only redeeming thing about this episode is C3P0 telling R2 that he thought his astromech buddy would have found a way out of this and he doesn't want R2 to leave him. It's sweet, and about the only decent thing here. Otherwise, this is a strange take on The Wizard of Oz, replete with munchkins, a wizard exposed as a fraud, and a frantic journey to get home. You can only take so much of R2sencrantz and Goldensternum bumbling their way through adventure before it becomes tiring, and the pacing of the episode was very disjointed to boot. Odd, not particularly interesting stuff.

EDIT 5/26/2022: As with the last episode, I revisited this one after watching the 1980s Droids series and hearing this episode was something of a spiritual successor. I can kind of see it. It's a bumbling, Threepio and Artoo adventure, even if there's no bland human counterparts or a need to escape from a villain stronghold that characterized their last set of animated adventures. Likewise, the two droids bickering and getting into trouble, only to affirm their friendship when the going gets tough was a trademark of the old cartoon as well, so it's good to see that beat trotted out again.

Otherwise, the connections are pretty thin. Threepio getting trapped in a vehicle while Artoo drives is their usual style of capering. And they certainly met any number of peculiar aliens and fauna in their journeys. But this owes more to Gulliver's Travels and The Wizard of Oz than it does to the old animated series. It's also fairly boring and scattered, with the two droids leaping from vignette to vignette without much charm or connective tissue. Still, there's something neat to seeing the connections between the pair's silly escapades across decades, even if the wires run pretty thin across the years.