5x13 Point of No Return

7.5/10. It probably goes without saying at this point, but I was pretty tired of the Gascon/WAC-47 team from the beginning. But damnit if this wasn't a nice little end to their arc. The entire way that Gascon's emotional journey has been handled over these past four episodes -- initially hating droids and thinking himself superior to risking his life for them -- involved one too many narrative shortcuts for my tastes. It's a paint-by-numbers story about changing one's mind, and I don't know that we needed yet another heroic sacrifice this time the fairly forgettable BZ astromech droid to drive that home, but still. This episode was the culmination of Gascon's change of heart, and while that element of it was hit or miss, the rest of the episode was enjoyable.

For one, the premise of a ship full of explosives headed for a Republic conference gave the episode both stakes and tension. Sure, the big bomb is another cliche, but it gave our heroes a defined mission with real risk to it. At the same time, it was nice to see some of the old droid designs from the original series come back, and for once D-Squad and their accomplices' adventures felt more like a Toy Story or Brave Little Toaster adventure than a story starring Scrappy Doo. Plus, the action was unexpectedly good here. The scene were R2 creates a flaming perimeter with those bug droids was a visual treat. In the same vein, I'm pretty inured to big space explosions at this point, but the big rainbow blast eminating from a ship rhydonium was surprisingly striking here. The sequence was well directed and animated, with the various stages of the explosion and the flying debris heading toward Anakin and Obi Wan's ship in particular conveying the sort of chaos in the wake of the blast well.

Overall, it's far and away the best episode of the Gascon arc, and while I wouldn't exactly be on board with seeing more of those characters, I'm glad they figured out something neat to do with them at the end of this quartet of episodes.