4.5/10. I'm going to offer this episode one of the gravest insults one can give an episode of Clone Wars -- this episode felt like something out of the prequels. Why? Because it featured two recurring motifs from the prequels that never worked.
The first is the romance between Anakin and Padme. I get that they're trying to set up Anakin's jealousy here, but the whole love triangle bit and tortured romance between the star-crossed lovers never succeeds beyond giving us a baby's first Tennessee Williams melodrama. While I like a lot of what this show does, romantic relationships have never really been its forte, with Obi Wan and Satine being its only real success. It's not like they have much to work with based on Episodes II and III, but still, the overdramatic love triangle stuff, not to mention the corny fight between Anakin and Rush, felt more like a Star Wars version of The Room than a real, meaningful interpersonal issue.
The second is all the machinations about the banking clan. Again, if there's anything we learned from the prequels, it's that Star Wars doesn't necessarily do byzantine political machination material well. I give Dave Filoni and company more credit than I give Lucas on that front, because they have explored some broader political concepts in a more interesting fashion, but the whole banking clan line of succession business with Clovis was tedious.
On top of that, we get a stock backstory monologue from Clovis that does add some intrigue to his character as an adopted child of the Banking Clan aliens who considers himself a part of that people, but mostly just feels like a cliche, and a similarly perfunctory fight between Anakin and Padme. There is one nice scene between Obi Wan and Anakin, where Kenobi talks about Satine and explains that he knows how Anakin feels. But for the most part, this episode felt like an extension of the worst elements of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in terms of romance. Hopefully the rest of the arc can do better.
..apart of the amazing beating, that was a boring episode!
Shout by LeftHandedGuitaristBlockedParent2020-04-15T13:50:28Z
I'm no fan of stories focusing on Padme, but I think this episode has done the impossible and finally made the Anakin/Padme dynamic interesting. There was also a natural explosion of anger and violence from Anakin which felt more real than anything we've seen before. That's one of the core things the prequel era stories need to make his downfall believable.