Ahsoka, for some reason, is still hanging around Trace and her sister, Rafa, who I could have sworn she said she was going to leave at the end of the last episode because she didn’t approve of their dirty-dealings and their nonchalance at putting people in danger just to make a buck. I guess she put that morality behind her and changed her mind because now she’s accompanying them on a job that goes terribly wrong mostly because everyone in this episode is a big, stupid, dumb idiot.
Since no employment in the Star Wars universe called a “job” is ever a good one, Ahsoka is either incredibly naive or incredibly dense.
Okay, so… I’ve found this season of The Clone Wars disappointing so far. Not terribly disappointing, but I don’t consider it deep or meaningful like the original run. This is more of a neutered version of The Clone Wars and it doesn’t have any right or reason to be.
Still, I wouldn’t call it a bad season because we haven’t had any legitimately bad episodes.
Until this one.
“Deal No Deal” is not just a bad episode, it is an episode so bad and so poorly conceived that I found myself more than once slapping my hand over my mouth despite the fact that the CDC is telling us not to do that. It’s an episode written in what I can only describe as a five-year old’s idea of how a plot should unfold… dense characters, unfathomable decisions, and incredibly lamebrained plans to get out of the mess that any moderately thinking brain damaged person wouldn’t have gotten into in the first place.
The idea that the conflict in this episode is so poorly written that it relies on the characters being a stupid as a backpack of hammers is… well, it’s almost amazing. I cannot believe the mind-numbingly idiotic decisions that the sisters and Ahsoka had to make to get them where they were going at the end cliffhanger to the point where I thought, “Yeah, they really deserve to die at this point.”
Okay, so… I understand that Ahsoka’s not a member of the Jedi Order anymore and that she is rather disenchanted by the attitudes that the people on the lower level have towards her former Force family, but she really dumbs herself down in this episode in service to the plot. This is a girl who has seen the horrors of death and war and then she honestly looks at slaves in the mines of Kessel and acts surprised that it’s happening. “i CaNnOt BeLiEvE sLaVeRy ExIsTs!”
This episode is such a disservice to Ahsoka. Yes, I get that the Jedi life might have sheltered her a little bit, but let’s not forget… Ahsoka is a warrior and soldier. She’s not a monk who has been released into the wild. She’s got more than a rudimentary understanding of how the world works and to see this episode strip it away from her simply because she would normally be too smart to be in an episode this stupid is astoudining.
You could have replaced her with Jar Jar and the episode would have had very little different about it.
To make matters worse, while the trio are in hyperspace Ahsoka and Rafa get into a war of words about the Spice that they are hauling and what it might be used for and then Trace, the obvious Mensa candidate of the bunch, dumps it all into space because she doesn’t want to lose her ship smuggling Spice. “nO sPiCe, No PrObLeM!” she proclaims as though she has just done the smartest thing in the world even though they JUST SAID they were delivering it to a dangerous crime syndicate.
And then Trace acts shocked, “oMg! YoU mEaN tHe GaNgStErS bE mAd At TrAcE? DURRRRRRRRRRRRR!”
Amazingly, it just gets even more cartoony and stupid after this, but this is the low point… this is the dumbest moment of The Clone Wars ever and that’s including the premiere movie if you can believe that and that movie included a Baby Jabba named, “Stinky.”
Still, the stupid is not over with yet. The tin-brained trio go to the gangsters world anyway and try to deliver the empty containers thinking that they would get away with it which is… mind boggling logic. I get that they needed the money and I can understand that they would enact some plan to get it and betray the gangsters… but to basically give them a palate full of empty boxes and get away before they opened them was…
I don’t even have words for it.
Yes, I now that Ahsoka used her Jedi mind trick on one of them (one of them) but Trace and Raffa don’t know she’s a Jedi and so, literally, their plan was to give the gangsters empty boxes, hope they would hand over the money, and then fly away before they opened the boxes.
Whu…. What!?
I was so mentally exhausted by the time this episode was over that, seeing them surrounded by the patrol ships and trapped after their incredibly moronic plan failed, I was actually hoping they got shot down.
This episode should have been called, “Dumb and Dumber and Dumbest.” Literally, this episode’s story could only be advanced by waves and waves of the purest most white-hot stupidity and watching it was insulting.
I’m not mad, Clone Wars… just disappointed.
Forget that, actually… I am mad.
Jason Gaston 