Uncle Kal's Words of Wisdom.

Hello all,

As you probably know, I am a co-host on We Talk Clones – your resident Clones Wars podcast here on the EUCantina.net. Stephen, William and I enjoy doing the show and have had some great reviews posted.

I’m posting this one chain of posts here because I have been in contact with one of our listeners concerning our latest podcast concerning “Senate Spy.”

James posted a comment at wetalkclones.podbean.com where he brought up some very valid points about our review and I thought I would watch the show again. I posted my thoughts there and figured I might as well post them here too. You will find below that I posted James initial comment for you all to read;

James starts out below::

” James Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 am e

No offense guys, but it was a little painful listening to this episode. It seems whenever an episode comes around that you don’t like, you spend the whole episode ripping into it and picking it apart. For me it doesn’t make for that great listening, especially when I enjoyed the episode. If you could find someone who does enjoy these episodes, I think it would make for more interesting listing (I’m always available, lol!)

And I am saying this not to simply criticize and hopefully you can understand that.

I enjoyed this episode simply because it had a lot of stuff going on in the background. For one, Notorious by Alfred Hitchcock.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ikko4UU0dg

Dave Filoni’s commentary was also interesting, interesting in a way that made me want to throw a brick at my screen, but still interesting.

wetalkclones Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 12:43 am e

Hi James;

This is Tom responding.

I appreciate you listening and passing along your thoughts. So, to be fair, I will watch the episode again with an open mind and post my thoughts here from the second viewing. And for full disclosure, I just finished Filoni’s commentary and have this to say about it, it was very interesting but now it appears that the only side “not” playing both sides are the Jedi themselves – if that is what we are meant to believe. Filoni and his writers hopefully have this all planned out on some master story line somewhere because if they don’t, this is going to very hard to follow.

But I do have one comment about what he said that I’d like make now. If you didn’t watch his commentary, you would never have known that Neimoidians / Loc Dodd (sp?) sell to both sides. So it appears that the only ones not playing to both sides are the Jedi.

Thanks Again – T

# wetalkclones Says:
October 28th, 2009 at 1:19 am e

Hi James;

This is Tom responding.

As I mentioned above I watched the episode again and watching it for second time I stand by my review.

I did find some more things I liked about the episode especially when it came to the opening sequence between Anakin and Padme. The interaction / dialog between the characters was fun to watch. I liked how Anakin basically “blew off” the lose of his ship when he need to hitch a ride on a freighter to get home. That, by the way, “home” line and Padme’s reaction was a nice touch, gives Anakin some “grounding.”

What bothered me in the beginning was the “exposition” or set-up for the story was too long. I stand by what said that somehow some way if the writers where able to show something in previous episodes to build to this point, it would have made it easier to believe Padme has some kind relationship with Clovis before this point.

I liked the argument in the senate chamber and how Padme was able to use Anakins own words to make her point (which BTW I hate something like happening to me in RL). What bothered me here was they where in the center of the chamber and no one else around heard the disagreement?

Okay, I need to scale back here because I don’t want to be labeled as nit-picking again. To me, this episode “moved to fast” on information that was not supplied to the audience. It made me feel that the writers “assumed” (and I know the double meaning of that word) the audience already knew (like the Jedi council) that Padme had “relations” with Clovis before Anakin.

I guess you can say that (for me) there was no real set-up or bread crumbs to make this whole “spying thing” believable.

With that said, I stand by my rating and also my review calling this episode – flat.

I know that I didn’t spend this time going over the show from beginning to end again. I did that on the podcast. I want be honest on my reviews because if I (or Stephen and William) give every episode the highest rating possible, I think we would lose credibility and the audience that we have.

We appreciate you downloading our podcast and trust me, we enjoy doing it.

Thanks you for your honest feedback – I hope you feel mine was the same.

Tom

I hope you all liked reading through this. I know Stephen, William and I appreciate hearing from you all and rating us on iTunes and the Zune Market place is a good thing too.

And James, if you read my blog here at EUCantina.net, I want to thank you again for posting and hope you enjoy our show going forward.

This is your Uncle Kal saying – Good Night All