Teach/Corrupt

The writers detailing more backstory and character history of the Jedi order and emergence of the Sith is an undeniably great idea. It should provoke nerdgasms in Gen X fans like myself. For me the narrative of Teach/Corrupt has some interesting moments for characters like Qimir and Osha, but it also underwhelms. The visual storytelling on the "unknown planet" is good and the dialogue between the two is okay. However, for me the direction of Qimir's portrayal involves some questionable creative decisions. In the previous action-focused episode he was a suitably vicious Sith Lord, whilst here in more reflective character-driven scenes he is reduced to a brooding young, pinup who appears like he's trying to act cool to impress girls. I guess it's all meant to be part of the seduction of the dark side, but for me this portrayal as a baddie lacks credibility. This might be because I am a forty-something male, but I think a young Sith should show moments of unfettered passion, rage and occasionally spit pure venom with dialogue. I do not blame Manny Jincato, who seems like a really good actor hampered by the script and direction to bring out this persona.

I think other scenes are equally problematic. Lee Jung-jae deserves credit for doing his best to inject life and emotion into scenes involving Sol and Mae. One moment where he has to express anger and frustration with pure body language and facial expression is brilliant, but additionally he has some weak material to work with. Several exchanges where the dialogue simply either explains what has happened, comments on something, says how something feels or speculates what might happen feels awkward. There is little he can do to improve clunky exposition in a script.

The sub-plot involving the character Vernestra feels like it's leading somewhere interesting, but scenes of her visiting previous fight scenes feel quite repetitive.

The characters have not made me fully invest in The Acolyte, particularly Osha and Mae. It is not the fault of Amandla Stenberg, who does her best with the material. It feels like the mysterious past and fate of the two are being drawn out by the slow pace of the overarching narrative to the point that frustrates.

Generally the visuals and art design are as great as you would expect from Star Wars, so I have no complaints there.

Creating suspense always is an act of manipulation. The writer hints at a mystery whilst withholding important information. However, in order to keep your audience interested you need to make it believe that they're "in" on the secret. You need to give them just enough to think that there is an actual progression towards a release of tension, sort of like a trail of crumbs they can follow so that you can take them along your story arc.

Unfortunately, this is where this show fails. There are a lot of "mysteries" but very few "crumbs" to follow. The whole story is spread very thin like way too little butter on a big slice of toast. The result is not added suspense but more a sense of bored bewilderment. You don't understand the characters' motivations, you can't connect the dots and you can't relate to the protagonists. The entire time my brain screams at he show to "Get on with the story!".

The tragedy is that the big bad villain is played by a pretty good actor. He could have been the centerpiece of a compelling narrative. Instead we get a lukewarm sister dynamic I couldn't care less about, a bunch of selfdoubting and clueless Jedi and some alien creatures who serve no purpose but you got to have creatures in Star Wars, right? Right?

This episode was a waste of time and space. A competent writer could have wrapped this up in like five minutes of screen time.

After the most dramatic episode of "The Acolyte" so far, the follow up is...underwhelming. There are a few twists in the tale here that don't make a lot of sense, with lazy writing at the heart of it. Clunky, awkward dialogue riddled with cliches. Can't Disney do any better?

It's interesting that some people really liked "Teach/Corrupt" and other people didn't like it at all. I'm in the former camp. Couldn't get excited. Some strange choices by certain characters wrecked all the momentum from the last episode. It was interesting that just when something exciting happened at the end of the episode, it faded to black and it's basically, "Come back next episode."

One good thing: the scenery in this episode was brilliant, especially those scenes by the water.

A Star Wars story all about twins. Just like the original trilogy. This is just a torturous bottle episode.

Osha and Mae have split off. The pull being after being taken to an unknown planet by and treated by Qimir. He is trying to entice he to the dark side.

Back at the ship. Master Sol seemingly cannot utilise the force to figure out that Mae is pretending to be her sister. At one point she even attempts to kill Sol.

Although it might also be, Sol knows that it is Mae all along.

A character based slow burn but with trite dialogue. As predicted by some, there is a potential switcheroo here. What if Osha becomes evil!

The actor playing Qimir gets to show the results of all those hours spent in the gym.

If I can sum up what's wrong with this show then I'm a word to it's Mog, a weak mumbly character who only speaks the obvious, to then be corrected and shown up by a Master Jedi. As a character he's a non entity, and as an actor we have the real reason the show will never work, he's terrible, a bad script is a bad script but give it to Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, Liam Neeson, even Domnall Gleeson the lines work, but this guy along with almost every other actor in the show, tells it like it is, just garbage. I would blame casting, but to get it this wrong goes upstairs, However the episode had nuggets of what might have been. For the first time the bad guy became interesting and well played, his scenes held my attention, the rest was passable, not really terrible, just pleasant forgettable filler.