Teach/Corrupt

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.

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.

It's very easy to see why the 30 minute episode is not fitting for most Star Wars projects. The first season of Mando and Andor were great Star Wars TV shows that benefited from the TV show format. That's not the case with every other Star Wars show I've seen and Acolyte is no exception. Drip feeding is 30 minutes of show at a time is agonizingly slow. It cuts off all tension in between episodes which really harms the experience of watching the show. This episode was no different. It starts off extremely boring and slow, when it finally builds up to something interesting, episode is over. Imagine watching Avengers Endgame and the show cuts away right when Captain America leads the final charge towards Thanos and says "please wait a week to see the rest." That's a terrible idea but that's what Disney Star Wars shows do EVERY, SINGLE, EPISODE.

I feel like if the Acolyte was developed as a movie it would r be getting as much hate as it has gotten. All of the problems would still exist but at least in a movie you'll feel somewhat satisfied after watching the full length. These writers don't know how to write for a TV show, I don't know if they're skilled enough to write for a movie either but this is really starting to tick me off. When is Disney Star Wars going to man up and make their next project into a movie?

I can't believe how this show keep showing us how low it can go. This latest episode unsurprisingly is not much different than the rest and the run time is again shockingly low with no action to be seen except the new lightsaber whip only shown for one pathetic second. The only bright spot is the character Qimir whose story arc is thankfully breathing much needed life into this otherwise very normal and short episode. The weakest and most annoying link in this series is still the twins story arc. Hope the next few episode will try to stop building on them and instead focus more on Qimir and Master Sol who may well turn the show around in this uneventful episode.

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.