Teach/Corrupt

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.

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.

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.

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?

Lots of suspense building and much better dialogue and acting than many previous episodes. I was pleased that they didn't drag out certain elements of the story and that we will be getting to the heart of the matter shortly. So to fill up some the required character count, let me just say once again that it was Lee Jung Jae that brought me back to Star Wars as a series to enjoy, and he has been absolutely stellar in this series. This episode was less action-packed, but that's 100% okay, because the backstory was well presented and I'm even more invested in the outcome. I remain very hopeful for a second or even third season.