An Upswing ft. #droidfeelings | Andor S1E7 | Dudes Daily
After being pretty critical of last episode, this one immediately felt markedly better. Cassian and Luthen's scenes still feel a little thin, but the rest of the episode was quite good. Mon Mothma's cocktail party subterfuge is the best payoff that character and storyline have provided so far.
I also really appreciate the meeting scene where Dedra puts down Blevin's attempt to get her in trouble for going around his back. It's peak smart-core, almost Sorkin-esque writing, and you can imagine Martin Sheen as the ISB Major being swayed by her justifications. That style of rhetorical sparring resulting in the advancement of absolute fascism is really sharp politically, and is a moment where I really see why lefty folks have been so positive on the show.
The way the show cuts from Cassian on Ferrix to his arrest on Unnamed Beach World is really economic, although it does make some of the show's other choices on where to elide time seem sloppy in comparison.
#droidfeelings: Since starting the show, I've been ruminating on Droids' purpose in Star Wars' DNA as a franchise. In its adaptation of adventure fiction, it seems to me that droids fill a certain structural position of characters that can be as human as they need to be but ultimately disregarded as full people, sidekicks and mooks to more important characters. This is also a character type in adventure fiction, often a racialized, disabled, or otherwise othered character who can be taken less seriously than the main players.
B2EMO demonstrates this in pretty stark terms, as he seems to be treated closer to a pet by Cassian and Maarva than a full person. It's not hard to imagine his lines delivered by a talking dog, for the most part. And the choice to give him a stutter makes the connection to issues of ability fully literal, in what feels like the show's most unfortunate choice altogether.
Perhaps because I was already primed to this reading, Cassian's encounter with the police droid in this episode comports to it as well. In particular, the droid's literal and violent interpretation of the cop's instruction to "hang on" to Cassian can be read a couple ways. In what seems to be the intended meaning, it's the uncaring structure bringing authority down, callous and inhuman in its application of the letter of the law. But simultaneously, it's hard not to think of this scene as tapping into certain ableist or racist tropes of oblivious/uncaring brutishness by using this missed social cue as a cheap punchline.