Meet the Team | Andor S1E5 | Dudes Daily
Despite the fact that the show has cut out one of the most fun heist story components (getting the team together), the Aldhani heist preparation plotline is compelling. The tension in the crew works well enough, and its dissipation at the end of the episode is believable.
And yet, there's a distinct whiff of the contemporary Marvel/Disney blockbuster storytelling to the whole thing. Nemik's radical politics and youthful exuberance feel focus-tested to allow any viewer to project their own perspective onto it; progressive agreement, conservative scorn, liberal patronizing dismissal. Similarly, the multiple implications in this episode that Cinta and Vel are together seems designed for a cheap "reveal" that lesbians might exist, or else baiting that relationship for a while. It just all feels so coldly calculated to hit a corporate formula.
I think it's particularly highlighted for me by this project, where all the other shows are from the 90s and early 2000s. Certainly they have their own tropes (and a lot of overlap), but they grate on me a lot less than the contemporary equivalents. And I know I'm also bringing the baggage of having heard Andor pitched for years as "the good Star Wars show," which probably exaggerates these friction points even more.
The plots on Coruscant had very little incident this episode, all those characters seem to be in a holding pattern until the heist.