Slow Down Again | Andor S1E8 | Dudes Daily
The BDS movement has called for a boycott of Disney+. I do not subscribe to Disney+, and don't recommend you do either. If my audience were larger, I would seriously consider dropping Andor from my list of shows here.
For an episode with a lot of incident in it, you can really feel the brakes being pumped here. Narkina 5 is extremely well-established as a place that sucks, and Kino Loy is well-drawn. The other characters there are a blur, and I didn't really need the long didactic demonstration that fascist prison camps are bad.
Luthen cutting off contact with Ferrix feels like the most substantive event of the episode, but otherwise it feels like his and Mothma's scenes are just wheel-spinning. Their actual goals and politics being complete ciphers beyond a general #resistance ethos makes their plots feel pretty stakeless to me - it's not clear what they're actually doing with their resources, and what would stop if they're caught.
The plot on Ferrix is by far the weakest of the running threads, in large part because of how little characterization our protagonists there have received. Bix and Brasso have the barely-there feeling of the love interest and buddy characters in a Marvel movie. Maarva has an attempt at more, but so far has been allowed to speak in a real way for exactly one scene, in her speaking-directly-to-the-camera political monologue. The fact that all of the major events and moments driving her have happened offscreen doesn't help the floaty, ephemeral feeling of her plot. I continue to think that the show would be stronger with almost everything on Ferrix cut out entirely.
The lesbians continue to be so underwritten as to not bear discussion.