Star Wars Andor S2E2: "Sagrona Teema" (continue)

Day two of the wedding festivities includes a...I want to call it a nature hike, but with a trail as built-up as this one I'm not sure if it merits that term. A nature walk? Nature stroll? Something more along those lines.

Hilariously, our voiceover introduction to this scene is a conversation between Man Mothma and Gul'Dan, in which the former yearns for the days when all this land was private and exclusive, and the latter fondly remembers sneaking onto it and poaching. Man is miserable through the conversation. Gul'Dan is relishing every syllable.

Well, I guess some things have gotten better in some parts of the galaxy in recent decades, at least. Also, this is the most sympathetic that Gul'Dan has ever come across in the show so far, I kind of love it. He's being a petty little shit to Man Mothma, but you have no choice but to support him 100% in being so.

Meanwhile, Val and Mon have a slightly more important conversation further along the trail. Val still clinging on to her love of Sinta and hoping that it really is reciprocated, more as an anchor for herself in this chaotic period than for any rational reasons. Val's life is presumably such a whirlwind working for Luthen that she doesn't have much time or opportunity to find other anchors.

Luthen's presence here at the wedding is, of course, bringing this all to the surface for Val. He is the only person who Val knows who is aware of Sinta's current location and activities, but of course he can't tell anyone what he has anyone else doing.

Well, Klaya also probably knows. And that might actually be why Val is such a jerk to Klaya. She can't vent at Luthen, so she's taking it out on the only other person in the know that she can get away with taking it out on. Which doesn't make Val look good, if that's the case, but, well. Stressful, isolated conditions bring out the worst in people.

Case in point, the one bunch of idiots has now decided to spend their ever-diminishing supply of strength and calories dragging the TIE-gunship across the forest floor into position to shoot the other bunch of idiots' shelter.

Either to extort them into giving up Cassa so he can teach them how to fly the gunship, or to extort them into giving up their vast treasure hoard of half a dozen moldy protein bars. Or else just out of spite. In any case, it should be remembered that this is a hot, humid jungle they're working in, and they have limited supplies of drinking water.

...

Forget asking how these people ended up getting shot down and abandoned on this planet. I want to know how this bunch of primates even got into a resistance movement in the first place. It's like they're going for a reenactment of "Lord of the Flies" but somehow missed the part where the people acting like twelve year olds are in fact twelve years old.

If Namek were still alive, he'd look at this bunch, feel a deep mental pain, and be forced to utter the foulest curse word in his entire vocabulary. "Unserious." I know, not a word to use lightly, but in this rare case it might actually be merited.

...

Gunfire breaks out again as the Yooks frantically attack the Zooks before they can get the big boy boomooroo pointed at them. And, since we're on the topic of people whose existences are inherently embarrassing, we then cut to Coruscant and finally see what Cyril has been up to all this time. The answer is...not surprising, per se, but a bit weirder than I expected.

He's still working on the same oversized office floor at the commerce department, but he's been promoted from cubicle jockey to petty taskmaster. We're reintroduced to him giving an orientation speech to a new hire, just as he himself was given one last season when he joined the department. Only, Cyril's orientation speech is a hell of a lot weirder than the one his predecessor gave.

It's heavily implied that Cyril got his promotion as a grudging favor from the ISB after he saved Dierdre's life. Cyril is very proud of this fact, and to be fair, it's a pretty dramatic story that does cast him in a genuinely heroic light. The problem is that it's also a promotion that he got for reasons completely unrelated to his actual work for the commerce department. He never took his work here seriously. He spent more time making up fake fuel standard violations for Cassa than he did doing any of his actual tasks, and was probably on the verge of getting his dumb ass fired again before politics happened and he was able to get kicked upstairs instead of out on the street. So, when it comes time to orient the new employee, Cyril wants to both motivate the new hire AND be acknowledged and appreciated for his heroic daring-do, but he can't do that without admitting that this office floor really is an unglamorous dead end.

So, Cyril makes up this utterly ridiculous story about how he sat at his cubicle and followed fuel purchasing anomalies that turned out to be the cover up of a massive criminal enterprise. Thanks to his relentlessly diligent monitoring of fuel purchasing records, no matter how adverse the conditions, he shut down a galaxy-spanning mafia and saved the day. And, if he's vigilant and determined and brave too, then the new guy can be a hero and save the galaxy and get promoted to lower middle management just like he did.

Mall ninja-ing as a fucking office manager.

The look on this college kid's face in response to this is just perfect.

The quietly dawning horror as he realizes that this is going to be his next few years, if not the rest of his life.

I want to know how furious Cyril was when he found out all he was going to get for saving Dierdre was a promotion within the department rather than transfer to a security agency. I can only imagine the neighbors' noise complaints when he had to tell his mommy about that little disappointment.

Later that day, after returning to Coruscant and getting her frustrating rebuff from her superior, Dierdre heads home to cool her head for the evening. This is our first time seeing her out of uniform, and her living situati-wait wait wait hold on a second what the actual fuck?

Wa

But

Why would

how

Hwwwwwwwwuuuhhhhhh????

Why would she...what would make...

Is she, like. Punishing herself for what happened on Ferrix? Is this emotional self-harm?

I guess it's either that, or she's just planning to eat him and taking her time with it.

I guess those aren't mutually exclusive, come to think of it.

All the other "off" things about this sequence just make the central conceit of the scene seem even more surreal and hallucinatory. Like, have a look at Dierdre's apartment. It's possible that she and Cyril just got this place within the last few months, but I think it's just as likely that Dierdre was living in this king-sized mausoleum all by herself until he moved in. Frankly, it's only slightly more absurd for two people to take up this much space than it is for one person. Especially when you look at how much of the space they aren't taking up. Gigantic empty living room. Gigantic empty hallways. Nothing hanging on the walls. Bare, monochrome furniture. Nothing on the walls, or the doors, or even the damned floors. Row of empty coat-hooks with barely anything to hang on them. It looks more like a realtor ad than a place where someone actually lives, only even realtors usually put a couple of humanizing touches in their airbrushed ads.

It extends to the way Cyril and Dierdre interact, too. Like, even when she's putting her hand on his chin, the way she talks to him is downright icy. The affectionate gesture feels so deliberate and forced, in light of everything else about how she's moving and talking and (un)emoting. I'd say they come across like a couple that have been living together for a decade and gotten sick of each other, rather than one that can't have been together for more than ten months, except even that feels unfair to typical loveless marriages.

I think my favorite part is the expression he makes after she turns her back and walks out of the room after a cold, borderline-hostile exchange about groceries and appointments.

I remain baffled about Dierde's motives for going through with this, but reading Cyril is hilariously easy. He's working so damned hard to believe that he's living the dream right now. He's got an important-ish job (that he knows he didn't earn and barely knows how to do), a big expensive apartment (packed full of creepy nothingness), and a hot action hero girlfriend (who visibly despises him while going through the motions of domestic love in downright clockwork artificiality). But oh god he really wants to believe that it's all real.

He's almost stupid enough to actually buy it. Almost. But not quite. It's taking him constant, significant effort to keep himself deluded. That smug smirk is weighing so heavily on his face, and you can tell he's struggling to keep holding it up.

...

I think this might be my new favorite subplot in Andor. It's only just started, and I have no idea where it's going yet, but it's just so amazingly WTF and I can't stop watching and waiting with morbidly baited breath. I have to know what happens with this relationship. Have to. I'm dying to see what happens next.

Maybe not dying as literally as Cyril will when Dierdre decides that she could really go for some liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti right now, but still dying figuratively.

...

Elsewhere on Coruscant, we have a little scene of Klaya - having carpooled back from Chandrila - returning to the antique shop to check the comms. Nothing actually happens in this sequence, but there's so much going on with the cinematography that it has to mean something.

It starts with this bird's-eye shot of the nighttime Coruscant plaza that really calls attention to the alien architecture of the place, the vastness of the construction, and the relative tininess of Klaya as she makes her way to the antique store entrance.

It took me a minute to realize this was just Luthen and Klaya's neighborhood, and not the bowels of the half-built death star or something. It's that daunting and weird-looking of a shot.

We have this low, dragging music, super ominous, and follow Klaya from over the shoulder as she walks up to the storefront, opens the door, and then waits for the lights to turn on after hitting the switch. The lights turn on reaaaaally slowly, from the outside in, the darkness slowly retreating backward and revealing more of the store by the second. Combined with the music, this lighting effect really has you expecting the darkness to reveal a squad of uniformed ISB agents or a gleaming assassin droid or something.

But no. The store is empty, just like she and Luthen presumably left it. The camera follows Klaya as she moves through, and focuses and swivels around several of the artifacts as if inviting the viewer to look for planted cameras or bombs or something. But, there's nothing. She goes to the back room and boots up the secret hyperwave caster, and nothing unexpected happens.

Nothing jumps out. No bugs or sabotage revealed. After this scene, we move back to the Chandrila party, and there's nothing more heard or seen about Klaya for the rest of the episode.

I have trouble believing that this is just a fakeout for the sake of having a fakeout. Even if nothing's happening yet. I feel like the show is telling us that the store is, somehow, compromised. Or at least, it will be compromised soon, and Luthen and Klaya do not have adequate countermeasures for this.

...

The purpose of this specific scene aside, the camerawork in Andor's second season is already a lot artsier than it was in the previous. Consistently so.

Just an interesting stylistic change that I'm noticing.

....

I think I'll split this episode into three. The last few scenes have either a lot of subtext, or just a lot of text.