I finally finished watching all of the Clone Wars series. This was the first weekly Star Wars TV show, set in between Episodes II and III and taking an anthology approach to filling in that gap. Different episodes would feature different characters. Some plots would exist for one-off episodes, while others would develop over time.
There are 7 seasons of Clone Wars, and more than 130 episodes, so it wasn't internet buzz that made me seek it out -- I actually started many months ago. Technically, I started many years ago. As seasons one and two of Clone Wars were first airing on television, I was involved in making a game based on the series, and wound up watching every episode that then existed as a result. That didn't really translate to an enjoyment of the show that kept me watching after I was no longer "required" to, and so I drifted away from it. As many fans would tell you, I left before Clone Wars actually got good.
That's sort of accurate. But I think it would be more accurate to say that I left before Clone Wars grew up. The first two seasons of the show feel very much aimed at kids. The plots were often shallow. Too many episodes focused on Jar Jar Binks or C-3PO, or were stretched to fit a teachable moral (explicitly spelled out at the start of every episode). And since the trappings of the prequel movies weren't exactly a favorite of mine to begin with, any obstacle to sticking with the show felt like too big an obstacle.
But enough people whose opinions I trust told me that Clone Wars was worth going back to and finishing. And indeed, they were right. I'm not sure there's a clear break point where the show improves; I just know that by the end of season three, it almost felt like a different show. A deep serialized arc with multiple concurrent subplots had crept in. Stand-alone episodes fell away almost entirely, with nearly every episode now part of an explicit two- or three- (or four!) part story. And it really stopped feinting at being a show "for kids," spending some whole episodes on political scheming, philosophical disagreements, or romance.
By season four, Clone Wars had become good enough to convince me that the entire folly of the prequel trilogy was actually worth it, as stage setting for this. And there were still three more seasons to go after that, each one a marked improvement over the last! I had the pleasure of just watching them all at my own pace, not having to wait a year or more between seasons (or much more, in the case of the six-year gap between seasons six and seven). And a pleasure it was.
Overall, I'd give Clone Wars a B grade. But that's truly an average, a result of me not really reflecting on each season as a whole as I went along. Loosely, I'd say the early seasons rate a C at best, while later seasons were at least an A-. The good news, if you've never watched Clone Wars yourself, is that I really don't think it's necessary to be a completionist here. The background you need on the series is provided by prequel movies, so if you want to just skip the early "bad" seasons and start around season three, you could do that. You can even skip all the way the real cream of the crop and watch just the last season or two, if you really wanted. The farther in you jump, the more chance you'll miss the introduction of a cool new character created for the show, or the first chapters of an important ongoing storyline... but I think it will all still probably be coherent compared to the average hyper-serialized television series.
Wherever you decide to start, the point is: I think you should start.
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