So Bad, It's Good

A few weeks back, I wrote in praise of the Star Wars animated series Clone Wars. Obviously, that praise is somewhat belated, as the series concluded (for the second or third time) in 2020. But I can voice more timely support for the series that took Clone Wars' place, and still has future episodes to come on Disney+.

The Bad Batch was a spin-off setup during the final 12-episode season of Clone Wars. It centers on a group of clone soldiers who actually aren't exactly like all their brethren, following their adventures in the immediate aftermath of the prequel Star Wars trilogy. The 4 episodes of Clone Wars that set up these characters actually was far from my favorite of the story arcs from that series, but as soon as The Bad Batch got a show of their own, they really began to shine.

For starters, the characters here really are quite interesting. That introductory Clone Wars arc set them up basically to be superheroes of a sort, each with their own special "power." But The Bad Batch series has really rounded them out with meaningful character flaws and personalities beyond "what they can do." The same thought and care that went into Clone Wars characters like Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex is fully brought to bear here. And it actually works better here, as The Bad Batch is not an "anthology show" like Clone Wars was, and can feature these same characters in every episode.

Perhaps more importantly, the time frame of this new show makes for a more compelling backdrop than the Clone Wars. That show did a great job of mining for diamonds of good ideas amid the rough of the prequel trilogy story... but ultimately, Clone Wars was always to some extent just "marking time" until the events of Revenge of the Sith. (That's why many of the most effective arcs in the show focused on areas the films didn't really explore, like the Mandalorian civil war.) The Bad Batch is set "after the fall," and Star Wars has never really had this much time and space to explore people "who thought they were fighting for the good guys" and are now disillusioned. It's fertile ground for storytelling.

To put it more directly: since the original trilogy, there's only one thing in the Star Wars canon that I've enjoyed more than the first season of The Bad Batch. (Rogue One. Duh.) The dialogue is occasionally pretty stilted, but that's kind of been a thing about Star Wars all along. (The cleverness of the plotting and quality of the voice acting more than makes up for that here.)

For certain, I'd give The Bad Batch at least a B+. Many episodes are better than that, and if season two continues the momentum of season one, I'll quickly nudge that up to an A-. The Mandalorian may be the Star Wars show with more buzz right now, but The Bad Batch is absolutely the better show.