The Mandalorian: Chapter 5

December 6, 2019 2:00 AM - Season 1, Episode 5

The Mandalorian helps a rookie bounty hunter who is in over his head.
posted by KTamas (48 comments total)

SHIT YEAH MING-NA WEN
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:41 AM on December 6, 2019 [19 favorites]

And Amy Sedaris!

First one where I was kinda bored, tho. Very little happened, and the action scenes didn't have the impact of previous episodes. I'm mostly enjoying these small, self-contained stories, but this one just didn't grab me.
posted by Frayed Knot at 7:15 AM on December 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

It needs more baby Yoda.
posted by ilovewinter at 7:54 AM on December 6, 2019 [7 favorites]

I guess my eyes are getting old...these days when a key fight scene takes place in the dark I take the opportunity to check my email and get a glass of water. No point squinting at dark smears.
posted by Construction Concern at 8:58 AM on December 6, 2019 [5 favorites]

TATOOINE !!! MOS EISLEY !! I guess the cantina has ditched the no-droid policy...
posted by Pendragon at 10:00 AM on December 6, 2019 [10 favorites]

Was the bartender the same droid who worked in Jabba’s palace (“You’re a feisty one”)?


It appears to be a similar EV-9D9 droid, but the voice is different.
posted by Fleebnork at 10:52 AM on December 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'll be SO SAD if that's all we get of Ming-Na Wen. Men's Health doesn't think it will be, and while I agree it's hard to imagine such a reputed badass getting easily offed by a scrub like that, on the other hand, Star Wars does have a history of doing that kind thing (see Boba Fett, Phasma, etc.).

I was interested/amused to see how much the collapse of the Empire and the death of Jabba the Hutt has hurt the Mos Eisley economy. Also the KOTOR fan in me liked the bit of a nod towards Tuskens' culture, even if previously it has not been possible to communicate with them through something as simple as some funky sign language (I suppose given the Mando's intense dislike of droids, he would've had to work something out that didn't involve a protocol droid, whenever it was that he dealt with Tuskens before).

I thought the episode could've been longer, TBH, and they could have dug a little deeper on both of those things and also ratcheted up the tension of the episode's plot a little more with even just 5 more minutes of runtime; maybe you could have them start hauling her back to Mos Eisley (slowly nursing along a mostly-busted speeder bike or something) while she's playing head games with them and they're also getting worried that the Tuskens will show up again and they're gradually getting testier with each other; something like that would give us a little more of her backstory, possibly more Tusken interactions, and some building tension leading up to the two Bounty Hunters eventually splitting up and Toro switching sides. Instead there wasn't much buildup, things just unfolded kind of matter-of-factly. I enjoyed the episode but some of what I enjoyed was definitely 'fanservice' and I can see where Frayed Knot is coming from.
posted by mstokes650 at 1:36 PM on December 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

Also I bet I would've liked Amy Sedaris's character better if I hadn't literally just made a date for my car to go in to the mechanic right before I watched this episode. Little too close to home! :|
posted by mstokes650 at 1:41 PM on December 6, 2019

The budget and production values on this show are off the chain. I’ve seen blockbuster movies that look worse.

I’d be amazed if we don’t see Fennec again given that ending.
posted by adrianhon at 2:24 PM on December 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

I also came here to say it needed more Baby Yoda.

We will also need more Ming-Na Wen in the future.
posted by KTamas at 2:26 PM on December 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

I kinda figured all the chatter about beskar armor was an out to give her a hidden beskar breastplate or some such.
posted by valkane at 2:59 PM on December 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

Amy Sedaris looking like she just walked off the set of an ill-fated space spinoff of Taxi is the beeest
posted by jason_steakums at 4:03 PM on December 6, 2019 [31 favorites]

I'd hope this isn't the last we'd see of Ming-Na Wen either.

During the ending, I noticed that jangling spurs sound. Sure it could be the yet-unseen Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), but do Moffs do field work? It could be another Mandalorian, but they blew their Covert's secrecy and saved his bacon right after he absconded with the kid.

With Favreau's and Filoni's liberal use of call-backs to existing lore, my gut feeling is it's not just a bountyhunter, but one we've already met that's coming out of retirement. I'd bet it's either Cad Bane (if Filoni's call) or Boba Fett. I don't think the episode's setting on Tatooine is a coincidence, and an armorless, scarred Fett could be mighty tempted to reestablish his reputation and gain a nice set of actual Beskar armor. In either case, I'd expect them to keep teasing us right up until they reveal it at the end of the season 1 finale.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 4:22 PM on December 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

Gotta say, I loved the fan service.
posted by rustcellar at 9:06 PM on December 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I hated the fan service. Tattooine, really? But that's what this show is and I gotta make my peace with it.

I loved Amy Sedaris though. Or rather I loved the character, having no idea it was Sedaris underneath that Richard Simmons wig. Of course it's an actress as great and singular as Amy Sedaris!

It's about time for them to do something with Baby Yoda's character. If nothing else I wish they'd give him a name, or a racial name, or something. "Baby Yoda" is starting to stick like this might somehow be the Yoda.
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on December 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

I guess the cantina has ditched the no-droid policy...

And business promptly went down the tubes. Apparently the clientele went down the street to the other Cantina. Or maybe, since the buildings seem to have absolutely no external markings to identify one from another, they just all got confused one day and started going to the wrong bar.
posted by Naberius at 7:36 AM on December 7, 2019 [3 favorites]

The Clint Eastwood was especially strong this week.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:38 AM on December 7, 2019

"Baby Yoda" is starting to stick like this might somehow be the Yoda.

But the show isn't calling him that, it's just all of us because it's so much easier to tell people that you're squeeing over the latest Baby Yoda meme instead of the latest The Child meme.
posted by cooker girl at 8:29 AM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" - could be used multiple times here.

I'm definitely going to go with beskar armor on Ming-Na Wen, she's a John Wick level assassin then I'm assuming she's prepared for the standard betrayal gut shot.

I feel like each episode is a Jon Favreau homage to the lone (anti) hero / ronin finding their way and a higher meaning / purpose.

Also I finally made the connection to the droids exterminating his family / people and his aversion to working with droids at all. That may have been an order 66 like scenario where the guard droids were turn on his family, etc.
posted by mrzarquon at 10:51 AM on December 7, 2019 [7 favorites]

I didn't enjoy this one as much. The combination of him leaving Baby Yoda on the ship alone and Baby Yoda falling in the final gunfight pushed my "child in danger! not ok!" buttons. Listen, Mando, you just blew up your life to protect this kid. Stop acting like a complete moron about actually protecting it. You need a team.

I also found dumbass wanna-be bounty hunter rich-kid failing upward extremely annoying. I want space fantasy, if I wanted to watch inept overconfident white guys say stupid things I would be at work.

Needs more Baby Yoda.
posted by medusa at 12:19 PM on December 7, 2019 [9 favorites]

Tor commentary by Emily Asher-Perrin.

I nearly spit out my coffee when the Mandalorian said the words “That’s my line,” after the other hunter said he could “bring them in warm or cold” at the start of the episode. My sweet beskar-encased meeiloorun danish, that is not a cool thing to say or mutter to yourself. You are such a beautiful loser. You wanna be cool, but you only achieve it when you’re not thinking so hard.
posted by medusa at 12:27 PM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

CAPTAIN, THE FAN SERVICE LEVELS ARE CRITICAL, SHE CANNAE TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS

(what, no ronto?)
posted by entropicamericana at 5:29 PM on December 7, 2019 [7 favorites]

> “That’s my line,” after the other hunter said he could “bring them in warm or cold”

I found myself going "wait that's his line" just before he said "thats my line" which gave me a chuckle and realized this show is so very hyper aware of itself.
posted by mrzarquon at 5:52 PM on December 7, 2019 [6 favorites]

I was SO HAPPY to see a Loth-cat!
posted by suelac at 7:45 PM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm really digging the quietly low-key 70s æsthetic they've got going on here.  From the mechanic's fro, to those marvelous Frank Frazetta-ish end credit art pieces, to the subtle boot-cut line of the wanna-be bounty hunter's trousers, the set design has done a wonderful job of quietly evoking the 70s heritage of the movies without going overboard.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 8:31 PM on December 7, 2019 [13 favorites]

This show remains fairly entertaining, but this one especially felt really unoriginal. Every story beat was pretty much immediately clear (although I thought originally that the Jr. Bounty Hunter might have been bait for Mando all along and working with the assassin). It looked good, and had a lot of personality within stock characters, but I think (and last episode too) just felt like watching someone else play a AAA video game.
posted by codacorolla at 6:57 AM on December 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

But have they used a Wilhelm scream yet? Or are they saving it for the season finale?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:30 AM on December 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh, I just got Disney+ (Netherlands is the only country in Europe to have it(!)) and a friend and I just binge-watched this yesterday.

This was also my least-favorite of the episodes so far. It did feel cramped, like there was a longer story here that could not be squeezed into this format.

Although I understand how this series could be compared to Kung Fu, the 70's show with David Carradine, I kept thinking about another space Western - Firefly.
posted by vacapinta at 1:40 PM on December 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

I kept thinking about firefly too, though I'll confess I'd only seen an episode and Serenity. Mostly in that this series seems to be crying out for Mando to assemble an ensamble cast around him.
posted by Kikujiro's Summer at 5:49 PM on December 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

I agree an ensemble cast would make this show breathe. Maybe as a season 2 thing? There's only so far you can go with a guy always wearing a bucket on his head and his cute but non-verbal infant puppet thing.
posted by Nelson at 6:05 PM on December 8, 2019 [3 favorites]

I just binged all of the show up to here yesterday. It's quite enjoyable, although it's long past time for some more info on the main quest. Who exactly is Baby Yoda and where did they come from? Who exactly was the Werner Herzog character and the doctor crony, and what did they want with Baby Yoda? Fine, keep drawing things out and leaving these questions open for a while, but at least start giving more clues now and then.
posted by dnash at 9:02 AM on December 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

Mando, you left a baby alone in a parked spaceship on a desert planet?!?? WTF is wrong with you?

The last episode with the Seven Samurai/Magnifcient Seven vibe, they at least spent a few minutes establishing why Mando would consider helping those people out--he needed a secluded place to stay, the village would be perfect if not for the baddies, and so his interests were well aligned with the villagers. Here, it's just "oh, well I need to make some money too, and I've already been searching for a job for like fifteen seconds, so might as well throw my lot in with this totally not suspicious guy. What could go wrong, I'm Mando?!"

They want to do a slow-burn from Mando being a solitary, stone-hearted bad-ass to a chaotic-good paladin (which is hokey and cliche but totally fine, this is Star Wars!), but having his motivations slowly change is gonna be tough to effectively show in this itinerant adventure-of-the-week pattern they seem to want to settle in to. Having a season with just eight episodes can be really cool, but I'd think the big benefit to that would be to avoid having filler episodes, and this seemed like a classic filler episode.
posted by skewed at 9:17 AM on December 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

So none of you have ever seen The Rifleman, huh?
posted by valkane at 9:57 AM on December 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

Well ACTUALLY Paladin was the star of Have Gun – Will Travel.
posted by The Tensor at 12:22 PM on December 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

"something with bones in it"
!

This has turned into such a 70s-early-80s show, with an incredible budget.
posted by rp at 4:25 PM on December 9, 2019

While Pedro Pascal is the voice of the Mandalorian, there are four body doubles donning the armor, including Brendan Wayne, grandson of John Wayne.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:11 PM on December 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Mando, you left a baby alone in a parked spaceship on a desert planet?!?? WTF is wrong with you?

I know, right? I screeched, "Isn't that illegal?!" at my husband.
posted by potrzebie at 11:22 PM on December 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

I don't know anything about music, but the other late-70s-feeling element that has been growing on me is the theme song, particularly that six-note closing ascent which does a nice job of evoking all sorts of 70s/80s-era TV shows without reminding me specifically of any of them.

they could have dug a little deeper on both of those things and also ratcheted up the tension of the episode's plot a little more with even just 5 more minutes of runtime; maybe you could have them start...

Following up on my comment on the last episode, I'm now entertaining myself trying to think of the minimum edit for each episode that would deliver the maximum increase in actual drama and emotion. A two-second cut on the previous one would have helped immeasurably, but this one is a little trickier. It's impossible the make the kid's betrayal actually hurt, but at least they could have made him eviler afterwards -- shoot the bounty quicker and more ruthlessly, no speech afterwards, and just a few edits in the final scene to make him seem actually dangerous to baby yoda, perhaps even hurting him slightly so that the mandalorian seems genuinely worried and later remorseful for leaving the kid untended. I mean, jeez, it's a defenseless baby -- it doesn't take a carriage toppling down endless stairs to add a little gratuitous threat and tension to a shootout.
posted by chortly at 8:31 PM on December 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Part of me had hoped that Baby Yoda ate like Nibbler from Futurama.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:50 AM on December 12, 2019 [10 favorites]

Truly yodas live long and are celebrated poopers.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:56 AM on December 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm hoping Mando eventually finds a droid to help him with Baby Yoda. I realize he hates droids, but it seems insane for an individual to travel in space without a droid in the first place.

I used to hate Tatooine call-backs, but not anymore. It's a special planet. Three of the most powerful Jedi ever have called it home. It is also the planet where Luke and R2 first meet (R2 is the most heroic character in the saga, IMHO). Interesting people are drawn to Tatooine, and that sounds like the Force to me.

I wasn't a big fan of Baby Yoda at first, but that's only because my headcanon paints Yoda as a terrible leader, and the Jedi Order as a corrupt institution, with it's tyrannical dogma safely entrenched under Yoda's centuries long administration.

My theory is that the Yoda species only ever consists of one individual Yoda (and they are always called "Yoda"). How do they endure as a species? Who knows. How do droids experience emotion? Most of Star Wars does not support sub-surface analysis so we're good.

Mando has lost his stoic ruthlessness (he must have said "thank you" a hundred times in the last episode), which I'm kinda sad about.
posted by Brocktoon at 6:34 PM on December 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

There are two (three, including the baby) known members of Yoda's species.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:00 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

Dang, how does he keep getting his ship repaired so good? I feel like it should take months and months, or years, to repair some of the damage!
posted by rebent at 7:25 PM on December 13, 2019

Mando, you left a baby alone in a parked spaceship on a desert planet?!?? WTF is wrong with you?

I know, right? I screeched, "Isn't that illegal?!" at my husband.

He left the window rolled all the way down. People are right, this show is faithful to its 70s heritage.

And that baby is fifty years old and can stop a woolly rhinoceros in its tracks

posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:37 PM on December 15, 2019 [8 favorites]

Tatooine! Cool!
Mos Eisley! Heh!
Carbon scoring. Yeah, that was...that was also a thing...
The cantina...Han's table...Tusken raiders...
zzzzzz

Hey, I'm Ming-Na Wen, galactic bad ass! Maybe I should just use this really long lull in the action to make good my escape. Or I could just sit here and wait for them to come get me, and then rather than putting my back to a rock and shooting them in the face once they round that bend in the only pass up here I'll keep staring forward. Also, I'll make sure to tango with one even though I know there are two of them, leaving my back unguarded...again.

Hey, I have the green kid and the Mandalorian's ship and a mechanic as a hostage who could hotwire it for me! Maybe I'll just wait here until nightfall instead of bugging the fuck out and collecting my awesome reward! What could possibly go wrong?

It's hard to take these guys seriously when they're just so egregiously incompetent. Same thing with the next episode. We're trying to remain undetected, but maybe I'll just shoot shit for no reason! It's like watching my ten year old son's mates play D&D. 'I SET FIRE TO THE ELVEN FOREST'
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 4:24 PM on December 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

And business promptly went down the tubes. Apparently the clientele went down the street to the other Cantina.

Bea Arthur owns that one though....
posted by JHarris at 11:02 AM on January 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

Can we talk for a second about sleepy, confused Baby Yoda waking up from his nap, finding dad not there and worriedly exiting the Razor Crest to find him? I just thought that short scene was an incredible testament to the skills of the puppetry and CGI department. It could have been a real toddler waking up from a nap, you know how bedraggled and disoriented they get. Even his ears were a little bit askew.

I also thought this episode was something of a letdown. Mando seemed to get the better of Toro pretty easily. I get that Toro isn't the 'Big Bad' of the episode, but threat levels didn't feel particularly high at any point during this episode.
posted by unicorn chaser at 5:39 PM on May 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I want an entire spin off series of that mechanic and all the rifraff that comes through her shop every week. She’s amazing !
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:01 PM on May 3, 2023