Andor: The Axe Forgets

October 5, 2022 1:43 AM - Season 1, Episode 5

Cassian must carefully navigate the distrust inherent in being the new member of a secret operation.
posted by EndsOfInvention (43 comments total)

They make an episode that's all about building the anxiety up before the action and then specifically have the characters talk about how the anxiety builds up before the action.

Can't wait for next week.
posted by nubs at 4:23 AM on October 5, 2022 [9 favorites]

Does Syril have clone trooper action figures?? No wonder he has to live with his mom, those things aren't cheap.
posted by orrnyereg at 6:26 AM on October 5, 2022 [9 favorites]

Looking at the title, and the quote that goes with it, it's interesting to me that while the Axe for the people involved in the heist on Aldhani is the Empire, the Axe for Karn may be Andor.

Anyways, some thoughts on what happens next:
-the heist on Aldhani goes seriously sideways. Andor is the one who pulls it together and makes it successful.
-I was trying to figure out if anyone in the Aldhani group is actually an Imperial mole. I don't think so - I think the show wants to have a legit heist start to go really wrong so Andor can be the leader who saves it. But if there is a mole, and that's part of why this starts to go wrong, my guess is Cinda.
-Whatever happens with the heist, it's enough to get Karn connected with Meero somehow.
-the Mon Mothma household looks set to explode.

Hopefully next week really delivers on the promise of all this slow burn.
posted by nubs at 9:31 AM on October 5, 2022 [8 favorites]

This was so good and projected strong middle-chapter energy. Lots of pieces moving a little bit farther across the board - motivations being established and backstories filled out. I now have a reason to care about every member of the heist crew beyond them being protagonist crutches. (I don't want Nemik to die but he pulled a big ol' target over himself when he revealed his unwritten manifesto)

I was speechless after the scene with Lt. Gorn manoevering his own men into standing down ahead of the heist because it wasn't until the smirk that I understood what he'd done. It was so beautiful and subtle.

Also: Sankara stones now confirmed within Rael's Antiquities Shop. Next to the oversized holocrons which... wow, should he even have holocrons in his store?
posted by Molesome at 11:36 AM on October 5, 2022 [9 favorites]

Feels like this episode and the next should have been bundled together. The setup was decent, don’t want to a week for the payoff.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:02 PM on October 5, 2022

Mom Mothma.
posted by snofoam at 5:47 PM on October 5, 2022 [11 favorites]

You know it's a well written show when basically nothing happens for the entire hour and it's still riveting television.
posted by octothorpe at 7:36 PM on October 5, 2022 [24 favorites]

An example of the sort of thing the show does that makes me confident in its writers:

They made sure to show us that the goats had been let out of their pens, in case everyone died on the mission.
posted by suelac at 9:04 PM on October 5, 2022 [40 favorites]

God, this show is so great!! How is this even Star Wars, I'm genuinely enjoying the writing and pacing and acting so much. This episode's slow burn of tension ratcheting up in every situation the show touches was just masterful. Really well done.

I got to the point where every time Karn's mom's place showed up I started laughing automatically before anyone even said anything. The humiliation of having to go back from his cop job hat in hand to his passive aggressive mother feeding him Cocoa Puffs and talking shit about him loudly on the phone with his uncle - magnificent. Can't wait to see what said uncle does for a living.

Mon's kid was savage. God, teenagers can just shred your heart. What a desperately unhappy home life. It's hard to even watch

And yes, that bit with the goats, I had the same thought. No need to belabor the point - just show they all know the stakes.
posted by potrzebie at 11:24 PM on October 5, 2022 [8 favorites]

Sheep! Bonnie Hebridean sheep!
posted by gnuhavenpier at 11:55 PM on October 5, 2022 [8 favorites]

Just being Scottish does not necessarily make them bonnie - they could be scunners.

I eagerly await the tie-in comic The Chronicles of Baabaa Fett
posted by Molesome at 3:43 AM on October 6, 2022 [19 favorites]

Somehow this show can manage to shoot twilight scenes but still have the actors' faces lit well enough that you can see them.
posted by octothorpe at 4:04 AM on October 6, 2022 [16 favorites]

Having the actor's faces be visible is a creative decision.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:17 AM on October 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

I love how in last week's episode they set up two big set pieces, the heist on the one hand and the dinner party on the other, and then in this week's episode they just load context upon context on those two events. I thought I was fully invested in Andow, but it turns out there were depths of investment in this show I didn't know were there, which I've now been plunged into.
posted by Kattullus at 5:08 AM on October 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I hope Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are taking notes, but they're probably too budy playing with their action figures.
posted by briank at 5:59 AM on October 6, 2022 [15 favorites]

This show wasn't shot using The Volume and it feels so much more real and expansive than the previous shows.
posted by octothorpe at 6:31 AM on October 6, 2022 [18 favorites]

This series is so good. It feels a lot more like a prestige series, and I love (and hope) that there's nary a mention of a Skywalker anywhere. It's been beautiful to watch and I think they gain a lot by not using The Volume.
posted by synecdoche at 8:42 AM on October 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

Reminds me a lot of those WW2 movies where an Allied special forces guy is parachuted into occupied Europe to work with local partisans. Lots of distrust, hiding from Nazi patrols, trekking across the countryside, etc.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 8:59 AM on October 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

I was thinking of The Battle of Algiers and Army of Shadows watching this show.
posted by octothorpe at 9:06 AM on October 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

nubs:
-the heist on Aldhani goes seriously sideways. Andor is the one who pulls it together and makes it successful....I think the show wants to have a legit heist start to go really wrong so Andor can be the leader who saves it.
....and thus disproving the point Karn's mum was making about leaders always Being Leaders and anyone Leader who isn't Always Projecting Leadership is a loser. Nice.

-the Mon Mothma household looks set to explode.
So, I'm betting that whatshisface the repeatedly-named Driver turns out to be a double-agent sent to protect MM, who is forced to quietly kill her arsehole husband with a tuna fork halfway through the dinner (just as he's about to nark on his wife)
posted by coriolisdave at 5:29 PM on October 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

Am I right that the number of lesbians in Star Wars just doubled? (At least temporarily. I think the manifesto kid will die first, but am not counting on any of the heist crew surviving.)
posted by mersen at 6:21 PM on October 6, 2022

Let's also take bets on Karn ending up as a sort of unofficial agent/stooge for Meero, who is basically Karn only with Imperial Intelligence.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:11 PM on October 6, 2022

Meero seems substantially more competent than supercop Karn.
posted by hototogisu at 10:17 PM on October 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

If anybody else was bugged by not being able to remember what they'd seen Kathryn Hunter (Mom Karn...thma) in, you may be thinking of her role as Cleopatra's adviser in Rome; she was apparently also in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 8:10 AM on October 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I only know her from playing all three witches in the recent Joel Coen MacBeth.
posted by octothorpe at 11:44 AM on October 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Kathryn Hunter is an extraordinary actor, and one of the great physical actors of British theatre (I saw her some time ago doing Beckett - a selection of early plays and shorts - and it was a revelation ). Watch how much work she does with her hands. It's interesting to see her in this, and my wife is pointing out all the actors she's seen in the theatre (apparently she's going to see Gorn at the National Theatre tomorrow).

It's a remarkable show, as if someone had decided to do an Edge of Darkness or State of Play inside the Star Wars universe. Which is exactly what they've done, I suppose, but it's all the more impressive for that.
posted by Grangousier at 1:52 PM on October 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

Kathryn Hunter is an extraordinary actor, and one of the great physical actors of British theatre

I was reading about her career and the next time we go to London I'm going to try to get tickets to whatever show she'll be in.
posted by fiercekitten at 5:11 PM on October 7, 2022

Feels like this episode and the next should have been bundled together. The setup was decent, don’t want to a week for the payoff.

For me, I actually loved the slow boil of this episode, if they had cut to the chase as it were, we would have lost the threads of the major themes that are emerging.

• Ambition. This motif keeps being explored in different ways. With Karn and his mom we now see where his fire came from. He's never been good enough and has always has had to prove himself to her. As someone noted above, he is clearly destined to link up with the Imperial Officer Dedra Meero, the combined level of their burning ambitions will probably end up powering the death star, lol.
• Fighting for your cause. The showdown where Andor admitted he was a mercenary was pretty important to his arc. Remember that the writers chose the objective of the heist to be money, (specifically the entire payroll for that base). We know the heist will go south, my guess is he will have the option to escape scot-free with all the cash (thereby choosing the mercenary life) but will end up coming back to save (some of) the crew. (Shades of dare I say, Han Solo).

Whatever the case may be, I'm so psyched there's 19 episodes of this show left.
posted by jeremias at 5:57 PM on October 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

A More Civilized Age - Andor episode 5

We finished last episode with two desires: To sit in on an absolutely terrible dinner evening and to watch the beginning of a high intensity heist. We got neither, and instead have received a feast unlike any we could've hoped for.

posted by EndsOfInvention at 12:30 AM on October 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

Excellent podcast discussion. Though funnily enough, the AMCA crew toss out a whole bunch of theories about What Perrin’s Deal Is Exactly, except what my first thought was, which is that he’s a Sith and his daughter is his padawan.

There may be lore-reasons why that would be stupid, but I’m not steeped enough in it to know. That said, I do love the idea they bring up that he’s deep undercover too, and then they meet at Rebel HQ and are all “what are you doing here no what are you doing here”.
posted by Kattullus at 5:34 AM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

My thoughts on What Perrin's Deal Is Exactly is he has a podcast where he complains about woke lefty senators ruining the Republic. Maybe it's anonymous so his viewers don't realise he's married to one of them.

I love that AMCA picks out great lines of dialogue I didn't appreciate the first time. Speaking of which, apparently "the axe forgets but the tree remembers" is originally a Zimbabwean proverb.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:44 AM on October 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

What Perrin’s Deal Is Exactly, except what my first thought was, which is that he’s a Sith and his daughter is his padawan.

Seems too ambitious for Perrin, who strikes me as a guy who just wants to hang with his bros, watch Limmie, and complain about whatever is happening that isn’t about him.

I’ll also just add that I really hope Andor doesn’t get into the whole Jedi/Sith thing and just keeps being a story about the various beings of the universe who found themselves coming together to fight the Empire.
posted by nubs at 8:16 AM on October 10, 2022 [13 favorites]

I'm really interested in the questions AMCA raises about the fashion choices of Perrin and Leida. Like, is this a weird vintage-hipster thing, that jedi-ish robes are au courant in upper-crust Coruscanti society? I think I love it, frankly: it's that whole assimilation/appropriation thing you get with the despised subculture that people also think is cool (so long as it's not a threat), like the way that fashion designers periodically pillage indigenous designs for their spring "Tribal" line.

I love the idea that the Emperor and his political supporters officially hate that fashion and bitch about it, but on the other hand it keeps the public image of the Jedi as a thing that is past, and safe to appropriate, because who is going to challenge your right to wear Jedi robes?

So Perrin and Leida think they're being contrarian -- and the kids think Perrin is a poser because he's too old to wear this kind of fashion -- when instead they're just supporting the Imperial propaganda.
posted by suelac at 9:12 AM on October 10, 2022 [9 favorites]

What Perrin’s Deal Is Exactly, except what my first thought was, which is that he’s a Sith

It’s weird because I thought exactly the same thing about Luthen
posted by andrewdoull at 12:27 AM on October 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Man does have both a Jedi and Sith holochron on his shelf, so… maybe?

I did think in the first episode Luthen shows up in that he looked awfully Jedi-ish. Though I’m starting to think that perhaps I just expect to see Jedi and Sith in Star Wars so I just glomp on the first possibility.
posted by Kattullus at 12:15 PM on October 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Lovely episode, people have already discussed all the major beats. Two minor things I noticed:

WTF is with the C plot with Syril this week? I loved his role early on, the actor is great. But to have him sitting around moping for a whole episode with his mother clucking her tongue over him? Weird. I trust the writers this is going somewhere, and I was OK with the relatively static plot in the A and B stories. But this was awfully self indulgent.

I absolutely love Nemik, the true believer rebel. First he's just absolutely cute and boyish, I just want to cuddle him and care for him. Also love his commitment to non-tech, both the navigation device and all the hand built wooden models for training. And that speech he gave Andor about his beliefs and what he's writing, just so amazingly earnest, lovely. Sure gonna hate it when he takes a blaster bolt in the back or whatever terrible thing is coming to his innocence.
posted by Nelson at 9:24 AM on October 19, 2022 [6 favorites]

I kinda love that there are Stereotypical Jewish Mothers in the Star Wars universe as well.
posted by Saxon Kane at 9:07 AM on November 3, 2022 [5 favorites]

i could eat this series for 3 meals a day

next up on my wish list : tinker tailor soldier sith
posted by lalochezia at 8:52 PM on December 2, 2022 [6 favorites]

I was just thinking of one line from this episode. When Skeen is talking about his brother’s farm, possibly fictitious as it may be, he says there were “centuries” of trees on the farm. While I realize that a ‘century’ can be many things, such as batting a 100 points in cricket, I’m tickled that here the writers use what is primarily a unit of time for most people (other than cricket folk) as a unit of counting things, like the old ‘long hundred’ (120).

This is basically the inverse of the old boast that the Millennium Falcon “made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs”, where Han Solo uses a distance measurement as a unit of time. Also, I suppose this opens up the idea that the word “millennium” in the name of the ship may refer to something else than a ‘thousand years’.
posted by Kattullus at 5:06 AM on January 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was just thinking of one line from this episode. When Skeen is talking about his brother’s farm, possibly fictitious as it may be, he says there were “centuries” of trees on the farm. While I realize that a ‘century’ can be many things, such as batting a 100 points in cricket, I’m tickled that here the writers use what is primarily a unit of time for most people (other than cricket folk) as a unit of counting things, like the old ‘long hundred’ (120).

I took it to mean literal centuries. That it was a farm that had carefully been tended over a dozen or more generations; an orchard that produces a better or more bountiful harvest with each passing season. And that in that place, with that type of pepper tree, how old your orchard was had as much import as how big it was. And what the Imperial prefect destroyed when they took it and flooded it was not just land, and not just a livelihood, but a living heritage, and that was what was too much for his brother to bear.

Also, what a great bit of dialogue:
"And that's as close to an apology as you're going to get." (pause)
"Close enough."
posted by Superilla at 9:28 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I also took it to mean centuries in terms of time. It made me think of the destruction of Palestinian olive trees.
posted by knapah at 5:45 AM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

For so long I’ve read commentary on Star Wars movies/series where people hope that this will finally be the episode not to lean on Jedi/Sith stuff, no lightsabers, etc., and I always thought they were nuts, I always wanted Jedi or Sith and definitely lightsabers. And I only now realize that the reason for that is I never believed there could be a legitimately good Star Wars movie or show, not just enjoyable. And now we’ve got one, and I really hope we don’t see any lightsabers.
posted by skewed at 9:18 PM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I know that there must have been discussions around whether characters in this universe would really eat colorful cereal in milk, but that touch was so perfect for infantilizing Sarn here.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:57 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]