“Dooku Captured” / “The Gungun General”
Subtitle: two Jedi walk into a pirate bar
After a few episodes away, we meet back up with Anakin and Obi-Wan and their bizarre plot to capture Count Dooku:
This is how well it goes:
Dooku escapes to a rock planet where he gets captured by:
Our heroes follow, lose Dooku, lose their lightsabers, get crushed by rocks and almost eaten by a space minotaur, and trapped while surrounded by poisonous gas. Luckily for them:
The pirates contact the Republic to ransom Dooku so Anakin and Obi-Wan are dispatched to verify his capture. The pirates choose to wine-and-dine them which brings us to my favorite TCW screencapture so far:
Anakin ogling the dancing girls while Obi-Wan tries to look anywhere else. Amazing.
Now, despite cleverly avoiding the poison in their cups, the second part opens with them passed out and imprisoned. Either the pirates drugged everyone in order to make sure they trapped the Jedi or Ani & Obi can’t hold their liquor. Both seem plausible. Anyway they wake up tied to Dooku:
So let me take this moment to be clear: both these episodes are so silly that even the writers get confused. In addition to the plot inconsistency mentioned above, lightsabers appear and disappear at least 3 times (and this despite Anakin’s lightsaber changing hands being a actual plot point). But I laughed aloud multiple times. I will never get tired of Anakin and Obi-Wan bickering, Jar-Jar’s ridiculous subplot is hilarious (and touching?), and the episode pokes fun of Dooku’s penchant for deadpan proclamations while simultaneously spotlighting them. It’s fun.
The unlikely trio tries to escape:
They get out of the cell but are recaptured in the corridor.
This time they make it into the courtyard and almost over the wall but Anakin can’t hold the weight of Obi-Wan and Dooku so they end up back in the cell again. I really like this sequence. It reminds me of Anakin carrying Obi-Wan through the ship after he kills Dooku at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith and it’s interesting to wonder if Anakin’s fall would have been accelerated or avoided if they’d dropped Dooku as he suggests here. Also out of context this looks like a circus act:
In the end they all escape because once again Jar Jar is a walking disaster. To be fair, Jar Jar also shows both compassion (he eulogizes the senator he was sent to assist) and insight (he notices the actions of the indigenous beasties and successfully uses them to the team’s advantage). However, he succeeds in rescuing the Jedi because when you send in this:
You get this:
The BOOM knocks out the power in the main encampment allowing Anakin and Obi-Wan, and Count Dooku, to escape.