Poor pacing and structure are killing this show
There’s nothing wrong with a downbeat. A story can’t relentlessly spin from set piece to set piece—if there aren’t quieter moments for reflection and strategising between high-tension beats, the action of a story becomes meaningless as it loses focus on the characters.
Episode 6, Teach/Corrupt, is one long downbeat. I see where the writers were coming from with this one. The previous episode featured action of the highest stakes from which emotional fallout was necessary. Indeed, one of my favourite shots of the whole episode was a simple one: Lee Jung-jae as Master Sol taking a moment to himself to process the loss of his entire team.
Sol is my favourite character on the show. He’s a man of skill and secrets, and the story is always keeping him off-balance. He’s guilt-ridden with hints of ruthless streak, and I wish the story was primarily about him; he’s the character with the most inner conflict and on-screen presence. But even this isn’t enough to redeem a show with pacing problems this poor.
I said there’s nothing wrong with a downbeat but dedicating an entire episode to one was not a good idea. Maybe—maybe—they could’ve gotten away with this if the entire season was released at once and people were able to binge the whole show in one sitting, but for those watching week-to-week (and for those in the future who only watch one episode at a time), this feels like dead air.
I’m not sure who behind the scenes over at Disney has such a poor grasp of episodic storytelling (it’s not just a problem with The Acolyte), but it feels like there needs to be a reckoning. If you’re going to tell a larger story in pieces, each piece needs to have a beginning, middle, and end, preferably with some action and tension. These episodes have not been structured to be satisfying chunks of a story in and of themselves.
Thirty minutes of people talking can result in effective storytelling, but Star Wars isn’t the place for it. For every stellar Star Wars action scene this show has given us, it’s also given us disastrously dull chunks of time where our characters plod through dialogue scenes without a hint of the excitement, humour, and action that normally characterises Star Wars.
It's more evidence that this should've been a movie, and was maybe even originally conceived as one. I can't think of another reason why such a sizeable percentage of the series is devoted to a downbeat this way other than a plot getting stretched beyond its capacity to tell a good story. Episodes need to have satisfying arcs, otherwise tuning in for a single one becomes a chore. The entire subplot where the green-skinned Jedi lady investigates what happened last episode is a prime example of time-wasting to make the episode feel longer--we already know everything that happened, and the green Jedi and her apprentice are total non-characters.
Bits of 'The Master' and Oshi's storyline are intriguing, if only because I want to know more about The Master's motivations and backstory, but he holds us at arm length for now, and nothing of intetest really happens between them.
I was on my knees begging for a bit of excitment by the end of Teach/Corrupt. Disney needs to learn some hard storytelling lessons if this show is to continue succesfully, and they're mostly to do with structure and pacing. The premise of The Acolyte works for me, as do most of the central characters and the mystery at the heart of it. I just wish I was having a better time with it.
***
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