blogging andor: killer for hire, you know not yourself

season 1, episode 5: the axe forgets but the tree remembers

well, it’s syril’s first day of funemployment! after getting fired for a botched extrajudicial kidnapping, he’s back home living with his mom — as one does!

syril’s mom, eedy, is played by the sui generis kathryn hunter. she’s also LIGHTS OUT in denzel’s macbeth from a few years back. what a voice! she really makes a meal out of the gilroy dialgue, hilariously brow-beating her failson while also pushing food at him. i also love how modulated kyle soller’s performance is in these scenes — syril is so muted and sullen at home, so paled by his defeat. i also kinda love their little apartment. dig the 70s traincar breakfast nook.

meanwhile on aldhani, cassian and space cousin are sizing each other up. they clock each other as former inmates and compare notes. “they built a lot of cages,” cousin says. he’s dropping bars left and right, this guy, including this one, which in our galaxy is credited as an african proverb: the axe forgets, but the tree remembers. amazing.

and all of this is just a warmup for nemik, the sweet young poet in the crew, who goes absolutely sicko mode out of nowhere:

It's so confusing isn't it? So much going on, so much to say, and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it, and that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine. It's easier to hide behind forty atrocities than a single incident.

dan gilroy’s typewriter is just bursting into flames every day, isn’t it? DAMN. i once read a blog post about ANDOR that described the show’s writing and outlook as “ferocious.” that’s the right word. nobody else brings the heat like this.

anyway, cassian is increasingly nervous about his ragtag heist crew. his knowledge of various imperial ships and their operation is so wildly ahead of what they know, he’s appalled. he bowls them all over in a field training with his natural eye for detail — after tweaking their formation based on space cousin being left-handed, vel asks him about everyone else’s dominant hand and he has them all down. they’re both impressed and rattled, and space cousin is increasingly suspicious.

eventually, we get a sort of double confession from cassian and cousin — cassian tells the group that he’s getting paid to be there (and of course, they’re not). nemik’s soul is a little bruised that cassian isn’t a true believer; meanwhile, cousin’s confession is that he kind of is one. he tells cassian about how the empire’s seizure of his brother’s land led him to take his own life. “i always hated the empire,” cousin says, “i don’t really know what to call how i feel now.” we could all say this 20 times a day and it still would not be enough: ebon moss-bachrach is an incredible actor. we owe lena dunham so much for bringing us both EMB and adam driver. we are overdue for a glowing cultural reappraisal of GIRLS, by the way.

senator mon mothma, who is funding the operation on aldhani, has some of the hardest scenes to watch in this episode, because we get a sense of how truly grim her home life is. her relationship with her daughter is damaged, maybe irreparably. her husband is resentful about the things he doesn’t know about her life, but he’s only really interested because he wants to know how it affects him. he also absolutely hangs her out to dry while her daughter is dressing her down, sitting hunched in his chair and smugly waiting for it to be over so he can swoop in and be the good parent. for people trying to balance families and careers—community and parenting, she’s basically living the nightmare scenario. we understand that she’s morally in the right, though! but sometimes this is what you lose.