blogging andor: our kind of traitor
andor season 2 episode 4
Today on ANDOR, everybody’s recruiting everybody. It’s a spycraft-heavy episode, and major props to Beau Willimon — who wrote last season’s prison arc — for a gripping hour of TV that is literally just people talking the entire time.
A year has passed since our last episode. Cass and Bix are in a safe house on Coruscant where they’ve been repeatedly crashing between missions. Cassian is paranoid about the way Bix likes to casually and anonymously move through the city; he’s rushing her out of space bodegas when she small talks the clerk. But it’s clear that Bix’s mental health is deteriorating. In a recent mission, Cassian killed someone who saw Bix’s face, and the guilt of that is compounding her lingering trauma from her torture and imprisonment on Ferrix years ago. Eventually, Luthen summons Cass to send him away on a fact-finding mission to Ghorman, and he’s nervous about leaving Bix alone. For good reason, as it turn out, as she’s using some kind of opioid when’s he’s not around. This whole section is impressively written and acted — the way Bix repeatedly fixates on getting some nice plates and things for their safe house? Crushing.
Syril is now living on Ghorman, running a field office for the imperial bureau of standards. But he’s really there for Dedra, allowing himself to become a recruitment prospect for the local rebel front. This whole section of the episode is really dazzlingly done.
Syril is a person of morals. Deeply weird, fascistic morals, but morals nonetheless. And so when you hear him complaining to his mother about the Imperial propaganda besmirching the Ghorman people, you actually buy it, or at least I did. In fact, he’s aware that his work phone is tapped and he’s exploiting it. When some local buskers approach him about attending their Space DSA meeting, he’s delighted.
This is of course where ANDOR starts to eerily approximate our world at this precise moment — as the primary subject of the meeting he attends is the empire’s arbitrary and perpetual changes to trade regulations and the impact it’s having on the Ghorman working class. It’s also worth noting that Carro Rylanz, the local business leader coordinating this nascent resistance and taking a shine to Syril, is the same man Cassian is on his way to meet. I know that the Ghormani resistance is basically a psy-op, but I am struck by the realism of their meetings — a funny sort of mash up of young academics and agricultural union guys. This is how leftist coalitions are built. And also, how they collapse.
To me, the strongest section of the episode takes place at the old Imperial HQ, where Partagaz, Dedra, Lonni, and Dedra’s former assistant Heert (The Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler guy) are at their usual roundtable. Lonni runs interference when another official is getting dressed down by Partagaz, and the two have a loaded conversation in the hallway after — it feels like Lonni is feeling this dude out to bring into Luthen’s tent. Meanwhile, Heert is looking at a seizure of stolen weapons and is trying to connect it back to “Axis”—their name for Luthen, who they have not yet ID’d. We understand that Heert took this assignment on when Dedra was secretly put on the Ghorman desk and is now doing his best to keep her from butting back in. Lonni swoops in on Heert too and they make lunch plans. Somewhere along the way — maybe at lunch with Nightcrawler, Lonni figures out that Dedra is running the Ghorman op and passes this along to Luthen. My guy Lonni is putting in the WORK.
Mon Mothma is back in Senator mode, whipping votes to attempt to block an extension of the PORD (Public Order Resentencing Directive), which is sort of the Star Wars equivalent of the PATRIOT Act. Again, fascinating conversations here, albeit confusingly edited. Mothma is focusing on the Empire’s crime stats, which she believes are inflated to ratchet up public desire for harsh law and order. Oh, kind of like this shit? Ironically, one of the no votes Mothma can’t pin down is the senator from Ghorman, who doesn’t want to piss the emperor off any further. It’s a chilling notion — how a targeted group will accept a certain amount of abuse so long as it doesn’t get any worse. This is of course in direct conflict with Mon Mothma’s whole life, in which she has invited increasing pain and discomfort for the greater good.
The weakest link of the episode comes when Wilmon visits Saw Gerrera. No fault to the actors here — I especially love the way Wilmon looks at Saw, a guy he’s probably heard about his whole life and is suddenly meeting for the first time. He’s staring at him like he’s not even sure he’s real, like he’s just shaken hands with Johnny Appleseed or something. Wilmon has some kind of device that he’s been asked to train Gerrera’s men on; the scene is off-kilter because of the very intense and overbearing score. It does a huge disservice to Forest Whitaker’s performance, which is supposed to be odd and off-putting but not outright menacing. The music is cartoonishly villainous. I still miss Nicholas Britell! Can we call him? It’s not too late!