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Bureaucracy is good and important, actually.

Building safety regulations? Absolutely.

folks seem to be enjoying it, but uhhhh. i really didn't like this opening arc of season 2. specifically, i don't like the narrative choices, and especially don't like the tone. season one felt different bc the tone felt adult; this first arc of season 2 feels… silly. almost the entire time.

first of all, putting syril and dedra together for silly wacky domestic drama seems to totally miss the point of where they ended up in s1. him saving her life at the end of s1 was not romantic, it was creepy; getting lucky and saving her from the crowds does not excuse the fact that he was clearly obsessed with her after previously stalking her. the fact that they've apparently built a relationship after that seems to validate the weird incel vibes he had going on in s1.

the whole bit with maya pae's group infighting and shit felt goofy. the "leftist infighting" scene with saw guererra already covered the same subject but WAY better. saw refused to work with other rebel cells because he disagreed with their politics, the point being that refusing to put aside political differences despite both being aligned in fighting a fascist regime is a recipe for failure. this time, it's petty personal squabbles; they argue like children and then start shooting each other before settling things with space rock paper scissors, and then an alien eats them. it feels like it's meant to be played for laughs. also the "hey look this happened on yavin 4" moment felt SO stupid. like that was a mandalorian style easter egg: "look it's this thing you like from the original trilogy, please clap."

lastly, we have to talk about the ferrix refugees story. on some level i respect the writers for making a star wars story about migrant farm workers being mistreated by a fascist government, focused on a latina lead; that's a very pressing political issue right now, given what's going on in america. but boy do i wish it was handled better. at a certain point when you're subjecting this prominent woman of color (one of the few we have in star wars) to unending abuse it just becomes torture porn. the sexual assault situation that happens with her is a real thing that happens in real life and that's fucked up, but cutting between that and mon mothma's wedding party felt like such a tonal disconnect that it took me entirely out of it. putting bix through that and then killing off brasso (kind of out of no where) felt just, thoughtlessly cruel. it gave the vibe of "we're the cool adult star wars, look at these mean things we do to our characters, bet you didn't see that coming" and like yeah i didn't see that coming, i expected better from you.

another, more structural note i have is that in season 1, almost all of the stories built together to the one climax. everything with cassian, the aldanhi arc, the prison arc, luthen, dedra, vel, bix, and syril all built towards the crescendo of the riot on ferrix. saw was more of a side story for luthen, but it was still connected to everything happening with the ISB and built out the rebellion in a great way. mon mothma's story is kind of put aside for the finale, but it still had its own conclusion. in this arc, the various story lines feel largely disconnected; cassian is off on some mission we don't care about, gets sidetracked with some wacky hijinks, and then shows up to the ferrix story to be sad. the mothma story is barely connected by luthen trying and failing to call cassian, and the shit with dedra and syril is entirely separate. i get that the next arc will probably build on that stuff, but when it's another YEAR later it feels too disconnected.