The Mandalorian (S1E2) “The Baby”: Flawed, But Fun

The nearly wordless first chunk of the second episode of The Mandalorian, already veering off from the somewhat exposition heavy first chapter is a welcome shift to say the least. Starting off with a trip through a narrow valley, following the face-off at the end of the previous episode, Mandalorian and Baby Yoda spend the episode traversing their way back to the ship, with the forces of the planet around them trying to stop them along the way, with often enthralling yet too restrained results. As an action adventure show, The Mandalorian may not be as high end as its counterparts but for casual Friday viewing, you can’t go wrong.

Lone Wolf And Cub

As previously mentioned, this week’s episode begins with a traversal through an empty valley with Mandalorian and Baby Yoda making their way back to their ship so Mandalorian can go to wherever he’s going to. It’s not really clear yet. Cue desert creatures attacking him, with a tracking fob leading to the baby. It seems to be popular around these parts. The coverage of the action is fairly standard, as most studio products tend to be, but it’s engaging nonetheless. Hand to hand combat, even at its most basic, can never be too bad.

Mandalorian comes back to his ship to find that Jawas are scavenging his ship. He disintegrates a few of them, ultimately chases after their “moving fortress” and fails to get back what they stole. His ship isn’t able to fly, and he needs to get off the planet. Not a single word is spoken during this sequence. Through a series of visual cues and grunts a story is told, and while it’s not particularly complex, it’s good to see the stoicism of Mandalorian be translated beyond just the literal deadpan delivery and emotionless killing. The transition into dialogue scenes is quite smooth too, which makes it all the better.

Mandalorian and Baby make it back to the Ugnaught, the creature from the last episode that helped Mandalorian get to the fortress, and he helps them trade with the Jawas to get his parts back. There’s some negotiating, until they land on what they call “The Egg”, which is something our lead must retrieve for the trade. There’s some bits here with and without captioning, with and without translation, and with or without some cheesy dialogue along the way.

The Egg

The crew travel their way to a flat pit area, with a cave in the back, and a monster to boot. Mandalorian and Baby traverse to the cave, Mando stirs up the monster, and a fight ensues. It’s dirty, it’s fun, Mando gets his ass handed to him, but most importantly Baby uses the force to help kill the beast. It’s a nice moment helped by some neat editing, and it’s crucial nature to how the rest of the series will progress is clear enough, without letting the viewer in on where exactly this show will go beyond a few basic points.

The very hairy egg is retrieved, brought back, the Jawas celebrate by cutting it open and eating the yellow goo (maybe a yolk?) that’s inside of it and Mando has his parts back. On the travel back, Mando and Ugnaught discuss the Baby, fix the ship, and say their thanks and goodbyes.

This seems like a little bit of a low point for the episode, with the repair montage feeling slightly cliché and a bit less than what’s expected overall but it’s quick enough to pass by. The thanks shared between the men is very emotionless, dead, which makes sense in a way but at the same time it feels limiting to how much we can really care for Mando. He leaves the planet, and Baby remains as adorable as ever.

The Mandalorian So Far

The Mandalorian isn’t the best thing on TV right now by a large margin, but as a Star Wars series, as a show for casual viewing there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fun, competently made, cute stuff that hasn’t evolved beyond its own limitations quite yet. It has potential to truly grow into something great, but until the day it does it remains as fun, but ultimately something to not think about much beyond Baby Yoda and how dang cute it tends to be.

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