User Reviews

After the underwhelming 3 part opening story of Season 4 this, on the face of it, is another filler. However, while it has clear flaws, it also has some more interesting aspects.

On first viewing I was disappointed by the big drop after the superb Season 3 to the first 6 episodes of season 4 which are all basically fillers which are not near the excellence of the top level Clone Wars episodes.

This story has the quite cliched premise of the mind controlled leader and a less than inspired idea of Jar Jar looking like the leader and replacing him. Convenient and contrived. The prisoner exchange is another slight contrivance. So in terms of the main plot this is clearly below par.

On top of the slight plot contrivances there is the mild annoyance of the supposed comedy moments with Jar Jar which are for kids only. But those moments are not all that frequent or bothersome really.

When you take the positives of the episode this is not at all bad:

There is an innocent fun to the episode and the Gungans are not always reduced to comedy pratfalls, there is a little bit more seriousness at times which is a big plus.

Anakin brightens up the episode whenever he appears and Padme is strong support.

The face-off with Dooku where we really see Dooku's power is the biggest plus in this episode. We see a really powerful and menacing Dooku which adds to the overall Clone Wars story. He carries out a dark execution as well as his very impressive and dark victory over Anakin which is actually a fascinating step on Anakin's character arc. It also helps with supporting the dialogue when Anakin faces Dooku in Episode III where he says "My powers have doubled since we last met".

In addition there is a sad death of an endearing character and a moral dilemma for Padme. So overall this has enough drama to be a respectable filler rather than just a silly Jar Jar comedy episode.

A mixed bag.

My rating: 7/10.

Dooku comes in person, the gungans aren't annoying. You even get to see General Grievous humbled.

First half is really good, but then Anankin and Padme make stupid out of character decisions that are really stupid. Padme would rather have saved Anakin then ended a war and saved possibly millions of creatures. Regular Padme would probably choose the more logical and less stupid decision but oh well.

It seems the writers really put themselves in a corner with having the Gungans capture Grievous. They know what actually happens to Grievous so they had to quickly come up with a stupid way to get him back in the hands of Dooku. First half is great, second half downplays the first bit and is really bad.

The great general greivous gets smashed by about 4 gungan woriors in minute while the jedi are triyng to get him for years but he always wins or escapes!?

This one is an ouch for me... Grievous was too easy to capture... why did Anikan fall for the trap?

Jar Jar does both nothing and everything in this episode.

Captain Tabbers dies in the most meaningless way.

The only thing this episode accomplishes is show that Amidala cares about Ani, what's new?

Anakin and Amidala risk their lives on a regular basis to capture Greivous. There is no world in which Amidala would trade Greivous for Anakin. If she'd do that, then why are either of them involved in this war?

One of the VERY few BAD episodes of "The Clone Wars."