Andor analysis posts!

i’ve been writing a lot about Andor recently, and figured i should collate all my reviews & analysis in one place.

most of these focus on the show’s political themes (colonialism, policing, radicalization), along with analysis of characters and story arcs:

Review of eps 1-3

Andor is the antidote to copaganda TV - A look at the well-observed array of Bad Cops we meet in the first three episodes.

Andor comes to Scotland - A brief intro to the way Aldhani draws inspiration from the Scottish Highland Clearances in ep 4.

Visiting Imperial Coruscant, Andor illustrates the banality of evil - Some thoughts on the show’s fascination with middle-management, along with how Andor bridges the gap between the Prequels and Original Trilogy. Rather than portraying the Emperor’s takeover as an ~evil switch~ being flipped between two distinct eras, the show makes it clear that life has barely changed for the aristocracy on Coruscant.

Episode 5: Of course the Rebellion includes a Theory Guy - 1) obvs we all love Karis Nemik. 2) this episode is an observational dramedy about an activist group??

Space lesbians!

Episode 6: No one is safe - A recap for that thrilling heist episode, constrasted with the sluggish pacing of Rings of Power. (i promise this makes sense in context lol.)

Andor, the Empire, and cultural erasure - The show is full of situations where indigenous cultures are erased or commodified by colonial forces, whether that’s the Imperial garrison on Aldhani or the Republic-era deforestation on Cassian’s home planet. I’m also particularly interested in the related role of Luthen Rael’s antique shop, where Coruscant aristocrats pay through the nose for rare items that were clearly looted from planets conquered by the Empire.

Episode 7: A chillingly realistic depiction of life under fascism - I’m constantly impressed by the show’s multilayered view of big political events. In this case, the fallout from the Aldhani attack has very different consequences for Cassian, Mon Mothma, the people of Ferrix, and the ISB.

Episode 8: Narkina 5 - The worldbuilding behind the Imperial prison (slave labor, divide-and-conquer gamefication, constant physical vulnerability) is some of the neatest political worldbuilding in the show, but this ep also illustrates why Andor is so divisive. Some viewers literally don’t understand what’s happening because they’re used to watching shows where everything is explained directly to the audience in simple terms. 

Ruescott Melshi! - Ep 8 brought back a very minor character from Rogue One, and unlike most Star Wars Easter egg cameos, his role serves a meaningful purpose.

Episode 9: Syril Karn is the Empire’s only true believer - Obsessed with this Reddit Inspector Javert freak. Unlike most of the other Imperial characters (who are corrupt, sadistic, self-serving or “just doing their jobs”), Syril seems to genuinely buy into Imperial propaganda, to the point where his wild-eyed zealotry is actively alarming to other people on the same side.

Breaking down the best line in Andor episode 9 - Kino Loy (Andy Serkis) gets such an unexpectedly interesting arc!

@amisssunbeam

When he tells Silna “for trade”, that’s where it all begins to come donw. 

By that point in the series, I already liked Goodsir, but his first scene with Silna was when I began to really care for him.  He, alone, made the effort, however clumsy, to approach her as a human being; was just aware enough to feel that something was wrong, that what the expedition was doing was wrong, that they’d fucked up collectively, not just Hickey, individually, by kidnapping Silna, but he didn’t have the perspective necessary to go further than that.  Goodsir is a product of his environment, he’s not blameless, but he is, in a fundamental sense, innocent- not because he’s inexperienced or incorruptible, but because he’s missing the pieces that bridge the gap from ignorance to understanding.  The difference between someone like him and someone like Hickey is that old original sin, awareness of doing wrong; the ability to question and decide for oneself, based on one’s own experiences and ideas.  Hickey knows that some of the things he does are wrong, but his experiences have made necessary to reconcile himself to surviving at the expense of morality; Hickey’s essentially amoral.  Goodsir can’t separate himself from morality, from the worldview, the society that made them; he is morality, Victorian society.  Victorian society isn’t Sir John, or James, authority figures, or even Hickey, all of them damaged and hardened by it, but this gentle, interested, curious man whom we know to be utterly doomed*, the least likely victim of a system that’s only cared for him, the victim we don’t want.  But that’s the nature of tragedy, and the British Empire, its scope, its aims, its actions, is a tragedy, and tragedy doesn’t care what you want.

So, anyway, I drove Goodsir to the hospital, and he was fine.

* They’re all doomed; we know that much from the beginning.  Goodsir’s death is painful, though, in a way that no other death, save Jopson’s, approaches.  Goodsir goes to his death furious, disgraced, betrayed, used and ridiculed, stripped of everything he thought he knew about the world and himself, left only with the bitterness and cruelty he’d up to that point rejected.  The narrative doesn’t judge him, tries to comfort him, tries to comfort us, but that doesn’t change the fact that Goodsir’s death is just wrong.  It shouldn’t have been that way.

Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry

What I think connects the deaths of Jopson and Goodsir in a particular kind of horror is betrayal.  Of all the pain on The Terror, that of betrayal is shown to have the greatest destructive potential; the greatest force for movement, in either direction.  Sir John’s betrayal of Francis, his constant whittling down of Francis to Francis’ defects, real and perceived, makes Francis sink even deeper into self-loathing until he no longer cares whether any of them live or die.  Hickey’s betrayed several times over, and while the men are already wretched by the time he gets around to taking his revenge, the violence and degradation he subjects them to/induces them to participate in is beyond what they’ve already suffered and could have imagined.  Conversely, James’ forgiving of Francis’ betrayal of him, Francis striking him and taking away both their dignity, allows them both to gain self-acceptance, to love each other, trust each other and work together.  These are easily named and understood, belonging to the logic of life. 
There’s no logic in death, least of all, in Jopson’s.  Sick and in pain, Jopson hallucinates Francis abandoning him, when Francis would never leave Jopson, not in life or in death, if he weren’t being held against his will.  We understand that, and so would Jopson, if he were in his right mind and in possession of the facts.  That it’s an illusory betrayal doesn’t make it less real.  Jopson feels it as though it were real, and spends his last moments convinced he’s been forsaken, reaching for Francis not in hope of help or comfort, but beyond these, reaching for Francis for Francis’ sake.  Whatever Francis is to Jopson*, it’s something vital, the loss is visceral, horrifying, without reason, and Jopson can’t survive it.
The betrayal Goodsir experiences is equally lacking in reason; another abandonment.  Goodsir’s belief in the British empire is not in an economic and cultural force, the acquisition of territory and knowledge, but in a kind of protective goodness, like a parent’s love.  It’s unconditional, until Goodsir begins to feel it slip away**.  Hence his inability to cope with his own moral failures, and his total break-down after Hodgson’s apologia, the muddling of the profane and sacred by an unbalanced mind, or self-serving varnish after the fact to cover Hodgson’s embrace of the bestial.  Either way, if Hodgson, an officer, has sunk this low, it’s further evidence that none of them are any longer what they were supposed to be.  Yet, Goodsir has learned too much to save himself with the logical assumption that it’s separation from Great Britain, geographical separation from the source of grace, that’s making them this way.  For a time, he tries, protesting to Silna, “people there [in England] are good”, but that soon fails him; whatever they had of home has left them.  One sees Goodsir approaching the inevitable conclusion that perhaps it was never there at all. 
Then comes Goodsir’s own treachery, a man allowing himself to become an animal to be butchered for sustenance, and that sustenance concealing death.  It’s the empire’s betrayal turned back on itself, the knowing and willful contradiction of its supposed civilization, Goodsir metaphorically biting the hand that fed him.  Yet, he can’t betray without betraying himself, giving up what was good about him, rooted in his connection to his home, the hope that there was still a home for him to return to.  “I will not leave this camp,” he tells Francis, both a statement of intent and a capitulation to fate.  The punishment for both his betrayal of his ideals and his awareness that his ideals have betrayed him, is that Goodsir can never return to ignorance, can never go home again.

* A popular reading of their relationship is strictly quasi-familial, but I find more interesting the lack of boundaries between them, the erasure of both the limits imposed by society and by time, Francis simultaneously Jopson’s mother, his father, his son, his husband, his master, his employer, his penitent; Jopson, Francis’ son, mother, enabler, wife, servant, priest, nursemaid.  The more entangled they are, the less intelligible their relationship is, the more Jopson’s anguish makes sense.  Francis is part of him.  What part or parts, I’m not sure we’re meant to know.

** I think of the exchange in “Deadwood” between the Reverend Smith and Jane.  The reverend, suffering the physiological and psychological effects of a brain tumor, says that when he prays, he no longer feels God’s presence.  Jane retorts, “Well, join the fucking club of most of us!”

OKAY i just finished S4E5 of babylon 5 and before i go any further (because i am on THE PRECIPICE of a whole bunch of f*cked up shit) here are some sundry thoughts about the end of season 3 and beginning of season 4. my liveblogs have been a little goofy and detached as a coping mechanism because this show is so heavy but i really wanted to get out my feelings before i moved onto more serious stuff:

• i didn’t really have the wherewithal to type out a lot about the season 3 finale but it was so good and it’s stayed with me a lot over the past couple of days. kosh telling sheridan to jump and sheridan leaping on faith and the white star crashing into the planet…i still have chills. that’s going to be one of those scenes that plays over and over in my head.
• i knew sheridan was alive because he was still on the credits but seeing him bleeding and, thankfully, alive in the cave was such a huge relief. my heart sang. my mind went to philosphy 101 and plato’s allegory of the cave but that might be a reach.
• i don’t know what’s up with lorien but he reminds me of king asgore from undertale. i think i like him. a lot of the stuff he said about life and death really resonated with me….the specific language of him not being able to create life but having the ability to blow on the embers of life was so evocative. i knew exactly what he was talking about.
• i love seeing sheridan (who is all about control and demanding answers and taking action) relinquish his grip and learn to trust. the scene where he accepted death with lorien until the room got dark…fuck. 
• i’ve barely even touched on any of the londo/g’kar stuff in my posts, mostly because it’s all been really gripping and really upsetting. i cannot believe the pain that g’kar has suffered, mostly at the hands of londo. to see londo finally, finally work to help him and free him (even if it was, as usual, at least partially self-motivated) is so long overdue. it doesn’t really feel good because g’kar has endured so much pain and all i want is for him to be happy and healthy but it’s a huge step.
• my heart breaks for vir. wasn’t there a prophecy about him killing the emperor? i didn’t see how it was going to be possible but it all makes sense now - of course it was partially an accident. of course he’s haunted by it. to see him drinking away his regrets like londo… i feel like i blinked and all these characters aged horribly. it hurts my heart.
• speaking of the emperor, i think they just baaarely struck the right balance between campy and scary for cartagia. he was still terrifying without being unbelievable and i am SO GLAD he’s dead. rip you piece of shit!
• i have no idea what’s going on with garibaldi - truly. i should rewatch those scenes. was he captured by a shadow vessel? is he a clone? don’t actually answer any of those questions. i’m worried and i feel like he’s going to die and even though he’s probably the main cast member whose death i could handle the best, i really don’t want to have to.
• i’m very worried about susan. i hope she makes it out okay and she gets to visit russia and her father’s grave after all this is done. i just want her to be happy and ok.
• i still feel the loss of kosh. i still haven’t gotten over that. i still hold out hope he’ll come. it made my eyes sting when john saw him in the mirror and kosh told him to jump. his death scene still lingers in the back of my mind a lot.
• narn is free. narn is free.
• and of course, obligatory mention for sheridan and delenn who i love and who are the sole bright spot getting me through this. the scene where he came back and she saw him appear on the railing from the crowd below sent a chill all the way down my spine. tears may have been shed. i had the same reaction when john said he only had 20 years left. this feels like sisko going into the wormhole all over again. fuck!! i’m worried!!