Dan Grievous reviews "Sabotage"

So it has begun... the final arc of Season Five.

This is a "right after viewing" review. For me some episodes tend to either get better or get worse with time.

We start off with a quite the fast newsreel. All I got from it was: Lucas still does not care for the CIS or its worlds, he still wants to keep the lame Republic-allied Trade Federation with Cato Neimoidia being a Republic world and we do not get a deeper reason for the "invasion". The show just doesn't care for the CIS side of the story - Neimoidians attacking neimoidians just so they could make the Republic think that the Trade Federation and Lott Dod are still good. But that would have been too deep. The newsreel reminded me of the first Umbara newsreel that just skipped quickly to get to the "meat".

The "Battle" of Cato Neimoidia was nothing special and it was short - just as everybody predicted. I am just sad I got my hopes up that the show would actually pay attention to the CIS a little more.

The visuals on Cato Neimoidia were stunning and I went back 3 times during my first viewing to look at how good they looked.

The buzz droids encounter was fun and I must say it was better than the one in "Revenge of the Sith".

The moment with R2 slamming a buzz droid with the wing - PRICELESS!

I really laughed out loud during the moment with the reveal of the bottom of Anakin's fighter. That was so funny... I love buzz droids. When I see them on a ship like that, I always think they are having a party on it with all the chaotic movements and noise.

The scene that had Ashoka saved Anakin was fun, but it was catered for the fans that have not seen the later movies. Especially the fact that they wanted the younger fans to think that they had lost R2. It is a normal thing.

Then we get the contrived "Anakin and Ahsoka are the only Jedi in the galaxy" situation.

I am still puzzled that Anakin and Ahsoka are always the only ones the council would trust, especially, given the history of the pair not following orders.

There is not much going on in the rest of the episode after this.

The droid was not that interesting for me. If you are a huge fan of "CSI: Miami" then you will love the cameo/tribute to the David Caruso.

There are several scenes of Anakin, Ahsoka and Ruso-ISC investigating and asking witnesses.

Several times they showed the image of the main suspect Jackar Bowmani and I was really eager to see a model of his alien species... The Abyssin...

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Abyssin

In the middle of all the investigating and questions to people, we get the coolest cameo of this episode - CIN DRALLIG.

CIN DRALLIG IS IN THE GAME... for anybody who has played and loved the 2005 Episode III game, this is a real treat.

During the scene with Drallig, Anakin meets Letta - the wife of the Abyssin suspect Jackar.

After Anakin talks to Letta in a private room inside the Temple and gets nothing out of her, he rejoins Russo and Ahsoka. They find out that lethal nano-droids were the cause of the explosion.

The walking through all the footage of the wreckage was quite a nice idea. 

Russo heads off to check all the security footage of hangar, Anakin and Ahsoka join him, but he informs them that nothing has been found. I personally loved the interactions between the droids. It really reminded me of Clank and his little robot minions in the "Ratchet and Clank" games.

There is another boring Council scene and then we get a funny scene with the discovery of Jackar, but is just a hand now. It turns out he was the bomb.

Anakin and Ahsoka go to the apartment of Jackar and Letta. They find nano-droids there too and assume that Letta had fed Jackar the explosive nano-droids.

Before she can be taken in, she tries to run. It does not last long since the chase scene is not a good one. 

The Anakin "rage" moments were as stupid as always and there is the famous "We did not say he was dead" cliche. 

After all that nothing, we end on nothing.

The episode very well and if this was not the finale, it could have been just a random, average episode of the show. Not the finale. 

The episode was not bad. I could not find something that I really hated. Maybe cause the episode had not much to offer. Well... Maybe the "battle" in the start. The battle was really disappointing. Not only cause the show wasted so much opportunity by skipping over it, but because it is just too clear that they needed to put some random action in the start. Since this episode was a long episode of  "CSI: Miami" in Star Wars, the creators knew that the episode would be a total bore if it did not start with a battle.

There were some fun moments like the Buzz droids scene and there were awesome moments like seeing Cin Drallig finally make it, but there was not enough to make this episode stand out or anything like that. 

I give it a 7,5. It does not work as a standard epic TCW episode like "Missing in Action" or "Tipping Points", but as a detective episode (an there have been others like Senate Murder, Lightsaber Lost and Duchess of Mandalore) it works better than I expected. 

PS: It is so nice to see once again new Jedi in the show like Dralling. I can not stress that enough.