I finished the original six season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars just the other day. I’ve been watching along as I listen to A More Civilized Age and I finally hit the point where, for a few years, this show had come to an end. It would eventually get a seventh season to help wrap up a show that absolutely should not have been cut off at the knees like this one was (the last few arcs of the show were some of the best Star Wars I’d ever seen and might have held the top position if not for Andor), but no one knew that at the time. This was just where the show ended, somewhat abruptly and in a bit of a lackluster manner. Now, I’ve yet to listen to the AMCA episodes covering the end of season 6, so I might change my mind once I hear someone else’s opinion on it, but I wasn’t super interested in the final Yoda arc. I feel like that time could have been better spent on wrapping up some other unanswered questions beyond “why did Yoda turn into a little, isolated gremlin on Dagobah” and “how did Yoda learn to become a Force Ghost,” which didn’t really need answers. Or at least I feel like they didn’t need answers. That said, this sort of lack-luster end to the show feels very “Clone Wars” as a whole, given its rather inconsistent quality and the more extreme peaks and valleys it developed in its later seasons. I’ve gotta give it point for consistency in that regard. And, you know, acknowledge that I don’t regret spending all this time watching five and a half full seasons of an increasingly well-made cartoon.
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Digging Deeply Into A More Civilized Age
While I might have started listening to Media Club Plus first thanks to what felt like a premise made specifically for me and my podcast listening time opening up right as it started posting, the podcast that actually got me to stop avoiding media discussion podcasts as a category was A More Civilized Age. I might not seem like it, but I’m a pretty ardent fan of Star Wars. I mostly avoid it because the online fandom is, perhaps, the most toxic and miserable fandom I’ve ever seen and not only do I want to avoid being associated with it in any way, shape, or form, I don’t want to ever catch its attention. The worst of them have way too much time on their hands and these miserable fucks have driven numerous people off the internet already, so I want to avoid them at all costs. Still, I love a good bit of Star Wars and while I might have some mixed feelings about the modern media landscape of the franchise (especially after all the books I’d read as a child and teen got launched into the uncaring and non-canonical oblivion that is “Star Wars Legends”), I figured that listening to some media-savvy folks discuss it might be a great way to push myself to finally sit down and watch some of the TV shows. I’d already tried and failed, after all, since I let myself get caught up in a bunch of online message boards that listed each episode in what was supposedly the “correct” timeline. I bounced off it pretty hard when I tried that method since none of it made any sense and it was a pain in the butt to cycle through seasons for the next episode I was supposed to watch. This podcast, though, declared that they were watching it in release order and, this January, when I ran out of other things to do, I resubscribed to Disney+ and started working my way through the show and the podcast in tandem.
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