THE SKILLS OF SPOILERS ARE NOT WASTED BELOW
An entertaining bridge of an episode, “A Different Approach” takes Omega, Batcher, and Crosshair on a brief stopover before they continue seeking out Clone Force 99. It’s an episode that re-states a lot of what we already know: Omega is a good person that leaves no one behind, Crosshair’s is a trigger happy survivalist, and the Empire’s rule, you know, sucks. After last week’s triptych, where our clone heroes escaped a months-long ordeal (far longer in audience time), it feels like “A Different Approach” is meant to eschew that ‘different approach,’ and bring the series back to baseline.
Star Wars tropes abound in “A Different Approach.” We get a young character talking down to an older, more experienced one; a beloved sidekick in peril; a run-down town with an open-air market, a bar, and a foreboding Imperial presence; a nasty British officer whose not quite as dumb as he looks; our heroes defending the natural world; and characters that never give up.
It’s similar to a lot of other Star Wars, and the strength of similarity is comfort. This is a very comfortable episode The Bad Batch, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I personally always love the streets and sounds of Star Wars outposts, they make me wish I could walk through them. It was my favorite thing about Galaxy’s Edge, feeling immersed in a world I have viewed my whole life from a two-dimensional distance. I liked walking through the market more than I liked the rides or the lines. Just being there felt good. So even if this episode offered a look at one more townscape of hundreds, it was something I always like, like pizza or a cup of coffee.
But, of course, the risk of the comfortable is diminishing returns. This episode is, basically, the 169th of The Clone Wars. (133 episodes of The Clone Wars proper and 36 episodes of its spin-off). Sometimes we get episodes that really push the limits or indulge some peculiar impulse, and sometimes, we get another plucky kid in another plucky town with another guy in armor, fighting stormtroopers on a landing platform. It makes this episode feel like it exists to get us from Point A and Point B, with no alarms and no surprises.
“A Different Approach,” though, does eventually reach to a powerful moment. You just have to wait for it.