The Bad Batch (Season 1) Review!

Alright! The first season of The Bad Batch, the newest animated Star Wars show, finished last week and wow... it is something... something kinda bad... 

If The Clone Wars has mostly good episodes and a few mediocre ones, and Rebels has mostly mediocre ones and a few good ones, then The Bad Batch has mostly bad episodes and a few mediocre ones. I enjoyed three episodes? The pilot was awesome, the one with Rex was awesome, and the one with Cad Bane was awesome. The rest were varying degrees of trash to acceptable. 

But before I get into the stuff I disliked, let's go over the stuff I liked: The animation was absolutely beautiful. This might be the best-looking CGI kids show ever made, most of the shots look like they came straight from a movie. It's incredible. 

The second thing I liked was the conflict of Crosshair being a servant of the Empire tasked with hunting the rest of the Bad Batch. I also liked the Bad Batch, the four of them worked together incredibly well and the unique abilities made them interesting protagonists. 

That being said, it really sucked how much the show sidelined the Bad Batch for its entire run. At some point, The Bad Batch became origin stories for established characters and a solo story for Omega, which sucked, because I like the Bad Batch. 

You see, the Bad Batch are five wonderful, interesting characters that the early episodes really sold you on. And then they proceeded to do absolutely nothing with them for the next fifteen episodes. Not a great plan. The problem was that Hunter, Echo, Wrecker, and Tech were always more interesting than whoever they chose to team them up with. I wanted them to be the main characters! They're the title characters, after all! 

The Bad Batch also suffered from an unfocused narrative. While the trailers got me pumped to see what the clones did after Order 66, the pilot was the only episode that gave me that. The rest of the season seemed to be building up to the destruction of Kamino, but even that only comes into play for a few episodes. 

We needed more of this vengeance quest.

They needed a better endgame. If they had focused on the emotional conflict between Crosshair and the Bad Batch, Kamino, the clones after the Republic ends, and the genetic makeup of Omega, it would have been better. Unfortunately, they chose to have the Bad Batch become bounty hunters, meaning every episode feels the same! 

I literally can not tell you what happened in most of these episodes, they're all the same. The Bad Batch is given a mission by the lizard lady, they tell Omega to stay put, Omega doesn't stay put and ruins everything, the Bad Batch compensates, and then they return to the lizard lady. Throw in a fan-favorite character and you have the writing process of The Bad Batch. 

"But Huntah! They're our friends!"

I hated Omega. Passionately. Her annoying, unchildlike voice, her insistence on saving every droid or person they come across... it reminded me of the episode of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous where the stupid children decide to "save" velociraptors or something and release them from their cages... like... dude... do you know how stupid you are? 

Omega, bless her soul, has pure intentions. But at some point, she must realize she is a burden to the Bad Batch, no matter how much they may tell her otherwise. She runs off, makes a new friend who's actually an enemy, makes a friend who's a droid who she needs to save, has an emotional plea to Hunter to help them... the same story beats, over and over again. It got old after episode three. I hated her so much it was almost a relief when Trace and Rafa showed up, and that's saying... a lot... 

Rex is just too good of a character for his own good.

The only episodes I liked (The pilot, the one with Captain Rex, and the one with Cad Bane) were the only ones to not use that formula. Every other episode used the same thing. In fact, I quit after episode three! It was so boring! But then I had a giant cross-country drive and needed something to do, so... download, download, download. And that's the only reason I was able to get through it. Otherwise, I never would have finished it. 

Which really sucks, because there's a great show in here somewhere. The Bad Batch (Without Omega) were great characters in The Clone Wars and the pilot episode. It's when they're sidelined for Omega and returning characters that the show suffered. 

Speaking of which, one of these episodes barely had the Bad Batch in it. It was literally a Hera Syndulla origin story. That episode really sucked. And then Omega became friends with her, and then pleaded with Hunter for the Bad Batch to help rescue her. I hated it. 

And it's all to the detriment of the Bad Batch. Echo and Tech are barely part of the show, Hunter and Wrecker start off good and then drop off the face of the series, and Crosshair basically shows up in the pilot and finale. 

Overall, I give The Bad Batch a 3/10. "Episodic in the worst way possible, The Bad Batch smothers a potentially interesting story by sidelining its titular heroes."

Hey, if time has told me anything, it's that the show will start to get good around season three.