When Good Shows Go Bad — The Mandalorian

the Mandalorian season 3 was a disappointment to say the least and for many fans It's the final straw they've now given up hope that Star Wars can ever be good under Disney now there are lots of reasons why this season was so weak from how baby Yoda was brought back when he should have been left with Luke or you can point out how the main plot starts in the seventh episode of this eight episode long season you can even point out how the show squandered an incredibly cool cause for conflicts where Mando has the darksaber and bogotan desperately wants it like this was an excellent setup for there to be some real tension between the two of them a setup that has no payoff at all when din just gives the dark saber to her without her so much as asking for it if you ask me while all of those are definitely pressing problems none of them are quite as heinous as this season's worst point of failure I'll break down what it is in a second but but normally it's impossible to prove how well or poorly a show on Disney plus does in terms of ratings because Disney is very secretive about their numbers but that's not the case with this one because the YouTuber Overlord DVD is is basically the Wikileaks for this kind of stuff and he released the ratings conveyed to him by Source inside Disney and it is pretty damning take all this as rumor with a grain of salt but according to this Source from episode 1 to episode 6 the Mandalorian dropped off over 93 in viewership now I have no way of verifying if those data are correct but assuming they are that is not just a bad abandonment rate for a show that's an apocalyptic abandonment rate like I have never heard of a show having a drop off as dire as this so here's why I think the show lost its audience they forgot to get the audience to care and I know that sounds so basic and that's because it is but when you tell a story it's a essential that you build up a level of investment the audience has in the character's Mission making us want them to succeed because when you charge right into the conflict without giving us any of that vital Preamble your story will not land to prove that let's look at episode 1 when Mando goes up to his clan and they say to him sorry we can't let you back in until you've redeemed yourself to which he replies okay and he spends the next two episodes trying to reach a sacred pool on his home planet to get back in his Clan's good graces now that's all well and good but there's a key storytelling ingredient missing here why does din want to rejoin his clan why seriously why it has never actually said it is such a basic question but we get no hints there is no dialogue we have nothing to go on here as an audience don't get me wrong we can guess what the reason is if I had to guess it's probably how he feels a need to reconnect with his old friends even though we've never seen him suffering from loneliness at any point on his adventures and he also probably wants to raise grogu in the Mandalorian way too despite how he has never once voiced how he thinks the Nomad lifestyle is no way to raise a child but I'm going to overlook this point let's assume that the show did convey that one of those reasons is why din wants to rejoin the clan even then there is still a big problem here because it is one thing to consciously know a character's motivation in a story it is a holy other thing to truly feel for that motivation to root for them to empathize that's what really keeps the audience sticking around and how and how buildup and empathy such as that as a writer well here's how you do it if you want to go for the feeling the need to reconnect with this old Clan angle showed in feeling isolated and lonely at the start of episode 1. perhaps he summons up a contrived reason to go see his old pal Carl Weathers pretending he's there on some important business but when his flimsy reason for coming to see him gets Unearthed Carl sees right through him sees the real quite sad reason why he came and we get some subtext Rich dialogue where he tells Mando more or less that he needs to find some real friends everyone needs a home living in the way he does is no way to live and of course Manu doesn't talk to Carl about this and he just bats this off because he's he has a very hard time expressing his emotions in this way but you show the audience just how much the loneliness is bothering him then when he goes to rejoin his clan and they say you've got to redeem yourself first it works so much better because you've done the hard work required to build up a strong empathy with him like this is far from The Only Time of the Season this exact mistake is made like I'll break down more examples in a second but like what's so baffling here is how this is an amateur writing error that you seldom see in big Productions it's so amateur that where you will commonly see it is in manuscripts written by novices just coming to grips with the basics of The Craft I'm not saying anything about favro or the writers like I'm just baffled frankly as to what to make of this because I have no idea how the Mandalorian season 3 fell for not just such a ruinous mistake but also such an easy to avoid mistake all you've got to do is add in a few scenes here and there and you completely solve this issue like the first four episodes are especially poor on this front and this is a good part of the reason why the show has that shockingly high alleged abandonment rate of 93 of viewers quitting by the time episode 6 rolled around here is a particularly bad example in episode 4 a Mandalorian kid gets taken by a dragon and the entire episode is about them trying to save his life all right cool but we have no idea who he is so why should we care does this kid have any hobbies or responsibilities or anything that might characterize him in any way nope we don't even know what his name is for Christ's sake it's as if the writers expect us to be engaged because a child is at risk and that on its own is enough to keep us rooted to our seats simply it's not like cheat codes like this do not exist in storytelling you can't put in no work then rely solely on the sentiment of think of the children to get us to care about this nameless backstoryless personality-less relationshipless character who has all of the Intrigue to him of a sheet of cardboard although scratch that actually because it later turns out he does have a relationship deep into the climax of this episode while they're assaulting the monster Nest this happens wait until we clear the area my son finally there is finally a basic sentiment around this character that might spur us into caring we now know this guy is his father but not only is the relationship between this dude and his son not fleshed out at all and it's so to such an egregious degree these two characters never share any dialogue with each other at any point in this entire bloody season couldn't they have also told us this earlier it wouldn't have been hard to do that the thing is I know exactly what is going on here like I've seen it happen hundreds of times in my own writing as has every writer to have ever written because this is such a common blunder it's basically a failure a theory of mind the writer knew this fact that this kid is the son of that Mandalorian and went along assuming that the audience inherently knew it too forgetting that it needed to be exposited at a much earlier point to the audience this right here is a classic draft one mistake if you're a writer be careful because you will often make mistakes like this in your first draft but that is what pees me so much about this season because so much of it plays like it's a first draft of a script in desperate need of revision and the worst part is fixing most of these revisions would have been extremely easy to prove that point let me do it now it will take me all of 60 seconds all you got to do is show this dude doing some fatherly bonding with the Sun at the start when everyone's doing all of their training clearly expositing their relationship demonstrating how much he loves the kids then also through in a moment where DIN and this dude are talking about raising kids and the struggles involved getting them to bond with each other and then the kid gets kidnapped and we see the father being devastated and irate abandoning common sense going in alone to the monsterness because he's so desperate to save his son and Mando and everyone else is scrambling to chase after him to back him up so he doesn't die alone there you go a very minor rewrite yet now it's so much more engaging to watch and while that wouldn't turn the episode into a breaking bad-esque brilliantly written Masterpiece it would do wonders to increase viewer engagement then on top of this all you've got to also consider how this rescue the kid plot line has no build up and is not connected to any other arcs going on giving it the feel of a side quest meaning the irrelevant feeling of this story arc is compounding with the sheer lack of care we have for this random kid diminishing the audience's will to keep watching even further but alright that's enough whinging here is a great example of how to get the audience to care in fiction let's look at the pursuit of happiness in that film we follow Chris a man failing to make ends meet he's unemployed he can't pay his rent and worse he has a son whom he loves dearly and he's totally unable to provide for him it's so bad Chris has to sleep in a public bathroom with him because he has nowhere else to go all the while Chris is interning at a brokerage firm uh he is not being paid for this but he's doing it because there is the potential offer for a job at the end however he's competing against dozens of other interns for this job I have never seen a film that is so unkind to its protagonist just when you think it couldn't get worse for Chris it does but you know what when he turns out for that job interview and he's an absolute mess because they spot a really rather bad luck where he couldn't clean himself up before he came the audience is on the edge of their seats and couldn't be more afraid for him when he completes that Rubik's Cube or when he completes that test we get these rare Victory moments where he proves just how great he is at what he does and the audience feels so fantastic for him we almost want to get up and cheer in the pursuit of happiness we couldn't want Chris to succeed more because the film does an excellent job at not just making him a really likable protagonist but at showing you how desperate his situation is and when in the end he actually lands the job Against All Odds we couldn't be happier for him that right there is how you handle this it's not enough to know The Logical level the motivation of he has no money he wants a job so he can get money that's not enough you've got to get the audience to emotionally connect with them too but now we've looked at a great example let's go on to look at an awful one uh this problem with the Mandalorian season 2 continues on with Beau Katan and the Mandalorian group in general so in this season Boca tan wants to retake Mandalore it's why she wants the darksaber so she can gather everyone together to go do it okay cool but why seriously why like how was it grounded for her emotionally what is her reason for wanting to retake her home planet it is a very basic question and the show can't be asked to answer it exactly like the issue of din wanting to rejoin his clan we can guess but we'd have to guess because the show gives us almost nothing to go on the same can honestly be said for din himself and the other mandalorians why do they want to retake Mandalore so badly like sure here you can point to external media and I'm sure in a novel over here or in the Clone Wars over there like this was explored a fair bit in all likelihood but that is simply no excuse each story must stand on its own two legs otherwise the people who didn't see the external media will have a very hard time understanding what's going on here's a suggestion in episode 1 does bogot and see foundling suffer from respiratory problems because they're living on inhospitable planets with low quality atmospheres and we see bogotan trying to console a kid who is horrendously sick as a consequence of breathing such low quality air for so long and then we get a shot of her face showing her hopeless frustration at the whole situation then her expression stiffens into resolve and we see how much she yearns this all to change does this season show mandalorians being treated like second-class citizens on other planets because their Nomads with no Nation to back them up and Beau and all the others are tired of being treated like scum hating how low their people have fallen she wants to reclaim the old ways and turn the mandalorians into a respected group once again maybe it's all about how she wants to reclaim the Lost status and Glory of her people that could have also been a viable motivation I am not saying the mandalorians had no reason at all to reclaim their planet we did have a few moments in the season like din saying this Perhaps it is time for us to live in the light once again on a planet where we are welcome so our culture May flourish and that's not nothing but one thing's for sure the show dropped the ball here hard because the reclaiming of Mandalore is the main through line behind this entire season so they should have given us a much much deeper exploration of why the mandalorians want to do that a few throwaway lines here and there simply don't suffice one thing that comes to mind here is that there's another sci-fi property that dealt with a very similar idea a group of Nomads trying to retake their home planet and they pulled it off much better I am of course talking about the quarians in Mass Effect in those games the quarians were booted off their planets by an AI Collective they created that got out of hand and ever since then they've been homeless living as migrants going from one place to the other we see them living in decrepit run-down ships so much so it's become a major part of their culture to go on a pilgrimage just to collect new parts to replace their ship's old crappy ones we constantly see quorians be victims of discrimination there are many xenophobic people's favorite punching bags they're forced to wear these EXO suits because their immune systems are so weak after having lived in artificial environments on ships for so long they'll get an infection and die if they don't wear them the Mass Effect games do a fantastic job at depicting the plight of the quarians conveying the desperation of that people's situation so in game three when they try to retake their home world the player is really rooting for them because we totally understand just how much it means for the Korean characters to be able to have their home back the same cannot be said the Mandalorian season three this is how you do character motivations you don't just say he wants revenge or he wants to find a job or he wants to go explore the Galaxy like Show Jon loving his dog to bits then when he is brutally killed we can really get behind the Revenge plot like show Chris in the pursuit of happiness loving his son but struggling to provide for him then when he's trying so hard to land a job we couldn't care more because we know how much this all means to him or even show Luke looking out over the desert with a Melancholy on his face as he yearns to leave the nest to go out and see the Galaxy to become an adult but he knows he can't because of his commitments to his aunt and uncle you've got to show the character caring otherwise the audience won't you've really got to be careful as a writer because there are so many mistakes like this that you need to learn to avoid or you will lose your audience if you're looking to hone your craft and write better characters a few years ago I made a skillshare course all about this topic on how to write great characters I talk all about writing villains and how to design characters from the ground up so that the audience finds them compelling and if you like you can watch it right now all you've got to do is click my link in the description and be one of the first 1 000 people to get a one month free trial using my link there are only so many spots available I couldn't recommend skillshare enough to you while it is today's sponsor I've been using it on and off for the past five years now because there really are some great writing courses on there it is a fantastic place to pick up new skills and hone your craft once you're done with my course you can check out storytelling 101 by Daniel Jose older he expands upon what we discussed in this video on how you can get your audience to really care about your characters and it's a course that I found really quite interesting again if you're into interested do click my link in the description and be one of the first 1 000 people to grab a one month free trial grab your slot before they go anyway thanks for watching keep writing and I'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 423,479

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Id: 0AmYRsVYHYM

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2023