Tales of the Underworld: Episode 4: The Good Life
What is it ? : Two Duro children are running through the streets of a bustling city, Colby has Blue skin, while Niro has Green skin. They look through shop windows at food and the news showing on screens, and encounter another Duro boy, whose parents call him away, calling the pair street rats.
The stare at food through a grocery store window, but the shopkeeper chases them away and they run down a side street where they find a fruit in a trashcan and share it between the two, as an older Duro watches them wearing a cowboy hat and chewing a toothpick.
Later on they scam a droid, knocking into it causing it to drop the food it was carrying and then pretending to help pick it up again while stealing some of it. Afterwards they are approached by the older Duro who gives them a coin, calling it an investment. They enter the grocery store and buy some candy, noticing a man being admitted to a back room, before heading to a rooftop to share the candy and watch a police chase happening in the streets below.
The Duro man approaches them the next morning awakening them, offering them a deal to do a job for him, Niro is concerned about working for the man, but Colby negotiates the price up, making the man smile.
Later, another man enters the door within the Grocery store, and Niro and Colby throw things at a back door, the storekeeper complains that they are disturbing his customers and sends a couple of droids after them, chasing them through the streets.
With the guards away gang bursts into the grocery shop and barges through the back door into a gambling den, which they proceed to rob. The store keeper tries to intervene, but is shot through the chest by the older Duro.
As everyone flees the scene, police speeders arrive with police droids, and they capture Niro as Colby escapes the the Duro and his gang, who congratulates him on earning both boys reward, welcoming Colby to his family.
High Points : A good start to this arc of stories about Cad Bane, we see him as a child, living on the streets, and being recruited into a criminal gang, abandoning the only friend who shared his life before that. And it shows us life on the streets in the Star Wars universe, where travelling between planets is common place, but there are still homeless kids eating from the food refuse left in trash cans. It definitely shows us why Cad Bane might become a bitter individual.
Low Points : But for all this, it weakens Cad Bane's character, as we see that he is just imitating his mentor throughout his life, chewing on a toothpick, wearing his wide brimmed hat, it's all just him copying the man who took him in, rather than being an individual. I once commented in a Clone Wars episode that when he needed a hat he just found one in a store, and I asked if the store just happened to sell Cad Bane costumes. Well it turns out that they don't, they sell Lazlo costumes.
So what do you really think ? : While there's definitely pieces of interesting story here, it feels a little cobbled together, with co-incidences aplenty (the only grocery store the boys ever visit also happens to be a hidden gambling den, and Lazlo managing to find where a couple of street kids have spent the night so easily), and the characters seem like the lightest sketches of characters, without any depth. Where do Colby and Niro come from, and what is their relationship. The city doesn't seem to be a Duro settlement, although there do seem to be a fair amount of Duro around, so I don't think it would have been difficult to weave in some kind of disaster which would have led to Duro kids being homeless and parentless (a news report on the anniversary of the Duro colony ship crash, or some such).
Leading to the episode just feeling undercooked, there's something here, but it's not presented as well as it should have been.
Final Words : So we're onto Cad Bane's backstory, and at least this time we're back to the story telling of Tales of the Jedi, where we're jumping into his life at certain key moments. We see his backstory, on the streets and getting into crime. It'll be interesting to see where it goes from here.
Score : 8.5/10
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