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Andor: Season 1: Episode 5: The Axe Forgets

What is it ? : Andor trains and prepares for the heist with the rest of the team, as the others in the team do not trust him. This leads to him to be truthful with them, telling them he is only here for the money. They set off, and camp down within sight of the dam where they plan to raid the next day.
Syril Karn is still with his mother, who is reaching out to contacts and people who owe her favours to get him a new career as he currently has no options, he dwells on what has happened, looking at a hologram of Cassian Andor.
Meanwhile on Coruscant, we discover that Mon Mothma's family, her husband and daughter, are resentful of the time she spends on politics, and the secrecy in her life is driving them away.
Blevin from the ISB is on Ferrix setting up an Imperial presence there, when he returns, Meero his rival walks past him and overhearing part of his conversation begins investigation thefts from across the Empire. Small crimes, which she thinks adds up to co-ordinated activity and a possible strategy against the Empire.
Finally, we see Luthen awaiting news of the mission, he is concerned that if things go wrong, two people on the team know his identity, so the Empire could be coming for him next. . . .

High Points : Andor continues to look beautiful, the contrast between the rugged hills of Aldhani, and the cityscape of Coruscant is wonderful, but even the differences between the tower block mass housing where Syril is, and the Speeder filled skyscrapers where Mon Mothma is, is so different the different worlds of affluence being as obvious as the different worlds of the galaxy.
The acting continues to be wonderful, and there's a whole load of character building, even if it remains to feel somewhat pointless. However, I could be proven very wrong about the character building which occurred previously, as we are still seeing events on Ferrix. The Empire is taking over, setting up an HQ on the world which even the local Corporate Security had given up on. So the characters which I had thought had been left behind and forgotten, may still be relevant and all the prior character building may still have a point rather than having been inconsequential as I had thought.

Low Points : But there remains nothing much going on. The very brief summary above doesn't actually miss too much out.
While it looks great, this episode is all set up, and while it's tense, with the feeling that something major is about to happen, nothing does happen yet. But this may be the format, with two episodes of build up before some action.
And while the character building of Andor's team may feel unimportant due to the fact that some of them aren't going to make it through alive, the fact that they are all being fleshed out will make their loss more important to us as we actually know who they are.

So what do you really think ? : While I want the series to be good, and I hope that all of this world building to have a point, with us revisiting the characters from the first episodes and seeing the ramifications of Andor's early actions. I do worry that we're not going to see any of that, and the series is going to remain as dull as it first appears to be.
And even if all the world building does come back, and is important to the overall story, it still doesn't excuse the individual episodes being as dull, even if they benefit the entire story.

Final Words : My thoughts are that the next episode will be the first part of the heist, with them sneaking into the Imperial base, and reaching their target at the end of the episode, with again little action, but loads of tension and intrigue. But going by the first three episodes, we may see the entire heist wrapped up next episode, with us going into an on the run three episode arc. But we shall see.

Score : 8/10

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