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Andor: Season 2: Episode 4: Ever Been to Ghorman?

What is it ? : One year later!
Andor and Bix are living in an appartment provided by Luthen Rael, Bix is still having nightmares about her torture, and Andor is over reacting to situations seeing everything as a threat. In a previous mission, Andor killed an Imperial for merely seeing Bix face, and while he says anyone wearing the uniform is a viable target, she is finding that harder to deal with.
Meanwhile Mon Mothma is trying to get votes to oppose further support of the Empire, but people are looking after themselves, knowing if they oppose Palpatine it will cause problems for their people back home. Even personal favours are being rejected as they accept that Mon helped them in the past and are grateful for it, they cannot bring themselves to support her now.
On Ghorman, Syril Karn has take a demotion to work as a supervisor with the government, he speaks to his mother who berates him for giving up his place on Coruscant and giving up his relationship with Dedra Meero, but he says it's worth it because Ghorman is a good place with good people who don't deserve the treatment the Empire is dishing out to them. But we see this call is being monitored, and some Ghorman insurgents decide that Syril is worth trying to bring into their group. As he leaves work that day, he is contacted and given a meeting to attend, and returning home he notices that it has been broken into.
He returns to work late that night under the pretence he has left paperwork he needs for a meeting in the morning, and slips into a safe room, contacting Dedra and letting her know that he has been contacted. She tells him to find out more, and to attend the meeting.
Dedra attends a meeting at Imperial Intelligence, where an officer speaks up, revealing that they are capturing so many people that they cannot process them and the information they are discovering through intelligence. Dedra approaches the officer afterwards, pressing for him to call on her for help if he needs, pretending her current role dealing with Ghorman is unimportant.
Another Imperial officer observes this, and reports back to Luthen Rael, revealing that she is in charge of the Ghorman operation, which has been secret up until now. Luthen contacts Andor, and tells him to go to Ghorman. But Andor is reluctant, as Bix needs his support, but Luthen urges him to go.
Wilmon, the other Ferrix survivor who left Mina-Rau with Andor and Bix visits Saw Gerrera and his group of rebels on D'Qar.
Syril visits the meeting, where people are voicing their complaints about the way the Empire is treating them, concerns are loudest about the construction of what they think is a new armoury, especially as it overshadows a memorial to those killed in the Tarkin Massacre in what they think is a massive slur to the memory of those killed by the Imperial military. After the meeting, he speaks to the leader of the group, who wants to speak to him further. Syril acts reluctant, but the leader asks him if the Ghorman people opening a line of communication with an Imperial representative is illegal, and Syril admits it is not.
Andor makes his decision to go to Ghorman, and says goodbye to Bix, as he leaves the safe house and slips into the city, Bix brings out a vial and swallows some of the contents. . . .

High Points : Strange to say the best parts of this episode are all Syril, his phone call with his mother is brilliant, as he pro Imperial rhetoric based on what she watches on what I can only guess is the Star Wars version of Fox News allows him to seem empathetic to the Ghorman people. A point brought to clear focus when the Ghorman rebels monitoring his call comment on how horrible his mother is.
And this series looks so good, the scenes on Ghorman are fantastic, showing off a city square and the scenes of where Andor and Bix are located (it's not identified in the episode, but given Andor meets with Luthen in the flesh makes me think it's Coruscant) look absolutely amazing, although I do recognise elements of the brutalist architecture of various places around London, which didn't bring me out of immersion, just made me realise how alien some of the architecture is.

Low Points : This is a slow episode, obviously all building towards the end of this arc, but Mothma, Syril and Dedra attending multiple different meetings (all seperately), and Andor and Bix debating the murder of a single Imperial officer, might be world and story building, but it definitely is slow and not that interesting. To such a point, that Wilmon meeting Saw Gerrera seems so pointless that apart from Forest Whittaker acting his pants off and being generally awesome in a role he absolutely owns, I have difficulty remembering the content of that scene.

So what do you really think ? : A major part of this episode is about how damaged by their actions Andor and Bix are becoming, she cannot sleep and he cannot perform basic interactions with normal people without being suspicious of them. This is really interesting, but does slow the episode down, especially in a universe where Luke Skywalker can blow up the Death Star killing over a million of its crew and never blink, it seems weird to see two rebels debating whether they really should have killed that one Imperial officer. And while it's interesting to watch, I can recognise why people might have problems with an episode of a Star Wars series where two people spend a chunk of the episode sitting at a table discussing their feelings.

Final Words : So we're back to the first part of one of Andor's three episode story arcs, and the pacing crashes to a halt. We're building storyline which will be important for later, but for the moment isn't massively interesting in itself. Hopefully next episode will be better, but going by last year, I'm prepared for another episode to drag past before we get a burst of action in the final part of this arc.

Score : 8.5/10

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