Anyone else think the writing is shallow? (spoilers)
Hi guys. I know how the title sounds so I don't want it to come off as trollish. I always enjoyed SW as a kid and I've just started the 3rd season of this show. I'm not sure if it is because they are trying to gear the show to a younger audience or because the episodes are 20 minutes long but there is a serious simplicity associated with the writing. I will attempt to convey the issues that support my viewpoint below:
(spoilers)
I just finished watching Season 3 Episode 6 (which I believe is titled "The Academy"), and I sat stupefied as the Duchess, who brought in Ashoka to teach the young Mandalorians about corruption (which she knew existed and previously expressed concerns about either moments earlier or in the previous episode) simply shooed the students away when they brought A RECORDING containing evidence of very corruption she was looking for without so much as looking at it. Earlier in the episode when the students were recording the secret meeting, I thought to myself "and one of them will alert the criminals to their presence in 5...4...3...2...1..." and sure enough, someone knocked over a datapad or whatever. I suppose I should also mention that 95% of the viewers probably knew who was under the cloak before it was revealed, simply because of the way the episode is laied out. But even though the Duchess' simplistic mind cost the lives of her guards and almost everyone else in the episode, we simply ended things with a hug, a smile, and the knowledge that we'll probably be back to clean up another mess.
Another example was Season 3 Episode 3 that was based off of the Battle of Thermopylae or at least the movie 300 (I know they aren't historically the same, I just never looked up the differences). Set up a barrier forcing the enemy to come from one path, fight to the death, allow innocents to escape over the mountain. Copy/paste.
I'm currently watching Season 3 Episode 7 and at the beginning of the episode, the narrator explains that Aurra Sing was killed. As soon as he said that, I thought "let's skip ahead a few minutes and see if there's a scene with the not-so-dead Aurra." Still haven't watched the episode through yet, but guess who I found back from the dead. zzzzz
(end spoilers)
I obviously enjoy parts of the show because I continue to watch, it just seems to me that the writing is excessively amateurish and could be drastically improved, especially since they take no issue with to-be-continued episodes. The situation listed above is just one of many examples of so-and-so will betray me in a later episode, cliche moments whether they are action / comedy / romance, supposedly tense battles between big characters (like Asajj / Grievous / etc) even though you know the battle will always end in neither party dying, and just a structurally weak script filled with bad decisions or open ends.
I look at other TV series like The Shield, which you may or may not enjoy, and I see examples of plots set in a firm direction that keep people immersed by showing characters suffering the consequences of their actions, showing dynamic, unpredictable and complex plots where characters have to react, and not being afraid to mess with the audience by eliminating a main character altogether. Instead we have a status quo machine that returns the situation back to X hours or Y days before anything happened. Kinda like a Family Guy episode. Peter can wind up being the President, but you know it will never last past one or two episodes.
What do you think? Is this series doing the franchise justice? Do you feel they have enough to work with considering certain characters must remain alive and certain balances of power must be present because they were displayed in Revenge of the Sith?