Let’s sit down and talk. Just you and me, Resistance. I’m trying really, REALLY hard to appreciate you. I know you are going out of your way to give me me what I like with all the Space Turtle engineers, a sly Kylo Ren shoutout, an Asty cameo… but I swear that goofball Kaz tripped over things 7 times in 22 minutes. 7 TIMES! Why? I’m clumsy but I don’t trip and fall seven times a day! Can Kaz maybe, just maybe get a clue? And for the love of Yoda, can he stop falling down all the dang time?
The Children of Tehar starts with a Kaz screwing up yet another project (imagine that) and he goes off to drown his sorrows in a glass of water at Z’s bar. Once there he sees a hologram of some missing kids that if he found, he’d get a huge reward. So he and Neeku fall down a couple times and eventually with the help of those fantastic Space Turtles, find the lost kids. Who to nobody’s surprise, would rather not be found. Seems these kids just escaped from the planet Tehar which just saw the mighty Kylo Ren wipe out a whole town of people and everyone these kids know.
In an effort to save these kids from a cool gold plated First Order trooper, Kaz’s character thankfully shows his first glimpses of being not being just a clumsy guy in a jacket who knows NOTHING about engineering. Though he still screws up a lot in the process, as soon as Kaz hears about Kylo busting up their town, he springs into action to do anything to try and keep them safe. It was good to see and it may be a hint of what’s eventually to come once the First Order does much much worse to everyone HE cares about.
While Children from Tehar is a much better episode then the blond kid episode or the nighttime biker gang episode, it’s still sad that just a namedrop of a film character like Kylo Ren can make a whole episode come alive. When Kaz was talking to Ello Asty at the end, I almost passed out and I completely forgot all about plight of the runaway kids. The show is good but the original characters just aren’t there yet. These new shows always take time, but I feel like by Rebels episode 5, we already knew we liked Hera, Zeb and Kanan. Kaz just isn’t doing it for me and wonder if anyone is actually laughing at his constant buffoonery?
I’m sticking with you Resistance because you have promise and I feel like you’re building towards something. Maybe it’s Hosian Prime blowing up, the discovery of Neeku being the First Order spy, a cameo from King Prana, a song by Asty or maybe it’s just Kaz falling down some more? Either way, I’m still on board for now.
B