SPOILER Andor Ep. 1-3 Discussion

You've got a lot of great stuff waiting in your future, mate. Enjoy!

 

My genuine reaction to 1-3 was, nice, rather low key, doesn't have that crowdpleasing hook yet, not reliant on opening with a bang, plenty of ambiguity and obfuscations, some of the stuff is more like a BBC/HBO co production and slightly reminiscent of classic old BBC drama mini series where you got weeks of introductions and then everything happened in a few episodes. It occurred to me that if they were anxious to get the fandom on their side following some of the griping about how TBOBF "should" have been paced, they might have condensed 1-3 into one pilot episode. At that time I thought it unlikely that the whole series would be like the Wire or one of those old BBC shows like Tinker Tailor, or Secret Army. But that's precisely what we got!

 

Just hopping on to say that after some troubleshooting, I was finally able to watch the first episode with my dad on Sunday! He...wasn't impressed. I warned him going in that the show was a slow-burn and that it was cut up into 4-mini-arcs over three episodes each, but I don't think the reality hit him until we were watching. He also didn't like the pacing* or grandeur of it too much. (He felt like the show was needlessly expensive, probably something that Igor's return has him thinking about.) My dad also didn't like how the flashbacks weren't in English, as he made it feel like they could have been more expository. (Yes, I countered that view with the point that the visual language tells you everything you need to know. I think he's just accustomed to subtitles nowadays, and the lack of those threw him off.)
He's on a trip now, but we'll watch Episodes 2 & 3 when he returns. Hopefully he'll like those more. Overall though, I'm pretty sure this will be a show my dad won't like as a whole. Yes, he loves WW2-era stuff and shows about WW2 and the like, but he's more into the "good morally upright war" sort of shows of his youth instead of the "gritty, this is reality" war sort of shows.

*This isn't new. My dad didn't like the first two episodes WandaVision or other slower-paced intro shows. He needs a hook and a mystery beyond the subtle ones.