I don’t know why, but when I finally got around to watching the first season of The Mandalorian a few days ago, I was not very enthusiastic. Maybe it’s because I tend to absolutely despise it when people over-exaggerate things and love them far more than they deserve (*cough*WalkingDead*cough* 😒), or maybe I’m just sick and tired of Star Wars in general due to it being over-saturated since Disney bought it (I haven’t even seen any of the movies that came out since Disney bought, and yet I’m sick of it, that’s how over-exposed it is).
Whatever the cause, I had low expectations despite people saying how good it was (I don’t put much stock in what others say because they frequently love things that are trash *cough*MadMen*cough*). I have noticed in the past that many of the things I loved most were actually things I had the lowest of low expectations for and thus they had nowhere to go but up, and thus I was pleasantly surprised with them, which then translated into positive feelings for it, which I interpreted as liking them. I figured I’d go for that effect again.
Meh.
I watched the whole first season in a few hours and to be honest, it wasn’t bad (the “baby-Yoda” surprise was ruined of course). I didn’t love it and I don’t really care if it doesn’t come back, but I did like that it flew by. It did not feel slow or sluggish; it did not feel like I watched eight episodes of a one-hour show (technically ~40 minutes). Each episode blew by quickly and I made it through the whole thing quickly and moved on. Sadly, I consider that to be a very good thing with most shows and movies these days. That I wasn’t bored is considered high praise. 🤷
There is one huge confounding factor however. I watched the whole thing at high speed. Yup, I watched the whole season at 2×, at 200%, double speed. At one point (episode six, “The Prisoner” to be specific), I suddenly thought that I forgot to speed it up like I do with everything I watch (and listen to), and tried crank it up, when I noticed it was already at double speed. I was shocked because it didn’t feel like it was running at twice the normal rate.
Out of morbid curiosity, I throttled it back down to normal speed to see just how slow it is supposed to be, and my god! was it slow. 😲 It was excruciating. How could anyone ever watch anything so slow‽ 😕 Have Jon Favreau and his cronies never heard of pacing? If you watch the behind-the-scenes footage of deleted scenes of movies, you will constantly hear directors saying that they loved the scene but had to cut it for pacing or that it had to go because it slowed things down. TV shows should not be any different. Just because you have eight hours in which to tell a story instead of 90 minutes doesn’t mean you can waste 80% of the time with boring, uneventful, mind-numbing filler. 😒 Cut the crap and speed it the hell up.
It’s as if directors think we have all the time in the world and theirs is the only thing we have to watch. They’re wrong. That’s why people like Judd Apatow, Brad Bird, and Aaron Paul can shut the hell up about Neflix giving viewers the ability to control playback speed. They should be thankful we’re watching their garbage at all. If they don’t want viewers to mess with the timing, then they should stop making their stuff so slow and boring in the first place.
+200%-speed / 5