Obi-Wan Kenobi Part IV Review (Patreon)

Obi-Wan Kenobi is proving to be a case study in how streaming has royally fucked the idea of narrative pacing. We're four episodes into a six-episode miniseries, whose plot structure can be described as "tenuously tracing Obi-Wan's return to the fight," and doing an abominably short (33 minutes!) "rescue the princess" plot in 2022. I don't know what's going to happen to TV drama in the immediate future, but streaming's inevitable implosion is on full display here.

Part of this isn't Obi-Wan Kenobi's fault. The production is visibly hampered by COVID restrictions, something most glaringly evident in its editing, which rapidly cuts to hide a lack of coverage and exposes Deborah Chow's puzzling lack of chops at shooting action scenes. This show is clearly undermined by circumstances, although its creative indecision is clearly the biggest result of that.

Like I said, this does a "rescue the princess plot", with Obi-Wan and a friendly rebel masquerading as an Imperialist scuttling through a not-Death Star attempting to save Princess Leia from the Empire. My mother recently noted on Twitter that the decision to have Obi-Wan and Vader meet between Episodes III and IV is clearly motivated by asking "what do the fans want." She's right, but she has no idea how right she is with this episode. The mix-and-match style of tropes that often makes Star Wars' "cyclical history" theming interesting just doesn't work here. It's simply a retread that has literally no time to cover its most interesting ideas.

Which is a shame, because this show's best ideas are quite solid. It continues to nail "what is life under the Empire like for ordinary people?", something Star Wars has been missing for 45 years (Christ, I'm 23 and typing that out made me feel ancient). Indira Varma's turn as Tala, an Imperialist officer secretly operating an Underground Rebelroad, is a compelling use of the Star Wars double agent trope. Moses Ingram is still fun as femme Kylo Ren, and Ewan MacGregor is Ewan MacGregor.

While Deborah Chow struggles with the action scenes, which lack a sense of fluidity or direction, she continues to nail character moments, and in this episode shows an aptitude at horror. The Jedi tomb bits are legitimately creepy, as the camera lingers on Obi-Wan's increasing horror before slowly and painfully revealing the frozen Jedi corpses. Why the corpses are there is unanswered, and they only appear for two seconds anyway,  but what the hell, we're apparently two thirds done with this show and it's nice to have some creepy-weird Star Wars.

Surprising also is Hayden Christensen's and James Earl Jones's creative relationship. Christensen is fantastic at stomping angrily down a hallways, and the giant mask and Jones' voiceover save him from having to do any real acting. This is Christensen's best performance as Vader, and more crucially, his best performance as Anakin Skywalker since Shattered Glass.

That's about the nicest thing you can say about this sitcom episode-length installment of this ostensible dramatic miniseries. It gives a mediocre actor who got too much shit from a bunch of nerds his dues by obscuring him from acting. Maybe he'll get a "mask smashed and an angry eye reveal" moment next episode. And maybe Ewan MacGregor will get more to do than scurry down corridors. But most likely, we'll be cursed with more trad Star Wars.