Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy (TV Show – Episode 4)
Premise: As evil twin Mae searches out another Jedi to kill on a forest planet, her good sister, Osha, joins the Jedi in the hopes of stopping her before she gets there.
About: You are looking at THE most talked about TV show of the year behind Baby Reindeer. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons. To understand why The Acolyte is creating so much darkness in the universe, you must remember when it was greenlit. It was greenlit at the height of every social movement in the US. So it was a no-brainer season committal at the time for Lucasfilm. But, four years down the road, that vision of humanity doesn’t feel as fresh anymore. And hence, the show is getting attacked more than any other show in history. Today’s writers, Claire Kiechel and Kor Adana, have written for some good shows! Watchman, The OA, Mr. Robot. Can they counter the evil forces of online hate?
Writers: Claire Kiechel and Kor Adana
Details: About 30 minutes
What Disney has done – and what all the big studios are doing nowadays – is create divisions devoted to fake social media accounts so they can counter online dissension.
So it’s no surprise that Disney is going all in, online, trying to combat the hate being levied at The Acolyte. This is just one account that popped into my Twitter timeline today.
I learned something very early on at Scriptshadow. Which is that you can’t beat the internet. If the internet wants blood, you can’t pretend they don’t. Disney is giving it their best shot because they have enough money to do so. But they’re going to find out the same thing I did.
You can’t make people think something that isn’t true. You can’t seriously convince us that The Acolyte is an amazing show. I can buy some people thinking it’s a decent show. But a great show? Come on. Now we know you’re some AI bot deep inside Disney’s digital farm.
If you’re one of those people who’s struggling with The Acolyte, don’t worry! I am going to tell you how to fix Star Wars TV just as I fixed Star Wars movies on Monday.
But before we go there, let’s recap this episode.
Osha says bye to the one friend she made within the Jedi group, Jecki. Seems like there’s a potential love story brewing there. But before she leaves, Master Sol (Squid Game dude) learns that her evil sister Mae is headed off to kill the Wookie Jedi, Kelnacca (played by the same actor who plays Chewbacca by the way). They’re going to try and stop her and believe Osha can convince Mae to stop her serial-killing ways.
The episode, then, follows a dual storyline. Mae and her goofy friend, Qimir, head into the forest to look for Kelnacca. Sol, Osha, and the other Jedi get to the planet a little later and begin their hunt for Mae before she can do any damage.
Along the way, Mae has a realization that she doesn’t want to be bad anymore. She’s going to turn herself into the Jedi. So she allows Qimir to get caught in a trap and leaves him! I’m not sure why she does this. It’s not like he was making her kill Kelnecca. And this is where you start to see some cracks in the storytelling (potential spoilers follow).
Later in the episode, both the Jedi and Mae meet up to find that Kelnacca has already been killed… BY A LIGHTSABER SLASH! They turn around to see Mae’s evil masked up mysterious master (say that five times fast) arrive and pull out his lightsaber. Smilo Ren then force dust-attacks the Jedi and we cut to black. In other words, the reason we nonsensically left Qimir in his trap was to split those two up… because Qimir is secretly Smilo Ren.
All right. I’m trying to use my powers of screenwriting analysis to see through all the Acolyte hate and judge this show fairly.
What does today’s episode do well?
Well, we do have structure here. We have a goal: Mae is going off to kill this Chewbacca-like Jedi. Does that goal have stakes? That’s not as clear. I mean, we know she wants to kill it. But do we sense the importance of her needing to kill it? I don’t think we do. And if we don’t see why something is important, it’s hard for us to care.
Also, Mae is bad. So her goal is bad. Audiences aren’t as excited to get behind a character pursuing a negative goal as they are a character pursuing a positive one. These are things you have to think about as a writer. Because, if you don’t understand that the audience might not be onboard with your character’s goal, you need to figure out how to counteract that.
Which, to the writers’ credit, they do. And this is what I believe Leslye Headland is bringing to the series. She understands screenwriting. So, she adds this dual-goal narrative where we have the Jedi (including Osha) going after Mae. Their goal *is* a positive one. It’s to stop this killing of a fellow Jedi.
And that second journey does contain stakes, or at least higher stakes than Mae going after the wookie. We’ve met Kelnecca. We kind of like him. So we don’t want him to die! That gives the reader some desire to keep watching the story.
But is it enough?
It isn’t because I still didn’t care as much as I needed to for the story to work.
Why don’t I care enough about what’s happening?
That’s a great question that should be applied to any screenplay you write. If you’re a screenwriter who sends a script out and the script’s strength is the plot, yet readers still aren’t responding to it, it almost always means that they’re not connecting with the characters.
What sucks about that problem is that there are levels to what “connecting with the characters” means. Sometimes, I think the characters in a script are solid. I connect with them to the tune of 7 out of 10. Which is pretty good. But 7 out of 10 gets you a pat on the back and a dog treat at the end of the script. It doesn’t get anyone saying, “Oh my god! I have to tell somebody about this script now.” Or, in this case, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to break this episode down in my script review.” To get there, you need 8 out of 10 characters or higher.
There isn’t a single character in The Acolyte who is higher than a 7 out of 10. The twin sisters are where Headland has focused the majority of her energy and they just aren’t that interesting. Mae locked her sister in a room and tried to kill her in a fire, which felt overtly forced and therefore false. Which is the kind of stuff that weakens the characters in the audience’s eyes. If you’re not being trutful with what characters do, we stop seeing them as real people.
Star Wars thrived specifically because it leaned into crystal clear archetypes. The naive young hero with big dreams (Luke). The old mentor (Obi-Wan). The trickster (Han). The “Shadow” (Vader). The characters in this show are way more nebulous. We do have a trickster, in Qimir. But I couldn’t tell you what archetypes Osha or Mae fit into if you offered me a million bucks to do so.
The reason why that matters is because the more muddled a character’s essence and purpose is, the less invested in them we become. Cause we don’t understand them. It’s easy to convince yourself, as a writer, that vagueness equals “complexity.” But you can use whatever word you want. If we’re not clear on exatly who these characters are, we don’t give a crap about their goals, about their journeys.
Like Mae in this episode says, out of nowhere, “I don’t want to kill this Jedi. I changed my mind. I want to go help the good Jedi instead.” That’s the kind of thing an unclear character would say. Because if you understood who this character was, then something way more intense then a fleeting change of heart would cause an action like that.
What’s interesting about that is that Headland pitched this movie as “Frozen” in the Star Wars world. And we clearly see that with these two sisters. But Frozen actually didn’t have a well-conceived broken-sister relationship at the heart of its story. Elsa ran away because she was afraid her new powers might hurt her sister. It’s not like they hated each other or anything.
Then the movie was about bringing them back together. But the reason that movie is a classic has little to do with the conflict in that relationship and more to do with the greatest soundtrack for a Disney movie in over a decade.
Which means Acolyte is using that same weak sister-division story engine except without all the great music to hide that relationship’s deficiencies.
So how do we fix this and Star Wars TV in general? Well, I can’t fix this show. It’s too late. But I can fix future Star Wars shows. Oh, yes I can.
Star Wars has always been strongest when there’s urgency at the heart of the story. It was there in Star Wars and there in Empire. It was also there in Force Awakens.
It’s part of the franchise’s DNA.
I’ve noticed that these shows are weak mainly because there’s little momentum to them. We’re never moving forward fast enough, like the movies. Now, this is a problem that TV deals with with every show. And the way it handles this problem is by leaning into character conflict as much as possible.
So, you may watch a scene that barely moves the plot forward in a TV show. But we’re still into it because there’s tons of conflict built into the dynamics of the characters. That’s why one of my favorite shows ever, Lost, worked so well, despite its plot having to slow down so much. There were tons of characters who had unresolved conflict with each other. I always loved, for example, when Jack and Sawyer had a scene together.
But there’s a caveat to that working. You actually have to give a crap about the characters. And we don’t have that here. It’s not for lack of trying. I know for a fact that Leslye Headland tried to create the best show possible. But she built that twin relationship on a faulty foundation. Is there anyone who really cares whether these two twins make up or not? Come on. Be real.
So, what Star Wars needs to do on the TV front is pull a “24.” Not literally. But they need to build a show around urgency. And that way, it’s going to feel a lot more like Star Wars.
Cause they still haven’t figured out how to have two Star Wars characters casually talking in a scene and it work. Star Wars wasn’t built for “casual.” Watch the very first scene in this episode to understand how that plays out. Osha says bye to Jecki after her Jedi practice. The scene is the definition of casual and something we don’t need. But they need to fill up that episode somehow so they put it in there.
Some of you will be happy to hear that it is officially my last Acolyte review. I’m morbidly curious about what happens next but I’m no longer going to subject you to these experiences. May the Force be with you. Always.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you feel like you’ve got a good concept, a strong story, and an exciting plot, yet people tell you your script is boring or slow – an analysis that makes no sense at all? That almost always means they’re not connecting with your characters. Don’t settle for 7 out of 10 characters. They won’t get you anywhere. What does a 10 out of 10 character look like? Both the characters in Baby Reindeer. Ken in Barbie. Logan Roy. “Wonka” has about 8 characters who are an 8 out of 10 or better. If you want people to really be engaged, that’s what you bring to the table on the character front.
