TCW - "Lair of Grievous"

This was a rather cool episode, though not without many flaws/boring bits.

This episode is a great example of how The Clone Wars is making each and every Jedi unique, and it's awesome to see. Kit Fisto had a pretty cool characterization, complete with an accent and a rare fighting style. His former apprentice, Nahdar Vebb, was especially interesting, since this is the first main-character Mon Calamari to grace the screen since Admiral Ackbar. Vebb fights with a more rigid and slightly awkward fighting style than that of other Jedi; perhaps this is a result of his Calamari physiology? It would seem so, and it fit very well.

I'm happy to see an episode where Grievous is an actual threat, however I am still slightly upset at the fact that the episode's plot still revolved around Grievous's patheticness, and Grievous still couldn't beat Fisto in the end without backup from hs magnaguards.

Still, though, it was a pretty amazing moment when Fisto grabbed a second saber and revealed that he knew Jar'Kai (the two-saber style).


This is easily the best example of the amazing animation present in TCW. While the early episodes of TCW had extremely stiff animations for the saber fights, this episode really shined as the best example thus far of fluidity and attention to detail. Fisto's head-tails and sabers moved in a dazzling show of circular motion that's not been seen on TCW before. It was perhaps one of the best moments of the series thus far, even though it lasted only a few seconds.

Unfortunately, this episode doesn't hold up as well when viewed as a whole. It's certainly got some great elements, but as an overall narrative it suffers. While the Jar'Kai moment was stellar, the rest of the episode wasn't as entertaining.