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    ‘Leo’ Review: Adam Sandler as a Gruff Lizard, Dishing Advice

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    Adam Sandler plays a gruff old lizard who dishes out advice to fifth graders in this animated comedy.Adam Sandler stars in “Leo” as a grumpy lizard who has spent his entire life in the terrarium of a fifth-grade classroom. He’s been joined by a turtle named Squirtle (Bill Burr), and the two are mostly content to stare out the glass, year after year, commenting like Statler and Waldorf on the various tween archetypes that show up on the first day of school: the motormouth, the class clown, the kid with helicopter parents who’s allergic to everything. But the bubble bursts for Sandler’s Leo when he realizes that he’s approaching 75 — the average life span for his species — and has hardly gotten to live out his dreams as a free lizard.Leo sees an opportunity with the arrival of a no-nonsense substitute teacher, Ms. Malkin (Cecily Strong), after the usual instructor goes on maternity leave. Along with implementing a stricter disciplinary system, she assigns her students at the Florida school to take turns bringing Leo home, caring for him as their own pet. The kids are dismayed, until one of them, the chatty Summer (voiced by Sandler’s daughter Sunny), discovers that the seemingly docile lizard can talk, and begins to open up to him about her problems. Leo, finding fulfillment in his new task, takes on the role of therapist each week, dishing out advice and convincing each student that they’re the only one who can hear him speak.“Leo” is the second animated film from Sandler’s creative house Happy Madison Productions and his newest release for Netflix. Unlike the company’s first foray into animation, the raunchy 2002 Hanukkah flick “Eight Crazy Nights,” “Leo” aims for wholesome family entertainment, combining themes like the challenges of growing older with a healthy dose of G-rated toilet humor (and a few double entendres that will go over kids’ heads).Sandler does a fine job as the voice of Leo, delivering a good mix of gruffness and sweetness into an absurd scenario. The kids in “Leo” confide in him their desire to be understood by their parents and peers, and the film drives home the overdone but nonetheless true message that everyone faces this struggle — even popular girls like Jayda (played by Sandler’s other daughter, Sadie). These tender moments are punctuated by several original songs — yes, “Leo” is a full-blown musical — and a plethora of running gags, like portraying the school’s kindergartners as wide-eyed bobbleheads crashing into walls.Written by Sandler, Paul Sado, and Robert Smigel (who also directed the film with Robert Marianetti and David Wachtenheim), “Leo” sometimes has trouble identifying its audience. The musical sequences aren’t particularly interesting visually and will drag on for adults, yet it’s hard to imagine children sitting through Leo and Squirtle’s extended riffs on divorced parents or the courtship behaviors of reptiles and not getting a little bored. But with the holidays rolling around and families gathering, this will undoubtedly work as something to put on in the background for everyone.LeoRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Old Dads’ Review: Bill Burr Rails Against Modern Life as a Dad

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      A curmudgeon, starting fatherhood late, has lots to say about the world.Don’t get your hopes up: This is not a documentary about Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Mick Jagger. “Old Dads” is the feature directorial debut of Bill Burr, a popular 50-something comedian with a shaved head and a light beard who plays Jack, who came to fatherhood late.Jack narrates in a voice not unlike that of Burr’s standup persona, responding to the issues that confound the contemporary straight white male with profane non-sequiturs. Jack muses that he can’t leave his child in the car to pop into a convenience store, but that said store is free to sell hormone-packed junk foods, and that nobody cares because they’re addicted to internet pornography. I’m paraphrasing.As is customary in today’s Guy Comedies, Jack is part of a trio — with Bokeem Woodbine and Bobby Cannavale, who play his business partners, Mike and Conner. They’ve just sold their successful concern to an unctuous young start-up bro (Miles Robbins) whose “disrupter” shtick provides fodder for more modern-life-is-rubbish humor.The movie emphasizes Jack’s near-constant indignation about adult scooter riders and parking as much as it does his parenting concerns. Jack and his wife, Leah, are currently worried that their son might not get a proper kindergarten recommendation. As such, Jack locks horns with a principal (Rachael Harris) who, like many of the parents who surround Jack and Leah, is a parody of both 1980s-style New Age bromide-spouters and insipid practitioners of today’s “woke” philosophies.Many scenes are predicated on Jack’s eye-rolling, then shouty reactions to phrases like “inclusive adjacent” or “check your privilege.” Burr is skilled at this, for sure. And Woodbine and Cannavale, who are better actors overall, slide into Burr’s mode with ease. The results will prove satisfactory and maybe cathartic for his fans.Old DadsRated R for language themes, nudity, more language. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      5 Smart Comedy Specials From Veteran Stand-Ups

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      Joel Kim Booster, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Fahim Anwar and Cristela Alonzo deliver strong hours ideal for summer viewing.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Why isn’t there a stand-up-special equivalent of a beach read? I wouldn’t recommend sunbathing with a smartphone in your hand, but it’s certainly possible. As more comics release their first specials developed in the pandemic, a new crop of hours from seasoned acts is ready to complement your summer vacation.Nikki Glaser, ‘Good Clean Filth’HBO MaxWearing thigh-high white boots and a short yellow dress, Nikki Glaser looks as much like a Bond girl as a stand-up. She’s not selling sex so much as teaching it, explicitly making the case for her own bawdy jokes filling the niche left by the pitiful job done by sex education and porn. Long adopting the persona of an older sister leveling with you, she moves closer to a modern comedy update on Dr. Ruth or even old-school women’s magazines, speaking prescriptively about everything from anal sex to how to get a man.A sly and skilled joke writer, she knows sex jokes get easy laughs, so she makes transgressive ones that look difficult to pull off. She scatters punch lines in a nimble voice that moves from gravelly deep to squeaky sweet. She delights in wordplay. Joking about her vagina, she says, “I talk about it so much that I don’t call it my privates. I call it my public.”And then there’s this gem on male rationalization for dating younger women. “There’s an epidemic of young people with old souls according to all my 40-year-old-friends.” Her hour can feel a little familiar, going over territory she has already mastered. On the other hand, there’s her closer, a silent act-out that works as a callback, an innovation and a big laugh.Bill Burr, ‘Live at Red Rocks’NetflixEarly in the pandemic, Bill Burr went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and got into it about masks. Rogan made fun of them as feminine and weak. “You’re so tough with your open nose and throat,” Burr snapped back, with an additional curse, pushing Rogan about turning a medical issue into something about manhood. “Why does it always become like that?”This viral moment revealed a divide between the two popular comics. On his podcast, Rogan sells a certain aspirational view of masculinity, while in his stand-up, Burr presents a more tortured portrait, giving anguished voice to male resentments and phobias as well as expression to their destructiveness. Along with one of the great deliveries in stand-up comedy, this complexity is what makes Burr a riveting performer.His messy, rambling, often hilarious new special baits the audience at every turn. Like Bruce Banner, Burr is worried about his temper, but it’s what we’ve come to see. And it can be the engine to some daring riffs that dig at both sides of the culture war, even though he’s more animated and funnier going after liberals. None of his many peers do this as well. No clichés about lattes and kale here. Describing a privileged white tweeter who’s virtue signaling, he imitates, typing out, “My heart breaks on my L-shaped couch.”Burr does repeat himself, and for the second special in a row, he speculates that they are running out of men to cancel. His bits are more intricately organized than his act. He closes on one that’s not as strong as the bit that came before. The emotional highlight sits awkwardly in the middle when he gets choked up describing the self-loathing of losing his temper in front of his daughter and finding that he is falling into the same mistakes that his father made. Bent down in a hunch, Burr is unexpectedly emotional, the bluster vanished and the rage transformed into tenderness. It’s a range that makes you think there’s a leading role in a great movie in his future.Fahim Anwar, ‘Hat Trick’YouTubeFahim Anwar filmed his special in three rooms at the Comedy Store.via YouTubeThe pun in the brisk, low-concept “Hat Trick,” in which the flamboyantly silly comic wears a backward cap while performing in three different rooms of the Comedy Store in Hollywood, is its only effortful part. Otherwise, the vibe is laid-back, offhanded, just another night at the club. You see introductions, shoptalk with comics and some of the drive home. In between are jokes on the most meat-and-potato stand-up subjects: dating, the pandemic, weed, porn.There’s something pleasingly comfortable about the style here, one that Anwar can pull off because he is one of the finest physical comedians working in clubs today. His act-outs rival Sebastian Maniscalco’s in grace and exceed them in goofiness, whether they are of a deer, a dancing emoji or a member of the Taliban using hand sanitizer. Each of these works nicely with the joke. The only risk is in seeming a little strained, which is why the underplayed style works so well. If you want a few laughs but don’t have time to get to the club, this will do.Cristela Alonzo, ‘Middle Classy’NetflixWhen Cristela Alonzo is telling a story, she has a specific if ambiguous look on her face that somehow generates suspense: a smiling kind of wonder that doubles as exasperation. It’s somewhere between “Can you believe this nonsense?” and “What a world.” You want to find out where she lands.It’s part of the fun of her first special in five years, whose highlights are sensitively observed jokes explaining the transition from growing up poor to finding some success. Keep an eye out for a virtuoso story about her first trip to the gynecologist. Her joyful comedy has a dark side, which shows around the edges of jokes, in the subtext. “I’ve been smiling so much and I’m not even happy,” she says about midway through. “I just got my teeth fixed.” Flashing radiant dental work, she says it was expensive in a pointed way that makes that joyful look on her face seem like a setup to this payoff.Joel Kim Booster, ‘Psychosexual’NetflixAfter saying he never hears queer women complaining about their inability to achieve orgasm, Joel Kim Booster abruptly silences a round of applause with a glare and a raise of a hand. “I will not let this descend into clapter,” he adds pointedly. For years, Booster — who between this special and his new Hulu movie, “Fire Island,” is having a moment — has brought a commanding club-comic energy to alt rooms: prickly, aggressive but clear premises that set up hard punch lines.His stylish and funny debut is broken into three acts, one that leans on his identity as a gay Korean American comic, the second that doesn’t and the third that focuses on sex. Throughout, he uses a straight white man in the crowd as a foil to examine questions of relatability and universality. He periodically talks directly into the camera to address the director about where to focus the camera, a fun tactic that evokes shows like “Fleabag.”His formal devices are clever and nicely integrated into the set — even if it builds to an argument that is ultimately pretty traditional. The strength here is his forcefully seductive presence, one that grasps that politics or sex are, among other things, powerful instruments to set up a punchline. After discussing the racism of Asian fetishes, he deadpans: “I think it’s doubly racist if you have an Asian fetish and are not attracted to me specifically.”Audio produced by More

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      in Movies

      5 Smart Comedy Specials From Veteran Standups

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      Joel Kim Booster, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Fahim Anwar and Cristela Alonzo deliver strong hours ideal for summer viewing.Why isn’t there a standup-special equivalent of a beach read? I wouldn’t recommend sunbathing with a smartphone in your hand, but it’s certainly possible. As more comics release their first specials developed in the pandemic, a new crop of hours from seasoned acts is ready to complement your summer vacation.Nikki Glaser, ‘Good Clean Filth’HBO MaxWearing thigh-high white boots and a short yellow dress, Nikki Glaser looks as much like a Bond girl as a standup. She’s not selling sex so much as teaching it, explicitly making the case for her own bawdy jokes filling the niche left by the pitiful job done by sex education and porn. Long adopting the persona of an older sister leveling with you, she moves closer to a modern comedy update on Dr. Ruth or even old-school women’s magazines, speaking prescriptively about everything from anal sex to how to get a man.A sly and skilled joke writer, she knows sex jokes get easy laughs, so she makes transgressive ones that look difficult to pull off. She scatters punch lines in a nimble voice that moves from gravelly deep to squeaky sweet. She delights in wordplay. Joking about her vagina, she says, “I talk about it so much that I don’t call it my privates. I call it my public.”And then there’s this gem on male rationalization for dating younger women. “There’s an epidemic of young people with old souls according to all my 40-year-old-friends.” Her hour can feel a little familiar, going over territory she has already mastered. On the other hand, there’s her closer, a silent act-out that works as a callback, an innovation and a big laugh.Bill Burr, ‘Live at Red Rocks’NetflixEarly in the pandemic, Bill Burr went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and got into it about masks. Rogan made fun of them as feminine and weak. “You’re so tough with your open nose and throat,” Burr snapped back, with an additional curse, pushing Rogan about turning a medical issue into something about manhood. “Why does it always become like that?”This viral moment revealed a divide between the two popular comics. On his podcast, Rogan sells a certain aspirational view of masculinity, while in his standup, Burr presents a more tortured portrait, giving anguished voice to male resentments and phobias as well as expression to their destructiveness. Along with one of the great deliveries in standup comedy, this complexity is what makes Burr a riveting performer.His messy, rambling, often hilarious new special baits the audience at every turn. Like Bruce Banner, Burr is worried about his temper, but it’s what we’ve come to see. And it can be the engine to some daring riffs that dig at both sides of the culture war, even though he’s more animated and funnier going after liberals. None of his many peers do this as well. No clichés about lattes and kale here. Describing a privileged white tweeter who’s virtue signaling, he imitates, typing out, “My heart breaks on my L-shaped couch.”Burr does repeat himself, and for the second special in a row, he speculates that they are running out of men to cancel. His bits are more intricately organized than his act. He closes on one that’s not as strong as the bit that came before. The emotional highlight sits awkwardly in the middle when he gets choked up describing the self-loathing of losing his temper in front of his daughter and finding that he is falling into the same mistakes that his father made. Bent down in a hunch, Burr is unexpectedly emotional, the bluster vanished and the rage transformed into tenderness. It’s a range that makes you think there’s a leading role in a great movie in his future.Fahim Anwar, ‘Hat Trick’YouTubeFahim Anwar filmed his special in three rooms at the Comedy Store.via YouTubeThe pun in the brisk, low-concept “Hat Trick,” in which the flamboyantly silly comic wears a backward cap while performing in three different rooms of the Comedy Store in Hollywood, is its only effortful part. Otherwise, the vibe is laid-back, offhanded, just another night at the club. You see introductions, shoptalk with comics and some of the drive home. In between are jokes on the most meat-and-potato standup subjects: dating, the pandemic, weed, porn.There’s something pleasingly comfortable about the style here, one that Anwar can pull off because he is one of the finest physical comedians working in clubs today. His act-outs rival Sebastian Maniscalco’s in grace and exceed them in goofiness, whether they are of a deer, a dancing emoji or a member of the Taliban using hand sanitizer. Each of these works nicely with the joke. The only risk is in seeming a little strained, which is why the underplayed style works so well. If you want a few laughs but don’t have time to get to the club, this will do.Cristela Alonzo, ‘Middle Classy’NetflixWhen Cristela Alonzo is telling a story, she has a specific if ambiguous look on her face that somehow generates suspense: a smiling kind of wonder that doubles as exasperation. It’s somewhere between “Can you believe this nonsense?” and “What a world.” You want to find out where she lands.It’s part of the fun of her first special in five years, whose highlights are sensitively observed jokes explaining the transition from growing up poor to finding some success. Keep an eye out for a virtuoso story about her first trip to the gynecologist. Her joyful comedy has a dark side, which shows around the edges of jokes, in the subtext. “I’ve been smiling so much and I’m not even happy,” she says about midway through. “I just got my teeth fixed.” Flashing radiant dental work, she says it was expensive in a pointed way that makes that joyful look on her face seem like a setup to this payoff.Joel Kim Booster, ‘Psychosexual’NetflixAfter saying he never hears queer women complaining about their inability to achieve orgasm, Joel Kim Booster abruptly silences a round of applause with a glare and a raise of a hand. “I will not let this descend into clapter,” he adds pointedly. For years, Booster — who between this special and his new Hulu movie, “Fire Island,” is having a moment — has brought a commanding club-comic energy to alt rooms: prickly, aggressive but clear premises that set up hard punch lines.His stylish and funny debut is broken into three acts, one that leans on his identity as a gay Korean American comic, the second that doesn’t and the third that focuses on sex. Throughout, he uses a straight white man in the crowd as a foil to examine questions of relatability and universality. He periodically talks directly into the camera to address the director about where to focus the camera, a fun tactic that evokes shows like “Fleabag.”His formal devices are clever and nicely integrated into the set — even if it builds to an argument that is ultimately pretty traditional. The strength here is his forcefully seductive presence, one that grasps that politics or sex are, among other things, powerful instruments to set up a punchline. After discussing the racism of Asian fetishes, he deadpans: “I think it’s doubly racist if you have an Asian fetish and are not attracted to me specifically.” More

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      Best Comedy of 2021

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      The return of indoor shows brought comedy closer to normal, and there were plenty of specials from Bo Burnham, Tig Notaro, Roy Wood Jr. and others.From left, a scene from Tig Notaro’s HBO special “Drawn,” Susie Essman in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and Tiffany Haddish in Netflix’s “Bad Trip.”From left: HBO; John P. Johnson/HBO; Dimitry Elyashkevich/NetflixComedy got dangerous in 2021. Not cancel-culture dangerous (though after creating one of the loudest controversies of the year with his Netflix special “The Closer,” Dave Chappelle might disagree). More like “I might contract Covid at this show” dangerous. After a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime shutdown of live performances, audiences returned to indoor shows, and comics picked up where they left off. These are some of the highlights.Best Punch Line Inside a Club to Defuse Covid AnxietyOne night at the Comedy Cellar, Dave Attell told a guy in the crowd: “I’m glad you’re wearing a mask because we need a survivor to tell the story.” But in the basement of the West Side Comedy Club, Bill Burr took down the elephant in the room even quicker: “I’m happy to be down here working on a new variant.”Best Experimental ComedyTig Notaro is not the first stand-up to turn herself into a cartoon, but her “Drawn” HBO special was the most ambitious attempt, using a different animated style for each bit — realistic one moment, whimsically fantastical the next, veering from the perspective of the audience to a cockroach. Imagine if Pixar did stand-up.A scene from “Drawn,” an animated HBO special from Tig Notaro, which uses a different animated style for each bit.HBOBest Musical ComedyThis was the year that visual humor caught up to the verbal kind in comedy specials. Bo Burnham invented a new comic vocabulary with his Netflix hit “Inside,” a filmic meditation on isolation, the internet and ironic distance itself. It was so tuneful and thematically well made that a blockbuster musical is surely in his future.Best Opening BitIn “Imperfect Messenger,” a Comedy Central special packed with refined comic gems, Roy Wood Jr. begins by discussing things that are not racist but feel racist. Things that have, as he puts it while rubbing his thumb and his fingers together as if he’s grasping at something, “the residue of racism” — like when white people use the word “forefathers,” or when you go somewhere and there’s “too many American flags,” which he calls “too much freedom.” He rubs his fingers and thumb again and asks: “How many American flags equal one Confederate flag?”Roy Wood Jr. in his Comedy Central special “Imperfect Messenger.”Sean Gallagher/Comedy CentralBest DirectingWith a jangling horror soundtrack, claustrophobic close-ups and the menacing humor of a Pinter play, the movie “Shiva Baby” offers a modern spin on the postgraduate angst of “The Graduate.” Its director, Emma Seligman, is the most promising cringe-comedy auteur to come along in years.Best MemoirIn the Audible original “May You Live in Interesting Times,” Laraine Newman describes studying with Marcel Marceau, dating Warren Zevon and farting in front of Prince. She gives you what you want in a “Saturday Night Live” memoir, but what makes her audiobook excel is her nimble voice, impersonating a collection of characters, none more charismatic than her own.Best Documentary“Mentally Al” catches up with the unsung comic Al Lubel when he’s near broke, disheveled and struggling with an impossibly dysfunctional relationship with his mother. Onstage, however, he’s consistently hilarious, even when the audience doesn’t think so. After countless documentaries about how a really funny person became a star, there’s finally a revelatory one exploring why one didn’t.Best Political ComedySometimes the most powerful punch is a jab. In “Oh God, an Hour About Abortion” — an understated, humane and deeply funny examination of the experience of having an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion — Alison Leiby uses observational comedy to reframe a political question at a critical moment for reproductive rights.The comedian Alison Leiby performing at Union Hall in Brooklyn in September.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBest Keystone Cops UpdateNot since Chaplin has running from the police been as funny as Tiffany Haddish in “Bad Trip,” a scripted movie on Netflix that includes unscripted scenes, such as Haddish emerging from under a prison bus dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forcing a male bystander into an uncomfortable decision.Best SpecialThere’s never been a better year for handsome comics making jokes about their fraying mental health. Along with Bo Burnham unraveling onscreen and John Mulaney describing the depths of his addiction in live shows, the British comic James Acaster delivered his masterwork, “Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999,” on Vimeo. It’s a nearly three-hour show, wildly funny and deeply felt, that mocks how easily mental struggles can be turned into entertainment before doing just that.Best Arena SpectacleThere were prop missiles, shining diamonds and a massive sign that announced “World War III” in lights. I’m still not sure what the battle was about, but as soon as the born entertainer Katt Williams charged into the Barclays Center, yellow sneakers a blur, it was clear he had won.Best Netflix DebutNaomi Ekperigin is a natural — a comic that can make you laugh at just about anything: summing up Nancy Meyers movies, vaccines, clichés (why L.A. sucks), the way she says “OK.” In a half-hour set, as part of the collection “The Standups” that will be released on Netflix on Dec. 29, she even has two different jokes about the color beige that earn laughs. It’s a delight.Naomi Ekperigin performs in Season 3 of “The Standups,” coming to Netflix on Dec. 29.Clifton Prescod/NetflixBest Grand Unified TheoryIn describing how the porn industry pioneered everything on the internet, from user-generated content to diversity casting, Danny Jolles, in his endearing and far too overlooked Amazon Prime Video special, “Six Parts,” finds a new way to describe the fragmentation and filtering of the news: fetishes. All news, he argues, has become “kink news,” catering to our narrow, even perverse whims.Best Inside Comedy ParodyLast year ended with the release of “An Evening With Tim Heidecker,” a parody of edgy stand-up comedy that was a bit too vague to really resonate. Now, Heidecker hit the bull’s-eye with his recent YouTube spoof of The Joe Rogan Experience; its 12-hour running time (really one hour on a loop) is its first joke. So precise, so meticulously sensitive to the details, to the cadence and lingo of that podcast, his conversation with two sycophantic guests (played with pitch-perfect smarm by Jeremy Levick and Rajat Suresh) is a master class in sounding absolutely earth-shattering while saying precisely nothing.Best Argument for the Staying Power of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’No comedy that started in 2000 should still be this funny. Part of the reason for this feat is the consistently elite supporting performances, none more important than Susie Essman, who shined this year. Famous for her volcanic fury, she can do dry and understated just as well. I have not laughed louder at a television show this year than after hearing her say the word “caftan.”Susie Essman, left, plays Susie Greene in the long-running HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”John P. Johnson/ HBOMost Underrated Star ComicJim Gaffigan has put out so much material for so long that he’s easy to take for granted. The fact that he’s family friendly probably doesn’t help his press either. His dynamite new special, “Comedy Monster” (premiering Tuesday on Netflix), may be his best, showing Gaffigan at his most dyspeptic. It suits him. Who would have thought that he would so satisfyingly eviscerate marching bands and parades? Or have the most unexpected prop joke of the year (keep an eye out for a grand piano). More

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      ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2, Episode 7 Recap: Face-off on Morak

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Mandalorian‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2, Episode 7 Recap: Face-off on MorakMando joins forces with an old enemy, just one of several major compromises he makes in hopes of rescuing Grogu.Mando and Boba (Pedro Pascal, left, and Temuera Morrison) took on the Empire together again, with a little help this time from a certain red-headed rogue.Credit…Lucasfilm Ltd.Dec. 11, 2020Season 2, Episode 7: ‘The Believer’It was bound to happen. All season long, Mando has been suffering loss after loss. The Child’s floating transport-egg? Totaled. The Razor Crest? Destroyed. Grogu himself? Kidnapped. So it was inevitable that at some point, Mando was going to have to give up what has mattered to him more than anything for most of his life: his helmet.About a third of the way through “The Believer,” Din Djarin realizes that the only way for him to infiltrate an Imperial refinery — and thus to obtain the information he needs to rescue Grogu — is to shed his near-impenetrable beskar shell and go undercover as a stormtrooper. He does get to stay masked, at least. He puts on a pathetic-looking helmet, with the little frown etched into the face-plate that’s common to the Empire’s armor. But as soon as he dons the gear, his body stiffens and he lapses into silence. The Mandalorian no longer feels like a Mandalorian.It gets worse. Once Din arrives in the facility, he discovers that he’s going to have to access a communications terminal that requires a face-scan. He makes one sad, fruitless attempt at keeping his stormtrooper disguise on while doing the scan, but immediately a warning alarm sounds, and he has to remove the helmet. For only the second time in this series, the actor Pedro Pascal — the star of “The Mandalorian” — shows his face.I could quibble with the narrative logic that led to this moment. We’re told early on that the Imperial base on the mining planet of Morak is protected by various devices which identify and weed out wanted fugitives. No one has seen Din’s face, so no scanners would register him as an outlaw. But wouldn’t it make sense for a scanner at an Imperial outpost to make sure the faces it’s scanning belong to actual Empire employees?I have no complaints, though, about the emotional punch of the scanner scene. It pains the Mandalorian to reveal himself — and it’s painful to see him do it. As the title of this week’s chapter, “The Believer,” implies, this is a man of deep faith who doesn’t take the trappings and the rituals of his order lightly. When the Imperial commander Valin Hess (Richard Brake) asks him to sit down and have a drink with him in the refinery’s commissary, Din is so mortified — so soul-sick — that he can barely move or speak.As with most of the episodes this season, this one was primarily made up of a few white-knuckle action sequences. Rick Famuyiwa directed and is credited as the screenwriter. Initially, Famuyiwa introduces a scenario reminiscent of the classic movie “The Wages of Fear,” with Din and the dastardly mercenary Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr) driving a transport vehicle filled with the explosively volatile starship fuel rhydonium across bumpy roads. Then their transport is attacked by pirates, who keep coming in waves after seemingly every last-ditch effort by Mando to fend them off.Paradoxically, Din and Migs are saved by the Imperial forces, who salute them as they roll into the refinery with potentially enough rhydonium to help the Empire strike back (again). But when Migs hears this boast from Hess, it stirs the criminal’s conscience, reminding him of all the past atrocities he has witnessed. He impulsively shoots Hess before executing a daring escape with the help of Mando, Boba Fett, Fennec Shand and Cara Dune, finishing it with a long-distance shot that blows up the rhydonium and the refinery.But as exciting as all those chases and shootouts are, it’s almost more thrilling this week to hear Migs push back against Din’s understanding of how the galaxy works. Although Migs sabotages the Empire, he’s not really a partisan of any kind. He insists to Mando that folks born on one planet believe one thing and folks born on another planet believe something else, and that none of this matters because in a life-or-death crisis, people will cross any line they have to, just to survive.The action in this episode seems to probe Migs’s point as Mando finds himself delivering vital rhydonium to the enemy — and killing “pirates” who could well be agents of the Republic, for all he knows — in order to further his own personal agenda. It also can’t be too reassuring for the by-the-book Mando to hear Hess argue that the Empire will prevail again because “Everyone thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order.”This is something else that our hero has been losing this season: his certainty about “the Way,” and about what he is and isn’t duty-bound to do. Taking care of Grogu has given him a new perspective on where his loyalty truly lies.That’s why it’s significant that during Migs’s rant about how both the Empire and the Republic routinely wreck the lives of ordinary citizens, Din is shown looking out the window at Morak’s native children. As an orphan himself, that’s who he identifies with the most. And as we head into next week’s season finale, that’s who the Mandalorian is most passionate to save.This is the way:After all the mythology built up around Boba Fett over the decades, it is both strange and awesome to have him just hanging around all the time as part of the Mandalorian’s team. (“Fett, punch in the coordinates!” Mando will say, as though it’s perfectly normal to be barking orders at one of the galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunters.) It was also cool this week to see how Fett’s ship, Slave 1, looks from the inside as it’s making the crazy horizontal-to-vertical pivot it does during takeoffs.Even with a stand-up comedian as a guest star, this episode featured fewer moments of comic relief than usual. I think I laughed out loud only once, when Migs shoots Hess, right as a stormtrooper walks into the cafeteria. The tension of that moment is immediately defused by the ridiculous image of a trooper carrying a lunch-tray, looking like a dumbfounded fifth grader.The locations this season have all been pretty spectacular — and impressively varied. This week, we begin in an imposing trash heap patrolled by giant “walkers,” and we end with a fight at a refinery by a towering dam. There’s nearly always something to marvel at on this show.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More