The Biggest Issue

Friday night Gwynyth happened across The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network. While I should have been watching it all along, I'll confess that I have not.
The animation is good, seriously. And the idea behind the series is awesome.
The problem has to do with the timeline.
The Clone Wars (the fictional event in the Star Wars galaxy wedged between Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, not the movie and TV series of the same name) is source material for all kinds of gritty war stories.
In the novels and comics, the topics include the increasing manifestation of separate personalities in the clones themselves, terrorism, increasing government control in the name of security and even ecological damage caused by various campaigns.
If the series, as beautifully rendered as it is, would cover topics like these, I would totally watch it.
However, there are other, darker areas of the story to explore and they got way too much screen time on Friday.
Jar Jar Binks.
And the worst part is that since he shows up in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, I know they can't kill him off in some horrible and entertaining way.
Before Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was released, geeks had a list of things we knew had to happen to make the prequels line up with the original (good) movies.
Anakin had to turn evil and be horribly injured, Luke and Leia had to get born and separated, the Jedi had to be wiped out, and C3Po had to somehow not remember anything about the past three movies.
But we also had things we just wanted to see.
The top of that list was, without question, the horrible death of Jar Jar Binks.
There were geeks who attended Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith just for the chance at seeing that since there was no way the story could surprise us in any other way.
The Clone Wars lacks the possibility of that, and it is a dark and empty place without that glimmer of hope.
I also missed the premiere of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse since Friday night is a crappy, crappy night for TV watching for us.
Fox (the network, not the adorable woodland creature) already started showing the episodes out of sequence, since that worked so well with Firefly.
You know, I suppose there is always the possibility - Since Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith included no Fox TV Executives - That there could one day be a scene where a bunch of them get shoved out of an airlock and fall into a star on The Clone Wars.
Maybe I'll give The Clone Wars another chance after Dollhouse gets inevitably cancelled.