It took me nearly a week to 'review' the latest episode of The Book of Boba Fett because I am traveling and the show just hasn't been good enough to make the effort to watch. Episode 5 is the best episode of Boba Fett yet, but that's a really bad thing because it isn't an episode of Boba Fett.
Episode 5 reintroduces Mando, who as usual happily kills a lot of folks doing his bounty hunting gig, visits Pelli Motto, and gives up a generally far more engaging and interesting 45 minutes of TV than Boba has in any episode. Sure, sure Fennic Shand shows up and mentions Boba at the end, but this was truly just an episode of The Mandalorian. Honestly, Boba should have stayed dead. They used all the best parts of Boba when writing the character and the new retconned Boba isn't interesting.
Lots of fun stuff happens in the episode, like Mando getting a new ship that makes zero sense in his line of work. Every minute of the episode is great Star Wars TV and shows us, unlike the prior 4 episodes of Boba, that it can be done. Star Wars has some very high-stakes properties coming out in the near future and if they run Obi-Wan Kenobi like they have Boba Fett, we are doomed.
If Kenobi follows the direction of the Mandalorian, we should see a deep story that should really be worth telling. Should Disney follow the vein of Boba we're going to be stuck with Vader and Kenobi spending whole episodes having ForceTime conversations with each other, trying to justify Anakin's mass-murdering of kids, and lots of flashbacks to Clone Wars that we have already seen.
I am hoping we don't get a lot of Force Ghost exposition and do get a lot of story and action. So far Boba has been mostly exposition with absolutely no payoff.
Again, the art, characters, visuals, and soundtrack are amazing — but Boba Fett has less storytelling than a children's storybook recap.
