Star Wars: Ahsoka - 01:08 - Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord

ctg

weaver of the unseen
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The heroes race to prevent Grand Admiral Thrawn's escape.
IMDB score: 8.5 (2.4k votes) Series Score: 8.0 Runtime: 49 minutes
 
I'll watch tonight, but i'm looking forward to your summary, CTG.
 
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Oh, that smug face. I have avoided most of the spoilers, but something I couldn't. They just came along all the other information, because I was too curious to not click links. Maybe that intrigue is good because it speaks on the strengths of this series. There are a lot of fans out there. And a lot of those fans had seen the SW: Rebels along the way. But major audience in here had avoided them and I can understand why, because they were most definitely aimed for the geeks and PG13 rating must have been most limiting.

Still people watched it, and they celebrated things, even if some of the stuff that critics and reviews started talking about flew over the heads of those who had not seen the whole canon. I just don't think it's needed because a lot of stuff comes through the viewing and people imagining the rest, just like it used to be. Still upset about BoBF

But let's see how this final episode evolves...
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This episode starts with the overwhelming sight of Thrawn's Chimera and drums calling people together. It is gathering together the last because the Grand Admiral is leaving. As a sidenote: you can bet that model will come to sales in your nearest hobby shop. Almost guaranteed.

We are going to see how space worthy it really is because I suspect Thrawn is going to make it with all his loot. Including Great Mothers. The trio was firmly standing behind then Captain Enoch escorted Lady Morgan to Thrawn.

"Grand Admiral," she said. "The Cargo transfer is complete.

"Good." Grand Admiral turned towards Cpt Enoch and said, "Bring the Eye of Sion out of high orbit so that we can begin the interlocking procedure."

Enoch nodded and replied: "Com-scan believes they have a fix on the Jedi's shuttle's location."

"Dispatch two TIE fighters. If they find their mark, tell them to engage." So not only he's scared on doing the lock on high-orbit, he doesn't really have loads of vehicles or pilots to put on shorties. Is a pair of TIE's enough against a Jedi heavy fighter?

"There is a little that Jedi can do to stop us now," Morgan suggested.

"I've watched many an Imperial officer make the same assumptions about the Rebellion." Thrawn turned towards Morgan and stepped closer. "Even I fell victim to the heroics of a single Jedi. Never again."

So he scared and reserving everything. Hence he thanked Great Mothers and let them to address Lady Morgan, "She who heard our dreams across the stars. Come forward."

A bit shocked, but she did as was asked, while blood visibly drained from her face.

"You shall be rewarded. A gift of shadows. Are you prepared?"

Pale as a shadow, Lady Morgan replied, "Yes, Great Mother."

"Do you pledge yourself to the sisterhood, to the majiks, to the old ways?"

Hands firmly on her side, she nodded. "I do."

"Do you abandon your old life for this new one?"

I wished her to say no. I didn't happen. Instead, she was blessed by the Great Mothers and given a sword, alongside a duty as a temple guardian.

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The Blade of Talsyn. It is suspected that this relic was named after Mother Talsyn.
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It is a Force Weapon and thus able to stop lightsabre blades. In theory. If this appears in the games, it is probably buffed piece of a legendary kit. Thawn was pleased because now he had the last tool in the box to stop the 'jedi.'
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Told you. He's also a techno wizard, and it is always interesting to see what Ezra creates as blades. The reason, his ability to create unique combinations that sometimes are borderline funny. So when the Master Droid offered him a piece for the blade, Ezra shook his head and said, "It's not going to work."

"Not going to work? What are you talking about?"

"The blade emitter is too narrow," Ezra answered.

"Now look here," Huyang said, offended. "I have been teaching youngling how to construct lightsabres longer than you've been alive."

"That's great," Ezra said without even lifting his head. "But I don't have time for lessons right now. Ashoka wants us to go after Thrawn as soon as we're ready."

Still offended, droid replied, "This is not something you can rush through haphazardly." He simply didn't know that he should have shut up and left the techno wizard to his own devices.

Not until Kanan was brought up as Ezra's master. The droid simply had thought everyone in the temple, but instead of accepting the boy as a hacker, he went on to interfere with the build project. It was because of the hilt that Master Kanan had once upon time, "...used to build his sabre."

When it was finished, Hyuang congratulated Ezra on producing a classic blue blade. But the girl left before the boy could show her the new toy. So the boy asked droid and Huyang told about the Purge and loss of her whole family. And then he dropped this bombshell, "At the time, Ashoka felt that if Sabine unlocked her potential, she would become dangerous."

That risk is always there.
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The Shephard and the Sheep, or should say the Master and the Apprentice, or maybe the best one is the Grand Wizard and youngling with a hidden potential. To be honest they are both weird, but Ashoka wasn't angry at her for betraying her post. There was nothing neither could say or do to change the fact. That was the past.

So the talked turned towards the boy as Sabine said, "I never thought I'd see him again."

"We might not have if you had chosen differently," Ashoka answered.
"I'm sorry," the girl sighed.

"I know."

"You're not mad?" the girl asked.

"Over the years, I've made my share of difficult choices. Often, no one understood my reasons. Except my Master."

"Anakin?" girl suggested without knowing how much Kenobi, Sith Lords and all the other Jedi's above her put in their share of 'teachings.'

Shaking her head Ashoka replied, "He always stood beside me. Almost when nobody else did. That's why no matter what happens next I'm going to be there for you."

So it was lesson time to not trust the sabre, even if it seemed overly powerful, but trust the Force. But it didn't come with a practical teaching as the session was interrupted by Ezra and TIE fighters. The pair managed to do enough of damage to ground ship. Although it might also be Sabine's fault that she didn't fire guns, but instead drove the engines to max and took the fighters down from the sky alongside their ship.

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Grounded and stranded. That ain't going nowhere. The only choice they'd left was to attack the temple. It was also the thing that Thrawn wanted. Surprise part was that he wasn't leaving, instead he committed his forces to ground assault.

However, it wasn't by the grounded vessel, instead the fight happened at the temple with the 'jedi' "knocking on the front door." Two howlers charging towards the ship Grand Admiral ordered an artillery strike. It was not effective even though all the Star Destroyer bottom guns were blasting them. You'd think that those guns were accurate and their firesolution computers could make the act easy.

It just didn't happen, because turbolaz0rs have potato aim. So the wizards and the apprentice got into the temple, while the Grand Admiral were pulling a serious fish face. "Dispatch NightTroopers," he said. "I'll inform Great Mothers that it's time (for departure.)"

Twenty went in, firing their old pattern blasters at the Wizards. Like a good commander, Ashoka ordered Sabine to fire her blasters, while the two focused on the sabre business instead of deflecting the bolts.

Twenty on the ground raised up again because of Great Mother's Force Majiks. For all his years spent in the exile, Ezra has not seen a zombie uprise. Thank you, Mr Filoni. It was something new. And the most notable thing about the NightTroopers is that they don't care if they get hit by blasterfire, because they are dead.

What I don't get is why they didn't commit to the slicing business when the lightsabres can cut through anything? Doesn't the House of Mickey want to show chopped off heads and limps in the small screen?

Grrrrrrrr... :mad:

At the top of the temple, Chimera finally docked with the ring and Lady Morgan was told the unfortunate news that she wasn't going to make the flight. All for the Empire.

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You're too late space wizards. Even if you cut her down you cannot stop Thrawn from leaving. Ashoka ordered Ezra and Sabine to try, while she committed to match number 2. Morgan didn't try to stop the pair, instead she went into one of the most beautiful fights in the live, while the two at the top were stopped by Beskar Armour wearing DeathTroopers.

I mean literally, as they too had been turned to undead. So it was no wonder why Sabine found herself unable to be effective. She was getting choked, with the only option for her to fight was to find the Force, and get back her sabre for the head job. It worked. Classical zombies.

Ezra is a more curious case, because he didn't use much of his Force-Fu. It was the sabre slice against the neck that worked.

The cunning plan to use Force Jump and Force Push assistance to get to Thrawn's ship didnt work even if Sabine had found a way to tap into the Force. The only attempt were two meters too short. Or so it looked for few seconds before it was shown that Ezra made while the girl were stranded on top of the temple.

Well, she couldn't leave, because her Master were underdog in a fight with Lady Morgan and the zombie troopers. Because she chose that option Ashoka was able to disarm Lady Morgan and finish her finally. No coming back for her. Yet.

We'll see if she comes back from the temple ruins as Thrawn opened fire on temple on Morgan's death, but Huyang, the master mechanic saved the girls by bringing the ship around. Fully functioning.

It wasn't enough to stop Thrawn from leaving the galaxy. So the Shephards returned to turtle tribe and commited to be their guardians. For now.

Shin didn't made to the ship. Instead she became part of the Bandits tribe, while Baylon was shown looking at lonely mountain

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at top of this...
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Father.

You know how that song goes. Thrawn made it back to the original galaxy, straight to Dathomir with all of his loot of thousands of cascets (5x5x5x11x2). And Ezra made it back to Hera.

What an exchange.
 
Honestly surprised by the ending. I'm trying to work if this means we'll see the defeat of Thrawn in a later series, or if it means Thrawn did in fact become part of the First Order (or maybe the Sith fleet).
 
Honestly surprised by the ending. I'm trying to work if this means we'll see the defeat of Thrawn in a later series, or if it means Thrawn did in fact become part of the First Order (or maybe the Sith fleet).
There's Filoni's movie coming called, the Heir of the Empire. I'm certain that he's going to feature in the Mandalorian as well.
 
I was disappointed. I really enjoyed the show, esp the penultimate two episodes, but the final episode was a rushed, thoughtless preface to the upcoming movie/content.

All I’d known about this, going in to it, was it was going to be one series. After the episode last week I found out about the Filoni film and people are talking about a season 2 (despite this being a one off, apparently).

Should have been a longer series or the last episode should have been far more explicit.

Too rushed.
 
What? There might not be a second season? The ending was tolerable only as a prelude to season 2 (or I suppose the movie). I thought that the next series would have two fronts. One with Asoka and Sabine on the "pastoral" planet and Thrawn and Ezra and Hera in the original galaxy.

I did think that the light saber battles were among the best ever. I would rate this series as about as good as the Mandalorian season 1 and better than Andor, because it least it was recognizably Star Wars.
 
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Star Wars was always for 8-year-olds, yes. But it used to be for people 8 year old and above. I discovered the original Star Wars trilogy with my father in 1993, after he brought the VHS home one afternoon. He was roughly the age I'm now. He loved every minute of it. I watched the Star Wars prelogy with him and with one of my grandfathers. He liked it. Sure they could shake their heads at some of the especially childish content at times, like Jar Jar's antics, but they also found plenty in there that talked to them as adults: poignant stories of family relations, political mumbo jumbo I couldn't care about at the time, and the ageless, mythical journey of the hero, which speaks to all of us, no matter who we are.

Now Star Wars only caters to the younger spectrum of its audience, insulting the intelligence of anyone who finds it impossible or too hard to shut off their brain.

Everything and everyone in this show is vapid. Nothing is exciting. The only bones Filoni will throw at his audience will only matter if you know TCW and Rebels by heart, or have a SW encyclopedia handy. I mean, I've seen the Mortis Arc and I didn't even recognize the Father and Son in the statues at the end (thanks @ctg for pointing it out!). This just comes out of nowhere, it isn't tied to anything else in the show's storyline. How are we supposed to care?

But the show by itself does not have legs to stand on. It didn't explore any of its main characters. Didn't give any sense of closure or resolution to anyone. I still don't know why the show is called Ahsoka... Is it because she was in more scenes than the rest of the cast? It seems to me Sabine has gone through much more than Ahsoka as far as character growth is concerned. Or rather, she's gone through more character-defining moments than Ahsoka, who just, I guess, fell off a cliff and saw Anakin then entered a space whale and fought a bunch of guys.

Thrawn is not a brilliant tactician, he's dumb.

"- Oh look, Admiral! They don't have a ship anymore! What could we do to finish them off?
- Send ground forces that were too valuable to waste until now, apparently.
- Erm... Don't you mean "send another lone TIE, now that they have nothing to ram against it?"
- Not at all. They couldn't do anything against it. Let's make sure they win again. Send in the troops.
- M'kay, supremely intelligent leader. According to the script."

Grand Admiral Yawn indeed, as the critics have dubbed him. The Rebels or whatever they're called at the minute should be happy that he's back in charge, there shouldn't be much risk for them. Oh but wait, the Rebels are even dumber than he is and no matter what, their ship is going down too.

One more thing that already bothers me... The show is doomed to address the absence of Luke, Han and Leia at some stage, right? I mean they should still be in their prime at that stage and heroes of the New Republic, how are they going to justify that they're not directly involved in the fight against Big Bad Thrawn? Or will they just be CGI cameos?

ctg said:
What I don't get is why they didn't commit to the slicing business when the lightsabres can cut through anything? Doesn't the House of Mickey want to show chopped off heads and limps in the small screen?

Abso-effin-lutely! I read the first (?) SW horror novel, Death Troopers, back when it came out in 2000-something. It was only scary because it involved Han Solo and his blaster, not Jedi and lightsabers. Who cares that the zombies show up when you can just cut them up into tiny pieces with a flick of the wrist? And how come the troopers were still in one piece to be reanimated in the first place, when they'd just been taken down by lightsaber-wielding inviduals? Again, Star Wars is now only for children.

When it comes to story and writing, the 8-year-old in me finds this show pretty cool. The nearly 40-year-old in me finds it appaling.

Visually speaking, both the 8-y-o and 40-y-o are happily reconciled and find this show absolutely breathtaking, the best Star Wars has ever looked.

So overall it's not all bad. It's just... pretty bad.
 
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I haven't seen it yet, so i with hold my final judgement. (I am inclined to agree with you, The Crawling Chaos. I'm not a hater, but I'm worried that this could be the end of my own love of Star Wars.)

Someone did point out to me that Ahsoka (the character) actually does nothing to move the plot forward in her own show and i think i agree. If she wasn't in the show, events would've unfolded exactly the same.

I'll judge fully after the weekend.
 
Star Wars was always for 8-year-olds, yes. But it used to be for people 8 year old and above. I discovered the original Star Wars trilogy with my father in 1993, after he brought the VHS home one afternoon. He was roughly the age I'm now. He loved every minute of it.
I haven't seen this episode yet (I hadn't realised it was the final episode, I thought there'd be 10, and whatever happens in it, it cannot end here???)

Anyway, I just had to say that I don't think Star Wars (and I do mean the original film Star Wars, not even that "A New Hope" business!!!) was always for 8-year-olds. I was one of those who queued right around the block to see it at the cinema (I didn't go more than once though) and those queuing were mostly older teenagers with quite a few even older people, but not many kiddies at all! That all started with Ewoks and the merchandising, and obviously more especially with the prequels. Lucas had a deal where he got more from the merchandising that the films themselves, and he knew exactly where that market lay.

The reason I haven't seen (very much of) Rebels or Clone Wars is that it was made for kiddies. The stories may have had some adult themes (anime for adults was already popular, Simpsons and Family Guy) but animated cartoons were still seen as primarily the domain of kids, and they weren't made for adults. There was no Rick and Morty or The Lower Decks.

I'll try to watch this tonight.
 
Everything and everyone in this show is vapid. Nothing is exciting. The only bones Filoni will throw at his audience will only matter if you know TCW and Rebels by heart, or have a SW encyclopedia handy. I mean, I've seen the Mortis Arc and I didn't even recognize the Father and Son in the statues at the end (thanks @ctg for pointing it out!). This just comes out of nowhere, it isn't tied to anything else in the show's storyline. How are we supposed to care?
No, it didn't come out of nowhere. The Mortis Arc is more prominent than it has ever been, but like you said, unless you know or have been told about it, you don't know about it. So don't worry about it, you can watch the episode and imagine that Baylon is doing something meaningful, and the Dathomerian's were totally weird with the landscape architecture.

Thrawn is not a brilliant tactician, he's dumb.
Yea, that is true in the light of the story. One which was crafted so that there would be a final fight and resolution on where the characters end. So he was forced to do stupid things. It was the story that forced him to do things, instead of being practical and just leaving the planet without much of the fuss. And it turned out that his ship was space worthy.

All I’d known about this, going in to it, was it was going to be one series. After the episode last week I found out about the Filoni film and people are talking about a season 2 (despite this being a one off, apparently).
What? There might not be a second season?
I haven't seen this episode yet (I hadn't realised it was the final episode, I thought there'd be 10, and whatever happens in it, it cannot end here???)
It doesn't end here. There's another season, and they are already talking about it because of this one's success.
 
Maybe I'm weird or then maybe someone failed the creation process because the audience is mostly clueless on what is going on.

The latter, unquestionably so.

Ahsoka was marketed as a brand new show, not a continuation of other shows. So these other shows should not be required viewing to understand the plot, the stakes, the lore and the characters from that new show. And if plot points, stakes, lore or characters from other shows percolate in this new show from elsewhere, then it's the storyteller's job to bring everyone up to speed on who or what they are and why they matter.

And that's what I meant by "It came out of nowhere" in my previous post. We just suddenly see Baylan standing on Star Wars' version of the Argonath, and the show hasn't even bothered telling us what it means to him, much less what it should mean to us.

Even if you picked up on the reference and know exactly who those statues depict, the show still hasn't told you anything about what Baylan hopes to find or accomplish there. Is he trying to find a place? A thing? A person? And why? What does he hope to do with it? How did he learn about it?

At the end of the day it's anyone's guess. A newcomer to the SW universe will see a somewhat bad guy standing on a statue. A SW fan will recognize the Father and the Son. But so what? What is the purpose beyond a vacuous reference to another, better show?

Ahsoka layed on the Macbeth references with a pretty massive trowel, from its triade of Nightsisters to naming one of its episodes "Toil and Trouble". So allow me to use Macbeth too to describe what Ahsoka adds up to for me: A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
 
At the end of the day it's anyone's guess. A newcomer to the SW universe will see a somewhat bad guy standing on a statue. A SW fan will recognize the Father and the Son. But so what? What is the purpose beyond a vacuous reference to another, better show?
That is the story I want to see, because it brings the balance in the Force. Father is the balance, the Grey side I've been talking about for years and mostly to empty years. It is the expansion of the Force because it allows richer and a bit darker Force-related stories to be told, because the Balance is a very hard to achieve.

In the Knights of the Old Republic game, the Mortis Arc weren't explained, but becoming one that was a Grey was the hardest. It mixes the plot, because there's no longer dominent Light or Dark sides. It's no longer Jin/Jang, because there's so much between all three sides.

Some people saw that Baylon was the stronger participant in the Ashoka matches, but nobody really could understand how much of Father side, or how he'd ultimately found the balance in the Force by accepting that the ultimate goody-good Light side can be also be bad. The ultimate Dark side is a dystopia. A bleak one.

Baylon most probably slaughtered a lot of people between him and the Freedom, but he got that the killing can be done if there is a reason. That's why it makes Shin very interesting because she was thought by converted Jedi Master, who also mastered the Balance and not got slipped into the Darkness.

That is a dark story. And what he's after is another story, which I leave to Mr Filoni's hands to tell. I just get a feeling that for the larger audience who didn't dabble into the animated stuff, this information is going to come along the way.

I also don't think that they are going to recast Ray because of his death. They are going to use a digital version of him or maybe altered one to show what the harshness of that world have done to him. There is a speculation about what he's up to, but let's leave that to Dave's hand to tell. With his stories you'll have to wait ... just like I said previously, it's mind-blowing when you finally get it and then when you rewatch, you'll see the references I've been pointing out.

Sorry if that spoils stuff for people.
 
That is the story I want to see, because it brings the balance in the Force. Father is the balance, the Grey side I've been talking about for years and mostly to empty years. It is the expansion of the Force because it allows richer and a bit darker Force-related stories to be told, because the Balance is a very hard to achieve.

I really enjoy digging into Force stuff and the ancient past of the SW universe, I do. But the problem is that as far as we knew, Baylan and Hati were already 'grey': neither Jedi nor Sith, something in between, hired by the highest bidder and walking that fine line between good and evil.

Maybe Baylan thinks he has much more to learn about being grey, and that's fair enough. But we still need to understand why it matters and what he plans to achieve with it, how it's going to change the world of the story.

If it's only a personal quest for a higher state of being, a spiritual pilgrimage, then it is rather dull. Kind of like if Luke Skywalker had wanted to become a Jedi Knight just to become a Jedi Knight. If we don't know why being a Jedi Knight matters to the story, then it doesn't matter. But his becoming a Jedi Knight mattered because A/ it was Luke's means to retrace his father's steps and rediscover his own history, and B/ he planned to use his powers to vanquish the Empire and help the Rebellion. And these two things made his journey relatable and gave us the stakes. If Luke doesn't become a Jedi Knight, the Rebellion is doomed and the Empire wins.

But if Baylan finds or doesn't find whatever he's looking for, well then... What? We do not know how this will change anything in his life or in the universe he inhabits.
 
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But if Baylan finds or doesn't find whatever he's looking for, well then... What? We do not know how this will change anything in his life or in the universe he inhabits.
A lot of people got the zombie slicing thing and were offed about it. We have been complaining that some of this stuff isn't really mature enough, even though the House of Mickey produced Andor. The people like that sort of stuff because it doesn't involve the Space Wizards in the play.

But they've also seen that the House of Mickey isn't really scared of showing offings, like they did with Andor's ultimate rebellion through Grand Mum's delivering the bombastic celebrations on the day of her funeral.

It would be fantastic if Disney took the blinders off and illuminated that side, because the larger audience is mostly mature and it is really their fandom. The kids aren't their main money source any longer. It's the adults and they've grown custom to accept a bit of darkness in the life.
 
Agh, to be fair I think Disney is targeting all age groups at the moment, even if the emphasis is on young teens. Hence why we have Andor, but also Young Jedi Adventures on opposite ends of the spectrum, with most of the "new canon" sandwiched in between.

Clearly the short-term plan is to drown us all in content, but the long-term plan is "The old generation has perhaps another 10 good years worth milking, but if we get the kiddies hooked on SW as early as age 4, we've got another lifetime of disposable income coming our way."

Now one thing that has to be said is that Filoni has a pretty steep learning curve ahead of him is he is to deliver quality live-action entertainment aimed at adults. A lot of set pieces in Ahsoka looked as if they had been designed for a teen animated show (the action scene of Ahsoka standing on her ship in space as enemy fighters zoom past her comes to mind). And if I'm honest, they very well could have worked in an animated series. But seeing real people perform this stuff... that's often what didn't click for me. I still expect my live-action SW content to showcase a modicum of verisimilitude in how the characters act and think, while I can forgive a cartoon for showing me Mace Windu annihilating an army of 2,000 Super Battle Droids with his bare fists.

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I never watched it. I saw a glimpse of it back in the 90's and thought it was too silly. Too Cartoon Network.
 
Unless it's a typo I don't think you're talking about the same show. It didn't exist in the 90s.

It is a great show if you take it as it is.

Of course it's a "micro-series" with an overall runtime of probably no more than two hours, so it can't have the depth or character development of Filoni's TCW and its seven seasons. But as the first animated depiction of the Clone Wars, and for one who craves a quick action-oriented SW fix, it's really up there. I don't think it's sillier than more recent shows like TCW or Rebels.

There's a great episode, or maybe a two-parter even, showing a squad of ARC Troopers infiltrating a Separatist city with a lot of urban warfare action that really stood out to me at the time.

I think you should give it a go, the format makes it easy to watch whenever you have a few minutes of spare time, like during a quick lunch break.
 
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