This mash-up of 'Sgt. Pepper's' and 'Star Wars' works way better than it should

This is a big week for popular culture anniversaries. Today, May 25th, is the 40th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, known during its original 1977 release simply as Star Wars. And this Thursday, June 2nd, is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 release of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Star Wars and Sgt. Pepper's indelibly altered the pop culture in which they emerged. Star Wars created both the modern blockbuster, becoming one of the most successful movies of all time, and the modern blockbuster era, while also beginning a media empire that is still going strong 40 years later (with a prequel out last year, and a sequel out later this year). Sgt. Pepper's was The Beatles' crowning achievement, the best-selling album of the 1960s, a masterpiece of sonic innovation and psychedelia. While Sgt. Pepper's may not have officially kicked off the "summer of love" or initiated the incredible creative output of 1967, it did define and reinforce the psychedelic aura of that year. Notwithstanding their medium-defining impacts, however, and the fact that they probably had many mutual fans, these two monumental products of popular culture had very little common.

Until now.

Our culture, and especially our popular culture, is, in many respects, caught in a nostalgia loop. What was cool decades ago is still cool, so long as the Baby Boomers maintain their vicelike grip on the commanding heights of our popular culture. There are many weird things about this trend (were kids in 1967 nostalgic for...1917?), and many bad things about it as well (at some point, the Baby Boomer grip has to break, otherwise our culture will stagnate). But, in the meantime, our cultural nostalgia loop, and a "remix" culture that likes to put two seemingly disparate things together, will produce some great things. And we have now officially seen the greatest remix of them all: a "mash-up" of Star Wars and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

What exactly does it mean to "mash up" an album and a movie? It's not like The Dark Side of the Rainbow, the famous urban legend about watching The Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon as the soundtrack (or similar legends about Pink Floyd's song "Echoes" and the final part of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Dark Side of the Moon and Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens). What the YouTube channel Palette-Swap Ninja has done, instead, is change the lyrics but not the music of Sgt. Pepper's to make it a concept album describing the plot of A New Hope, with cleverly cut scenes from the movie itself accompanying the appropriate songs as "music videos." There's no reason something this complex, a merging of two works of art so artistically singular and unique in such a fashion, should work. And it's not perfect; some of the lyrics scan awkwardly, and some of the songs don't really match the parts of the movie they're supposed to describe. But, on the whole, Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans works way better than it should. It works so well, in fact, that I'm going to comment on each track of the album.

1/2) "Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans/With Illicit Help From Your Friends" ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"/"With A Little Help From My Friends")



The original Sgt. Pepper's album opens with an emcee of sorts introducing the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the band The Beatles pretended to be as part of the concept album. And so, fittingly, Princess Leia's begins with an "introduction" that is also separate from the main body of the work, in the form of an altered Star Wars opening crawl musically identical to the Sgt. Pepper's original:





The only downside of this track is that "Empire" doesn't scan as the lyricists want it to. Naturally, the first syllable of "Empire" is stressed, and the second is unstressed; here, it is reversed, an awkwardness that persists on every subsequent usage. The rest of the "album" does this here and there; again, it is one of the work's few defects. But it is forgivable.

After the intro, "Princess Leia's" makes one of its few alterations of the actual music of Sgt. Pepper's. Where Sgt. Pepper's followed its intro with a horn intro and some crowd laughter, Princess Leia's splices in a segment of John Williams' Star Wars score--again, an appropriate change. The 2-minute song also introduce "Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans" as the "theme" of the concept album, which works, not only because it scans, but because that's what the movie is also about. And, as we shall see later, the structure of Sgt. Pepper's allows Princess Leia's to return brilliantly to its "theme" at the end.

In the original Sgt. Pepper's, the first song of the album ends with the "introducer" bringing along a new "performer," "the only and only Billy Shears" (Ringo Starr). Princess Leia's ends its first track also by introducing a new "performer" (who makes his entry in the accompanying video at the same time) in Darth Vader (with "Vader's here" replacing "Billy Shears"). And while Billy Shears' playful melody remains, Princess Leia's juxtaposes that airy music with the dark threats of Lord Vader: "you're gonna die along with all of your friends." Billy Shears' song has a call-and-response format, which "With Illicit Help From Your Friends" keeps, turning it into the back-and-forth between Vader and Leia and Vader and his underlings. Whereas Billy Shears claims just "to want someone to love," Vader intones that he "wants those plans in my glove."

3) "Luke is in the Desert" ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds")



"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the next song on "Sgt. Pepper's," combines a relatively simple structure with layers of psychedelic instrumentation and evocative lyrics to create a soaring vision through a crystalline world. "Luke is in the Desert," again, keeps the same music, and introduces a new world, but changes the lyrics to make it mostly about someone (Luke) complaining about how boring his life is. To extent there is a "Lucy" figure guiding him through this world, it's the mysterious Leia, "a hologram woman/now there's a surprise." But, for the most part, we have another instance of smart contrast: Lucy and her world were magical (eliciting an "ahhh" in the refrain); Luke's world is boring, and he's whining (hence the "whaaaa").

4) "Never Better" ("Getting Better")

On Sgt. Pepper's, "Getting Better" is a budding optimist's acceptance of the possibility of life's improvement. On Princess Leia's, the first half of "Never Better" continues Luke's whining from the "Luke is in the Desert." As a result, the entire first half of the song is negative, unlike the dawning optimism (with sardonic stoicism supplied by Lennon's "it can't get no worse") of "Getting Better." "Never Better" keeps the sitar-heavy mid-section that launches "Getting Better" into its final stretch, and smartly makes this the transition point for Luke's frame of mind (even keeping the spirit, if not the letter, of Lennon's sardonic refrain by remarking that "it only took one verse" for Luke to start feeling better about his situation). I would argue that "Never Better" even slightly improves on "Getting Better" by setting our first lyrics hinting about the mysticism of the Force over the Eastern, mystical tones supplied by the sitar.

5) "Imperial Holes" ("Fixing a Hole") 


This is the first song on Princess Leia's in which the title does not appear. It's more a description of te state in which the upper-level Imperial bureaucracy finds itself: struggling on what to do next, now that the rebels have the Death Star plans, and the Senate is collapsing. Its analogue on Sgt. Pepper's is "Fixing A Hole," which I've always interpreted as being about someone who is tired of listening to doubters and critics and has finally decided to "fix" the holes in himself. If my interpretation is correct, then "Imperial Holes" is a great analogue, as it describes the Empire's attempt to deal with "holes" of its own. The guitar break also quotes the "Imperial March," which is a bit anachronistic (that theme does not appear until The Empire Strikes Back), but clever enough to forgive. My only complaint: I wish the title were better, and appeared as the song's refrain, as "Fixing A Hole" does on Sgt. Pepper's.

6) "He's Leaving Home" ("She's Leaving Home")


I shouldn't even have to explain that "He's Leaving Home" is Princess Leia's version of "She's Leaving Home." It's a very straightforward change, enabled by a similarity in narrative. "She's Leaving Home" is the story of a girl who runs away from a household headed by two well-meaning parents who don't understand why she would do such a thing. "He's Leaving Home," similarly, tells the story of Luke, finally leaving home, as he always wanted, but only because of the tragedy of his parents' murder. "She's Leaving Home" is told from the perspective of an omniscient, third-person narrator and of Luke's parents; "He's Leaving Home" is told from an omniscient perspective but almost exclusively follows Luke. The parents, in this case, are the main object of the tragedy, getting a flashback, earning ruminations on their simple, honest life. Forgiving another instance of awkward scanning ("Jawa sandcrawler") makes "He's Leaving Home," if anything, superior to "She's Leaving Home," at least in lyrical content and narrative purpose. It may be my favorite song on this "album."

7) "Being From the Spaceport of Mos Eisley" ("Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite")



This is yet another example of near perfect symmetry. John Lennon's inspiration for "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" was a Victorian-era circus poster he found at an antique store; the song's lyrics come from it almost verbatim, describing a veritable menagerie of bizarre and entertaining acts. And so Princess Leia's fills this same space of the album with "Being From the Spaceport of Mos Eisley," a recounting of the bizarre creatures and fraught perils contained within the Mos Eisley Cantina. The best symmetry: "And of course/my power source/comes from the Force" replacing "And of course/Henry the Horse/dances the waltz." There's also some clever musical alterations, most notably replacing the musique concrete tape loop of "Mr. Kite" with a snippet from the Mos Eisley cantina band. Chewbacca's roar also replaces Ringo's mid-song drum break, and Han, shooting first, ends the song with the noise of his blaster. Another great effort.

8) "The Force Within You" ("Within You Without You")




'Within You Without You," the song from Sgt. Pepper's on which this track from Princess Leia's is based, has always been one of my favorite tracks on that album. Other bands of the time had dabbled in Eastern musical styles; The Beatles themselves had done so as early as 1965 with Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood," and again with "Tomorrow Never Knows" on Revolver. And The Rolling Stones, for their part, had "Paint It Black." But "Within You Without You" embraced the sitar, Indian tones, and Hindu spirituality and mysticism more than any piece of popular Western music up to that time. Setting A New Hope's main interstitial ship-based sequence (the sort that appear in every Star Wars movie; with a method of faster-than-light travel that gets you anywhere, such trips only take as long as the plot demands them to) to this song works for at least two reasons. First, the effect of going into hyperspace, as Star Wars portrays it, has itself long had psychedelic implications (as humorously demonstrated in Spaceballs), and "Within You Without You" is one of the most psychedelic songs on Sgt. Pepper's. And second, the content of this scene matches well with the content of the original song as well. "The Force Within You" swaps out the Hindu mysticism of the original for the first major exposition on the Force from Obi-Wan that we receive in A New Hope (the training ball et al.), and it works perfectly. Bonus points for seemingly making Chewbacca's voice into a sitar, replacing the mid-song instrumental interlude with R2-D2 beeps, and having the last words we hear in the video be Han saying "this is ridiculous," a clear parallel to the laughter that closes "Within You Without You." This song and "He's Leaving Home" go back and forth in my mind for the best/closest musical analogues.

9) "AA Twenty-Three" ("When I'm Sixty-Four")



The most impressive aspects of "AA-23," the replacement for "When I'm Sixty-Four," come in its syncing to footage from A New Hope: At the beginning, when the stormtroopers march and stop in sync to the song, and at the end, when the last note plays exactly as Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewie land in the dumpster. The playful melody of "When I'm Sixty-Four" also reinforces how downright funny the action sequence of Luke, Han, and Chewie rescuing Leia is. Other than that, though, there's no real compelling reason, other than an admittedly clever structuring of the song around the location of Leia's prison cell as the refrain, that this song had to be where it was. And "trooper" doesn't really scan how they want it to. Still an acceptable track, however.

10) "Dianoga ("Lovely Rita")

The main thing that "Dianoga" has going for it is that it's about someone (or, rather, something). But unlike "Lovely Rita," its counterpart, "Dianoga" is about fear, not love. In that sense, it has the same sort of juxtapositional irony that "With Illicit Help From Your Friends" also displayed. Aside from that, the best parts of this song come, again, from clever syncing to the movie: the piano interlude comes as Luke struggles to escape the dumpster creature; and where "Lovely Rita" ended with the breathing and scatting of its singer, "Dianoga" ends with snippets of desperate dialogue from the movie while the music still plays. But "ricochet" does not scan like the writers want, and the song is otherwise not that special. At least I learned from this song that the dumpster creature in "A New Hope" actually has a name.

11) "Keep Moving Keep Moving" ("Good Morning Good Morning")

"Good Morning Good Morning" has always been my least favorite song on Sgt. Pepper's. Likewise, "Keep Moving Keep Moving" is my least favorite song on Princess Leia's. I've never understood what "Good Morning Good Morning" was supposed to be about (Lennon said a box of cereal inspired it). And so, in this sense, "Keep Moving Keep Moving" actually improves on it somewhat. It describes how Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewie escape the Death Star using an admittedly clever and concise scheme of self-contained rhyming verses. The action is largely transitional, which is always how "Good Morning Good Morning" felt to me: the prelude to something better.  But "Keep Moving Keep Moving" pulls the movie splice trick to great effect, swapping out the animal noises of "Good Morning Good Morning" for some of the most famous dialogue and sounds from A New Hope. Other than that, though...it's just okay. Though, to be fair, it could never be much better than the song on which it is based, which I've always considered the weakest song on Sgt. Pepper's.

12/13) "Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans (Reprise)"/"A Day in the Life of Red Five" ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [reprise]/"A Day in the Life")


Remember when I said that "Good Morning Good Morning" has always felt like a prelude to me, and that "Keep Moving Keep Moving" took on some of that character? Well, both Sgt. Pepper's and Princess Leia's sure know how to end. The cleverness of Princess Leia's final track begins with its countdown: What was "1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4" on "Sgt. Pepper's (reprise) becomes "1, 2, Yavin IV" on "Princess Leia's (reprise)," helpfully informing us where in the galaxy we are. "Sgt. Pepper's (reprise)" is meant to convey the impression that it is being performed live; "Princess Leia's" mimics that by describing the meeting before the Death Star trench run, in which the Rebel high command gives attack instructions to the fleet. But the most impressive thing about this track is something over which this album's "creators" had no control, but perhaps inspired them to make it in the first place: in both the original Sgt. Pepper's and A New Hope, there is a "reprise" of sorts. The first act of A New Hope focuses on the stolen Death Star plans, and they retreat to the background for most of the movie until the final act. Likewise, Sgt. Pepper's merely provides a bookend to create the concept album of its titular band performing the album. Combining these two is the masterstroke of the album, highlighting the bookending nature of both the album and the movie.

"A Day in the Life of Red Five" is impressive, though not quite as much as this. There isn't much of a reason for the tonal shifts that we see in "A Day in the Life," or the abiding sadness of its first and third parts. "Obi-Wan spoke and I went into a dream," however, is brilliant, as is replacing the famous final note of "A Day in the Life" with the explosion of the Death Star. If these guys were really clever, though, they would have done something short with the secret message at the very end of Sgt. Pepper's, though I am impressed enough with this project as it is.

I can't emphasize enough how much of a creative wonder this is. I myself am fond of rewriting lyrics for different purposes (see, e.g., my rewriting of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to make it about the 2016 election), but this outdoes anything I've ever attempted. I'm not exactly sure why this had to be done, or how anyone thought to do it, but boy am I glad someone did. It's a fitting way to honor the 40th anniversary of one of the most important movies ever released, and the 50th anniversary of one of the most important albums ever released. They both changed our popular culture forever, and this video is proof that their legacies, now intertwined by this project, live on.

The final episode of 'Samurai Jack' is a gift

The end. 

The final season of Samurai Jack, which I have taken it upon myself to review, has been many things: thrilling, dazzling, brilliant, surprising. But it has been, above all, a gift. I have been with Samurai Jack since the beginning, as I wrote in my first of these reviews. Somehow, my eight-year-old self was smart enough (or just narcissistic enough, given the title) to catch the premiere on August 10, 2001 (!). I continued watching it faithfully thereafter, but in 2004, the show stopped airing new episodes with its story incomplete: Jack was still in the past, with a definite yet unfulfilled destiny to defeat Aku...someday*. And that's how I thought it would remain--until December 2015, when news emerged that a final season would come out sometime in 2017. That season has now come to a close.

And what a gift it has been. Samurai Jack was always one of the best shows on television, animated or not. Its heavily stylized, beautifully animated, often wordless sequences wowed me at a young age, and wowed me once more when I rewatched the show in college. But this final season has consistently been at the highest artistic level the original series reached. Thanks surely in part to its move to Adult Swim, Samurai Jack's final season has been deeper, more mature, more serialized, and more visceral. We've seen parts of Jack and Jack's world that the original series did not even touch. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable journey to the end.

But the end has come. And it is only fitting that the last episode of Samurai Jack contains many gifts for its fans. They come in spades, beginning in the very first frames, as Jack's allies worldwide watch helplessly while Aku broadcasts the news of his capture of Jack, as we saw last week. These allies are all people we have seen before: the humanoid dogs from the second-ever episode, the Woolies, the sea-dwelling Triceraquins, and the Archers from season one, the rescued ravers from season 3, the Scotsman and his many daughters. In a fashion reminiscent of the season one episode "Aku's Fairly Tales," Aku forces them all to watch a propaganda video of sorts--and it's the original credits for Samurai Jack, featuring a back-from-the-dead Mako as Aku.

Samurai Jack characters, watching Samurai Jack in Samurai Jack, in Samurai Jack.

The result is that the inhabitants of the show's world become, in effect, viewers of Samurai Jack, for a moment, anyway. For once the credits end, Greg Baldwin's Aku undercuts it all with a mocking "NOT!" and reveals that he has captured Jack. Yet Aku, still caught in the same existential funk from Jack's relentless insistence upon existing, has trouble deciding how to kill Jack. After some struggle, he decides simply to make Ashi, under Aku's control but struggling vainly to escape it, do the deed.

And here appears the second gift of the episode: Jack's allies swarm Aku's lair, hoping to rescue him. An impressively vast portion of those Jack has helped throughout the entirety of the show comes to his aid as he came to theirs (making good on the foreshadowing of a few weeks ago). In addition to all of those already mentioned, we also get the people who taught Jack "how to jump good," and, a personal favorite for me, the 300 Spartans Jack once fought alongside (well before Zack Snyder's 300, I might add). They all likely know how futile their efforts will be unless Jack is reunited with his sword. But they have come to return the favor Jack paid them in his quest against Aku. They are a gift to Jack in his time of need, and to fans (like me) who have watched the entirety of the show.

Jack's allies, come to help him against Aku. 

Yet it is not they, in the end, but Ashi who truly saves the day, making good on this season's exploration of Jack's romantic side, and constituting, in itself, another gift in the process. At Jack's urging, and with Jack's love, Ashi breaks free from Aku's spell but keeps one useful aspect of her paternity: Aku's powers. She fights him briefly, until Jack realizes that her possession of Aku's powers means that she herself can travel to the past. And so Jack and Ashi, hand-in-hand, hurdle down a time portal of Ashi's creation.

Time travel has never been more romantic.

And they leave behind an Aku who, for the first time in the show, appears worried (though not worried enough to go after them, apparently).

Aku, worried, for once. 

This leads to yet another gift of this episode: a direct callback to the very first episode of Samurai Jack. We return to the final moments of Jack's very first fight with Aku, the moment when he flung Jack into the future (see the different versions of the same scene compared here). "We will meet again, Samurai," Aku says as Jack disappears down a time portal Aku just created. "But next time, you will not be so fortunate." 50 years in real-time but less than five seconds later from Aku's perspective, Jack and Ashi appear from another time portal in the same spot. Aku is flabbergasted. "You are back already?!?" he exclaims, and barely even has time to mount a defensive in the weakened state past-Jack left him before Jack vanquishes him once and for all.** This leads to a "destruction of ultimate evil" sequence of thematic power I haven't encountered since watching Return of the King in theaters in 2003. What took 16 years in real-time, and 50 years in show time, unfolds in what, from past-Aku's perspective, seems to be all of 10 seconds. It's a brilliant, hilarious, and fitting end to Aku's evil.

The last moments of Aku. 

The episode and the show do not end here, however. The man Aku called a fool has finally returned to the past, to all that he loved. And he has brought with him the one person he met during his time in the future who loved him back. They are set to be married in a lavish ceremony, alongside Jack's family, watched by all of Jack's friends and trainers from his past and childhood. The land is at peace, Jack is in love, and he is to begin ruling as emperor, with Ashi at his side as empress. It is all so happy, so neat, so tidy. Too much so, I suspected upon my first watch.

Too good to be true. 

And so it proved to be. As Ashi makes her wedding procession, she faints. Jack rushes over to her, and hears her whisper: "If not for Aku, I would have never existed." Then, she disappears, and Jack is left holding an empty robe. You could say this is a logically inconsistent manifestation of a time travel paradox, since, if Aku brought her into being, she should have ceased existing the moment Aku did in the past. And that's fair. But the way I see it, treating time travel in this way did not allow for a convenient deus ex machina or something like that, which is where most people would get mad about it. It, instead, only heights the pain Jack must endure, giving him one final, ironic suffering at the hands of Aku.***

Jack, however, does not let this get him down. Nor should we. In the show's final moments, Jack sits under a tree, reflecting on what has happened to him. A ladybug interrupts his reflections. It was a ladybug, remember, that set Ashi on the road to her redemption. Jack remembers this, catches it, releases it, smiles, and observes once again the unfolding of one of the autumns he loved so much as a child.

I know I already included this image, but I just love it so much. 

And that is the end of Samurai Jack. I have spent 16 years of my life devoted to this show in some fashion. Not since the finale of LOST have I experienced the end of a TV series in which I invested so much. Samurai Jack was way more than a cartoon, both for me, and objectively. It was a work of art. And what was the point of this work? I think I'm as well-qualified as anyone to hazard a guess. In the end, after suffering through so much alone, it was Jack's opening himself to others that ultimately allowed him to achieve what he had always sought. Yet misfortune marred even that accomplishment.

You could ignore all that I have said and written and say that Samurai Jack is just a cartoon. But I think there is a profound lesson in the show that should far transcend its medium even to the direst animation skeptics. We are strong creatures, we humans, capable of great things, with talents and virtues worth honing. But we accomplish nothing, and our accomplishments mean nothing, without friends, without family, without love. Sadness will come to us all, and no one among us will ever achieve exactly what we want. But that is no reason not to try, so long as we keep those we love by our side. Whether that is what Samurai Jack was trying to say after all these years, I am grateful for the gift this show has been in my life. So thank you, Genndy Tartakovsky, for creating the show in the first place, and for giving it the ending that it deserved. I will continue to try to live a life worthy of sharing a name with Samurai Jack.

Farewell, old friend.

*I wrongly thought last week that this glimpse we got in the original series would be the path Jack took back to the past. We learned last week that it would not. But I think the path the show took was better than that would have been.
**This reminded me of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, for some reason. Or maybe Bogus Journey.
***One filmmaker has said that "coincidences to get your characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of trouble is cheating." I think this is more an example of the former than the latter.

The penultimate episode of "Samurai Jack" is full of surprises

The end is near, but things aren't looking good for Samurai Jack.

The final season of Samurai Jack has been full of surprises. But before this, its 100th episode, a somewhat clear vision of resolution had begun to emerge: Jack, along with the now romantically-linked Ashi, would return to the time portal whose guardian had violently forbidden Jack's entry in the original series. Jack was not yet worthy of entering the portal then, but the guardian did not kill him because the portal itself hinted that Jack would one day be worthy. After Jack's struggle this season, it seemed like he was finally ready. So, with Ashi's help, and perhaps that of the various friends and allies Jack has accumulated over the course of his quest, he would defeat the guardian (and also Aku, in the present), and then return to the past, and "undo the future that is Aku"--i.e., the entirety of the show.* It was a straightforward, simple, happy ending, with the only potential for sadness coming from Jack and Ashi never having met.

Was this how the show would end? I thought so. 

This week made it clear that this is not going to happen.** We pick up right where Jack and Ashi left off last week, still locked in romantic embrace, and get a half episode's worth of some more awkward romantic interactions (as well as some cool nature-and-seasons-based visuals). But these quickly take a back seat to Jack's inner drama. As I wrote last week, Jack is not well-suited to romance, both from temperament (being a stoic loner) and from experience (the last woman he even came close to loving was Aku in disguise). This episode added another explanation for Jack's emotional distance: fear of loss. Aku's evil "has taken everything I have ever loved. All I have left are memories," Jack says. "I do not want you [Ashi] to become a memory." Ashi tries to convince him otherwise, arguing that "everything that has happened in our lives has brought us right here. Right now. Together. And together we will defeat Aku."

Jack remembers the autumns of his childhood. 

Things are a bit more complicated than that, as it turns out. For the first time this season, Jack and Aku (who is very darkly funny in this episode) face one another in the present. Aku was following a tip given to him by Scaramouche, who claimed that Jack was sword-less; when Aku's eyes catch the gleam of Jack's blade, Scaramouche, who bet his life on his claim, finds himself at the wrong end of an Aku eye beam. Aku, surprisingly, even politely, is about to leave Jack with his "lady friend," when he discovers something: Ashi is, literally, a Daughter of Aku. The graphic births of Ashi we saw at the beginning of the season were the product of a sort of mystical insemination by Aku himself.

Ashi's "conception." 

This makes Aku Ashi's actual father, and grants him a control over her that he takes full advantage of, forcing an at first outwardly-unwilling Ashi to fight Jack, against her wishes and Jack's urging to fight Aku's control*** (Aku soon gives Ashi a more fitting makeover, in his image). Once again, it seems, Jack has fallen for Aku in disguise. But this time, the hurt is even more profound, for him and for us. We had seen Ashi grow (albeit in somewhat rushed fashion) from homicidal monomaniac to a strong force for good. When she briefly regains control of herself, she begs Jack to kill her and destroy Aku, but he cannot. We had also seen Jack grow out of his rut, escape from ultimate despair, and renew his commitment to his quest. But seeing one of the only people he has ever loved revert to a slave of Aku is the injustice that (seemingly) breaks him. The episode ends with a still-frame (clipped above) of Aku holding Jack's sword, and Jack bowing in despair before him and the transformed Ashi.

Ashi, under Aku's control. 

This is shocking. With only one 22-minute episode to go, Jack is as badly off as he has ever been, at a position of maximum weakness. He is swordless, friendless, and broken once more. Just as the show's conclusion was starting to come into focus, it has destroyed all of the predictable paths of denouement. What this means for the show's end is beyond me. But what this means for the quality of Samurai Jack's final season is that it has retained a relentless capacity to surprise and entertain to the very end. Whatever surprises next week holds, Samurai Jack has already thoroughly justified its return.

*Despite having time travel baked into its premise, Samurai Jack has not yet made clear what form of time travel logic it would subscribe to. That is, would Jack defeating Aku in the past reset the timeline? Create an alternate universe? Have no effect, because changing the past is impossible?
**I had long assumed the exact opposite. The easiest prediction to make for this season was that, at some point, a wise, mature Jack would re-encounter the guardian who kept him out of the portal in the original series and finally earn entry. Not only did this not happen, but also the portal and the guardian himself seem to have been destroyed, presumably by Aku's mission to destroy all extant time portals.
***Jack has some experience of fighting Aku's control; Aku briefly took over his body in Season 4's "The Aku Infection."

Reflections on my first half-marathon

Taken during my race by Mark Motz. Thanks, Mark!

Around this time last year, my commitment to running was at an all-time low. In the fall of 2015, my first time training entirely alone as a serious runner, I worked harder than I probably ever had before, only to injure myself two weeks before the 2015 Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race and embarrass myself when I did the race itself. Over the next few months, running ceased to be a priority in my life. I even spent an entire month not running for no other reason than that I didn't feel like it. This was untenable, but I still went through most of winter and spring of 2016 running only listlessly, without any real direction. Indeed, the only notable running-related accomplishment I had during that period was using a 9-mile run to enable myself to complete a professional eating challenge (which you can read about here).

At some point during the summer, though, the running impulse returned to me. I decided to train again for the Thanksgiving Day Race in an attempt to redeem my failure from last year. And though it wasn't always easy, and though I faced one major setback in the form of a freak pre-race accident that made even walking difficult for a few days before the race, I ended up placing 2nd at the 2016 Thanksgiving Day Race. And that race was only the culmination of a training period that saw me come within 10 seconds of my college 10k PR, and come within 3 seconds of breaking 15 in the 5k. Jack was back.

En route to almost being as good as I was in college in the 10k. 

And since Jack was back, and since I had satisfactorily proven my ability to train myself to more or less my best potential in the races I knew, I decided it was time to try some longer distances. But before I jumped into a marathon, I wanted to do a half-marathon first. I had my heart set on D.C.'s Rock 'n' Roll Half, but the training turnover between the end of my fall training's break and the date of that race proved too quick, and it exhausted me physically and mentally too much for me to have entered that early March race. So I elected to go return home for my half-marathon debut and run the Cincinnati Flying Pig on May 7, 2017.

Having never trained for a half-marathon before, I reached out to runner friends, including past coaches, for advice. They are all wise and experienced, and know much more than I, and gave me good advice. One prior Flying Pig champion advised me to do hill workouts, for example, since the Pig was a very hilly course. (This was good advice.) Despite that, I chose largely to forge my own path for half-marathon training, focusing on marathon pace runs, fartleks, long interval workouts at half-marathon goal pace (which I determined early on was ~1:10, so 5:20/mile), and long runs (with tempos within), run in 80-90 mile weeks. I carried on in this fashion for February, March, and early April, feeling very capable, and delighted finally to be training for a race where endurance and strength mattered far more than speed and a kick. As a runner, I've always had the former qualities in abundance, but suffered from a deficit of the latter two. I was pretty sure the half-marathon would be a good race for me.

My training was going well, and probably peaked in difficulty during early April, when I finished my first 90-mile week in some time. That week contained one bad workout, but one 10-mile tempo run at 5:27 pace, and it felt great, an encouraging sign. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the next week, my body straight-up shut down. I spent about a week trying my best just to run at all, but even that was difficult. The last four weeks of my training were largely dedicated to returning to the shape I was sure I had been in while making sure not to work so hard that I exhausted myself and also tapering. It was a tricky thing to pull off, and it didn't help that I got a short sickness a few days before my race that forced me to take a day off and made me generally more uncertain about how I felt and what kind of shape I was in.

Because of this training uncertainty, and because the half-marathon was more than twice as long as anything I'd ever raced before, I went to the line early Sunday morning far more nervous than I had been for a race in quite some time. I hadn't run a new distance since spring 2012, when I raced my first 10k. I wasn't sure how much of my fitness I had kept/restored from my down period and my sickness. And I wasn't even sure if, before that point, I had even been training for a half-marathon correctly, since I chose to ignore the advice most people gave me. Despite all of this, however, I still had several goals I was confident I could achieve, in order of feasibility:
-Get in the top 5
-Run 1:10-1:12
-Win (unlikely, since Cincinnati standout Tommy Kauffman was present)

I thought of all of this in the moments before the race began. Then the gun went off, the starting line erupted in (deliberate, planned) flames, and I began the race, sporting the St.X singlet my high school coach had given me (and shouted at me mid-race not to waste), which I always try to wear when I return to Cincinnati to race. I started out the first 6 miles of the race very conservatively, trying my best to stick in the 5:20s. This was good enough to put me in the top 5 out the gate, and I was content to remain there for the time being.

Beginning the hardest portion of the race. 

When the sixth mile began, I decided I felt good enough to make a move on 4th place; I passed him right around the 10k mark, and ventured into unknown territory for my racing history. This was also around the time that the race began its primary uphill portion, which would last for the next 3 or so miles. Here, my parents cheered me on for the first of two times; they were among many spectators who encouraged me, some who knew me, some who lent me support because of my St.X singlet, and some who were there to cheer on all of the racers.

There was a water station near the start of this uphill, and I took a sip of something that turned out to be Gatorade, which I never drink while running and so immediately spat out. I don't know if the sip of Gatorade was why I began to cramp up over the course of the next mile. That uphill mile would have been difficult regardless. But whether it was the Gatorade's fault or not, the next few miles of the race were some of the most painful I have ever experienced. My average pace for the first 6 miles of the race was probably around 5:25; miles 7-10 were 5:58, 6:16, 5:39, and 5:44. For the first two miles, I was in so much pain that I thought the race was basically over for me, that I was barely halfway through but would have to spend the rest of the race dragging my cramp-addled carcass to the finish line in shame. Not even two welcome sights, the cheering of a St.X friend and the bizarre improvisations of an Elvis impersonator, could break me from this funk, during which the fellow I had passed to get into 4th passed me once again.

Fortunately, the story of my first half-marathon does not end here. In fact, this is where it begins. Not long after my sister, who was also around to cheer for me, encouraged me, I reached the top of the race's seemingly infinite uphill. And, miraculously, my cramp went away. The legends of the second wind proved true. Somehow, I had recovered, as I discovered when I began to drop my pace once more. At the end of mile 10, I felt just as good as I had at the beginning of the race, if not better. Amazed at my fortune, I set my sights on 4th place once more, running toward, with, and then past him. Mile 11 began arguably the best kick I have ever managed in my running career. 3rd place was at least a minute ahead of me at this point, but I could still see him, so I set my sights on him as well. For mile 11, my pace dropped down to 5:20.

Starting to feel a lot better. 

As we got back into downtown for mile 12, my pace dropped down to 5:11. At this point, the race did an awkward out-and-back turnaround via some cones. I wish it hadn't, for two reasons: I lost a bit of my momentum, and 3rd place, who had no reason to expect I was anywhere near him, saw that I was somehow closing in. I didn't let this stop me, however. For my last full mile, my desperation to catch him enabled me to run a 5:05.

I got as close as 10 seconds away from him, until my body finally gave out and I basically jogged the last few hundred meters. And then, I was done, 4th place in 1:13:22*, well outside my goal time parameter, but oh well. At least I still get default results page visibility, as you can see here.

A goal, achieved. 

As I confusedly, almost dumbly made my way through the finish chute, I accepted the various things--medals, blankets, congratulations--given to me. I wasn't as interested in the food, though. Even though running usually makes me hungry, something about the task I had just completed made me totally uninterested in eating. I could barely even drink any water. Some people were shocked that I had already finished, but I made sure to tell them that I didn't win. I had only two real priorities upon finishing: finding the shirt I had deposited at the starting line, and returning to my car. I learned from a race official that all shirts left at the starting line are donated, which saddens me, as the shirt I wore to it was from the 2016 Thanksgiving Day Race, at which I got 2nd. There were many post-race celebrations and shenanigans, but I wasn't interested in any of them. So, more sore than I've ever been in my life, I slowly walked toward Sawyer Point, where I left my car. As I did so, I saw Tommy Kauffman, the race winner (and new course record holder), lightly jogging, presumably for his cooldown, and wondered how he could feel so good; I was so sore I didn't even feel like cooling down. I spent the rest of the day moving as little and eating as much as possible, and thinking about my race. It took about three days of no running for my legs to feel normal again, but now, after six days of no running, runners' restless leg syndrome pains have replaced those feelings of soreness.

Thus went my first half-marathon. I am content with it. Yes, I was a bit off from my time goals, and I certainly didn't win. And yes, my training, though it went well for a while, became frustratingly erratic in the last four weeks leading up to the race, an adverse reaction to and consequence of overtraining. I would have been happier if my debut half-marathon were a little faster. And I would have been happier if miles 7-10 weren't as unpleasant as they were. I have much to learn about the half-marathon, and much to change about my training (I'm certainly going to do hill repeats if I run this very hilly race again). But there are plenty of good things about this race as well. Miles 1-6 were calm, conservative, and consistent, exactly as I wanted them to be. And miles 11-13 were some of the most impressive I've ever run; to be honest, I'm still not sure how I was able to close so fast after recovering from several miles as painful and difficult as they were.** It would have been nice to get 3rd, but the fact that I came as close as I did from as far away as I was is encouraging. For my first half-marathon, it was not bad. It was also a fun race and a great experience.

And I looked good doing it. 

But the main takeaway about this race, for me and for everyone who know me (especially those who may compete against me), is that this won't be my last half-marathon. Indeed, it was only my first. And now that I have the experience under my belt, I expect only to get better and better at this race. For I have now proven, to myself and to anyone who may have doubted me, that graduating from college was not the end of my competitive running career.

It was only the beginning.

Honestly, how could I stop, with this face?

PS

*According to my Garmin, I actually ran 13.28 miles, and ran 13.1 miles in 1:12:24. I don't know if that's accurate, but it's at least worth mentioning.
**Also according to my Garmin, here are my splits:
-5:15
-5:18
-5:28
-5:30
-5:28
-5:27
-5:58
-6:16
-5:39
-5:44
-5:20
-5:11
-5:05

Love is in the air in Season 5, Episode 8 of "Samurai Jack"

Is that your sword or are you just happy to see me? 

Over the course of the show that bears his name, Samurai Jack has been through a lot. He's been, among other things, beaten, eaten, stabbed, robbed, possessed, captured, and tortured. And through his experiences, he's felt many things: happiness, disappointment, anger, sadness, ennui, self-hate, and even suicidal thoughts. But there's one thing Jack has never experienced in his 50-year struggle against Aku, and that we fans have never seen Jack experience in our 16 years watching the show:

Love.

Pictured: Two people who haven't experienced love in a long time, and aren't the best at recognizing it.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it's to be expected. Despite the range of emotions and experiences listed above, Jack is, above all, a stoic. He'd have to be to have made it this far. But it's not just stoicism that accounts for Jack's reticence about love. He's also something of a lone wolf. He has helped many on his quest, but only had one true friend (the now-deceased but still-spectral Scotsman, who I hope returns soon). As for female companionship, well...the one time Jack found himself growing close to a woman in the future (in Season 1's "Jack and the Warrior Woman"), it turned out to be Aku in disguise. Given Jack's personality, the nature of his quest, and the lingering memory of his ex, then, it's no surprise Jack has never really trusted himself to a woman since then.

The last time Jack fell for a woman, this is what happened. 

So you might expect Jack to continue in this stoic, lonely manner, even with the addition of a trustworthy female companion in Ashi. Which is why it was so surprising that the exact opposite happened. Most of the first half of this episode consists of a series of awkward, affectionate incidents between Jack and Ashi: accidental touches, garbled sentences, and some striking innuendo. ("Something's poking me!" Ashi complains, at one point; it's Jack's sword. Later, Jack sucks venom out of Ashi's leg, an act we saw enough of that it certainly seemed at least somewhat sexual.)

It's a classic study in how two characters falling in love with each other can do so while in complete denial of it happening at all (while also fighting their enemies, of course). And if Jack and Ashi were going to fall in love, that's exactly how you'd expect two stoic warriors, trained from birth to discard emotion for discipline, would react. Their difficulty dealing with these feelings, and the stilted journey they make toward fully realizing them, makes this one of the funnier episodes of Samurai Jack.

"I was just reaching behind you to punch that guy."
"Yeah...me too."

But this is Samurai Jack, so, naturally, the love and the humor unfold in the face of one of the most terrifying, discomfiting creatures Jack has ever faced: a shape-shifting monster from space (whose beautifully-animated landing on Earth opens the episode) made up of countless leech-like insects, able to transform into a giant while simultaneously shooting legions of blood-sucking, venomous parasites at exposed skin. I've always been frightened by the horror genre known as "body horror." As practiced by such experts as Davids Lynch and Croenenberg and John Carpenter, body horror derives most of its scares from the uncomfortable feeling one gets from witnessing terrifying things happen to people's bodies: creatures crawling over (and inside of) people, parasites taking people over, people viscerally transforming into other beings. And this episode somehow expertly combines a budding romance with a profoundly disturbing body horror beast that Jack and Ashi spend the struggle to defeat, and made both of these contrasting elements work.

Of course, they do defeat it. And when they do, exhausted, adrenaline pumping from battle, drawing heavy breaths from the effort, and having already awkwardly interacted romantically during a fight earlier in the episode, Jack and Ashi stare at each other for an eternity in animation terms and then...

...and then, this episode of Samurai Jack closes on not a first, but another second*: the second time the show has ever ended without its trademark end credits. Instead, a song plays**. And the choice of music should tell you all you need to know about how the episode ended: 

It's hard to judge an episode like this. It is obviously very, very different, not only from most of the episodes of this season, but from any episode of the show so far: funnier and lighter (at parts) than this season has been on the whole, and more so even than most of the show's original run was. But that relative levity disguises the remarkable expansion and exploration of Jack's character this episode contained. Jack has been through a lot, and we've seen many aspects of his character emerge from what he has experienced. But love has revealed characteristics of Jack we've never seen before: He can be awkward, modest, and even a bit puritanical (blushing, cracking his voice, and covering up Ashi when she denudes herself after the leeches have swarmed her clothes). Thus, Jack falling in love is of a piece with his contemplation of suicide earlier this season. From both extremes, we now know him better than ever before. As for Ashi, her journey from homicidal maniac to loving partner has been a bit rushed, but she is now a fully realized character in her own right. Both will make the final two episodes of Samurai Jack even more compelling.

*The only other episode I can remember that ended without the show's end credits theme was the bizarre, Benny Hill-inspired, comedic episode "Jack Is Naked" from Season 2.
**I like when creators of modern pop culture reach back into the past (in this case, a 53-year-old song) and introduces it to a new generation. Check out the YouTube comment section (yes, actually look at the comments!) for this video of the song, and see how many references there are to Samurai Jack: