My apologies for this rather long rant in advance.
(From the Force.net boards)

I really don't know what to say about these episode, the season 2 and especially 3 openers really pulled me in to the seasons only to be disappointed later on, but these episodes just felt flat.

Before we even get to the episode proper I already have a problem with the announcer: "aggressive squid-like Quarrens":
Aggressive; since when? Squid-like: I can see there is one on the screen, while you are saying that... (the comment actually comes off quite xenophobic imo)

The set up, as already discussed; was terrible. The king was murdered "mysteriously", I hope the mystery wasn't how, because he has a large knife protruding from his back... Then the Quarren were angry because they didn't want a Mon Cal King again, so they decided to kill and enslave all Mon Cal... How about you denounce the Mon Cal monarchy and propose a freely elected leader that represents the community at a whole? What would the Mon Cal do? They have no obvious military advantage. It would have been so easy to add a scene where the senate denies the planet of Dac duel representation, followed by Dooku being the great leader described in Heroes on Both Sides, by offering the Quarren what the Republic would not, an equal voice (In the CIS parliament). Suddenly there is sensible motivation, with two short scenes. It would have been even better again, if it was the Quarren leader who had been killed, giving the politically motivated Quarrens, additional military motivation. Of course it would have been even better again if the story was told positively from the Quarrens point of view. Struggling against the oppressive republic, truly showing "heroes on both sides." But we all know the CIS are a bunch of evil, aggressive, squid-like, monsters...

Moving on from the "Story", I honestly can't remember much of what happened in either episode, some armies fought in the water, using the standard TCW tactic of charging and holding the trigger, being careful not to actually hit the enemy. I actually found that I was looking for other things to do during the fight scenes because they were so bland and they weren't holding my interest at all. Then the prince spent the whole time being a terrible leader for the sole purpose of being redeemed later, could it be any more clichéd? The unnecessary Captain Ackbar got caught in a trap. Which leads me to wonder why there was no-one higher ranked in the MonCal military then a captain. If Ackbar had to be in the episode he should have been a minor character leading a platoon, or serving as a generals aide, not a general in all but name.

Then shark-face bit some people, causing instant death, sharks don't kill people in one bite like that, they don't have cyanide teeth, especially when the sharks head is the size of a humans. Shark-face really needed a blaster, so that when he started biting people it was more exciting, the novelty got real old real quick. And despite knowing it will never happen, there really needed to be blood in the shark attack scene, it just looked really weird with none. (Anyone for Adults only clone wars )

Anakins helmet lose was a real face-palm moment.

Something that annoyed me right from the moment I read the second episode title, the Gungans are so far from Dac how can they possibly get there in time? I was willing to overlook this as just nitpicking until Master Tiin had to go and outright say they were the close. Are the 4 masters looking at the map blind? Dac is about as far from Naboo as you can possibly get in the galaxy, surely there are other water planets somewhere in the galaxy. The below image is a map that has a line between Dac and Naboo with a circle around Dac showing just how much of the galaxy is closer than Naboo:

Basically the only people who can't send an aquatic army faster than the Gungans is the mighty Ewok underwater expeditionary force...

Finally a positive, the Gungans arrival; WOW, just wow. They could have just replayed that scene with the Venerator on repeat for an hour and I would have given the episode a 9.5/10 (I never give 10s). The animation was flawless, the Gungans were perhaps finally redeemed in that one scene from their status as one of the most hated thing in the Star Wars universe. The story line of "Gungans go sky-diving, the end", is much more compelling than what we actually got too.

Oh another positive to Ahsokas scuba gear, the model really stood out for some reason I think it was just really detailed and of course it was actually appropriate attire for once.

One last thing the hydroid medusas were impressive until they didn't do anything.

Anyway I think that's enough ranting for now, I will try to rewatch and force myself to conecrate better.

General Un-Co,
                         Signing off