If The Bad Batch has proven one thing over its first two seasons, it’s that Omega’s plucky optimism can turn anyone around. In Season 3’s fourth episode, “A Different Approach”, the pragmatic and resolute Crosshair steps into Omega’s…crosshairs. After a pretty frenetic three-part premeire in which it was revealed that Hemlock was working on Project Necromancer and that Omega’s DNA was the key to creating clones of Sleepy Sheev, writer Ezra Nachman and director Saul Ruiz put together a solid bottle episode that focused on what The Bad Batch has always done well: explore interpersonal dynamics.
After teaming up to escape from Tantiss Base, Crosshair, Echo and Batcher crash land on a planet named Lau where, other than for a brief check in on Hemlock and Nala Se, the bulk of the episode takes place. The heavy Imperial presece on the planet and the restrictive circumstances of their situation call for some creative solutions. Rather than resorting to blasting their way off the planet and adding to Crosshair’s body count, Omega’s strategic mind becomes their best weapon as they seek to find a way back to Hunter and Wrecker which, of course, they ultimately do.
The final moments of the episode aside, “A Different Approach” doesn’t do much to advance the overall plot of the series but after such a heavy does of exposition in the three-part premeire, that’s ok. Throughout the first two seasons, executive producers Jennifer Corbett and Brad Rau have had no problem backing off into bottle episodes–which sometimes end up being derided as “filler episodes”–and they’ve done it again here. The strength of these types of episodes, such as Season 2, Episode 5-Entombed, is almost almost always in the character dynamics and that remains the case here. Crosshair has given Omega–and all of us–plenty of reasons to hate him over the first two seasons; however, he’s hurting, too, and his time with Omega is providing exactly what he needs to find himself again. In a series with a heavy emphasis on identity, these “filler episodes” have almost always helped define each of the main characters.
Corbett and Rau’s bottle epsiodes have also always seemed to take inspiration from other action franchises. “Entombed” was an homage to Uncharted; “Metamorphosis” hit all the notes of an entry in the Alien franchise; “A Different Approach” feels a bit like the opening act of a James Bond film. However fans feel about such episodes, by the end of Episode 4, Crosshair and Omega are back with their brothers, though as shown in a brilliant shot, there’s quite a gap to close before they can return to be a functioning Bad Batch.
