I decided to flip through one of the episodes of TCW: Decoded to see what the annotations were like. After all, on ABC's LOST, the annotations are often very helpful and remind you of things from past seasons and episodes you might have forgotten. These show that the writers really are paying attention, and you can get a lot more out of it by being a regular viewer.

After watching parts of The Clone Wars: Decoded, however, I'm convinced that it's intended for people who have never seen any of the movies. For example, "Did you know that Anakin and Padme are secretly married?" sheds much light on the show's inner goings-on, for those who haven't seen Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. "Anakin can understand R2-D2's droidspeak. Can you?" prompts the viewer to evaluate his linguistic skills regarding fictitious robot languages, adding layers of meaning, and possibly explaining why Anakin keeps answering R2-D2's beeps. A hologram stock picture of General Grievous taking up 1/4 of the screen to say "Curses, the senator is getting away!" made me feel like I understood the character like never before. A possible plot hole was resolved when, as C-3PO was being hit by a train, a pop-up informed the nervous audience that "Fortunately, Anakin made C-3PO super tough when he built him." Fortunate indeed that a 9-year-old would think to make a droid's pre-existing skeleton extra durable; his Force-sense must have alerted him that a protocol droid built from scrap would need to have military-grade defensive capabilities even without droid plating.

I'm just looking forward to the season finale decoded, so we can finally find out who this "Chancellor Palpatine" guy is!