I love Andor. I'm suggesting not every show needs to be serious. I get your stance, but I'm not needing every show to be that.
So, to clarify, it's not that
Andor is serious. I think there is funny stuff that is of a similar quality. As well as horror, romance, etc.
As a writing teacher, what I appreciate about
Andor is that every character has understandably human (therefore complex) motivations with a believable arc, story details consistently pay off later in the story, and that
everything makes sense and nothing feels random. Also, the dialogue feels like words actual people would say. It's what I refer to as "tightly written."
Mando is not tightly written. Let's take one example: the giant Kaiju that rears up out of nowhere. It looks so cool! But...has this been foreshadowed in a significant way? Is there any logical reason why it should be
just there, exactly where they need to get, after hours/days of travel? Is there a reason why it suddenly attacks? If it is that randomly aggressive, why has it not been a problem for the Imperials who built a base in the same spot, which they currently occupy? Will there be any significant consequences to the encounter?
As far as I can tell, it appears where, when, and how it does because the writers wanted something that looked cool to add a sort of exclamation point to the travel sequence. That's it. And so, mission accomplished, it vanished from the story.
Here's another example: Christopher Lloyd's villain has a literal giant red button that, if pushed, instantly turns all the former Imperial droids back into killer battledroids. It makes for a (supposedly tense, actually laughable) moment where he threatens to push it. So...has no one commented on that giant red button before? Why would he have it on his work station? What was
that conversation with the tech team like? How has he never bumped it by accident? How has no one ever asked about it? Is he like, "that's my order coffee button!"?
It's the stupidest thing in the world. I just kind of assumed that we had descended into actual parody, since that entire subplot was irrelevant to the wider plot anyhow, so maybe the writers figured, "What the hell - just give him a giant red button."
Now, there is quality parody, too, but this was not that. It was more like an unintentional
Spinal Tap moment. But I still laughed and had fun, just as I did with Grogu in the mech suit (so cute!).
So when I say that I can't take
Mando seriously, I mean that it is not believable. I cannot be immersed in a story that fundamentally makes no sense. I can be entertained ("Are you not entertained?!"), but that is something different. And, for me, lesser, more easily found.