This week on The Clone Wars: We kick off actual, genuine fun with "Secret Weapons." We know we're in for a departure this week because the "Clone Wars" logo was bright blue instead of the usual yellow. R2-D2 and a team of droids team up with a Republic tactician to obtain a widget from a separatist flagship. It's the best episode of the season. It may be the best episode of the series. I had a big, dumb grin on my face the entire time watching this one. More after the break. (Best. Episode. Ever.)

I thought the previous "Young Jedi" arc was pretty good and was wall-to-wall fun, but "Secret Weapons" is, without a doubt, the kind of thing I was wishing we would see in a second season of Droids back in the 1980s but this is a kajillion times better. Zero-G droid battles! A frog that sounds like Walter Matthau! A truly wack Pit Droid! This episode has it all. Watch it now, you cynical heartless people.

Click here for "Secret Weapons" trailers and videos on YouTube

The Clone Wars managed to tell all sorts of stories in its run so far, but few are as innately Star Wars-y as this one. If you've never seen an episode of the show, but have seen (and are familiar with) the movies, it's easy to get in to the story and actually enjoy it. Colonel Meebur Gascon is voiced by Stephen Stanton, and the little guy should sound familiar to anybody out there who's watched The Bad News Bears or Grumpy Old Men. Mace Windu and the Jedi selected him to lead a small squad of our little robot buddies into an espionage mission to swipe a Separatist Encryption Module. It may as well be a pie, it doesn't matter - what matters is you get to see all sorts of awesome stuff happen in nearly every scene. Astromech upgrades by creepy squid doctor? YES!

Meet the team: R2-D2 you already know, and he gets enhanced booster rockets. When you watch the episode, you can actually see the animators put black-and-yellow caution tape around the areas in which the droids received their new parts. QT-KT gets a remote controlled flying magnet that fits in her dome, which I'm surprised doesn't scramble her own circuits. U9=C4 gets a swell upgraded slicer arm which is more powerful than the little orange guy can handle. Finally, M5-VC gets his brains carved out which is a shame, as his goofy, chubby chirps sounded pretty funny. The Colonel's command station gets implanted in his head like we saw with the little aliens in Men in Black and, more close to where we live, Seripas. We have a few green R4-style units, but all of these would make fantastic action figures.

As the robots go on their mission, things go more or less as you might expect. There's a few snags on the way, a few gags, and we also get to have the Pit Droid WAC-47, who I'm guessing was brought on for a mix of comic relief and so we can have another character speak English rather than the chorus of fun but admittedly difficult to translate beeps and whistles.

Takeaway from this week:

I want action figures of these droids and Colonel Gascon.
Did we actually get to see Droid giggles? I think we did!
I want action figures of these droids and Colonel Gascon.
The Super Tactical Droid's name? Aut-O. Heh.
I want action figures of these droids and Colonel Gascon! Five stars ***** and we run a four star system here. I think. (Don't we?) Anyway, this is probably the highlight of the series so far as far as I'm concerned because it's so fun and so many of the characters are basically mute.

Next Week: Colonel Gascon returns in "A Sunny Day in the Void." I'm beside myself with glee. I look forward to the show but not this much usually. Bring it on, Cartoon Network! Try to kill my buzz. You can't!

See you then!