I finally got around to watching this - I'll try not to wander into a review of the entire show.

First of all, there is still entirely too much talking. The actors are being directed to put the uttermost grim emphases on every single line because this is a Very Serious Show, but the plot is very short on developments and very long on dialogue.

Incredibly this even hurts the runup to significant events like the Battle of Ghorman. The local rebel chapter and Syril the wannabe ISB agent spend so much time hacking it up between the two of them that it becomes unclear exactly when Syril started sympathizing with them, or worse yet, maybe this was never even defined. The Rebels talk about doing direct action, but even on this subject the details are maddeningly thin. We are told of military transports and hijackings that we never see, nor see the effects of. What effects? Doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the narrative of the Ghormans rebelling, which is something that doesn't require 5 hours of television to communicate but nevertheless somehow does.

So onto the actual battle itself: it becomes apparent in the first few scenes of the episode that the Rebels are retarded, and this condition only intensifies through the runtime. "But that's the point." OK, so:

1. the Imperials made a big show of setting up barricades and deploying brownshirts in the plaza (days before anything happened)
2. Andor, acting as a representative of the experienced Rebellion, warned the Rebels that direct action is a huge mistake for several reasons
3. Syril the ISB infiltrator also had a change of heart and warned the Rebels the plaza was basically a January 6th trap

But the Rebels are like "nah, we good" and proceed to plan and execute the dumbest gorilla warfare I have ever seen in my life:

1. Organize hundreds of peaceful civilians to march into the plaza and chant at the Imperials
2. Hide blasters and molotov cocktails under civilian clothes and march in the middle of them
3. Ignore the stormtroopers that suddenly appeared to cut off the plaza exits
4. Instigate the Imperials into a shootout
5. Get yourselves and a few hundred people mowed down because you're surrounded by snipers, barricades, stormtroopers, and death robots, and all you've got is a space Burberry coat and a blaster (there's also TIE fighters ready to do strafing runs btw)

Yes, the Imperials were the party that actually ignited the conflict by sniping their own men, but it was made clear that the rebels knew a fight was going to happen and marched to the plaza expecting one. Even though the rebels are supposed to be feckless idiots, this is such a deliberately moronic plan that it actually harms suspension of disbelief and should make you question the rebel cause itself. What kind of monsters would deliberately put hundreds of people in danger for reasons of optics? The Imperial objective and the Rebel objective are literally the same.

Not that the Imperials are geniuses either. Why is the K2SO robot squad programmed solely to throw people in the air? Are they repurposed from a water park or something? Why don't they have blasters? Why don't they punch or kick people?

Where are the overwhelming stormtrooper reinforcements cutting off the rebel stragglers from all sides? Why is the battle virtually nonexistent outside of the plaza? What are the TIEs doing?

The unwieldy dialogue also harms the basic functions of the Imperials. Every line in this show must be wrought with emotive significance, and the result is that not even military officers are capable of passing basic information to each other without getting into pseudo-Shakespearean pissing matches. This is an underrated thing about the genuine Lucas Star Wars: a battle droid says "Captain, take them to Camp 4" and the other battle droid says "roger roger" without so much as a brooding pause, a furrowed brow, a soulful glance, or a long closeup. Actually I'm pretty sure the separatist army would clobber the ISB easily.

All that being said, it was entertaining seeing rebels and stormtroopers finally get in a gunfight after 7 hours of gasbags jabbering back and forth. 6/10