I'm afraid the vast majority of Clone Wars episodes are going to have cartoonish villains, Temis. Cad Bane was really the only major villain who wasn't silly to some degree (not counting his ridiculous hat).
I just watched the first five-episode disk of
CW, and my negative impressions of it have done a 180 or at least a 165.
Which I suspected would happen if I just accepted the parts I don't like - cartoon villains, dopey battle droids as enemy cannon fodder and the essentially boring and interchangeable clones.
First off, I appreciate the newsreel-style recaps at the beginning of each episode. They're a nice reminder that
Star Wars hails from the tradition of old 20s and 30s space opera serials, and even though the text crawl is famous, it would be a clumsy way of conveying the same information.
I
love the way they write, voice-act and animate Anakin - if I'm not mistaken, his look is based on an adult Jake Lloyd, who being far less of a pretty-boy type than Hayden Christensen, is far closer to my idea of how the guy who becomes Vader should look - more masculine, a bit brutish (it's the forehead) and with intense, striking eyes.
He's likable and heroic, which is how Anakin should have started out. That is a huge improvement over the film strategy of making him a surly, stalker-ish brat from the outset, but leaves open the problem of how is Tartakovsky going to realistically start to move him to the Dark Side, which needs to start to happen a couple of seasons before the series end for plausibility's sake.
Sure, he's overconfident and breaks rules, but that's a long long ways from blowing up planets. He cares about the lives of Clone Troopers while Vader just sees them as disposable in his quest for ever greater power - how the heck does that transition occur? I would love it if Lucas gave Tartakovsky the rights to re-do Ep III - maybe just frakkin re-make it, with some important rejiggering of the story's major faults (no sappy excuses for why Anakin falls to the Dark Side; give Padme a heroic or at least less moronic death). I really feel that this Anakin isn't the same guy as in the movies, and is the real Anakin as far as I'm concerned. I want to see
his story concluded, not that imposter from the movies.
The way Anakin is being written solves the dual problems from the movies of his relationships with Padme and Obi-Wan, both of whom are too intelligent to waste any time on an unpalatable creep like the movie Anakin, much less become a lover or friend. I never bought the idea of Anakin and Obi-Wan being friends in the movies, which destroyed the emotional weight of the Mustafar fight, but now I'm chomping at the bit to see a lot more development of their friendship that isn't just them trading breezy quips. The Anakin-Padme romance may have been utterly cringe-worthy in the moves, but with
this Anakin, it could be an affecting and wonderful part of the story. Bring on the mushy stuff! Just don't talk about sand.
I also appreciate the way they're animating Obi-Wan to look more like Alec Guiness, with soulful eyes and a long, elegant, patrician nose instead of that potato that Ewan McGregor has on his face. Overall, I'm warming up to the animation style which initially put me off. Character movements are too stiff, but the faces are surprisingly evocative. There was a scene in which Anakin realizes Padme's ship is being pulled into Grevious' ship and he makes the decision to stop firing on the ship. The look of fear and concern on his face gave me a twinge, which is more than I ever felt for the live actors who played the character.
I appreciate the attempts at humor, although they often fall flat. Here's hoping that some greater thematic and character depth makes its way into the series, because right now it's okay but if it's nothing but fighting between Jedi, robots and clones, it's going to wear out its welcome very quickly. I wouldn't mind seeing some backstory into the Dark and Light Sides of the Force. While of course avoiding the pitfall of treating either as a form of mind control (that would destroy the moral dimensions of the story), I'd like more of a sense that these are real things which have an actual impact on the psychology of Jedi and Sith alike, and it's not all just talk.
There also should be more of a mystical, epic dimension to how the Force is presented, maybe tied in with its history. A visit to some ancient nexus of dark power or something like that would be a nice way to build some texture and foreshadowing into the story. I'm sure the EU provides a lot of cool, creepy, impressive places for our heroes to venture.
I seem to be writing my whole review already, so I'll just stop, and cut & paste. For the first time since the end of
ROTJ (I don't even want to think how long ago that was), I'm fairly excited about
Star Wars again, so I'm sure I'll blast thru the rest of S1 in a big hurry and then start an independent thread on the season while waiting for the S2 DVD release. Meanwhile, my DVR is saving all the current season. I have lots of issues with the series, but it's good and it's space opera and given how little of that is around nowadays, I'll just shut up and be happy.
And the American Gladiator (old syndicated version) styled training arena was pretty cool. 
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