Episode 2 is the one where I had to tell myself that George Lucas just sucks at deep romance plots but that’s not why I was watching. Because yeah, those “romance” scenes were awkward af when they didn’t have action adding to the intensity. Plus Anakin was waving red flags right from Ep 2 and it took some suspension of disbelief to even accept them as a couple even before the dynamic caused by their age difference (and Anakin acting like a child because Padme treats him as a child) and somehow she ends up even more attracted to him?

But the overall plot was still coherent (though maybe I was more forgiving because I knew it had to check off certain boxes to fit and it did) and not just going for that reaction in a live audience sitcom when one of the main characters first enters the stage like Ep 7 (though it did have potential still IMO) or an “ok, I’ll make the next star wars movie, but I actually hate everything about star wars and want to show that through my Episode”, or “ah fuck, the last guy really made a mess out of this, can you fix it? Or just make something, anything to finish this trilogy and we’ll try to recover on other stories in the franchise”.