Yeah, to me the appeal is a bit like what TFA was - a major palette cleanser after something SW that left a very bad taste in my mouth. For TFA that was the PT (TFA was joyous only because I could actually follow the story and it had OT hardware - even if it was all 100% lifted from ANH,) and for Mando it's the ST, and TLJ in particular.
I like seeing something so realistic, what it would be really like to walk the streets of Mos Eisley, which I often imagined as a kid. And so often with minimal to no dialog or exposition, vs the ST's wall-to-wall chatter and yahooing and explaining.
And it's pretty much a deep dive into OT fan service. The sandcrawler sequence was especially cool - almost reminded me of the SNES game from the 90s (which made the Jawa cry especially sinsiter) crossed with the Last Crusade sequence.
That being said, the show almost feels like a fan made film, though in the best way possible - fan movies would jam in all the high-carb SW bits into a short 1/2 hour, like this show does.
The baby Yoda looks too much like a stuffed toy or obvious CGI, and again has that aspect of taking something/someone major from the OT to hijack as your OT crutch. I mean he's already Boba Fett in his weekend armor, I didn't need one of the "big dozen" iconic SW characters to show up in a slightly altered form.
I'm really enjoying the show though - it's like a breath of fresh air and hits everything I would have loved as a kid: a walk through a real SW universe with a cool badass as your guide.
