You have been warned. These are also not going to be in any particular order, if that kind of thing bothers you.

OK, so. As you are all well aware by now, my relationship with this series is... fraught. Nevertheless, I haven't given up hope entirely yet, and I watched the first couple of episodes last night. (Not the third one. Saturation levels. Not a big fan of the binge viewing experience in general.) Here are a few thoughts.

- As I noted when it was released as a promotional clip, the first scene with the vines made me facepalm. Korra and Tenzin doing the Korra-and-Tenzin thing, as they have since Day 1; she gets frustrated and stomps off, he pets her patronizingly on the head. Really, guys, we're still doing this?

Speaking of "we're still doing this" and vine scenes, the second scene with the vines made me want to kick something. Guys. GUYS. It's 2014. We can be DONE with the "Korra can't actually fix anything, in fact she makes everything worse and everybody hates her for it" thing now. HONEST, I WON'T MIND.

- What's new in Issue 3: Air Control for Dominators. Doctor Brainstorm's Power Set Proliferator has struck again, and the popular Airbending set is now available to the most diabolical of Villain Archetypes.

I'm... I don't think I'm OK with airbender proliferation on a lot of levels. Phil is, so I'm probably stuck with it, but I think that's some pretty weak sauce being drizzled on us there.

Speaking of which, while I'm not in any way surprised that Tenzin wasn't expecting people to resist conscription into the Psi Corps, it does strike me as pretty dubious that Korra thought things would turn out differently. After all, she should know better than basically anybody else how monumentally unappealing the Air Nomad lifestyle is to any even slightly normal person. She nearly burned the island down when Tenzin tried to make her live like one. That she then goes on to be surprised and glum that their ham-fisted recruitment efforts fail is, I think, disingenuous on the part of the writers. It's blatant plot-furtherance at the expense of what the characters would actually do. You can see the scaffolding.

Also, will someone please drown the one recruit (well, apart from Bumi) they did get, please. I'll wait. Thanks.

- I think I like Mako as Korra's ex better than I liked him as Korra's utterly unworthy boyfriend, but I still don't like him. Bolin's little dance convincing him to come along on the field trip was hilarious, but frankly it would've been OK with me if he hadn't bothered. (Seeing him get clobbered by a door almost made airbender proliferation worth it for a brief moment.)

On the other hand, I have to admit I would willingly, even happily, accept another entire episode of The Legend of Mako: Poorly Trained Policeman (the saddest of Book 2's many sad-Keanu moments) in lieu of all the screen time I know that airbender kid is going to get.

- An unalloyed positive thing! The Korramobile scene was everything I could have wanted out of such a scene, and I require many more like it. (N.B. They don't all actually have to take place in the Korramobile. I would also accept bridge-of-the-blimp scenes, corner-table-at-a-café scenes, and - O almighty Grodd, hear my plea! - hot tub scenes.)

- Bolin remains brilliant. Pabu remains brilliant. Naga remains brilliant. Asami remains some distance beyond brilliant. Lin Beifong remains... rather less than brilliant. Way to remember who your friends are, hon. Your mom was a real jerk sometimes, but at least she was always able to keep that straight.

- Speaking of less-than-brilliant characters, President Raiko! I want that weasely little fuck down on his knees begging Korra to come back and save his city, and then I want her to not do it until the inhabitants of that city have realized that she isn't going to as long as he's still there and taken him out around back of the garage, never to be seen again. (Don't worry, sweetie, he's gone to live on a farm with lots of other crooked politicians. He's happy there!)

- The White Lotus continue to be both jerkbags and ineffectual. This is unacceptable. I will only put up with one of the two in any ostensibly-good-guy organization. I am frankly OK with it at this point if the Legion of Doom manage to kill them all.

- Speaking of which, the Legion of Doom. What? I mean, they're better villains than the Equalists, but only by dint of the fact that the Equalists were so lame. I guess Korra's just never going to have a villain that can compete with the entire Fire Nation in terms of gravitas.

- I dig the Airship of Love (I think I'll start referring to it as the George and Vulture, because it's almost exactly what I was envisioning for the UF Hellfire Club's pleasure zeppelin), but wasn't Asami dead broke like last week? Even Tony Stark didn't recover that fast the time he lost Stark International. Damn, girl.

So. Some bad points, some good points, and some points on which I haven't figured out where I stand yet. The first two episodes are uneven, and in places they still make me want to do pugilism someone, but they weren't the absolutely unrelieved whipping that the show has pretty consistently been for me since midway through Book 1, so that's a hopeful thing, relatively speaking.

Korra herself, in these two episodes, is also weirdly uneven, much like the show. She is occasionally brilliant (the scene on the Kyoshi Bridge, for instance, although she does appear to have either forgotten that she could, in fact, help that guy not be an airbender any more, or chose to bullshit him about it for some reason)... and then she suddenly isn't any more, and we're back to the old standbys like the "vine removal mayhem" scene, the "whining about wisdom" scene, and the "I don't get it, why didn't beating that guy up get him on our side?" scene. It feels like the writers know she's trying to grow, and sometimes their attention wanders and she gets away with it a little, but then they consciously set her back for some inexplicable reason.

That, in particular, remains very frustrating, and causes me to remain wary of assurances I receive that It's Gonna Be Worth It Eventually; but so far, Book 3 has not been throw-up-hands-and-go-back-to-bed infuriating like Book 2 was.

So far.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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