> - 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?

... wait, what?

Tenzin is kind of Korra's mentor. He never patronizes her, except to the extent that any relationship involving a very young girl and a middle-aged man is going to involve some of that.

>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.

Hmm. Is it weird that I'm incredibly enthusiastic about the airbender proliferation in general, but am actually really ticked off about it applying to Bumi in particular?

I really, really liked that Aang had a kid who didn't bend and who very clearly took after Sokka and Hakoda.

>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.

This strikes me as wrong in a few ways.

The Air Nomad lifestyle isn't monumentally appealing to any even slightly normal person; it's monumentally unappealing to Korra specifically. There are lots and lots of people for whom the lifestyle is in fact incredibly appealing, and we know that because people keep seeking it out. Things may have changed a bit by LoK, but at least back in Aang's day tons of people wanted to be Air Acolytes. There are enough of them in Korra's time to fully staff multiple air temples!

(Traditionally, being a monk has been a really, really sweet deal. You get a roof over your head and three meals a day and people treat you with respect and you can drink all the liquor you can brew.)

But putting that aside... it makes perfect sense Korra would expect people to drop everything in their lives and sack up for the greater good, because that's what literally her entire life has been like. It's not so much she expects them to be enthusiastic about being airbenders, I don't think. She expects them to be enthusiastic about fulfilling their destinies, because clearly, they've been chosen to help rebuild an ancient culture that's been on the brink of extinction for two centuries. You can't just decide not to take part in that!

... can you?

It probably also doesn't help that Korra has likely been marinating in an environment that completely mythologizes the airbenders and their plight her entire life. She's the successor to the Last Airbender, trained and mentored by the widow of said airbender, then trained and mentored further by the son of said airbender (who was ALSO the Last Airbender for awhile) and who lives with a family full of airbenders. There were probably tons of White Lotus guys and Air Acolytes around her all the time who'd have given their left nuts to get some of that sweet, sweet airbending action.

The part that seems slightly disingenuous to me is that it took them so long to change their approach, and that the idea didn't come with Asami, probably the only person on the Airship of Love who has ever heard the term "advertising budget." Really, they need to sell it not as "come join our cult" but rather as "we are willing to train you all the way to bending mastery completely free of charge." Being a bending master of any sort makes you a member of an economic and cultural elite. Then you just hope that the people you train stick around.

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

I'm unsure if we're supposed to regard Kai as a little shit or not. If we are, good job!

If we're not, the show isn't doing a great job of that; most people seem to react to him with ambivalence at best. If we're supposed to like him, he really should have been a girl; his behavior would be far more endearing then, much in the way that Toph acting like a thug often was.

(Also, if you want your audience to like someone, having them take advantage of Bolin, the most likable person on your show, isn't a great way to go about it!)

> - 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.)

Jesus, I know, right?

I dislike how the show has been handling Mako a lot more than Mako himself. Mako has never seemed like a bad person to me, just someone the show handles badly, as opposed to, say, Zhao (I picked a villain at random) who was a bad person but was handled extraordinarily well.

But Mako suddenly being deeply, crazily humbled is pretty great. I'd have rather he stayed behind in the city and held down the fort with Lin, but can't have everything.

>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.

As someone who has watched all the way through episode six, I can tell you that Kai isn't going to get a ton of screentime in the front half of the season at least, and that the screen time he does get is mostly directly attached to Korra kicking the shit out of the Dai Li and having a sweet, silky smooth exit from Ba Sing Ce that would make Aang weep with jealousy.

Also, he completely humiliates Mako at least twice. You gotta be on board for some of that, right?

> - 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.)

You should have stuck around for episode three, in which they literally have a conversation that goes "Should we get the boys for this?" "Nah, fuck it, we don't need'em" and then they take the airship down south and fight the guys from Mad Max by themselves.

Also: oh my god, Asami's bedroom eyes. I think they may rise to the level of "genuine superpower."

> - Bolin remains brilliant.

Y'know, I think I've finally cracked the Bolin code. It took me awhile to figure out why I liked him so much, because aside from cracking wise he didn't really have a lot to do. His nearest analogue in the Gaang was Sokka, only Bolin isn't nearly as complex as Sokka.

Then I figured out that was the whole point.

Bolin is just completely uncomplicated and a genuinely good dude. That's it. There's nothing else there, and there doesn't have to be. Unlike Mako, he's dealt with the various damage the Fabulous Bending Brothers have suffered during their lives in a healthy way.

He's completely free of guile, malice, or subtlety of any sort, and in fact most of his humor stems from the fact that he largely isn't trying to be funny. Sokka knew he was witty and also that he was smart; it's why he was so arrogant all the time. Bolin isn't dumb, but he also doesn't have a filter and wears his heart on his sleeve, which might be annoying if it wasn't such a good heart.

I actually really want to see Bolin spend a lot more time hanging out with Asami. I want to see them restore classic cars together, and for Bolin to actually be really, really bad at it. I want to see her finally give him that makeover he was so enthusiastic about! I want him to totally be her best friend, because Asami really needs a best friend.

(And before you say "Korra's job!" Korra's job is to be Asami's girlfriend. Two different job roles! :)

> 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.

.. wait, what? What'd Lin do?

> - 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!)

Okay, I'm actually gonna offer an extremely limited defense of Raiko.

Actually, wait, no I'm not. First I'm gonna tear into him, because, what the fuck, dude? You are supposed to be shepherding the Republic into a post-autocracy era, where it is no longer ruled by unelected douchebags appointed by foreign powers! You aren't allowed to be mediocre, you have to be Sun Yat-sen!

Even if the Republic has given you near-dictatorial powers (which it really shouldn't have, because the last thing a nation transitioning from colonial status needs is a strong-President system; that's been a colossal failure here in the real world for the most part) your job as a responsible human being is to disavow them at every opportunity! I don't care if you have the power to banish people without due process, the only moral response to having that power is to never use it. You know who else loved to banish people? Fire Lord Azula! And also her dad! You're in real exalted company there, buddy!

And if you're gonna banish people, banish them for something legitimate. Not for dealing with a jumper! Were you off your meds or something, jerkface? Oh, and I can't believe you sandbagged Korra! You heard she was trying some experimental vine trick and you brought the press? Dick move.

Okay. Whew.

... I actually spent a lot more words on that than I was planning.

Oh, right. Some sort of qualified defense.

I kinda feel like if I were in Raiko's position, I'd be sort of pissed off with Korra as well. The first time they ever met, she asked him to start a war half a world away on her behalf, at a time when he was trying to hold together a nation that had just had a civil war. Then when he demurred, she got angry and yelled at him, and then tried to steal his navy and suborn parts of his officer corps. Then some spiritual bullshit happened, his city gets half-destroyed in a really goddamn weird kaiju fight, and now spirits are moving in and she can't fix it?

I'd be put out. Maybe I'd be less put out if I knew the level of bullshit Korra had been dealing with in her own life, but from Raiko's perspective Korra is nothing but trouble. And, well, the world doesn't revolve around her.

> - 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.

Okay, this one I'm going to mount a much sterner defense on. The White Lotus don't seem to be all that jerky here. I mean, yeah, that group of guards was pretty snide to Zaheer. Zaheer tried to kidnap and/or murder a four-year-old. A four-year-old Korra. He's lucky he's in solitary and not dead.

As far as being ineffectual... ehhhh. These guys are straight-up supervillains. They're allowed to carve their way through regular mooks with ease, even supposedly elite mooks.

It's like... okay. I'm reasonably certain that in UF, Big Fire has had it's share of lopsided wins, right? There have probably been times where Shockwave Alberto decides he really wants this shiny new piece of military hardware the Salusians are developing, and single-handedly walks into a research base guarded by Royal Marines and just murders the lot of them and takes what he wants. That doesn't mean the Royal Marines suck. It means they were trying to fight Shockwave Alberto and that was just not going to work out well without your own superhuman on-side.

On the flip side of that, Big Fire's Black Hoods and Q-bosses are also probably at least minimally competent. The fact that Geoff Depew spent a few years eating them alive didn't mean they were total losers, it meant Geoff is The Punisher and you're not going to take him out when he kicks in your door.

EarthForce also doesn't usually suck, right? Neither does the Psi Corps. The fact that they've repeatedly gotten their asses kicked by teenagers they've had every advantage over, on the ground and in space, doesn't mean they're bad at their jobs. It means they keep trying to fight superheroes and failing at it hard because that's what happens.

So I'm okay with these guys kicking the shit out of their captors. It's a bit "the new guy beats up Worf and/or Logan to prove how tough he is" but it's not an enormous issue. It might have worked better if at least the non-Zaheer guys had been guarded by non-Lotus guys, though. I sort of miss seeing dudes in Fire Nation armor get beaten up by an airbender.

> - 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 really like Zaheer so far. He impressed me more in five minutes than Amon ever did, possibly because Amon was a Scooby-Do villain and Zaheer is an actual, terrifying religious zealot.

Also, they got Grey DeLisle voicing an armless waterbender. That's so crazy it just might work.

> - 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.

Asami got a whole shit-ton of money from Varrick. When he bought a lot of Future Industries? I can't see her having given that back to him.

>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)...

Can Korra strip someones bending away?

We know she can undo what Amon was doing to people, but Amon was just doing some fancy chi-blocking and not actual psychic surgery the way Aang could do. And that psychic surgery was legit dangerous and could get the person doing it killed, and Korra doesn't have Aang on tap anymore.

Also, she was trying to talk down a jumper. While I'm sure Korra hasn't been formally trained in doing that, I'm not sure making big promises about being able to fuck with his soul would have been a great idea. Plus, she knew Tenzin wanted to recruit the dude.

>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.

Eh. Aang had the same thing going on, where he'd flip back and forth between "this kid is really wise for a twelve-year-old" and "wow, you are the most passive-aggressive brat in the universe."

-Merc
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