So, Legend of Korra. Started off so pretty and so promising and with such great characters. Stayed pretty, lost the rest. God, remember Amon being so cool and badass and saying all that spiritual stuff then lolnope just some lying waterbender asshole.
I’ve got – well, not exactly high hopes for the second season, but I’m hoping that it’ll improve back to deceptive goodness. I may have seen the trainwreck coming last time but I admit, I did enjoy much of the ride. Maybe we can manage that same standard this time!
So let’s watch!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND no we open with announcer guy happily recounting the events of last season: Korra solved everything by defeating the people called Equalists fighting for equality how do you think that was good, the republic is no more and power has been concentrated in a single president, and she successfully stole another girl’s boyfriend. Peace has come! The only question now is how much worse things will get given we’re starting off from last season’s low.
Cut to some water monster spirit eating some guys on a boat. Oh no, show, not falling for it. Amon was talking last season about the spirits being out of wack and we know he turned out to just be some crazy evil dude who had evil bending. If you wanted to trick people twice you needed to put a little more effort into it.
Cut to pro-bending shit. But it looks like she’s not doing it thank god. So they did manage to learn one thing from last season. Maybe. Hopefully. At least for the moment, things are looking up in this one respect.
Cut to people with police chasing a truck and I can’t tell who because everyone’s in the same brown. I think it’s not someone we know? Asami? Wait no fire it’s Mako? Who’s apparently also a secret metalbender with how he controlled that motorcycle. On the one hand, this is managing the pretty fight scenes part. On the other, where the hell is Korra, show? You said FEMALE AVATAR and I got lots of LOOK HOW GREAT MAKO IS and here look, it’s fucking Mako again. Also, learn colors.
Meanwhile Asami has made a plane but the company’s going under. She’s still great, though now that she’s back I’m back to worrying that the clock is ticking on her turning on Korra. This is the one area the show hasn’t been terrible, though, so…maybe we’re good. Maybe Asami stays good. They managed to break them up without turning her evil, after all.
Finally some Korra, where she uses her avatar state to beat small children in a race because Korra is not only a cheater, but also would lose to small children if she couldn’t rely on someone else’s bending powers to help her. Oh christ. Also her “airbending” style continues to be punching dudes with air because turns out you can totally master an element without incorporating its wisdom and Aang was too dumb to just airbend style his way through earthbending.
And her stupid airbending master failure of a human is, in addition to continuing to fail to teach Korra anything, there to cheer on the loss of their republic in favor of one guy holding the reins because hey, less work for him hail Caesar!
And now Bumi is here to quirky at us. He doesn’t even serve any point. So he’s one of Aang’s kids, can we please see how the world is actually functioning, not just the relatives of the most important people? It’s like how last season we have no idea if nonbenders can even hold positions of power because the only one we know of was Aang’s friend.
Then Korra and Mako do as I predicted and have “relationship conflict” which is Korra being a jerk because Korra was so flawless before she really needed some imperfection. See, I knew it’d just get worse when they were hooked up. Moral of the day is that sometimes, being a kid’s show where you’re not supposed to focus on romance is good, because you think they’re so good at doing it but actually it was the suits keeping them from doing all the dumb shit they wanted to that made it look like that. Let’s all hear it for executive meddling, apparently all that kept Aang’s story good.
Now there’s a traditional/modern conflict! Let’s see how this is shit up and how fast it is.
“I wouldn’t mind learning how to fight spirits,” Korra says, and no one even reacts. New record!
Prediction: the rest of this season will be completely legitimate issues with ample proof of how the spirit world is being unbalanced by modern society, all of which is solved by some combination of Korra punching/getting the stuffing (and/or bending) punched out of her as we learn everyone pointing out this problem was actually an evil waterbender who was faking spiritbending because you can do absolutely anything with some bloodbending. Maybe the show will shake things up and it’ll be an evil earthbender instead, though! They’ll have earthquake bending which they’ll use to cause tsunamis and blame it on the spirits and we’ll spend the series thinking it’s an evil waterbender like people were suspicious Amon was a firebender. Then next season, an evil firebender fakes being an earthbender somehow, because finally we’ll be expecting every other bender but fire.
Mako is a doormat in the relationship, pretty sure show’s still thinking Korra’s the sole problem, you win show I’m sorry I complained about the cheating love triangle last time. At least Asami seems safe since she’s definitely ending up with Bolin now. Unless she turns evil for the drama there.
Traditionalist guy continues to raise good points, so he’s probably going to be evil. Probably he’s making the spirits attack. Sadly, the fact the spirits are just appearing out of nowhere to beat Korra up and otherwise act nothing like the original show’s spirits is probably not proof they’re being controlled, I think things just work that way now.
Tenzin actually responds to the spirit like Aang! He just gets beat up like everyone else, proving me right. All things must be about violence and solved with violence. Also, Mako saves Korra because Mako boy, Korra girl. At least he can’t stop the spirits either.
At last traditionalist guy solves it by waterbending the evil out/secret bloodbending, because ALL THINGS MUST BE ABOUT VIOLENCE AND SOLVED BY VIOLENCE. Aang dealt with spirits by talking to them and caring about their issues, traditional guy solves it by mindraping the “corruption” out of the generic dark spirit so they change color into generic light spirits and wander away.
Also hey look at how EVERYONE IS A BOY. We’ve got poor Korra surrounded by boyfriend, boyfriend’s brother, traditionalist guy, airbending screwup who failed to teach anything spiritual to her last time, and her dad. Does her mom have any opinions about this? WHO KNOWS.
Then Korra dares point out that she really should get some say in her teachers, (I mean, god, Mako’s old enough to be a cop and she can’t even pick her education?) especially when one teacher happens to be the only one able to deal with a vital problem everyone else failed to even mention existed to her, so just as equalists had valid points the show then said were evil, Korra doing anything but be a smothered pawn will now also be a horrible mistake.
“I have great plans for you.” Yup, very evil. You can tell by the part where Korra is important in any way. He goes on to say he’s not going to teach her to beat up spirits, because again, equalists take two. Anyone who claims to be for peace or progress or anything positive is exactly like the regular oppressive thugs but extra evil because they’re lying about it.
We also learn that Korra spending her life locked up learning bending not only wasn’t Aang’s super plan but also wasn’t just the White Lotus being viciously controlling but her dad being completely on board with the plan for reasons that are looking worse by the minute as we learn he took advantage of Korra’s crushing isolation to hide the fact he’s actually the true leader of the northern tribe except he got banished for being a terrible person which will totally turn out to be traditionalist guy’s fault. Despite the fact it’s not like he was tricked into fighting on sacred ground and offended the spirits but fucking leveled the entire forest. You know, I don’t care if his brother tricked him into it, he was obviously acting for everyone’s good by getting rid of this asshole before he did something even worse. Thank god obviously evil guy got rid of the monster before he leveled their own city.
“Spirits and the physical world should remain separate,” says her dad. So the reason she sucks at spirit everything is because they deliberately fucked it up. She didn’t even know any of this was going on.
Then Korra almost manages to “purify” a spirit. She fails because she can never win but honestly, good job, everyone else just attacked like a pack of idiots, at least you recognized violence wasn’t the solution even if you’ll later learn it totally is when we reveal he’s evil.
Now evil guy is telling Korra he believes in her and he knows she can open the portal to the spirit world. This is possibly the most positive reinforcement Korra’s gotten in her entire life. I mean, remember the beginning of the first season? She aces her firebending final and all anyone can say is well you weren’t great and you’re such a disappointment in other ways maybe we shouldn’t pass you just.
Of course when she tries to open it all she can think to go is punch it, then punch it, then punch it, because that’s how they raised her, to be completely helpless at anything but punching what they decided to point her at. Which is why we’re getting a plot that’s going to be all about how they’re the good guys. After she gets beaten up by spirit vines, she manages to just touch it/avatar state at it, and it opens. It’s probably the avatar state part so the show can continue to cheat her out of any victory at all.
Evil guy is evil grinning. Korra makes up with Mako for being mean, so we’ll probably be repeating this every damn episode won’t we.
Episode ends with evil guy marching his army into the south.
On the brighter side, the waterbending twins are awesome! The girl’s deadpan is beautiful and I like that she’s not just doing that when ordering him to do stuff for her but when saying any romantic line at all. She’s like deadpan Azula. Someone told her a list of Things One Does In Relationships and she will dutifully read them off when it seems appropriate.
Join me next Sunday where I find out who the season’s main villain who makes good points yet will be evil for no reason will be, since apparently evil guy’s tipped his hand already, and also, presumably watch Korra fail more.
Edit: But you should still watch it because seriously the waterbender twins! It’s not going anywhere good but look at the waterbender twins! This will all end in tears and sadness BUT LOOK AT THE WATERBENDER TWINS! And Korra’s honestly still a good character if not in the way the show thinks or in ways that will be validated in the least.
Darn it, that’s too bad. I’ve had half the season downloaded for a while, but I’ve been putting off watching it because I was worried I’d be just as disappointed as I was by first season. Seems that was a valid worry.
I’d watch it – it’s all still very pretty, I love Korra’s character when she’s not being Crazy Girlfriend at Mako and has actual lovable flaws, and the waterbender twins were just great and worth watching just for that.
Just ignore the fact there’s nothing but good points coming out of Obviously A Villain guy and how obvious it is that this is going to go down even worse than Amon.
I really enjoyed Avatar, but I’ve heard nothing but awful things are Korra. Any idea what went wrong between the two series? Different writers? Or just the usual HOW DO I FEMALE CHARACTERS bull?
I really think it was that some people need restrictions to produce good work. The core problems of the series seem to be:
Having morally grey “adult” characters but still writing the conflict in good or evil kiddie mode.
Having romance.
There seem to be some major pacing problems, but I think that still ties into those two core issues – we waste ungodly amounts of time on pro-bending, but it’s because the writers were never planning to develop the equalists because actually they were just evil so there’s nothing more to show. Then the pro-bending time can serve the godawful romance parts as the love triangle is within the team. And all of it’s extra terrible because despite having older characters and a huge adult cast they’re still getting written very childishly. If everyone was the age of Aang’s group, things would come off so much better.
I’d honestly watch it because it had so much potential and it was so pretty and I love Korra and Amon and the setup of Republic City. Every episode gives new weight to the idea nonbenders are an underclass! You can see it in every glimpse of the background. The setting is such a great powder keg of conflict and change and how people are moving away from the older ways but it’s not going smoothly and the avatar has always been in charge of balance but if the world is changing what’s her role?
(Punching things as always. But until the final episode it seems like it might not be!)
I am deeply disturbed by the central romance plot being, “How can I seduce this person away from their significant other?”
Also, RE: punching, wasn’t the whole point of Avatar’s finale about how Punching: not the solution?
But the finale of Korra last season was that punching: totally the solution, just do it with air this time!!!!!!!!
damn, I was really hoping season 2 would be better from the things I heard. I guess instead of watching I’m just going to read your updates.
You should definitely watch this one, though. Waterbender twins! Learning just how fucked spiritually the southern tribe is and how increasingly obvious it is that Korra can’t deal with spirits because they didn’t even try to train her for it! It’s really obvious the show doesn’t care but there are still lots of great elements here.
I started watching it and I have to agree. If nothing else for the waterbending twins and their father and Bolin. In fact if the show could actually center around them and Asami that would be great. But I am enjoying this more than season 1, if for no other reason I know what to be prepared to forcibly ignore.
“I will defend you, my feeble turtle-duck.”
She is my favorite.
That was the best line in all of history. She’s so perfect for Bolin! Bolin needs someone to punch things for him because he’s a youngest-child dork.
Exaaaaactly. Originally I was hoping for him and Asami but now I just ship those two. So hard. But I hope Asami doesnt’ turn evil and just continues to kick ass.
I remember how annoying that stupid love triangle between Korra, Mako, and Bolin episode was. She and Bolin actually enjoyed each other’s company and had interests in common other than pro-bending, while Mako was consistently a jerk to her, but there’d been absolutely no doubt in my mind since the first episode which one she would end up with. Ugh.
One of my favorite moments in the series was this little scene in episode 7 of the first season where Korra feels down/rejected and is declining to hang out with Mako, Asami, and Bolin… and Bolin responds with doing a cute bit with Pabu that instantly makes Korra smile and has her agree to go with them making sure Korra feels included in the group. Forget any kind of romantic relationship, I thought their friendship was super cute. Terribly disappointing how they barely interact anymore.
See, that’s why I shipped them! I don’t actually care in the OTP sense but he turned out to be just such a great person. Unlike Mako, who turned out to be a Nice Guy. And you can see she really needs anyone like that now that she’s hanging out with Mako and it’s a disaster.
It was actually a little frustrating to discuss Unalaq with some people. So many didn’t even acknowledge that he had good legitimate points and showed he had a stronger understanding of the situation then any of the other adults. Some people even called Korra dumb for trusting him at all and thought she was disrespectful to her father and Tenzin while I thought her behavior was really reasonable.
That’s the worst part. We’re getting all the HEY LOOK AT HIS FACE IN THIS SHOT stuff, so it’s obvious from the start from the camera’s behavior that he’s the villain. Korra’s not aware of the camera. She’s going above and beyond just in continuing to have any contact with the other adults now that she’s learned just how much they lied and manipulated her, and the fact it seems they deliberately kept her from anything spiritual even as they tore her down for not being good at it. They don’t deserve a shred of respect.
I’m very pigheaded and still cling to the hope that the writers will realise the Equalists had a point and come back to that eventually.
So I guess I’d probably side with Obviously Evil Guy too. LOK is really not helping me bond with the good guys…(the reason I haven’t actually bothered to follow season 2)
(And I liked the original ATLA Gaang so! >_<)
I wasn’t expecting but was hoping that maybe season two would try to fix the equalist plot, but as soon as Obviously Evil Guy showed up I realized that no, they were doubling down on the status quo being god.
Can I thank you for being the first reviewer of this show I have ever seen who doesn’t spend the whole review talking about how perfect Tenzin is and how Korra is a horrible bitch?
I don’t know if it’s because Korra is a girl, or because everyone is comparing Korra to Aang (basically Jesus in the original series), or because the writing just isn’t up to par this time around, but I am so sick of everyone just endlessly hating on Korra.
I get it – there are serious problems with the writing and Korra herself, but I don’t think they’re nearly as terrible as the audience or the show is trying to make them out to be.
It’d be great if the show actually bothered spending time developing a backstory for her so we could better understand where she’s coming from, instead of a couple of throwaway lines from the men who dominated her life. I mean, for the love of god, you kept Katara alive this long. You established that Katara and Korra had some kind of relationship. Use it. I know it’s scary because it’s two females and one of them isn’t crazy masculine (Toph) or insane (Azula) and they’re talking about important, story relevant things, but I think you’ll be able to handle it. Just pretend they have penises and maybe you’ll manage to make it through.
The first series was so great with that! Azula and her henchwomen, Katara and Toph. Even the first season of Korra had some good interaction between Korra and Katara and her and Tenzin’s daughters.
In retrospect, the seeds were there. We had Katara, the girly girl who could kick butt, and Toph, the tomboy who could kick butt. The rest had to be filled out be villainous women, be they slightly, like the bounty hunter, or extremely, like Azula. Now we have Korra, the tomboy who can kick butt, and Asami, the girly-girl who can kick butt, and the most interesting one is the girl waterbender twin being all herself and having an evil dad.
I’m not sure they could delve into Korra’s back story without everyone who put her into seclusion coming out looking terrible for doing it. I mean besides how clearly woefully unprepared she was for Republic City or for dealing with spirits; did Korra even get to hang out with anyone her age? Or to put it another way, did Korra have any friends at all during her training?
It may be true that going into Korra’s backstory would make everyone who put her into seclusion looking terrible…but if that’s what happened, I don’t see what’s wrong with it. People make bad choices. I’m already a bit bitter on Tenzin and Korra’s father for keeping her locked up in a compound her entire life in direct opposition to how every other Avatar has been raised.
Really, i think the writers realized how big of a corner they wrote themselves into, and now they won’t give Korra a backstory because of it. They’re too afraid that the characters so many fans love will look bad, and instead choose to make Korra look bad and hope that they can develop her character enough to fix it.
I don’t know…the weird thing is they are giving backstory and it’s that backstory that’s locking in the terribleness. We had no idea how total her seclusion was before now, or that they had the ulterior motive of keeping her dad’s past a secret, or that they apparently had an agenda that was to deliberately stifle the spiritual stuff because they didn’t want spirits interacting with humanity.
But there could be a good reason! Like, they could have let her out on occasion for trips around the world and just kept her too insulated on those trips to really absorb her surroundings. We had no idea she knew practically nothing about HER OWN PEOPLE until now. Before, her not realizing stuff like that you have to pay for food with money could’ve just been everyone knowing her and putting it on her parent’s tab. Last season it also seemed like they’d done their best to teach her about spirits and she’d just focused more on the punching side of things, not that they apparently supported the two worlds being separate and told her nothing about them.
Christ, really? I mean, god, I want to like Tenzin, but he could not be failing harder here. As far as I can tell, the sum total of bending help she’s gotten from him is “oh I see probending is teaching you something, keep doing that I guess” and “yes you are totally ruined by losing some of your bending we should all leave you alone next to this nice tall cliff, oh hey avatar ex machina good going me”.
It’s not even like Korra would refuse to soothe and just punch, because we saw her trying to do that! Just by seeing someone else doing it! And when she was told to fix the portal, she didn’t get sidetracked into fighting, she tried to fix the portal! He just never bothered teaching her anything at all about this, or even telling her the basics of spirits like that the ones in her homeland have spend a hundred or more years in a blind rage. No one tells Korra anything, their idea of teaching is just throwing her at something and taking the credit if she gets anything right, and yet everything’s her fault when she fails.
Unfortunately, I don’t know a better place than Reddit to get my LoK news, so I end up dealing with the Reddit community which can be a bit…assholish? I don’t even know the word.
But, yup, EVERYONE fucking loves Tenzin. They feel Korra is entirely to blame for not learning how to airbend, or learning anything spiritual. They constantly rant about how Korra does nothing but punch her way through problems, and how everything she does is a horrible decision. Of course, this is matched with that lovely word “bitch” every time. Every. Fucking. Time.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the Nostalgia Critic vlogs, but he seems to be channeling Reddit for this. I watched the first few, but after “The Beginning”, I can’t get through them anymore. It’s just too frustrating.
I don’t know if anywhere’s any good. I’m reading a thread on GitP, which is a pretty family-friendly forum, and there, their preferred epithet for her is “thug”. I also just got through a vile Let’s Watch for the first season that was nonstop Katara hate because how dare that bitch accomplish anything what a horrible mary sue she’s nowhere near as great as Zuko, beating an adult in a firebender duel one on one then turning out to also be able to beat everyone with swords, HE’S so realistic but Katara beating a half-dead Zuko while she’s completely surrounded by water at the time waterbending is most powerful?
Katara vs Zuko, Round 2. Aaaand she beats him in one move. Sigh. Welp, I guess that’s that. I actually liked Katara for a while, but I can’t see how they’re going to bring her back from this.
And by “liked her for a while” they mean “for the period after Zuko beat her”. Because unlike Zuko, Katara never worked for her ability at all. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, the damn mary sue.
Reddit is where feminism goes to die. It is a horrible place full of horrible people.
I was told how wrong my “ideological feminism” was when I shared my essay on “The Host” to counter someone’s review of it.
The essay is told from the point of view of feminist literary theory. It’s not the Tumblr feminism, where I freak out every time there’s a man on the scene. My criticisms of women in the book (and Melanie’s lackluster survival skills) are actually pretty similar to Farla’s. In fact, I may have even been easier on the book’s women than Farla was.
To be fair, that same person told me that the plot and characters don’t matter in science fiction so…
Reddit doesn’t believe in feminism, let alone their lit theory. Normally I’d say that you should just stay simple, avoid any minor points people could debate, and point out that 50% of the book is her being beaten bloody, but it’s Reddit, so they’d probably just defend that.
4chan creeps me out less than they do.
4chan at least KNOWS they’re fucked up. Reddit’s sanctimonious and smug about it, which is a million times worse than just “batshit.”
Then I would advise you to stay the hell away from 9gag. But if you frequent Reddit, you probably already know this.