“Uncle, why did you bring your troops down from the north,” Korra says, because the show’s decided she’s a fucking moron. This is not going to be a good episode, is it?
Is the show seriously going to have Obviously Evil Guy be the villain for the whole season? Is it going to just be Korra being stupid and then the final episode is Korra saying oh wait you were evil all along and then punching him with some element? Maybe she can punch him with spirits since she’s already punched all the things with all the other things.
In fairness, he gives a pretty damn good explanation regarding “protecting” the spirit portal that doesn’t seem to need protecting because the spirits are unstoppable but at least it’s a reason. The problem is Korra doesn’t respond with “Wow that makes perfect sense so I guess your troops will KEEP WALKING TOWARD THE PORTAL AND GTFO OF OUR CITY RIGHT?” because that’d have exposed the flaw.
Also the spirit portal is a portal between places too. BECAUSE.
“If both portals open, our tribes will be united again,” Korra says happily, admitting they’re not and that her uncle has fucking invaded her homeland.
Incidentally, somehow “protecting” the portal is done by blockading the harbor because the best way to protect something from people is to prevent them from going away from where it is and have absolutely no one stationed in the direction is actually is. (And somehow this makes the cargos at the south pole rot.)
And they make Korra actually try to argue for this!
Over and over Evil Guy says he’s the leader of both tribes. We’re in an episode about his invasion titled Civil War and show has still explained nothing about it. Half the time it’s tribes, half the time it’s one tribe, another half the time it’s two tribes who are one the same people but also separate. No one has said anything about if he actually is in charge and they’re just pissed off by the fact the guy’s flexing his power or if they had their own people. There’s a reference to him kicking out their local guys, but not if those local guys are below him in the actual power structure and they’re just mad he’s making it so only people born in the north get positions of power.
And it’s completely contradicted by the whole past season, where Republic City has a representative from both tribes! As well as everything from the first series, where the north and south had different cultures and traditions! It came up across multiple seasons!
Most of the way through the episode, Korra’s mom finally actually starts existing. She’s here to discuss Korra’s dad, because of course all the plot revolves around the guys. She does attempt to make it vaguely about Korra by explaining that locking Korra in a big cage so she never spoke to anyone they didn’t approve of who might spill the beans regarding the whole exile business was so she could have a normal childhood. Right. That was your motivation.
She points out that Evil Uncle is the only one who believes in her. Her mother denies it, but can offer no evidence, not even actually saying she believes in her own daughter. Instead, she blurts out that by the way dad’s maybe a rebel who knows for sure I mean she’s only the guy’s wife why would he tell her. So Korra runs off to rescue her uncle from a kidnapping attempt. Not an assassination attempt, mind you, kidnapping, the more boring option.
Korra actually has a good fight (look at her just taking those guys down in the least violent way possible! Without massive collateral damage either! If only you could’ve done this last season with the Equalists that plotline would’ve been marginally better!) that’s ruined by her spending the whole time thinking it’s her dad and shouting that every two seconds. You’re an idiot. Anyway, she successfully rescues Obviously Evil Guy, because once again Korra only succeeds when she’s doing the wrong thing, and he decides to lock them up forever. Korra asks for them to get a trial and he says he’ll do it as a special favor to the avatar and not because basic fucking rights and also because doing this will make the situation worse which supposedly he doesn’t want.
At least her dad finally says she did a good job with the opening the portal thing.
Anyway, we conclude with her parents being arrested. So is it finally done with and she knows he’s evil? We’ve only wasted two episodes on the subject already. This is so stupid. The only way this makes sense is if his master plan is to drive the avatar into rebellion to drive the spirits nuts or something, and that would already be pushing the upper limits of stupid plans.
Look. This is so damn easy. If for some reason you really, really want to drag out the revelation that the evil guy is evil – well first you shouldn’t have told everyone he’s evil every five minutes, but second, you could have his troops walk in, violating the South’s sovereignty, but keep going. (ALSO EXPLAIN WHAT THE CURRENT POLITICAL SYSTEM IS DAMMIT) So Southern Water Tribe is understandably upset, in the same way Canada would be displeased if America decided to march our troops through it, and the fact they’re doing it to protect a portal that’s technically SWT’s and with the implication that SWT is the problem, those are all reasons to be pretty angry, but they’re not necessarily let’s begin open warfare reasons against our brothers. Korra is still wrong for not seeing NWT as the problem with how they’re doing it, but this now looks like what actual mediating looks like – it’s easier to get people to agree to not retaliate than it is to get the instigators to back down again, and thanks to the complete incompetents in charge of raising Korra, it’s not like she has any idea what might actually be necessary regarding the portal. All she knows is the spirits have been in a blind rage for a hundred+ years at the portal and her dad’s input is “eh spirits suck let’s keep ignoring it” and also the spirits have recently gotten even angrier and started attacking people. The only one who seems to have any solution that isn’t ignore the murderous spirits and hope the murder doesn’t get worse is Obviously Evil Guy. It’s easy to make him sound reasonable! But no! Korra has to be an idiot even though the viewers figured it out two episodes ago! That’s how we write female characters, so that the eight year olds watching learn that they should never be allowed to make decisions ever! A new generation of girls can point to their supposed role models and say, “Girls suck! I’m not like them!”
Oh, and the first outbreak of violence? Male soldiers vs male civilians. It’s all men men men men men down in the water tribe area of the plot. And Korra! She actually tries dealing with it peacefully, but she’s wrong because she’s doing what evil guy says because Korra can’t succeed at anything that isn’t punching. And we get what I’m pretty sure is the only line to pass the betchel test, and hey, it’s a girl pointing to her supposed role model and saying she sucks.
–
Meanwhile with Tenzin’s sideplot, his siblings explain that Aang only cared about his airbender kid with bonus Katara ruining since she apparently just let this happen.
I mean, that Aang spent a lot more time training the only other airbender to exist, that’d be totally reasonable. That he never cared about teaching them about the culture less so, especially since he’s fine with unrelated nonbenders keeping his culture going and his kids could go on to produce airbender grandkids – we don’t know if you can have recessive bending tendencies, so possibly his waterbender kid would never produce anything but waterbenders unless she marries a different bender, but his nonbender kid has a perfectly good chance of it. And Katara letting him only take airbender kid on vacations that were just about riding the giant koi and making sandcastles? What the hell.
(Also, Tenzin really doesn’t seem like a kid who spent his life on endless fun vacations. He seems the sort to hang out peacefully at the temples, and Aang taking him around those and giving him special training would still give plenty of resentment fodder for favoritism while not being ridiculously evil. It would also let Tenzin not be an idiot who just missed that only he got to go on vacations – from his point of view, having to do extra training with his dad was part of his responsibility as the only other airbender alive and it makes sense he’d have no idea his siblings were jealous he got special attention.)
Then his kid runs away and his siblings are fucking monsters doing such appropriate things as “pretending to be the kid he’s looking for” and “blaming him for his kid being missing” and “demanding he stop looking for his kid and let them berate him for their issues with their dad”. HEY WHY ARE YOU LEAVING TO GO LOOK FOR YOUR MISSING KID HOW DARE YOU MAKE EXCUSES TO GET OUT OF THIS!
Though admittedly, watching his sibling maybe fall to his death without intervening is nearly as bad. I think the show’s pretending he just didn’t have time to react in that long, long fall. But he did, and it’s terrible.
–
Waterbender twins continue to be so great, though. Apparently between last episode and this one Bolin became terrified and downtrodden, though, so I guess the relationship’s not to last. I kind of figured anything that wasn’t Bolin/Asami would be. Everything else about it is shit now, so I’m assuming the subplot will end soon and Deadpan Girl will no longer grace our screens. Well, at least it lasted longer than Korra/Bolin. They hate all good things.
Mako explains it’s possible to break up to a flabbergasted Bolin, so, apparently all of the last season just never happened because Mako’s love triangle fuckup culminating in a breakup was a solid half of that.
“Ending a relationship is kind of like pulling off a bloodsucking leech!” Asshole says, as if the writers think the viewers also forgot about that whole relationship he was in last season. Then Bolin jokes that Mako seems good at breaking girl’s hearts, and gets a glare because he totally never broke up with Asami or anything forget that.
Then apparently when he tries it she threatens to murder him brutally, but we don’t see it for whatever reason and what we do see is her still being hilarious. Given he’s apparently dancing around it, I choose to interpret it as Bolin asking how she’d feel about him dating other girls without mentioning that he means in the post-break up sense and not the rampant cheating sense.
So. We’re now at three for three useless mothers: Korra’s mother is following in the footsteps of evil bloodbender guy’s wife from last season in being there just because someone had to actually bear the kids, and Katara apparently did nothing about Aang playing favorites to a hideous degree. Maybe next we could find out Pema never wanted kids but did it so she could get Tenzin.
God this has gone downhill fast. I’m going to go watch the next episode to see if the second half of the civil war episodes finally explain if it’s actually a civil war.
As to if you should watch, youtube the fight scene and the waterbender twins and you’ve seen everything of value.
I didn’t see Tenzin’s vacation as all fun. The way he said it, it sounded like it was pretty much all airbending training, but him and Aang would take breaks to do some fun stuff. I imagine Katara might’ve said something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the kids would know about it. A lot of parents refuse to argue in front of the kids.
As for the women this season, it’s like they’re determined to make them useless. Honestly, the men are hardly any better. No one is doing anything useful except Mako.
I still can’t believe Tenzin decided to stick with his vacation rather than delaying it and helping Korra train in airbending and taming spirits. I can’t believe that Lin does nothing. I can’t believe that we get to see other kickass characters who all go, “Well, nothing I can do” and just move on to Korra punching things in the face and failing.
I feel like it’s because the writers genuinely don’t know how to handle complicated moral issues on this scale. Aang against the firelord? Yeah, stop him. Stop all his troops. This is war, son, the only time you actually have to think about the morality of fighting is when one of your teammates, less dedicated to the cause of pacifism, want to murder someone, before they figure out that they’re enemies are human because they had dialogue.
In the first season, there’s no wondering if the Equalists have a valid point. In this season, we’re not supposed to see the shades of gray of politics. Instead we get heavy handed camera angles and dramatic music, making it completely obvious that Korra’s uncle is evil. Korra’s actions all seem unbelievably stupid because they can’t portray the subtlety they’re aiming for. We know that there’s a right path the writers are laying out. She should have gone with Tenzin. She should have immediately forgiven her father. She shouldn’t have trusted her uncle. She should have rolled over and done exactly what she was told, what’s this bullshit “independence” thing she’s trying to pull? Doesn’t she know there’s men all around her telling her exactly what she needs to do?
I don’t know what the writers have been doing with LoK, I really don’t.
The problem was it was presented as Tenzin talking about how much he loved their relaxing vacations and his apparent unawareness that his siblings weren’t even there. If he was talking about airbender temples, it’d make more sense, but instead it’s random places like the Ember Islands – if Aang had taken the family on vacations and then spent most of the time with Tenzin doing airbender stuff, it’d all work fine for them to be correcting him that their family vacations were still mostly Aang and Tenzin doing their own thing. And it doesn’t mean Katara is either okay with this or objected but was ignored by Aang, because that’s much more subtle favoritism than no family vacations ever and also somehow Tenzin never noticed his siblings always stayed behind.
I’ll admit, that bothered me as well. How much of an asshole do you have to be to have not noticed you were the only one who did any of that stuff?
Not only that, but despite having an entire season that was supposed to be dedicated to how benders aren’t oppressing non-benders, they still included a scene where they mocked their brother for nearly plummeting to his death for not having bending.
Someone suggested that it should’ve been Tenzin got extra vacations with their dad at first, then Katara made Aang stop playing favorites- so Tenzin was left with a general sense that his siblings were around, and but his siblings mostly remembered that he got special treatment. Really, anything would’ve been better than ONLY YOU GOT VACATIONS, TENZIN.
Not only that, but despite having an entire season that was supposed to
be dedicated to how benders aren’t oppressing non-benders, they still
included a scene where they mocked their brother for nearly plummeting
to his death for not having bending.
But see, that just shows how non-oppressive benders are! Bumi is the one at fault for not wanting one of the overmen to help him out.
The Waterbending twins sort of grated me the wrong way, honestly. The had a cool gimmick at first with the whole-bland-creepy thing, but I found Eska’s relationship with Bolin to be mildly terrifying. If the roles were switched, and Bolin were the deadpan prince who possessively stalks a girl who tries to talk to him in a carriage and then later makes her his girlfriend (basically against her will, mind you)(and makes her drag her around in a cart afterward, lol)(Bolin! Laugh at my humorous quip!), threatens to kill her if she leaves him, and other things (won’t spoiler for future episodes, but there’s some pretty creepy imagery later on), this relationship wouldn’t be allowed by anyone.
Yes, I know, it’s thrilling because the gender roles are reversed let’s break gender boundaries hurray, but I found it too similar to domestic abuse to be amusing.
Bolin initiated the relationship (so she’s not particularly stalking him) and she hasn’t been obviously dangerous until the recent off-camera murder threat that came out of nowhere. The switch from Bolin doing stuff because he’s like that to Bolin doing stuff out of fear for his life was just too abrupt. Before then, it’s funny precisely because there’s no sign Bolin couldn’t just break up with her. If she’s actually psychotic, they really should’ve shown that first, rather than starting off with trying to amp up the Bolin abuse in the carriage scene – that’s still funny because it seems like just an outgrowth of the snowcycle scene where they just don’t really care about Bolin’s existence. Even Bolin’s horror at going back with her to the north pole is funny as long as the joke is that breaking up just didn’t occur to him – he thought he wanted a girlfriend and didn’t quite get that “a girlfriend” doesn’t mean “any girlfriend”. And it stays funny as long as I ignore what the writers are obviously going for and assume she doesn’t really care about him and the death threats aren’t for his attempt to ask to break up but because he’s communicating so badly she thinks it’s something else entirely – because then there’s still that key element of self-inflicted misery.
The gender bit does come into play in that a large boy is more likely to be seen to have the just-break-up-with-her option while a girl might seem more hemmed in, but I maintain the basic formula is hilarious. It just needed to resolve with Bolin finally managing to stammer out he wants to break up and her agreeing that she tires of him.
Not quite sure how far the Bolin/Eska relationship has progressed as of Episode 3, but I’ll take your word for it that it hasn’t reached an insufferable level at this point. I’ve got the timeline a bit muddled in my mind, but I’m honestly curious to see how your view of this relationship changes/remains constant in future episodes. There are some scenes in particular that really made me uncomfortable about the whole dynamic (managed not to spoil anything important, ha!)
Oh, it’s obvious where it’s going and was from the first scene, I just think it’s done terribly and that Bolin just not communicating well makes more sense. Ep 3 was just him pulling the carriage, complaining he wanted out of the relationship to his brother, and him later saying she’d off-camera given him death threats when he tried to suggest breaking up. He also simultaneously admits to softballing and hinting, and we don’t see a single on-screen threat from her, so to me, the obvious reason for that would be he was all “So hey how would you feel about me dating some other girl?” and her interpreting this as him talking about cheating on her.
The correct way to do it would be to show why Bolin is pulling that carriage. If we see him try to say he maybe doesn’t want to and she replies by saying he’ll die an icicle-y death if he talks back ever again, then it’d be the abuse I think the show intends the scene to be read at. But Bolin seems to always be acting happy around her, so to me, it seems more likely he’s responding to her every request with frantic enthusiasm – and yes, even Azula would probably pick up that this is totally faked, but just look at her, she’s obviously had no socialization at all, and she does seem to actually like him in that the few times he makes a request she reacts positively. Her “icy bliss” thing is hilariously threatening but part of that is how it’s totally not meant to be – she’s not saying he will return to serve her, he’ll come with her so they can be mutually happy together! Because obviously that is a thing he wants, right?
Now, certainly the fact that she needs a relationship with extremely clear communication and Bolin can’t manage it means they’re not suited for each other at all and he should break up with her for that reason (or, given he can’t, someone else should break up with her for him), but I don’t think she’s being malicious about it.
One of the reasons I was okay with it was because Bolin never breaks up with her. He’s clearly dealing with someone who doesn’t understand subtlety, and he can’t bring himself to say, “I don’t want to date you”. This girl doesn’t get the subtle clues that Bolin is saying, ‘Get away, I don’t like you”, and he’s not correcting her.
I agree that if the roles were reversed many people would find it too creepy and demand it be stopped, but I’d still look at it the same way. There are times when you can’t be subtle. You have to be blunt and say, “Leave me alone. We’re not a couple. I’m not okay with this.”
It also helps that he’s a bender too. If this was someone like Sokka, I’d find it creepier because it’d more easily read as actual fear for his life and not fear of having a fight with his girlfriend. But as it is, Bolin comes off as not wanting to deal with the emotional aspect, and the death threat bit is just to show that there isn’t a way to break this off amicably.
“Is the show seriously going to have Obviously Evil Guy be the villain for the whole season? Is it going to just be Korra being stupid and then the final episode is Korra saying oh wait you were evil all along and then punching him with some element?” They keep Korra clueless longer then they should’ve but the writers aren’t so delusional that they’d play that up all season.
“Oh, and the first outbreak of violence? Male soldiers vs male civilians.” To be fair, we know the north didn’t train women in offensive water bending skills for a long time. Even if they do train women now, since Eska is clearly skilled, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t allow women in the army. The south has no excuse especially since it’s just civilians and they never seemed to have any problems with women water bending or fighting.
Oh thank god I was seriously worried that Obviously Evil McBoringface would last until the last episode.
Even if they do train women now, since Eska is clearly skilled, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t allow women in the army
That’s technically possible, buuuuut it shows why background sexism doesn’t do anything positive. It worked well in the first show because our primary waterbender was Katara so the north being sexist assholes was only relevant in how it impacted her life. Given it’s been decades and Katara’s a waterbending master personally acknowledged by the north’s waterbending master and also wife of the avatar, plus modernization in general, saying that things have changed wouldn’t have been any surprise. Especially when there seems to be no plot relevance to it – as you say, both waterbender twins seem to have the same skills, and there’s also the fact that her traditionalist uncle seems to have nothing but approval for Korra knowing waterbending and while he complains about basically everything the south does, teaching women isn’t on that list.
(Plus, the north still being super sexist has bad implications when the south was practically wiped out and likely got repopulated in large part from northerners, and Korra’s dad himself is from there – especially when the show is already ignoring her mom in favor of how everything revolves around her dad. Really, the only thing you could do with it is have her mom be the one masterminding the resistance and the legal system letting her off because they assume women can’t do stuff like that, and I don’t think that plot point would be worth all the negative stuff it takes to get there.)
And we get what I’m pretty sure is the only line to pass the betchel
test, and hey, it’s a girl pointing to her supposed role model and
saying she sucks.
That’s not even a Bechdel pass. Unless I missed it, the kid doesn’t have a name.
I go with the traditional requirement of just asking there be someone female involved. I don’t think the caveats matter much because it’s not like female minor characters are better represented than female major characters.