I'll give it this - Episode 6 was one of the coolest episodes of TV that year. It was everything the first four episodes was building up to; the rising conflict with Amon, the budding teamwork with her buddies, the roles of Tenzin and co. in maintaining peaceful relations. It all comes crashing together here for a great episode with great action that blows your socks off and also has some awesome music.
Negatives? Well, the fifth episode was where the entire series fell apart.
Not indisputably! It was just the episode where everything that DIDN'T pop about the series came to the forefront and was badly executed. Love triangles, soap opera-level reveals, people cheating on other people, poorly scripted relationships, rom-com banter. The original had dashes of these things, no doubt, but this was too much all at once with none of the things people liked. We liked the banter in the original because we liked the characters so much, and the story was building to something meaningful. To make a rom-com plot the hook one-third of the way through (to put it in perspective, at this point in ATLA S1 they were learning Aang had to defeat the Fire Lord in six months) makes you feel like it's not taking itself seriously, and the frankly cringy romantic plot didn't make people laugh. The thing about the original that attracted people wasn't that it was a sit-com or a romance; it was a coming-of-age martial arts fantasy epic with a sense of humor and good characters. Going full rom-com so early in the sequel just felt like a mistake. And it was.
But the later episodes are better. They really push along the Equalist plot. They have a decent twist with (spoilers) Asami's father and a slightly weaker but still intriguing twist with Tarrlok. It's really here where the season starts feeling pasted together, but it's still mostly good, and the artwork, music, and mood are still stunning as usual. Not the greatest, but far from the worst. All right.
Moving on.
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