This is going downhill fast. Rather than bothering to review the damned episode, I'm going to list everything that went WRONG with what would otherwise have been a fantastic episode.
1. The entire Hollywoodization of Bolin. It was absolutely ridiculous and did diddly-squat for his character. It makes him look more and more and more like an idiot. While the movies (or 'movers' as they're called in -universe) were funny and the makeup on the Unalaq actor made him look like the Fire Lord Ozai actor from "The Ember Island Players" but that's just about the only good thing I have to say about the entire setup. Everything else about it is just DUMB, and it ruins Bolin's character horribly.
2. Mako himself has gone from being competent to being even worse of a dumbass than before, barging in on an interrogation. He might as well have shown Chief Beifong the remote control outside. Lin Beifong is made unreasonable to make Mako look reasonable - which is doing her character no justice at all. That the writers for this episode are not as good as Konietzko and DiMartino shows and shows BADLY.
3. Korra waking up on an island in the fire nation and greeted by three fire nation individuals - fire sages, perhaps, judging from their costumes - and finding out that she can airbend but has amnesia is a real cop-out. I suspect that the writers realized that they had dug themselves into a corner with Korra's character and needed to 'reset' her, and did so using the hackneyed, cliched, banal, trite plot device called amnesia. Pathetic.
4. What was Mako doing, heading over to the gangsters? And why did the Triple Threat Triads agree to help a beat cop who had made himself a reputation busting triads? It's understandable that someone paid the gangsters to keep them busy, but the entire scheme makes both parties - Mako/Asami and the gangsters - look like idiots.
5. Varrick is delightfully, thoroughly amoral, and he's probably one of the straightest portrayals of a late 19th/early 20th century eccentric millionare/robber baron I have seen. He's the only smart character in the middle of a horribly dumb cast, and judging from the reactions to his movie, he's likely to get his way and have that war he wants - and make a fortune out of it.
6. Unalaq was plainly holding the idiot ball in The Civil Wars Part II when he told Korra that he didn't need her anyway. It was moronic and made no sense - and now, judging from the way he, Eska and Desna are acting, the Dark Spirit problem is real and the only person who could have done anything about it has been eaten by a monster Dark Spirit herself. The writers did a fantastic job creating this mess out of nowhere.
7. How long has Korra vanished? Has anyone factored in travel time for Eska and Desna to go all the way from the South Pole towards Republic City (which is pretty far up north)? Wouldn't anyone with any sense notice that Korra was missing for days, and wonder what was going on? Wouldn't Raiko have noticed?
8. Last but hardly the least - the relationship bullshit has taken over the entire show. Asami and Mako kiss each other and start to make up or so it looks like, complete with cheesy dialogue (wasn't Mako the guy who cheated on her blatantly last season? So yeah...) and then Bolin kissing Ginger on the lips without asking, even when she very clearly didn't like him (I don't blame Ginger, either. If I were a girl and someone leered like that at me, I would be pretty darn disgusted). The Gin-lin relationship is like Eska-lin but without being blatantly violent and abusive. Bolin's behavior towards Ginger is just plain WRONG and to play it for laughs, like they played Eska's brutal behavior towards Bolin, shows that these writers have no sense of reality when it comes to relationships.
I'm curious to see the next, two-part epiosde because Avatar Wan is likely to be handled a lot better than the seriously derailed, dumb and lousy characters we have seen so far.
1. The entire Hollywoodization of Bolin. It was absolutely ridiculous and did diddly-squat for his character. It makes him look more and more and more like an idiot. While the movies (or 'movers' as they're called in -universe) were funny and the makeup on the Unalaq actor made him look like the Fire Lord Ozai actor from "The Ember Island Players" but that's just about the only good thing I have to say about the entire setup. Everything else about it is just DUMB, and it ruins Bolin's character horribly.
2. Mako himself has gone from being competent to being even worse of a dumbass than before, barging in on an interrogation. He might as well have shown Chief Beifong the remote control outside. Lin Beifong is made unreasonable to make Mako look reasonable - which is doing her character no justice at all. That the writers for this episode are not as good as Konietzko and DiMartino shows and shows BADLY.
3. Korra waking up on an island in the fire nation and greeted by three fire nation individuals - fire sages, perhaps, judging from their costumes - and finding out that she can airbend but has amnesia is a real cop-out. I suspect that the writers realized that they had dug themselves into a corner with Korra's character and needed to 'reset' her, and did so using the hackneyed, cliched, banal, trite plot device called amnesia. Pathetic.
4. What was Mako doing, heading over to the gangsters? And why did the Triple Threat Triads agree to help a beat cop who had made himself a reputation busting triads? It's understandable that someone paid the gangsters to keep them busy, but the entire scheme makes both parties - Mako/Asami and the gangsters - look like idiots.
5. Varrick is delightfully, thoroughly amoral, and he's probably one of the straightest portrayals of a late 19th/early 20th century eccentric millionare/robber baron I have seen. He's the only smart character in the middle of a horribly dumb cast, and judging from the reactions to his movie, he's likely to get his way and have that war he wants - and make a fortune out of it.
6. Unalaq was plainly holding the idiot ball in The Civil Wars Part II when he told Korra that he didn't need her anyway. It was moronic and made no sense - and now, judging from the way he, Eska and Desna are acting, the Dark Spirit problem is real and the only person who could have done anything about it has been eaten by a monster Dark Spirit herself. The writers did a fantastic job creating this mess out of nowhere.
7. How long has Korra vanished? Has anyone factored in travel time for Eska and Desna to go all the way from the South Pole towards Republic City (which is pretty far up north)? Wouldn't anyone with any sense notice that Korra was missing for days, and wonder what was going on? Wouldn't Raiko have noticed?
8. Last but hardly the least - the relationship bullshit has taken over the entire show. Asami and Mako kiss each other and start to make up or so it looks like, complete with cheesy dialogue (wasn't Mako the guy who cheated on her blatantly last season? So yeah...) and then Bolin kissing Ginger on the lips without asking, even when she very clearly didn't like him (I don't blame Ginger, either. If I were a girl and someone leered like that at me, I would be pretty darn disgusted). The Gin-lin relationship is like Eska-lin but without being blatantly violent and abusive. Bolin's behavior towards Ginger is just plain WRONG and to play it for laughs, like they played Eska's brutal behavior towards Bolin, shows that these writers have no sense of reality when it comes to relationships.
I'm curious to see the next, two-part epiosde because Avatar Wan is likely to be handled a lot better than the seriously derailed, dumb and lousy characters we have seen so far.
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