Post by GROOONK'D on Jun 25, 2012 15:03:37 GMT -5
I was extremely disappointed with the way that Season 1 of Korra ended to say the least. While I had many concerns going into the finale due to some questionable decisions made earlier on I had hoped that Bryke would salvage the situation. They didn't. In the process they not only failed to have TLoK live up to the high standard set by TLA but also sent a negative message to its viewing audience. For the creative team behind such an amazing show as TLA, with it's strong progressive characters and meaningful development, I am shocked that they dropped the ball so badly.
Now, I could write out a huge rant on the specific reasons why I feel this way but some posters on another forum articulated things far better than I could. The following quotes are NOT by me and all credit goes to the proper authors in the TVIV on somethingawful.com.
By SatansBestBuddy:
What the hell happened? This show had so much promise but it kinda just ticked it all away by focusing on philoprogenitiveness that didn't matter. Hell, let's recap all the interesting plot threads the series brought up, and how it chose to conclude them:
- The Mafia are terrorizing the citizens of the city and attracting even decent guys like Bolin into their ranks thanks to the money and influence they command. Crime is so widespread that everyone just accepts it as part of living in the city, and the police seem powerless to stop them.
Conclusion: We see one mob don lose his bending. I guess Yakone being a mob don also counts, maybe? Point is, this plot thread had AWESOME potential written all over it but it was basically ignored.
- The Equalists are non-benders sick of all the opportunities and advantages benders get over them in society, from better paying jobs to benders-only sports, fame and fortune just come easier to benders. Non-benders all over the city are joining the cause, believing in a better world where everyone is equal.
Conclusion: The Equalists are warmongering fascists who use benders as a scapegoat to cause a revolution and turn the entire city into a warzone. Admittedly, that's still a pretty cool storyline, but it came off as really black and white, as the oppression of benders was never properly expanded upon, nor were we given a glimpse into their side of the struggle so we could have a chance to sympathize with them.
- Councilman Tarlokk is ambitious, charming and dangerous. His Task Force actually succeeds at finding and capturing Equalists, but the idea of using a secret police force to find and arrest anyone deemed an Equalist on the slimiest of evidence is on slippery ground when it comes to the morality of the situation, and Tarlok keeps pushing more extreme legislation before the council that subtly gives him more and more power to do whatever he wants.
Conclusion: Tarlokk snaps and tries to kill Korra after she accuses him of being just as bad as Amon. He reveals himself to be a bloodbender and that he wanted to rule the city because... uh, he wanted to rule the city. Really this was the best plotline in the show until we realize Tarlokk's ambition is just to rule because he wants to rule. He's not aiming to make the city a better place or anything, he just likes power. Pity, the rest of this plotline is really good and probably delivered on it's promises the best.
- The Order of the White Lotus are a secret organization of powerful individuals from all four bending nations. They work together to keep balance in the world and try to stop those who seek to disrupt this balance. Their position as a secret organization means that almost anyone can belong to it without you realizing they do, and thus they have a huge network of contacts and spies throughout the four nations that would be willing to help, should you ask them to.
Conclusion: They built a fortress at the south pole to train Korra at, and later guard her while she trains in the Air Temple. They are nowhere to be seen when she's actually in danger and in fact completely disappear between episode 2 and episode 10, when some of them are briefly seen getting their asses kicked during the raid on Air Temple Island. It's implied her previous bending masters are part of the order, but we don't see them do... anything. At all. Considering the last season had them play an important role in recapturing Ba Sing Se during the series finale, it's more than a little disappointing their just background fanservice here.
- The new Avatar is a bending prodigy capable of bending three of the four elements while just a toddler, and even easily mastered those three by the time she's seventeen. She's a buffed up meathead of a jock who can still be pretty dang girly when she wants to be, and is overconfident and strongwilled. She's charge headfirst into most situations without thinking or considering the consequences, and has a hard time grasping diplomacy as a concept. She sucks at comebacks.
Conclusion: The first confrontation with the big bad of the series has her charging in headfirst to fight against him, which doesn't work and he catches her off guard, leaving her helpless and crying in fear. He lets her go. The final confrontation with the big bad of the series has her charging in headfirst to fight against him, which doesn't work and he catches her off guard while she's hiding and crying in fear. Oh, but this time he doesn't let her go. Then, after she's lost her bending and has to save the boy she really likes, she gains the ability to airbend and win due to sheer dumb luck and the bad guys momentary idiocy. Basically Korra was awesome as the series started, but never really learned from her mistakes and kept charging in headfirst hoping that brute force would work everytime. She's a fighter and she kept fighting when it was time to stop and actually think about how to solve problems instead of beat them up. Don't get me wrong, she does do that a little bit, like when she overheard Sato's phone call she didn't bust down the door but instead asked the police to investigate his factory, which was the right call, but then her final confrontation with Amon she just blurts out his backstory without any evidence to back it up and no way to escape so all she can do is run and hide from him after giving him free reign to use skills he'd been hiding the entire time. So, yeah, I'm kinda disappointed that the strong leading female character of the series who was full of confidence at the beginning was a big crybaby who didn't do anything right by the end.
- Pro-Bending is a sporting competition that Korra takes a huge interest in and wants to see live. Pro-Bending is an intricate sport reminiscent of team boxing that involving one of every bending type except air, complete with a ring to be knocked out of and rounds you need to win. It's less flash and more nuance, less raw power and more deliberate and precise. Basically, it's a sport that will teach Korra the skills she lacks and will give her a circle of friends and fans (and rivals) outside of the walls she was trapped in for seventeen years.
Conclusion: She doesn't learn a dang thing from probending. The friend's she makes form an awkward love triangle that eventually ditches one third after he's dumped by Korra, where he stays as a background character with no further development for the rest of the show. The actual sport itself takes up more time than it really needs to, distracting from every other potential plotline and filling up time with tensionless action scenes. I was actually cheering for Amon when he blew up the ring and kicked the series plot into gear after it'd been stuck at a near standstill for 1/4 of the season. In short, a plotline that didn't accomplish what it promised it would (teach Korra airbending and nuance) and took one episode too long to wrap itself up.
I could probably think of more stuff, like Tenzin learning from Korra or Lin's fall from police chief to vigilante, but I think I've covered enough to prove my point; this series started out with so much promise, but it tripped over itself trying to deliver. Really, this series needed to be 20 episodes long, badly, as it's fairly obvious that cutting out 8 whole episodes from the season meant a lot of stuff had to be cut, and considering how much more ambitious this series was compared to the last one, that hurt it a lot more than it would have hurt The Last Airbender. It's a real shame, they built such a wonderful city here full of interesting possibilities. Here's hoping the next season has less of a laser focus on it's main plotline and leaves more room for character development, the real strength that Mike and Bryan have as writers.
As explained here it is clear that Korra introduced too many plot points that the writers were capable of handling in just 12 episodes.
By dj_clawson
First of all, let’s establish what was great about Legend of Korra: the setting was great, the voice acting was great, the music was good to great, and the animation was great. Most things about this show were great. I don’t regret watching it. But it was such a letdown in what I consider to be the most important aspect of shows I watch – writing – that I have to comment on why I think that.
A year or so ago, I heard the Legend of Korra was only featuring the two creators, and not the entire staff of writers. Fans took this to be good news, as it would trim the fat from TLA, which the other writers were responsible for. I saw a huge red flag. You don’t fix something that isn’t broken. If any other show said, “OK, we’re coming back, but we’ve lost over half of our stupendous, award-winning writing staff” I would be more than highly alarmed and skeptical. Writing is a process, and you never know what that process is until you’ve seen the dynamics in person. Even novels, which are highly personalized works (and of which I’ve published nine), require other sets of eyes before they get published. A good novelist doesn’t trust their own opinion. They’re too in love with their work and if they’re good, they know it. Group writing or television writing often requires, for sustained work, a tremendous number of voices, even if some of those are just sounding boards. I’m not saying TV shows can’t be written by two people, I’m just pointing out that TLA wasn’t.
When I was in love visually with the first two episodes, a more skeptical friend of mine (also a career writer) pointed out a major problem in the narrative: it didn’t compare to the more exciting but less polished opening to TLA, and he lost interest. In many ways, he was right.
“The Boy in the Iceberg” – Over 44 minutes, we’re introduced to the things we need for the rest of the series: the main characters, the setting, and the plot. In a world where some people have magic elemental powers, the evil Fire Nation has tried to take over the world, and has almost succeeded because the Avatar has been missing. Two downtrodden Water Tribe kids find a mysterious boy. Over the two episodes we learn that the boy is the Avatar, that he’s being hunted by a mini-boss, whom he defeats, and he begins his quest after this small but memorable victory, aided by his two friend who have distinct personalities. There’s a tremendous amount of world-building to do, but it gets done in this mini-movie, and we meet the majority of the “good guy” cast that we’ll be rooting for in the finale, even though we don’t know it yet. Most importantly, the two conflicts of the show are established:
1. Aang must master all four elements
2. Aang must defeat the Fire Nation
Things will come up over three seasons. There will be more characters to care about or dislike. People will change sides, develop, and mature. There will be so many story threads that in the massive final battle, things will be spread out over four distinct locations and take four episodes. But in the end, Aang masters all four elements (enough of them anyway) and defeats the Fire Lord. If you came in for the last episode after missing everything but the first, you would understand what was going on. You would recognize people.
This is called good plotting.
“Welcome to Republic City/A Leaf in the Wind” – I’m counting this as the 44-minute premiere because they aired together and also were leaked together, though I do acknowledge it was two stories over two episodes.
The basic structure of the first episode rests on our knowledge of TLA. The narrator makes references to awesome events that happened in the past in the opening segment, and characters continue to reference somewhat obscure things (like Zuko’s mom and the Bei-fong last name) that are going to pass by new viewers. We’re introduced to Korra, and a lot of other people whose origins aren’t explained (the White Lotus society, Katara) for newcomers. We learn she is not in touch with her spiritual side and must master airbending, but there’s only one airbending teacher in the world, and he lives in Republic City. He reveals that he’s too busy to train her because of some tense situation that is never fully explained at any point in the episode or arguably the series. Korra travels to Republic City, where she learns about various plotlines that we think are going to be important but are not – the Triads, the angry policewoman who’s going to constantly watch her back in a bad way but isn’t, and the non-evil, politically-relevant Equalists who are definitely going to stay that way.
Amon is introduced. This is giving a lot of credit, because he actually isn’t. We don’t learn anything about him and he’s not part of the episode except to clue the viewers into there being a bad guy in town. Korra doesn’t learn about him and won’t for another two episodes. Nobody knows about him and he hasn’t done anything yet. Then he’s not even in the second episode.
Speaking of the second episode, Korra is so bored with the one conflict she has so far (she must master airbending) that she runs off to watch sports. Because that’s what we want our main character to be – bored, instead of being involved in a conflict. We are introduced to pro-bending, a sport we’re going to have to sort of figure out on our own (or read about the rules on the complex Nick website), and two character we’re assuming are going to have arcs, Bolin and Mako. Mako’s arc – that he’s going to eventually be in love with Korra after initially disliking her – is revealed in the final shots. Bolin, as it turns out, has no arc.
So we’ve gotten as far into the show as TLA, and what are our conflicts?
- Korra must learn airbending
-
Seriously, what is the main conflict of the show? Clearly Amon, but we don’t know that yet. We also don’t know who he is or what he’s really doing or how he’s really doing it until the finale. Are the Triads a main conflict? No, they get taken out in the third episode Is airbending? No, that seems to do nothing and then resolve itself. Is corruption a main conflict? That’s not something Korra can really fight, even if she was a fully-realized Avatar. Is it inequality? No, that turns out to be another red herring, as inequality is never actually shown to be a problem. We’re just told about it and then we find out the equalists are terrorists. I’m not even throwing bloodbending in because we’re going to have to wait half the season to even hear about it.
To be fair to Korra, she bumbles through the entire show from fight to fight, usually losing, because she has no clear goal. The world hasn’t provided her with one on a show that’s about martial art mixed with magic, so should essentially be fighting-based. But she’s also pretty stupid. Even when there are hints of something, like Amon visiting the spirit world, or blood benders in the past, she doesn’t research them to find out more. Neither does anyone else who should know better. No one ever discusses where Amon might come from and how he does what he does. They just shrug their shoulders and say, “But nobody can do that!” and keep fighting. No wonder they lose all the time. They’re amazingly idiotic characters.
Let’s address the central problems of the rest of the show:
Amon remains an unclear villain, and no one attempts to address this. I’m not saying that Ozai was astoundingly complex and Aang’s choices didn’t all involve somehow beating Ozai into a pulp with bending, which is what he did, even if it wasn’t his finishing move. He didn’t need to be. Lots of villains who are heads of large empires that have unfinished wars want to rule the world, in real life and in fiction. Aang knew enough about him in the pilot, and anything he learned along the way was because Zuko was a character. Clear conflict is good writing. It gives the main characters and the audience something to hope for. Legend of Korra establishes early that Korra isn’t ready to fight Amon, but it isn’t clear why, or what she would do if she fought him. The only reason he schools her in the fight battle is because he cheats rampantly. What does Korra have left to do? She’s mastered three elements. Is airbending really going to help her that much? If he needs to be pushed off something, can’t she do it with another form of bending? Nor does anyone else try to provide her with another answer. No one discusses if he’s a bender or not, if he should be arrested or killed, if there’s anyone in the city could give them more information. The police raid a couple houses but sure don’t do a lot of investigating. In the end, Korra learns Amon’s backstory only by running into someone who knows it on another mission and defeats Amon only by luck.
The equalist conflict is not well-definited. The main “shades of grey” of the equalist argument is that benders are oppressing non-benders. We’re never given any evidence of this. In fact, we’re given plenty of evidence in the opposite direction. In the TLA universe, a lot of hierarchies were filled with non-benders. Hakoda was not a bender. The chief of the Northern Water Tribe was not shown to be a bender. The Earth King was not shown to be a bender. Two high-ranking members of the fire nation, the old women, were not benders. In the Korra universe, we see that council membership is not based on being a bender, as non-benders are in previous councils. The richest man in the city is not a bender. Meanwhile, we’re shown examples of bender poverty – Bolin and Mako living on the streets and not being good for anything other than bending. The Triads essentially being people like them who choose to do crime using bending because it’s their only economic opportunity. Benders also contribute tremendously to society with actual bending, with the power plant, and I’m assuming the construction of every stone building everywhere. It seems that if you took away bending, you wouldn’t change the social structure but you would lose more than you gained. Plus, getting rid of the current generation of benders via Amon wouldn’t remove the next generation, as non-benders and former-benders can give birth to benders. Bending is something that naturally occurs in the universe. That’s going to be hard to get rid of. Amon’s long-term evil plan, which is what the equalist movement is revealed to be, has no long-term potential unless they don’t allow anyone to have children.
Most of the character do not have arcs. In TLA, every important character had an arc, even if it was only to go from an ambitious firebending noble to being totally insane. I don’t recall a character we met for more than a few episodes who didn’t have an arc with challenges that they either met or were defeated by. In Legend of Korra, the arc of most characters seems to be “learn how to avoid chi-blocking weapons.” Korra, the main character, learns very little. She wants to be an airbender who beats everyone up, and in the end she becomes an airbender who beats everyone up. She charges into every situation with little or no plan to the very end, and when it seems like she might actually have to pay a steep price – the loss of her own bending – she is miraculously saved by Aang. Mako’s arc remains what I thought it was going to be in episod 2, admitting his feelings for Korra, though to be fair along the way he also learns to be oblivious to the needs of his girlfriend, which is realistic but doesn’t make him a very likeable character. Bolin has no arc. His bending doesn’t even get better. He remains the same character we met in episode 2. Asami has an arc of some kind, but in the end she’s mostly there to get cheated on and not betray everyone anyway. Tenzin and Lin have a minimal arc of becoming friends again after years after squabbling, but otherwise they remain consistent. I could go on and on, but you get where I’m going – there is no development for the central characters.
The only person with a real arc is Tarlokk, who goes from being ambitious to being evil to redemption through ultimate sacrifice. Unfortunately, he’s a latecomer to the series. Not super-late but he’s not there in the opening gate and he’s defeated almost as quickly as his intentions are revealed, and not by our hero. He seems like a decently-written character but we don’t get time to get invested in him.
Meanwhile, the show coasts on fanservice. We get hints at the fates of characters we know and love from TLA and we get hyper over them because we’re still more interested in them than the characters we see every episode. This is a bad sign. That a new Zuko has to come in and kick Equus asinus in the last two episodes of the season means other characters weren’t pulling their weight. There’s no reason within the narrative of Korra to care that Iroh II gets scarred or gets saved by “Aang.” This just a callback. That it is universally agreed by fans that Bumi was a highlight of the finale – the FINALE – despite us knowing next to nothing about him that we didn’t get from a website and not the actual show is also bad writing. People who haven’t seen TLA would just see a new character who appears exciting introduced with seven minutes or something left to the entire season and say, “Where has that guy been? Are we going to see any more of him? No? Oh, OK, I see we’re out of time. Forget about him then.”
Ultimately, you get a very confusing show, with a lot of missteps and characters killing an episode doing nothing because they have nothing else to do to advance the story until a bad guy does something. You get a lot of red herrings, or things that become super-relevant for a couple episodes (like probending) and then get tossed out as soon as the plot shows up again. You get a lot of characters who do not grow or learn. You get a lot of happenstance instead of planning. And you don’t’ know what to make of the last five minutes, even if it makes you cry. I started tearing up when Aang showed up, and then the episode was over. I wasn’t even done forming my first tear. What the hell was that? I had to go and rewatch the last two minutes just to finish feeling what I was feeling, which was not long enough to process that it didn’t make much sense. Removing someone’s bending (or restoring it) was never explained. Korra’s spiritual breakthrough was never explained where Aang’s was crystal clear. Why the hell the other Avatars would help her out while she was crying in the South Pole and not when she was getting debended by Amon (which seems more important) remains a mystery. Why she suddenly learned to airbend remains a mystery. Aang did achieve the Avatar State after seeing Katara in trouble because of his love for her, but it actually took them a couple combined episodes, including that one, to figure out that the Avatar State could simply be triggered by rage, loss, or self-defense, and Korra was angry, upset, and defenseless a lot of the time. The in-world explanation that she learned airbending by being in love with Mako falls flat to me.
A lot of people will defend this show either by saying it’s a kid’s show so it shouldn’t be overanalyzed, or it has mature adult plotting so there should be shades of grey and not just a bad guy to beat up. Both of these arguments fall flat. Any good show should have a strong, clear conflict and good plotting.
Take The Wire, of which I have seen the first two seasons. It’s revered by many people as being the best-written show of all time, but at it’s heart it’s a show about cops and robbers. This is not to diminish it at all. There are good guys and there are bed guys, and we see the central conflict between them in the first episode of each season and see it resolved in the final episode of each season. The good guys win but they lose a lot along the way and they give up their ultimate goal in service of achieving anything at all. The bad guys take loses but some survive with their skin intact. Both sides have complex characters who contain both good and bad in them and are in conflict with themselves. The cops fight not just bad guys but corruption in their ranks, obstinacy in the system, and their own alcoholism and failed relationships. The robbers face violence, death, economic woes, and the general feeling of being unable to escape their own self-ordered fates. You’re constantly on edge, but you’re not lost.
Legend of Korra doesn’t have that. It has clear good, ambiguous evil, but it hits a lot of walls with plot, conflict, and character depth – walls it didn’t hit in The Last Airbender because no matter how strange or violent or silly it got, everything was in service of the basic narrative of good vs. evil. Even though the ending was predictable from day one, we cared deeply about how they were going to go about doing it, and even when they were flailing in the dark, they had an endgame that was clear and consistent. Legend of Korra had no such thing.
I’m not going to let Nick’s ordering a second season mid-production excuse any of this. We don’t know when negotiations began, but we do know they were given 12 episodes to construct a narrative that should be self-contained just in case there wasn’t another season, and they didn’t do that. You can leave plenty hanging and still finish your story.
Since Mike and Bryan are good at learning from their mistakes, hopefully they were make a much better season 2, but until I see it I’m going to remain a little skeptical.
So, as we can all see TLoK failed to follow a basic narrative structure, resulting in a complete loss of coherence by the end of the season.
by blurry:
The whole point of storytelling is really to teach lessons or convey meaning about life, especially to those who are young. It is done to provide something for people to call upon as they come of age. Every story ever told provides a lesson, whether intentional or not. The characters, their motivations, their reactions, the things they say and do, and the way the plot progresses, says something. And the way the story of The Legend of Korra was told sends a very confused and off-color message.
The most important theme of Korra, which was tragically mismanaged, was not one of privilege or any message the involved a greater socio-political meaning. It was one of self-image in the face of failure, fear, and despair. It was about not limiting yourself in terms of who you are on some preconceived notion you've handed by your elders. It is a dark show, especially for young people. Korra at a young age knows she's the avatar. It's her first line. Seems pretty confident right? However, she's a three year old. She is a child, and still needs guidance towards becoming a well-rounded person. The White Lotus, Katara, and Korra's parents should have been more responsible and taught Korra that "you may be the Avatar, but that is not all you are." But they didn't. They hid her away from the world, isolated her in an environment specifically designed because she was the avatar, reminding her every day that she is nothing but the Avatar. Narratively, this is a good move, because it provides our set-up for growth and development.
The main conflict of the show is a force called "Amon" (he lacks any sort of real characterization until the 11th episode so that is his role), is taking away parts of people. The part he happens to be taking away just so happens to be the entirety of what Korra considers her personality.
And here is where the show falls apart. It strays off tone when it fails to fully address the most important aspect of the theme: you can't sum up a person in a label. Amon uses labels to divide and conquer people. Benders are bad, non-benders are more pure. Purify all benders. Being a bender is a large part of a person's identity, but it is not everything.
That is where the show failed, but how did it fail? By thematically equating being de-bended with death. Think about it: for the majority of the series, whenever we saw some one "equalized", their role in the narrative is reduced to nothing. Lightning Bolt Zolt is introduced as a label, a bender criminal, has his bending removed, and is never heard from again. He was a bit character, so we didn't assume a trend. The next character of relevance to be de-bended is Tahno. He and his entire team is de-bent, and we see him briefly in the next episode, looking dejected, like he's deathly ill or something. He looks like he's about to keel over and die. He then disappears from the plot. He dies, in a narrative sense; we never see him again and his role in the story has ended. Lin stages a rescue for her fellow metalbenders, but upon the revelation that they, too, have lost their bending, she shakes her head and says "I'm sorry", and they are then dismissed quickly from the tale. When Korra goes to confront Amon on Avatar Aang Memorial island, she is ambushed by Amon, who tells her he will destroy her. To be destroyed in this story is to lose one's bending.
The end result of this is the prevailing idea that a person's life is over if they lose bending at the hands of Amon, the antagonistic force of this series. Amon becomes synonymous with death. He doesn't physically hurt anyone, but they might as well be dead, because they can't bend. They're worthless. We never see a person coping or finding a new life after de-bending (until the very end), and this is important. Through out the story, we are told time and time again, that yes, Korra (and by extension the audience), if that label you use to define yourself is lost, you might as well be dead. All your fears are true.
The negativity of this message is never used appropriately to send a positive message to people watching. Tarlokk lost his bending, so he kills himself and his brother. Korra loses her bending, and although she is surrounded by loved ones, she doesn't see them. She doesn't see that she is indeed still a bender. She doesn't see her self worth extending past her identity as Avatar, even at the very, very end of the story. Mako tells her he loves her regardless of her status of Avatar, but she doesn't care. She projects this right onto him and then leaves.
She goes out and stares down a cliff. A single tear falls into the greater ocean, like her soul joining her avatar brethren. Then, in a completely atonal event, Aang shows up, tells her everything is fixed. What just happened there? The only thing I saw was Korra giving into her despair. She doesn't grit her teeth and deny that the only thing she is a label. She collapses in a heap and weeps openly. Then, she is finally rewarded with everything she hoped for.
WHAT THE love KIND OF MESSAGE IS THAT?! The creators are telling all the young people watching that despair is the correct emotion. Our heroine falls to her knees and gives in completely to feelings of loss, and is immediately rewarded.
And that is truly, on the most fundamental level, what is wrong with The Legend of Korra. The show did not have Korra at a truly low moment during the story, where she had to confront her greatest fear, her greatest weakness: that she only thought of herself as the Avatar. That she was defined by a simple label given to her at a young age. That she was who she was when she was three years old. She never grows up. Having her lose her bending was a good storytelling technique that was inevitable. It had to happen. However, it should have come earlier, to allow for the most important thing the show could have conveyed:
Never give in to despair.
Korra loses her bending, she loses part of herself, and she never has to learn that life goes on. If she were to lose her bending mid-season, and forced to confront the fact that she's still alive, still breathing, and there are people that love her, and for love's sake, is still the Avatar. She then emerges anew, like a phoenix rising up! She has gained insight and grows the love up into an adult. Then, she achieves the Avatar State, emerging out the other side with all four bending disciplines. She's rewarded for her revelation, and an important lesson is taught to the young people watching. Post-despair Korra is now more powerful than she ever was before, and she earned it by not giving in to the darkness. She may be powerful, but dramatic tension is not dispelled, because she knows she can't just punch Amon, but must beat him in another way (like an airbender!)
And no, it wouldnt' have to be a lengthy debate about the merits of the Equalist movement. She would trick Amon into revealing himself as a bender and a fraud, perhaps by overpowering him using the Avatar State, and he uses bending against her as his own defense mechanism. She wins by the power of love, but not like we saw, where its just her love for Mako. It's her love for herself that gave her the power to defeat Amon and expose him.
All in all, this is why I'm disappointed by Korra. Because as a children's show it sends a very bad message to children.
.......
The teardrop symbolizes this: She's lost her bending. She doesn't want to be with all her friends and loved ones. She tells her crush, Mako, to love off. She goes and stares out at the ocean, and her little tear drop falls into a wider body. This is her thinking about rejoining all the other Avatars in the cycle of reincarnation. This is the only way she can feel whole again. And by giving into these feelings, the Avatars of the past all show up and give her everything she thinks she needs: bending. They tell her yes, that feeling of despair was correct, you have achieved spiritual awareness, have everything you considred important back. She'll never really get it that people loved her despite her being the Avatar. She never had to discover that fact.
And that's why the show failed.
Again, we see Korra failed to even portray a positive message in the show. So here's where we stand after season 1;
no character development
no consequences
a complete disregard for many of the morals lessons emphasized in TLA.
I don't know what happened with Mike and Bryan that led them to mess up so badly but I am immensely disappointed.
Now, I could write out a huge rant on the specific reasons why I feel this way but some posters on another forum articulated things far better than I could. The following quotes are NOT by me and all credit goes to the proper authors in the TVIV on somethingawful.com.
By SatansBestBuddy:
SatansBestBuddy said:
Just finished watching the finale. Man, that was a big heaping pile of horseshit, wasn't it?What the hell happened? This show had so much promise but it kinda just ticked it all away by focusing on philoprogenitiveness that didn't matter. Hell, let's recap all the interesting plot threads the series brought up, and how it chose to conclude them:
- The Mafia are terrorizing the citizens of the city and attracting even decent guys like Bolin into their ranks thanks to the money and influence they command. Crime is so widespread that everyone just accepts it as part of living in the city, and the police seem powerless to stop them.
Conclusion: We see one mob don lose his bending. I guess Yakone being a mob don also counts, maybe? Point is, this plot thread had AWESOME potential written all over it but it was basically ignored.
- The Equalists are non-benders sick of all the opportunities and advantages benders get over them in society, from better paying jobs to benders-only sports, fame and fortune just come easier to benders. Non-benders all over the city are joining the cause, believing in a better world where everyone is equal.
Conclusion: The Equalists are warmongering fascists who use benders as a scapegoat to cause a revolution and turn the entire city into a warzone. Admittedly, that's still a pretty cool storyline, but it came off as really black and white, as the oppression of benders was never properly expanded upon, nor were we given a glimpse into their side of the struggle so we could have a chance to sympathize with them.
- Councilman Tarlokk is ambitious, charming and dangerous. His Task Force actually succeeds at finding and capturing Equalists, but the idea of using a secret police force to find and arrest anyone deemed an Equalist on the slimiest of evidence is on slippery ground when it comes to the morality of the situation, and Tarlok keeps pushing more extreme legislation before the council that subtly gives him more and more power to do whatever he wants.
Conclusion: Tarlokk snaps and tries to kill Korra after she accuses him of being just as bad as Amon. He reveals himself to be a bloodbender and that he wanted to rule the city because... uh, he wanted to rule the city. Really this was the best plotline in the show until we realize Tarlokk's ambition is just to rule because he wants to rule. He's not aiming to make the city a better place or anything, he just likes power. Pity, the rest of this plotline is really good and probably delivered on it's promises the best.
- The Order of the White Lotus are a secret organization of powerful individuals from all four bending nations. They work together to keep balance in the world and try to stop those who seek to disrupt this balance. Their position as a secret organization means that almost anyone can belong to it without you realizing they do, and thus they have a huge network of contacts and spies throughout the four nations that would be willing to help, should you ask them to.
Conclusion: They built a fortress at the south pole to train Korra at, and later guard her while she trains in the Air Temple. They are nowhere to be seen when she's actually in danger and in fact completely disappear between episode 2 and episode 10, when some of them are briefly seen getting their asses kicked during the raid on Air Temple Island. It's implied her previous bending masters are part of the order, but we don't see them do... anything. At all. Considering the last season had them play an important role in recapturing Ba Sing Se during the series finale, it's more than a little disappointing their just background fanservice here.
- The new Avatar is a bending prodigy capable of bending three of the four elements while just a toddler, and even easily mastered those three by the time she's seventeen. She's a buffed up meathead of a jock who can still be pretty dang girly when she wants to be, and is overconfident and strongwilled. She's charge headfirst into most situations without thinking or considering the consequences, and has a hard time grasping diplomacy as a concept. She sucks at comebacks.
Conclusion: The first confrontation with the big bad of the series has her charging in headfirst to fight against him, which doesn't work and he catches her off guard, leaving her helpless and crying in fear. He lets her go. The final confrontation with the big bad of the series has her charging in headfirst to fight against him, which doesn't work and he catches her off guard while she's hiding and crying in fear. Oh, but this time he doesn't let her go. Then, after she's lost her bending and has to save the boy she really likes, she gains the ability to airbend and win due to sheer dumb luck and the bad guys momentary idiocy. Basically Korra was awesome as the series started, but never really learned from her mistakes and kept charging in headfirst hoping that brute force would work everytime. She's a fighter and she kept fighting when it was time to stop and actually think about how to solve problems instead of beat them up. Don't get me wrong, she does do that a little bit, like when she overheard Sato's phone call she didn't bust down the door but instead asked the police to investigate his factory, which was the right call, but then her final confrontation with Amon she just blurts out his backstory without any evidence to back it up and no way to escape so all she can do is run and hide from him after giving him free reign to use skills he'd been hiding the entire time. So, yeah, I'm kinda disappointed that the strong leading female character of the series who was full of confidence at the beginning was a big crybaby who didn't do anything right by the end.
- Pro-Bending is a sporting competition that Korra takes a huge interest in and wants to see live. Pro-Bending is an intricate sport reminiscent of team boxing that involving one of every bending type except air, complete with a ring to be knocked out of and rounds you need to win. It's less flash and more nuance, less raw power and more deliberate and precise. Basically, it's a sport that will teach Korra the skills she lacks and will give her a circle of friends and fans (and rivals) outside of the walls she was trapped in for seventeen years.
Conclusion: She doesn't learn a dang thing from probending. The friend's she makes form an awkward love triangle that eventually ditches one third after he's dumped by Korra, where he stays as a background character with no further development for the rest of the show. The actual sport itself takes up more time than it really needs to, distracting from every other potential plotline and filling up time with tensionless action scenes. I was actually cheering for Amon when he blew up the ring and kicked the series plot into gear after it'd been stuck at a near standstill for 1/4 of the season. In short, a plotline that didn't accomplish what it promised it would (teach Korra airbending and nuance) and took one episode too long to wrap itself up.
I could probably think of more stuff, like Tenzin learning from Korra or Lin's fall from police chief to vigilante, but I think I've covered enough to prove my point; this series started out with so much promise, but it tripped over itself trying to deliver. Really, this series needed to be 20 episodes long, badly, as it's fairly obvious that cutting out 8 whole episodes from the season meant a lot of stuff had to be cut, and considering how much more ambitious this series was compared to the last one, that hurt it a lot more than it would have hurt The Last Airbender. It's a real shame, they built such a wonderful city here full of interesting possibilities. Here's hoping the next season has less of a laser focus on it's main plotline and leaves more room for character development, the real strength that Mike and Bryan have as writers.
As explained here it is clear that Korra introduced too many plot points that the writers were capable of handling in just 12 episodes.
By dj_clawson
dj_clawson said:
Here's my thoughts about the show, which I thought about all last night:First of all, let’s establish what was great about Legend of Korra: the setting was great, the voice acting was great, the music was good to great, and the animation was great. Most things about this show were great. I don’t regret watching it. But it was such a letdown in what I consider to be the most important aspect of shows I watch – writing – that I have to comment on why I think that.
A year or so ago, I heard the Legend of Korra was only featuring the two creators, and not the entire staff of writers. Fans took this to be good news, as it would trim the fat from TLA, which the other writers were responsible for. I saw a huge red flag. You don’t fix something that isn’t broken. If any other show said, “OK, we’re coming back, but we’ve lost over half of our stupendous, award-winning writing staff” I would be more than highly alarmed and skeptical. Writing is a process, and you never know what that process is until you’ve seen the dynamics in person. Even novels, which are highly personalized works (and of which I’ve published nine), require other sets of eyes before they get published. A good novelist doesn’t trust their own opinion. They’re too in love with their work and if they’re good, they know it. Group writing or television writing often requires, for sustained work, a tremendous number of voices, even if some of those are just sounding boards. I’m not saying TV shows can’t be written by two people, I’m just pointing out that TLA wasn’t.
When I was in love visually with the first two episodes, a more skeptical friend of mine (also a career writer) pointed out a major problem in the narrative: it didn’t compare to the more exciting but less polished opening to TLA, and he lost interest. In many ways, he was right.
“The Boy in the Iceberg” – Over 44 minutes, we’re introduced to the things we need for the rest of the series: the main characters, the setting, and the plot. In a world where some people have magic elemental powers, the evil Fire Nation has tried to take over the world, and has almost succeeded because the Avatar has been missing. Two downtrodden Water Tribe kids find a mysterious boy. Over the two episodes we learn that the boy is the Avatar, that he’s being hunted by a mini-boss, whom he defeats, and he begins his quest after this small but memorable victory, aided by his two friend who have distinct personalities. There’s a tremendous amount of world-building to do, but it gets done in this mini-movie, and we meet the majority of the “good guy” cast that we’ll be rooting for in the finale, even though we don’t know it yet. Most importantly, the two conflicts of the show are established:
1. Aang must master all four elements
2. Aang must defeat the Fire Nation
Things will come up over three seasons. There will be more characters to care about or dislike. People will change sides, develop, and mature. There will be so many story threads that in the massive final battle, things will be spread out over four distinct locations and take four episodes. But in the end, Aang masters all four elements (enough of them anyway) and defeats the Fire Lord. If you came in for the last episode after missing everything but the first, you would understand what was going on. You would recognize people.
This is called good plotting.
“Welcome to Republic City/A Leaf in the Wind” – I’m counting this as the 44-minute premiere because they aired together and also were leaked together, though I do acknowledge it was two stories over two episodes.
The basic structure of the first episode rests on our knowledge of TLA. The narrator makes references to awesome events that happened in the past in the opening segment, and characters continue to reference somewhat obscure things (like Zuko’s mom and the Bei-fong last name) that are going to pass by new viewers. We’re introduced to Korra, and a lot of other people whose origins aren’t explained (the White Lotus society, Katara) for newcomers. We learn she is not in touch with her spiritual side and must master airbending, but there’s only one airbending teacher in the world, and he lives in Republic City. He reveals that he’s too busy to train her because of some tense situation that is never fully explained at any point in the episode or arguably the series. Korra travels to Republic City, where she learns about various plotlines that we think are going to be important but are not – the Triads, the angry policewoman who’s going to constantly watch her back in a bad way but isn’t, and the non-evil, politically-relevant Equalists who are definitely going to stay that way.
Amon is introduced. This is giving a lot of credit, because he actually isn’t. We don’t learn anything about him and he’s not part of the episode except to clue the viewers into there being a bad guy in town. Korra doesn’t learn about him and won’t for another two episodes. Nobody knows about him and he hasn’t done anything yet. Then he’s not even in the second episode.
Speaking of the second episode, Korra is so bored with the one conflict she has so far (she must master airbending) that she runs off to watch sports. Because that’s what we want our main character to be – bored, instead of being involved in a conflict. We are introduced to pro-bending, a sport we’re going to have to sort of figure out on our own (or read about the rules on the complex Nick website), and two character we’re assuming are going to have arcs, Bolin and Mako. Mako’s arc – that he’s going to eventually be in love with Korra after initially disliking her – is revealed in the final shots. Bolin, as it turns out, has no arc.
So we’ve gotten as far into the show as TLA, and what are our conflicts?
- Korra must learn airbending
-
Seriously, what is the main conflict of the show? Clearly Amon, but we don’t know that yet. We also don’t know who he is or what he’s really doing or how he’s really doing it until the finale. Are the Triads a main conflict? No, they get taken out in the third episode Is airbending? No, that seems to do nothing and then resolve itself. Is corruption a main conflict? That’s not something Korra can really fight, even if she was a fully-realized Avatar. Is it inequality? No, that turns out to be another red herring, as inequality is never actually shown to be a problem. We’re just told about it and then we find out the equalists are terrorists. I’m not even throwing bloodbending in because we’re going to have to wait half the season to even hear about it.
To be fair to Korra, she bumbles through the entire show from fight to fight, usually losing, because she has no clear goal. The world hasn’t provided her with one on a show that’s about martial art mixed with magic, so should essentially be fighting-based. But she’s also pretty stupid. Even when there are hints of something, like Amon visiting the spirit world, or blood benders in the past, she doesn’t research them to find out more. Neither does anyone else who should know better. No one ever discusses where Amon might come from and how he does what he does. They just shrug their shoulders and say, “But nobody can do that!” and keep fighting. No wonder they lose all the time. They’re amazingly idiotic characters.
Let’s address the central problems of the rest of the show:
Amon remains an unclear villain, and no one attempts to address this. I’m not saying that Ozai was astoundingly complex and Aang’s choices didn’t all involve somehow beating Ozai into a pulp with bending, which is what he did, even if it wasn’t his finishing move. He didn’t need to be. Lots of villains who are heads of large empires that have unfinished wars want to rule the world, in real life and in fiction. Aang knew enough about him in the pilot, and anything he learned along the way was because Zuko was a character. Clear conflict is good writing. It gives the main characters and the audience something to hope for. Legend of Korra establishes early that Korra isn’t ready to fight Amon, but it isn’t clear why, or what she would do if she fought him. The only reason he schools her in the fight battle is because he cheats rampantly. What does Korra have left to do? She’s mastered three elements. Is airbending really going to help her that much? If he needs to be pushed off something, can’t she do it with another form of bending? Nor does anyone else try to provide her with another answer. No one discusses if he’s a bender or not, if he should be arrested or killed, if there’s anyone in the city could give them more information. The police raid a couple houses but sure don’t do a lot of investigating. In the end, Korra learns Amon’s backstory only by running into someone who knows it on another mission and defeats Amon only by luck.
The equalist conflict is not well-definited. The main “shades of grey” of the equalist argument is that benders are oppressing non-benders. We’re never given any evidence of this. In fact, we’re given plenty of evidence in the opposite direction. In the TLA universe, a lot of hierarchies were filled with non-benders. Hakoda was not a bender. The chief of the Northern Water Tribe was not shown to be a bender. The Earth King was not shown to be a bender. Two high-ranking members of the fire nation, the old women, were not benders. In the Korra universe, we see that council membership is not based on being a bender, as non-benders are in previous councils. The richest man in the city is not a bender. Meanwhile, we’re shown examples of bender poverty – Bolin and Mako living on the streets and not being good for anything other than bending. The Triads essentially being people like them who choose to do crime using bending because it’s their only economic opportunity. Benders also contribute tremendously to society with actual bending, with the power plant, and I’m assuming the construction of every stone building everywhere. It seems that if you took away bending, you wouldn’t change the social structure but you would lose more than you gained. Plus, getting rid of the current generation of benders via Amon wouldn’t remove the next generation, as non-benders and former-benders can give birth to benders. Bending is something that naturally occurs in the universe. That’s going to be hard to get rid of. Amon’s long-term evil plan, which is what the equalist movement is revealed to be, has no long-term potential unless they don’t allow anyone to have children.
Most of the character do not have arcs. In TLA, every important character had an arc, even if it was only to go from an ambitious firebending noble to being totally insane. I don’t recall a character we met for more than a few episodes who didn’t have an arc with challenges that they either met or were defeated by. In Legend of Korra, the arc of most characters seems to be “learn how to avoid chi-blocking weapons.” Korra, the main character, learns very little. She wants to be an airbender who beats everyone up, and in the end she becomes an airbender who beats everyone up. She charges into every situation with little or no plan to the very end, and when it seems like she might actually have to pay a steep price – the loss of her own bending – she is miraculously saved by Aang. Mako’s arc remains what I thought it was going to be in episod 2, admitting his feelings for Korra, though to be fair along the way he also learns to be oblivious to the needs of his girlfriend, which is realistic but doesn’t make him a very likeable character. Bolin has no arc. His bending doesn’t even get better. He remains the same character we met in episode 2. Asami has an arc of some kind, but in the end she’s mostly there to get cheated on and not betray everyone anyway. Tenzin and Lin have a minimal arc of becoming friends again after years after squabbling, but otherwise they remain consistent. I could go on and on, but you get where I’m going – there is no development for the central characters.
The only person with a real arc is Tarlokk, who goes from being ambitious to being evil to redemption through ultimate sacrifice. Unfortunately, he’s a latecomer to the series. Not super-late but he’s not there in the opening gate and he’s defeated almost as quickly as his intentions are revealed, and not by our hero. He seems like a decently-written character but we don’t get time to get invested in him.
Meanwhile, the show coasts on fanservice. We get hints at the fates of characters we know and love from TLA and we get hyper over them because we’re still more interested in them than the characters we see every episode. This is a bad sign. That a new Zuko has to come in and kick Equus asinus in the last two episodes of the season means other characters weren’t pulling their weight. There’s no reason within the narrative of Korra to care that Iroh II gets scarred or gets saved by “Aang.” This just a callback. That it is universally agreed by fans that Bumi was a highlight of the finale – the FINALE – despite us knowing next to nothing about him that we didn’t get from a website and not the actual show is also bad writing. People who haven’t seen TLA would just see a new character who appears exciting introduced with seven minutes or something left to the entire season and say, “Where has that guy been? Are we going to see any more of him? No? Oh, OK, I see we’re out of time. Forget about him then.”
Ultimately, you get a very confusing show, with a lot of missteps and characters killing an episode doing nothing because they have nothing else to do to advance the story until a bad guy does something. You get a lot of red herrings, or things that become super-relevant for a couple episodes (like probending) and then get tossed out as soon as the plot shows up again. You get a lot of characters who do not grow or learn. You get a lot of happenstance instead of planning. And you don’t’ know what to make of the last five minutes, even if it makes you cry. I started tearing up when Aang showed up, and then the episode was over. I wasn’t even done forming my first tear. What the hell was that? I had to go and rewatch the last two minutes just to finish feeling what I was feeling, which was not long enough to process that it didn’t make much sense. Removing someone’s bending (or restoring it) was never explained. Korra’s spiritual breakthrough was never explained where Aang’s was crystal clear. Why the hell the other Avatars would help her out while she was crying in the South Pole and not when she was getting debended by Amon (which seems more important) remains a mystery. Why she suddenly learned to airbend remains a mystery. Aang did achieve the Avatar State after seeing Katara in trouble because of his love for her, but it actually took them a couple combined episodes, including that one, to figure out that the Avatar State could simply be triggered by rage, loss, or self-defense, and Korra was angry, upset, and defenseless a lot of the time. The in-world explanation that she learned airbending by being in love with Mako falls flat to me.
A lot of people will defend this show either by saying it’s a kid’s show so it shouldn’t be overanalyzed, or it has mature adult plotting so there should be shades of grey and not just a bad guy to beat up. Both of these arguments fall flat. Any good show should have a strong, clear conflict and good plotting.
Take The Wire, of which I have seen the first two seasons. It’s revered by many people as being the best-written show of all time, but at it’s heart it’s a show about cops and robbers. This is not to diminish it at all. There are good guys and there are bed guys, and we see the central conflict between them in the first episode of each season and see it resolved in the final episode of each season. The good guys win but they lose a lot along the way and they give up their ultimate goal in service of achieving anything at all. The bad guys take loses but some survive with their skin intact. Both sides have complex characters who contain both good and bad in them and are in conflict with themselves. The cops fight not just bad guys but corruption in their ranks, obstinacy in the system, and their own alcoholism and failed relationships. The robbers face violence, death, economic woes, and the general feeling of being unable to escape their own self-ordered fates. You’re constantly on edge, but you’re not lost.
Legend of Korra doesn’t have that. It has clear good, ambiguous evil, but it hits a lot of walls with plot, conflict, and character depth – walls it didn’t hit in The Last Airbender because no matter how strange or violent or silly it got, everything was in service of the basic narrative of good vs. evil. Even though the ending was predictable from day one, we cared deeply about how they were going to go about doing it, and even when they were flailing in the dark, they had an endgame that was clear and consistent. Legend of Korra had no such thing.
I’m not going to let Nick’s ordering a second season mid-production excuse any of this. We don’t know when negotiations began, but we do know they were given 12 episodes to construct a narrative that should be self-contained just in case there wasn’t another season, and they didn’t do that. You can leave plenty hanging and still finish your story.
Since Mike and Bryan are good at learning from their mistakes, hopefully they were make a much better season 2, but until I see it I’m going to remain a little skeptical.
So, as we can all see TLoK failed to follow a basic narrative structure, resulting in a complete loss of coherence by the end of the season.
by blurry:
blurry said:
You know, people think I (and others) are mad at the way the series played out because I'm a sperg. It's just a TV show for children, you say. See, the details of bending and the world, how Korra didn't use bending forms to learn airbending, that all is small potatoes to why I'm dissatisfied. It's because it's a kid's show that I'm a little peeved at how they paced it because of what it chooses to say to young people. The whole point of storytelling is really to teach lessons or convey meaning about life, especially to those who are young. It is done to provide something for people to call upon as they come of age. Every story ever told provides a lesson, whether intentional or not. The characters, their motivations, their reactions, the things they say and do, and the way the plot progresses, says something. And the way the story of The Legend of Korra was told sends a very confused and off-color message.
The most important theme of Korra, which was tragically mismanaged, was not one of privilege or any message the involved a greater socio-political meaning. It was one of self-image in the face of failure, fear, and despair. It was about not limiting yourself in terms of who you are on some preconceived notion you've handed by your elders. It is a dark show, especially for young people. Korra at a young age knows she's the avatar. It's her first line. Seems pretty confident right? However, she's a three year old. She is a child, and still needs guidance towards becoming a well-rounded person. The White Lotus, Katara, and Korra's parents should have been more responsible and taught Korra that "you may be the Avatar, but that is not all you are." But they didn't. They hid her away from the world, isolated her in an environment specifically designed because she was the avatar, reminding her every day that she is nothing but the Avatar. Narratively, this is a good move, because it provides our set-up for growth and development.
The main conflict of the show is a force called "Amon" (he lacks any sort of real characterization until the 11th episode so that is his role), is taking away parts of people. The part he happens to be taking away just so happens to be the entirety of what Korra considers her personality.
And here is where the show falls apart. It strays off tone when it fails to fully address the most important aspect of the theme: you can't sum up a person in a label. Amon uses labels to divide and conquer people. Benders are bad, non-benders are more pure. Purify all benders. Being a bender is a large part of a person's identity, but it is not everything.
That is where the show failed, but how did it fail? By thematically equating being de-bended with death. Think about it: for the majority of the series, whenever we saw some one "equalized", their role in the narrative is reduced to nothing. Lightning Bolt Zolt is introduced as a label, a bender criminal, has his bending removed, and is never heard from again. He was a bit character, so we didn't assume a trend. The next character of relevance to be de-bended is Tahno. He and his entire team is de-bent, and we see him briefly in the next episode, looking dejected, like he's deathly ill or something. He looks like he's about to keel over and die. He then disappears from the plot. He dies, in a narrative sense; we never see him again and his role in the story has ended. Lin stages a rescue for her fellow metalbenders, but upon the revelation that they, too, have lost their bending, she shakes her head and says "I'm sorry", and they are then dismissed quickly from the tale. When Korra goes to confront Amon on Avatar Aang Memorial island, she is ambushed by Amon, who tells her he will destroy her. To be destroyed in this story is to lose one's bending.
The end result of this is the prevailing idea that a person's life is over if they lose bending at the hands of Amon, the antagonistic force of this series. Amon becomes synonymous with death. He doesn't physically hurt anyone, but they might as well be dead, because they can't bend. They're worthless. We never see a person coping or finding a new life after de-bending (until the very end), and this is important. Through out the story, we are told time and time again, that yes, Korra (and by extension the audience), if that label you use to define yourself is lost, you might as well be dead. All your fears are true.
The negativity of this message is never used appropriately to send a positive message to people watching. Tarlokk lost his bending, so he kills himself and his brother. Korra loses her bending, and although she is surrounded by loved ones, she doesn't see them. She doesn't see that she is indeed still a bender. She doesn't see her self worth extending past her identity as Avatar, even at the very, very end of the story. Mako tells her he loves her regardless of her status of Avatar, but she doesn't care. She projects this right onto him and then leaves.
She goes out and stares down a cliff. A single tear falls into the greater ocean, like her soul joining her avatar brethren. Then, in a completely atonal event, Aang shows up, tells her everything is fixed. What just happened there? The only thing I saw was Korra giving into her despair. She doesn't grit her teeth and deny that the only thing she is a label. She collapses in a heap and weeps openly. Then, she is finally rewarded with everything she hoped for.
WHAT THE love KIND OF MESSAGE IS THAT?! The creators are telling all the young people watching that despair is the correct emotion. Our heroine falls to her knees and gives in completely to feelings of loss, and is immediately rewarded.
And that is truly, on the most fundamental level, what is wrong with The Legend of Korra. The show did not have Korra at a truly low moment during the story, where she had to confront her greatest fear, her greatest weakness: that she only thought of herself as the Avatar. That she was defined by a simple label given to her at a young age. That she was who she was when she was three years old. She never grows up. Having her lose her bending was a good storytelling technique that was inevitable. It had to happen. However, it should have come earlier, to allow for the most important thing the show could have conveyed:
Never give in to despair.
Korra loses her bending, she loses part of herself, and she never has to learn that life goes on. If she were to lose her bending mid-season, and forced to confront the fact that she's still alive, still breathing, and there are people that love her, and for love's sake, is still the Avatar. She then emerges anew, like a phoenix rising up! She has gained insight and grows the love up into an adult. Then, she achieves the Avatar State, emerging out the other side with all four bending disciplines. She's rewarded for her revelation, and an important lesson is taught to the young people watching. Post-despair Korra is now more powerful than she ever was before, and she earned it by not giving in to the darkness. She may be powerful, but dramatic tension is not dispelled, because she knows she can't just punch Amon, but must beat him in another way (like an airbender!)
And no, it wouldnt' have to be a lengthy debate about the merits of the Equalist movement. She would trick Amon into revealing himself as a bender and a fraud, perhaps by overpowering him using the Avatar State, and he uses bending against her as his own defense mechanism. She wins by the power of love, but not like we saw, where its just her love for Mako. It's her love for herself that gave her the power to defeat Amon and expose him.
All in all, this is why I'm disappointed by Korra. Because as a children's show it sends a very bad message to children.
.......
The teardrop symbolizes this: She's lost her bending. She doesn't want to be with all her friends and loved ones. She tells her crush, Mako, to love off. She goes and stares out at the ocean, and her little tear drop falls into a wider body. This is her thinking about rejoining all the other Avatars in the cycle of reincarnation. This is the only way she can feel whole again. And by giving into these feelings, the Avatars of the past all show up and give her everything she thinks she needs: bending. They tell her yes, that feeling of despair was correct, you have achieved spiritual awareness, have everything you considred important back. She'll never really get it that people loved her despite her being the Avatar. She never had to discover that fact.
And that's why the show failed.
Again, we see Korra failed to even portray a positive message in the show. So here's where we stand after season 1;
no character development
no consequences
a complete disregard for many of the morals lessons emphasized in TLA.
I don't know what happened with Mike and Bryan that led them to mess up so badly but I am immensely disappointed.
