Lurker > SeabassDebeste

okay last contentless bump for now
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

KORRA - Season 3, Episode 11

Recap: Mako and Bolin commandeer an airship and escape Ba Sing Se with their family. They reunite with Korra and deliver Zaheer's message: Meet me at the Northern Air Temple. Zaheer gets to the meeting spot first and explains the hostage situation to the Air Nation.

I don't have a ton to say about this episode, oddly. It's enjoyable enough to watch, but the thrust of it moves pieces around, somewhat less interested in paying off or being its own story.

The first half of the episode is an action escape sequence. Is it a little ridiculous that Mako and Bolin escape so cleanly with the airship? Well, sure. But let's not let that get in the way of a cool action scene. Could there be some real emotion in Grandma's decision to stay? Well, yeah. It's a sadly compressed scene that could easily have breathed better without, say, an episode of Kai chasing bison poachers.

Wait, but let me cool it with the butthurt for the moment. I do like the wind-down scene where everyone reunites. Mako's awkwardness is back on full display. Even more awkward: Grandma calling Asami really beautiful as the Avatar, and when Korra reappears, switching compliments entirely - 'You are very muscular for a woman!' Lin is also typically grumpy and fun here: 'Good, you guys aren't dead.' ('Don't get all mushy on me, Chief!')

So moving on to the obvious extended climax of the episode - four benders take down the entire fledgeling Air Nation. The action scenes are spectacular, and I love that Tenzin is stronger in the Air Temple than he was in Republic City - it's an art that combats humans much stronger than it does metal. I'd say he has the upper hand on Zaheer in single combat, which is GREAT. It's only when multiple Red Lotus can come at him at once that he succumbs. In a typical move, you can't really have the mentor winning the biggest battles, even if he's the strongest.

Kya and Bumi are also wonderful here, with their final fall being a hilarious echo of their first spotlight episode, the sibling conflict one.

I have just one major disappointment with the assault on the Air Temple, which is that the showrunners teased me so bad with Kai's death. I mean, intellectually I should've known they'd never do it, but I got so hype seeing him getting shot out of the air. His return at the end of the episode unfortunately was a tragic punctuation on an otherwise sterling second half.

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* Pretty lukewarm on Iroh in this episode.

* Meelo is the f***ing worst. It's unclear whether he or Kai should die first. Maybe they could have an Agne... Kai. Huh, one more thing ruined for me by Kai.

* I don't really care for Combustion Woman's style of fighting. That said, it makes her an incredibly useful support fighter, which does work well.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Not_an_Owl posted...

Zaheer killing the Earth Queen is a total Darth Vader moment.

God, everything Zaheer does is great. I think he is straight-up the best villain in all of Avatar.

Hmm.

Well, Zaheer isn't likely to make it out of Season 3, which sucks. Azula and Ozai might not be as good per scene, but they have that epic, personal, series-spanning feel that Zaheer lacks due to the structure of the show.

BlackDra90n posted...

Zaheer is pretty fantastic.

Even when I was watching TLA I thought that air benders could be super powerful cause they could just drain air from people's lungs. Glad to see it in action.

It's neat how it seems like the creators paid attention to the fan community. I like that we've gotten both Waterbending and Airbending villains in TLOK. Hama was a minor Waterbending villain, but generally speaking, you notice that the bad guys are the ones using Bloodbending and offensive Ice (as we know from Katara in TLA.)
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Moving right along.

KORRA - Season 3, Episode 10

Recap: Zaheer brings Mako and Bolin as prisoners to the Earth Queen and strikes a deal: intel on her Airbenders for Korra. However, Korra and Asami manage to escape captivity in the desert. With no leverage to be had from the Earth Queen, Zaheer assassinates her and incites riots in Ba Sing Se.

Well, it's going down now.

Zaheer continues to be great. I love that his voice isn't actually gruff - the dude actually kind of sounds like a dork, like Zuko. He seems genuinely bummed out in 3x08 when his little airglider staff gets ripped up by the Steelbenders. I dunno if it's intentional, but it doesn't detract from him at all - especially when he's ripping the air out of the Earth Queen's lungs.(How's that for finding a silver lining? You miss out on the Avatar, but at least you get to throw the capital of the Earth Kingdom into disarray.) Or how about when he shows up at Mako and Bolin's cell, they lunge... and he KO's both in one hit before asking them to deliver a message. Guy's just so reasonable-sounding... even when the thing he's saying is, 'No need for alarm. All I need is to make an announcement to the whole city!'

One reason why the image of BSS's walls falling is so powerful - the segmentation of the city. We know what it means for the outer walls to fall, but ever since TLA, we've known that the inner walls protect the upper class from the smallfolk in the Outer Rings. The groundwork has been laid for what this means politically. I'm getting hype!

Hannibal Lekorra and Asami escaping is incredibly predictable, but it's not awful. There are some minor bright spots in it. The guard who's way nicer than he has any business being - Korra actually has to deal with him after escaping, in a rare touch. The desert and the giant animal underneath it generally feel like a Star Wars situation ('That's no spirit...' I can't be the only one who wanted to shout 'IT'S A SPACE STATION!' Korra gets blamed for Spirits like she's Obama, and Lin is subdued and grumpy - classic Lin! - when they reunite: 'Thanks for ditchin' me back at Zaofu...' she mutters, but we all know she's not gonna do anything about it.

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* As for Mako/Bolin and Bolin's failure to Metalbend... it's kind of embarrassing that the Earth Kingdom is using metal bars to hold its prisoners. This Bolin-Metalbending-angst arc is really dumb.

* Awesome beginning to this episode as Bolin chats with his captors about their time in captivity, talking about the stories they'd make up to amuse themselves... and (seemingly accurately!) shipping Ghazan and Ming-Hua. (I don't think I consciously realized it before, but she's physically armless. That explains why she's so psycho-eyed!)

* Once again, the Earth Kingdom is the Hufflepuff House of the Avatar universe. At least this time the Dai Li are getting punked by the Red Lotus...

* Asami gets in a great dis on Cabbage Corp, lmao.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

argh
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

thanks for the bumps

this will happen relatively soon
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

i'm so sorry

if you ever want to meet to talk about it, let me know.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness