[00:00] The first season of Netflix's Avatar, The Last Airbender, was better than the M Night Shyamalan movie, and that's pretty much the nicest thing I can say about it, except
[00:12] perhaps that it had the potential to be better. A second season is a second chance, in some ways it's the moment that a show truly becomes itself. It's where one piece found the footing to step up from merely good adaptation to one of
[00:28] the greatest of all time, but then it's also where Stranger Things proved the Russo's had exactly one season's worth of ideas, and started our torturous descent into the bottomless
[00:40] mystery box. In setting out on their second outing, Natla's showrunners found themselves at the crossroads of these two outcomes, with a chance to double down on what worked and discard what didn't,
[00:52] but also a risk of, you know, just f***ing it up some more. So, which way did they go? It's still better than the Shyamalan movie, except that's over faster.
[01:09] This review is brought to you by ZenLisZone Zero, Hoyo vs. Gorgeous free-to-play urban fantasy character action game from mobile consoles and PC, which just rolled over to version 3.0
[01:21] with its sleepwalkers confession update, bringing with it a whole new floating city to explore, whose blend of cyberpunk sensibilities and British urbanism makes for the most visually striking map in the game to date, not to mention its densest.
[01:36] They had to add a whole new grappling hook mechanic just to help you get around alongside extra modes, an upgraded side quest progression system, ray tracing and high res support for high res systems, and a bunch of other quality of life upgrades.
[01:50] With that new area, there naturally comes a new chapter to the story, kicking off season 3 with new mysteries, new factions and, of course, new playable characters, like Volina, the game's very first wind agent who adds the elegance of a mature woman to your squad,
[02:07] and a whole new elemental affinity to the game's combat system, and Norma, a zany fire-aligned mad scientist with an oversized ego to complement her undersized frame.
[02:20] Since 3.0's such a big version number, the dev teams added some huge free rewards to match including a playable agent, Pyrois, who you can unlock simply by following the main story along with two mindscapes and their exclusive W engine, plus a free campus style outfit for
[02:38] your protagonist. On top of all the usual boop-on and encrypted master tape goodies you get just for checking in, there's a whopping 1600 polychrome up for grabs as extra rewards this update cycle,
[02:52] all of which is just a taste of the mega-rewards coming with the 3.1 anniversary update, so stay tuned for those. For all these goodies and more, all you gotta do is click the link in the doobly-doo to
[03:05] download Zendless Zone Zero today. One thing that hasn't really changed since the last season of Natla is how the second one starts, opening on a scene of Fire Nation's soldiers hunting down innocent civilians, followed
[03:19] by a character assassination of one of the original's most geriatric cast members. To be fair, this fight scene where the gang defends the refugees of Omashu is nowhere near as cringy as season 1's Wukma, we can do genocide on screen now, but to be balanced, live-action
[03:37] grand-grans mind-numbing exposition dump has nothing on what they did to my boy Bumi. The whole idea of Omashu's king instantly surrendering to protect his people from the Fire Nation is already a wee bit undermined by, you know, the first scene showing those same people
[03:55] being hunted like animals while he sits back doing f*** all. But it's Nat Flix's choice to have him kicking back in a polatial royal prison cell that really puts the nail in his hanging metal coffin, you know, the one that he's not in in this
[04:10] show. The way the original played it, there was a shrewd self-sacrificing wisdom in Bumi's
[04:23] choice not to fight, to wait and watch for the perfect chance to turn the tables on the invaders. But this version just makes him look like a lazy, crazy asshole, all talk of neutral Jin coming
[04:35] off as a half-assed excuse to hold up in a nice hotel while his city burns, like,
[04:48] What the f*** are you even talking about, bro? And to make matters worse, we don't even get to enjoy the cool fight on the scaffolding and slides that's supposed to introduce us to Team Azula because instead the episodes
[05:03] got to immediately shift gears to adapting the serpent's pass for some reason. Just jump in right to the midpoint of book two and making that the intro? Why not?
[05:15] Actually, I can think of one really good reason why not, which is Appa, who, what with them not having been to the library yet, hasn't been kidnapped yet, meaning they could just fly over the dangerous mountain trail, which the entire point of it in the original show
[05:32] was to demonstrate how hard they have it without Appa. Even if they have to go back in fourth a few times to ferry over all the refugees, it would still be faster, and they have four Kyoshi warriors, Team Avatar, and a choke point that they
[05:45] can defend if the Fire Nation does catch up with them before they're done doing the back in fourth, so there's just no reason not to do that, except, I guess, that it means the show doesn't end up cutting another big scary sea monster, which does lead to a pretty solid
[06:01] CGI set piece, but I really don't think that setting that up was worth forcing themselves to tell us how scary Azula is, instead of being able to show it in one of the coolest fights
[06:13] from the original series. Everyone from a mosque, he's got a thousand and one scary stories about Zuko's sister, Azula. She's the one who's slashed and burned the city. So she's actually worse than Zuko, is that even possible? It really just went with the first take there, huh?
[06:27] The lag, the library, also means that Team Avatar doesn't actually, you know, have anything important to tell the Earth King when they do get to bossing, say. So they throw in this random scene of side-to-mechanist, given a little roadside PowerPoint on stuff
[06:42] we already know about Sozin's comment from the Winter Solstice, and that becomes the intel that they desperately need to deliver, because I guess nobody in the Earth Kingdom Army has an Almanac or a telescope.
[06:55] The Almanac doesn't just create chances to exposition dump, though. It also leaves space for some CW core flirting.
[07:08] You should eat it. You're being very rude about my picture, try it. I think I may owe Riverdale an apology. The B plot of Zuko and Iro hanging out on a random farm is a total drag if I'm being
[07:21] honest, and with only one episode of setup compared to the like 4 or 5 that it took in the original series, Zuko's decision to split off and go it alone at the end comes completely out of nowhere.
[07:33] And then the C plot is just about Azula explaining this crazy master plan to invade bossing, say, that never actually happens or goes anywhere, and then her dad tells her to go find her brother.
[07:45] While this other guy who's like a big Azula Simp takes charge of the operation, we do at least get a fight scene with May and Tylee out of that, but it's as dimly lit as it is poorly justified. With Azula just telling them, you have 10 seconds to kill each other, or I'll kill both
[08:01] of you as a little loyalty pop quiz. Which turns the subtext of her friends being scared of her into explicit hit the second screen audience over the head with it text, and just fundamentally misunderstands all of these
[08:15] characters. Yes, Azula sees her friends as tools, but she still wants them to like her. She craves their validation so much that she literally loses her mind when they do finally
[08:28] reject her. I just don't think that she would ever do this. May definitely wouldn't be this gung ho about killing Tylee, and by making this our first real introduction to how Azula's side kicks fight, they end up coming off as squabbling
[08:43] goons who don't really like each other, instead of the terrifyingly united girly pop murder force that they are in the anime. Which would really be a problem if they bothered to adapt the chase, but luckily the next episode
[08:58] only uses like three total scenes from it, except it's not lucky at all, because it uses those scenes to completely ruin both of Book 2's best episodes. Zuko alone is Avatar at its most gripping and dramatic.
[09:12] Some of the best world building and character development in the entire series. It highlights the innate good in Zuko right out of the gate, when even though he's starving, he refuses to rob a pregnant couple of f*****.
[09:24] Nevermind, I forgot this was the edgy grim dark version, which kind of makes him a massive hypocrite when he then steps in to stop some soldiers from robbing a small child. But hey, at least that whole relationship still lets us explore the irrationality of the us
[09:40] versus them mentality that could cause somebody to hate a firebender who's protecting them from earthbenders who are trying to rob them, right, you know, like the fundamental theme of the episode, at least that's still there, right?
[09:54] I'm just gonna put a little pin in that while I talk about the other episode they f***** up. The blind bandit is Avatar at its most fun, introducing us to Toth, who is the greatest and gets to show off just how the greatest she is into absolutely delightful pro wrestling-flavored
[10:11] fight scenes. It introduces some of the most memorable minor characters in the entire series and gives us some of Avatar's most iconic one-liners.
[10:24] What a chat. They tried, I guess, except, you know, with how they set that scene up which doesn't actually make any sense. These two dudes just come up to them out of nowhere, specifically to tell them about Earthrumble.
[10:39] But then when they ask, they just give them the nanny of business as a prank on these random strangers that they overheard talking in a market, utterly bizarre writing.
[10:51] Almost as bizarre as how they chose this episode to be the one where Ang just kind of spontaneously develops a sense of humor and whimsy, dragging the whole refugee camp to town to see the world's largest croco rhino egg.
[11:05] In a vacuum, I don't really mind this plot beat, having them argue with Kataro over whether or not the roadside attraction is the real deal or some earth bent up scam, honestly feels like something the original series might have done.
[11:18] But to have Ang just transform into a goofball this late in this show, where he was glumface McBrutey pants all last season and went through a whole last puberty off screen, creates this
[11:30] very weird feeling of his character regressing in what's supposed to be the book where he grows up. And it sure doesn't help that Gordon Cormier's acting skills completely failed to grow up
[11:42] with him. I need to understand neutral jing, and I've seen you do it. Can you just show me how you worth it? Everything's vibrating all around us, squirrels run across tree branches, ants carry little bits
[11:54] of sand through the moss, we're all connected through the earth. Even you. What's the moment you walked into my house twinkle toes? I bet the badger most made you feel safe. This still did self-conscious, dare I say no a schnapp core performance is bad enough when
[12:11] he's being positive, but it makes him insufferable at his angstiest. So we even got in front of the king in the first place. And that worked really great, didn't it?
[12:23] Please note that I spelled angst with two A's there, and feel free to applaud. Thankfully this is the fun episode, except the Zuko parts, which are quite angsty with 1A.
[12:35] So we don't really have to deal with that just yet, but we do have to deal with them completely butchering Tof's first fight, where instead of a whole stable of earth-bending personas, earth rumble comes down to her and one other guy, the boulder, who doesn't even really act like
[12:51] the boulder and their fight sucks. She takes him down very slowly, with none of the brutal efficiency that let her take on 7 guys at once in the original version's finale, and worst of all, we don't even get a shitty
[13:03] watered down version of that finale because they replaced it AND the ending of Zuko alone with the big Azula fight from the chase. In the Zuko alone plot, instead of exposing himself by trying to defend the family that put
[13:18] him up from evil earthbenders, Zuko just abandons them when he hears, and ends up running into his sister while chasing down Ang, leading to that whole showdown with everyone versus
[13:34] her, which of course the kid just happens to be there to see, and that's why he throws a rocket Zuko who actually deserves it in this version, because instead of protecting
[13:46] them from people who were trying to rob them, he burned down half the f***ing town to try to capture some innocent kid, crazy how they made that less morally nuanced and mature than
[13:59] the cartoon for literal children. But that's not all, because instead of dramatically showing her parents who she really is in the ring where she defined herself and having that motivate her decision to leave with the
[14:11] Avatar, Tof just kind of butts into the middle of all them fighting with Azula and says, whoa there twinkle pose, you didn't tell me I'd get to kill people, f*** my family, I'm
[14:23] team Avatar now, baby. In light of all that, it is actually very impressive how much Miyako manages to feel like Tof, even while she's saying bullshit like that, she really is perfectly cast for the role, but good
[14:38] acting can only do so much with scripts this bad.
[14:53] The plot pending does start to work a little bit better as we settle in the bossing say for the rest of the season, but not immediately. Before arriving in the city, Episode 3 sets up the start of Aang's Earthbending training
[15:05] from bitter work, which then gets interrupted by Tof's teacher and the boulder trying to capture her, only for them all to get distracted, giving Aang Earthbending advice in what is honestly a really funny scene, but then they don't actually conclude that story arc before they get
[15:22] to the city, so Tof ends up having to do that bit where she yells at Aang until he figures out how to Earthbend in the middle of a fancy party scene. That said, the fancy party itself is one of the better parts of the entire show.
[15:36] There's lots of snooty gossiping, backhanded compliments and other social maneuvering that add quite a bit of depth and texture to the high society politics of the Earth Kingdom, and everyone gets their own thing to do here.
[15:50] Like Aang actually ends up befriending long fang who positions himself as an ally to try to control the avatar, which I actually think is a much more effective way of establishing how slimy and manipulative he is than just having him present as this obviously evil
[16:07] scheming, viseer type guy in the original series. Then Katara helps Tof stick it to these snooty bullies. Your friend? We went through a lot to get here. How could we not be friends? What are you talking about?
[16:19] You guys met last episode, you've been through literally two things, wait, no I'm trying to be positive here, I really like how Soka strikes up an early friendship with the
[16:31] professor from the library episode, that's really fun and kind of plays up how he's a scientist type character, until he's reminded of all his girlfriend, trauma and goes to drown his sorrows in cactus juice, which the show just turns in the member Berry's garbage.
[16:47] It's a giant mushroom, maybe it's friendly. I don't understand why they can't just like make a new joke about him hallucinating something that's actually in the room and he can actually look at instead of randomly quoting the scene
[17:01] from the cartoon, absent the context of there's a big mushroom cloud over there, dog shit writing. Why did I like this episode again? Oh right, the bee plot. All of this gets intercut with Zuko's side of the serpent's past story where he teams up
[17:17] with Jets freedom fighters to steal food for a boat full of refugees and when you juxtapose that against all the high society stuff, plus the bit where the gang visits Danny Pudy and the other refugees in the lower quarter, it ends up painting a pretty comprehensive portrait
[17:32] of the social stratification of bossing, say. It's the closest that maybe any of this show gets to actually having a coherent theme and the episodes that follow it really benefit from it being able to leave a lot of its thematic
[17:47] and plot threads dangling. By spending four straight hours in bossing, say we get a lot of time to soak in the uneasy atmosphere of this city ruled over by secret police and explore the factions vying for control
[18:03] of it behind the scenes. Danny Pudy getting disappeared is also a really good way of raising the stakes of that storyline even if it also furthers the sad Sakaside plot, which I'm not a fan of.
[18:15] And overall, I think that turning the Die Lee plot into more of a background story thread instead of the dominant problem of the week for a couple of episodes does wonders for the sense of intrigue that it evokes.
[18:29] It also gives us time to really live with the characters in the city, which is pretty cool, especially since the production actually went and built quite a few practical sets to depict bossing, say, instead of hollow decking everything like they did last season.
[18:44] Instead of being contained to a single episode, the tales of bossing, say, get to be spread around as subplots, which I mean, they do kind of royally f*** up everything about leaves from the vine, except the bit where Iroh forgives that mugger.
[18:58] And since Oppa hasn't been kidnapped yet, they can't really do Momo's story at all, but they are able to draw out Jin and Zuko flirting with each other over multiple episodes now,
[19:10] which makes their eventual date feel like a proper payoff with emotional build up and what not. And Saka gets to have his little high coup battle, which they even turn into a bonding moment with Toth.
[19:22] I really appreciated that, because they are easily the best actors on team Avatar, and it was fun watching them interact without anger dragging them down. Toth also gets to go through her own little live-action, original subplot about her parents secretly
[19:36] selling weapons to the Fire Nation, which I guess it's not really original so much as they just copypasted Asami's arc from Season 1 of Korra. But that was one of the least bad parts of Korra, and it gives her something to do while
[19:50] we wait for her to, you know, get kidnapped and invent metal-bending. It would have been nice if she could have just done the whole spa day thing with Katara instead, but sadly the gang's waterbender is busy being a secret superhero.
[20:04] So yeah, they just kind of moved the whole painted lady bit from Book 3 to here and made it into an ongoing storyline about Katara sneaking medicine into the lower ring, helping
[20:21] poor people with their problems, stopping Jett from doing a pogrom on the city's Fire Nation defectors, and other such things. She even teams up with the blue spirit at a couple points to dish out vigilante justice.
[20:35] It's fucking terrible. It completely divorces the painted lady from her original purpose of humanizing the civilians of the Fire Nation and fleshing out their culture, not to mention her status as a river spirit,
[20:49] which was supposed to be cover for Katara waterbending, plus putting on a disguise wouldn't do anything to stop the die-leaf from identifying her since they're gonna see her walking out of
[21:01] the Avatar villa in the disguise, narratively, logically, it doesn't make any goddamn sense except perhaps in the sense that someone in the writer's room with some kind of agenda
[21:14] wanted to shoehorn in more scenes with her in Zuko. I don't want to get too tinfoil-hattie about that though since someone else in the writer's room did not do Zuko. Any favors with his side of the whole vigilante subplot?
[21:28] Through this season's tragic flashback sequences, we discover that the blue spirit isn't a character that Zuko invented, but rather the hero of his favorite bedtime stories, mommy used to
[21:40] read him. In the broad strokes, that isn't that different from the original context of the mask being a prop from his mom's favorite play, Love Amongst the Dragons, but when you drill down to the
[21:52] more specific details, it becomes the difference between using some theater props you had lying around to make your own superhero costume and going out lorping as Batman in real life.
[22:05] The fact that Zhao didn't fall on his ass laughing, the second the blue spirit showed up, is now retroactively the single most embarrassing thing about his entire character.
[22:17] But speaking of Zhao, this part of the story is also where the characters finally get to one she tongs library, which might prompt you to wonder how they manage to get all the way out of the city and into the desert to find that when there's only, you know, a couple
[22:32] episodes left to go, and that's the neat thing. They don't. In this version of Avatar, the legendary long lost spirit library that Earth Kingdom scholars have been seeking for generations is just a random collapsed building in the middle of downtown
[22:48] embossing, say, I will never complain about live action one piece making its world feel too small ever again. Putting that aside, though, and the bizarre choice to make this where live action jet dies.
[23:09] The episode overall is pretty good. For starters, they did a fantastic job of bringing the library itself to life with a mix of practical sets and the volume, which is kind of perfectly suited to creating massive, physically
[23:23] impossible spaces like this. Avatar's Yang Chen and Kiyoshi also both show up here with the former kind of just being there to deliver all the exposition about the Avatar cycle that Guru Pateek is supposed
[23:35] to give to Ang, but you know, they don't have time to put him in the show, so she just does it instead. Kiyoshi appears before Tof to tell her all about the day of Black Sun, which, more wise,
[23:47] is really weird, but giving Avatar's two most badass Lady Earthbenders a chance to interact is fun enough fan service to justify the contrivance, I guess.
[23:59] Juan Chitong is also beautifully animated and genuinely scary when he starts freaking out on everyone, and while it is definitely less poetic than having Professor Zay's lust for
[24:11] knowledge drive him to bury himself with the library, the way the owl spirit just fucking marks him after he goes out of his way to tell him about Team Avatar using his knowledge
[24:24] for evil because snitches get stitches is hilarious. There's a lot of good stuff in the rest of the episode, too, like Tof finally getting her heart to heart with Iro over that common cup of tea, which gives him the push that
[24:40] he needs to really open up to Zuko, and that relationship is still the emotional bedrock of this entire adaptation, so that's seeing really hits, plus we get maybe my favorite Azula moment in the entire live-action series.
[25:06] But unfortunately all of that just ends up leading us into the worst parts of the entire show to date. The library is of course where Aapa finally gets bison-napped in this version by the die-lea
[25:20] instead of sandbenders since you know they're in the city, and we're supposed to feel all sad about that, but that's a little difficult to do when Aapa is barely in the show and barely interacts with Aang, or anyone else because all that fur makes him such a huge
[25:36] CG budget sink. We can't really feel his absence when his presence was limited to a few pillow shots, which makes it pretty challenging to relate to this version of Aang in his grief, and that's kind of
[25:50] a problem because he's a giant f***ing asshole about it. Aang also didn't take this well in the original of course, but there is a world of
[26:08] difference between a 12-year-old boy lashing out over losing his oldest friend and a 16-year-old young man throwing that same tantrum, especially filtered through acting this monotonous.
[26:21] What's sympathetic in the one is just pathetic in the other, and while I didn't like this Aang up till now, Episode 6 made me actively hate him. With Team Avatar now finally having a real reason to talk to the Earth King, not to mention
[26:36] questions about Aapa, the episode focuses on them breaking into the palace with the help of a general from the outer wall who's opposed to the die-lea, which does lead to a bit of fun heist planning, which Aang refuses to stop whining through, and the guards have
[26:56] to go and get their coats. And he keeps on whining into the heist, which really doesn't help after
[27:17] long. Feng comes in and starts exposing everyone's secret superhero identities and illegal arms deals in order to shred their credibility with the Earth King. For the villain's part, that is actually a very clever plan, and I do really like how he controls
[27:32] the flow of the scene, twisting everyone's words and deeds to his own ends. Ultimately, I think this is a better version of the character than we got in the original, and Shin Han plays him perfectly, it's just a shame that these are the heroes he has to
[27:46] work against. Conceptually, I don't hate the idea of having Team Avatar lose the battle for the Earth King's
[27:59] trust and being on the back foot, but I do hate how the writers made them react to that. This change takes us well off the rails to the original season finale, in which the gang lets their guard down and splits up after beating Long Feng.
[28:14] So in order to force the story back on that path for maximum fan service while still completely f***ing up the ending, everyone has to scream at each other now until they go their separate ways.
[28:26] Toth and Katara both being extremely defensive about how the villain twisted their own secrets against them, while refusing to listen to each other's explanations, Saka failing to stand up for either his sister or his friend who confided in him about her family having
[28:42] perhaps committed some light treason, and worst of all, Aang, at a moment when his cartoon counterpart would absolutely be rallying everyone to search for Aapa and stop the Di Lee however
[28:56] they can, just giving up, whining, it's over, he beat us, and it's everyone's fault, but mine! The fact that he's still mad at Toth for letting Aapa get captured instead of letting
[29:11] him and everyone else get killed is just ridiculous, that's supposed to be a knee jerk irrational first stage of grief reaction, not a sustained source of anger for his character, hanging
[29:25] on to an intrusive thought like that for days is actually clinically insane, and his reasons for yelling at Katara are even more contrived, to the point they had to make him act like
[29:38] literally the opposite of himself.
[29:59] The first season had a real problem with sanding down character flaws, reducing dialogue to dry exchanges of exposition, but this is a gross over correction, moving production from
[30:11] the no characterisation factory over to the mischaracterisation factory is not an improvement. I'm not saying every change is bad, when Azula convinces Zuko to help her take down
[30:39] the avatar, instead of dangling the carrot of daddy's approval one more time after he rejected it, here she talks about how Ozai is always pitting them against each other while
[30:51] their mother always wanted them to get along. For Zuko at this point in his journey, that's a much more compelling pitch, one that builds on the emotions of that big heart to heart that he just had with Katara instead of simply
[31:06] rejecting them, and it's also a much more compelling angle for Azula who in this version was literally planning to murder Zuko right up to this moment, but changes her mind because
[31:18] she sees this chance to prove she's not the monster that their mom always feared. That is legitimately great writing, but moments like it feel like accidents when you find them
[31:32] buried in a stinking pile of a script that ruins Toph's big breakthrough by having her explain out loud for the people on their phones that she just invented metal bending.
[31:47] And makes long feng unironically hit ang with the old, we're not so different, you and I. Some of the worst changes though are found fittingly in the final fight.
[32:09] This whole season has serious problems with the flow of its action, the choreography taking on this unpleasant staccato rhythm where it looks like every goon who's not currently fighting is just kind of waiting around to run up and get punched, and the editing makes
[32:24] the battles between the main characters feel borderline turn-based. And this showdown showcases some of the worst of that.
[32:51] It's in these moments that are nearly one to one with the animation that we really see how bad it is, but that's just the prelude to the real f*** up which comes when Ang enters the Avatar state to protect Katara.
[33:05] Instead of setting up the little rock meditation tent to protect himself in a moment of vulnerability, he just falls into a trance two feet in front of Azula who naturally shoots some lightning at him and misses the meditating child at point blank range.
[33:22] That's already stupid if you're familiar with the cartoon, but this version of Azula is even faster and deadlier with her lightning to an almost comical degree. Earlier this same episode she kills an entire room full of the kingdom's strongest earthbenders
[33:38] in two seconds with one shot that none of them could block when she was right in front of them, yet because the writers apparently thought a big dumb CGI powerflex would be cooler than
[33:51] having her read the flow of battle sneak away and sucker punch the hero out of his big shonen transformation. She's only able to hit Ang after he avatars states all over her and Zuko and the Dileee
[34:05] has her on her knees one blow away from victory and then just gives up for no reason. We know from the nearly identical moment in the original Ozai fight that he could be encasing
[34:19] her in stone here, he could hit her with some Dileee handcuffs or waterbend and freeze her or do literally anything besides just sit back and let her kill him. There are also several different ways she could have actually won the upper hand and still
[34:35] earned that kill, like maybe he does earthbend her into a prison but then the Dileee lets her out for that cheap shot or maybe she could fake miss a shot that Zuko then fires into
[34:49] Ang's back with the lightning redirection that Iroh taught him in the third episode of the season and then he doesn't do anything with it for the entire thing because apparently hack hollywood writing 101 doesn't include Chekhov's gun but none of that happens so this
[35:05] change that was supposed to make the fight more badass or whatever just ends up making both the villain and the hero look ridiculously incompetent all seemingly in a contrived effort
[35:19] to prove the other villain right and possibly set us on track to an ending where Ang decides
[35:33] that he should just give up his deeply held beliefs and kill Ozai. Maybe I'm overestimating how Grim dark they want to make this thing I really hope I am but it kind of feels stupid to hope for anything after what I just sat through.
[35:49] Natless Season 2 is in many ways a market improvement over the first. The characters are finally able to be funny and joyful even if they aren't when it really counts. The dialogue while often clumsy and redundant is lighter on exposition and heavier on
[36:05] characterization which sometimes isn't wrong, the best actors in the cast get a lot more time to shine and bounce off of each other. It's kind of contrived making Sai a recurring character but I like Danny Pudi enough I'm willing
[36:18] to forgive it. The productions moved away from CGI fakery to embrace real practical set design that makes the world of Avatar feel more tangible than ever. The effects are cleaner overall and more reactive to the bending motions of the actors but
[36:34] it's just not enough. Even if there was still room for more course correction nothing here inspires any faith that the writers could get it to where it needs to be. And with Book 3 having already been filmed to avoid future aging issues the show simply
[36:51] is what it is now and will be forever more and I just do not like what it is. A show that bends over backwards to recreate iconic imagery from the original while gutting
[37:04] the characters that made those moments iconic to begin with, a show incapable of committing to either the original version of the story it's telling or the darker reinterpretation that it wants to tell, a show that works slavishly with its effects and production design to
[37:21] make the world of Avatar feel real yet fails at nearly every turn to fill it with real people. It's still better than the M Night Shyamalan movie but it is a stark reminder of how lucky
[37:34] we are to have things like speed racer and Netflix one piece. I'm Jeff Thue, professional Avatar fan and I'd rather be penguin sledding.