Korra Discussion Post: 'When Extremes Meet'

[whitelotusmods]

I won't be around this weekend, so posting this early:

This is a post where you can discuss this week's episode and link to your own reaction posts.

spoilers up to 1x08 below.

Comments

[eralkfang]

Here's my reaction, which can be really summed up as "AAAAAAHHHHH".

[iosonochesono]

Ugh I wish I could watch it. I haven't found any links yet and Nick doesn't do online videos for LOK out of the USA apparently. Or at least not in Ecuador.

[deird1]

It's up at Just Dubs. (Finally.)

[jadedmusings]

I love that the show is so fast-paced, but I almost wish there were more than twelve episodes in Book 1 because, holy shit this is moving fast.

Also, WHY CAN HE BLOOD BEND WITHOUT THE FULL MOON???? And did Katara discover this later in life, or did she never try blood bending again like she swore? Did Katara teach the method to someone else because it was necessary (and that flashback scene with the courtroom looked like blood bending, so maybe she had to retaliate)?

I mean, I can totally buy that in the last 60 or 70 years people have made the connection that blood=water, so Katara wouldn't be the only person to know how. I'm just curious as to how he became so powerful.

[iosonochesono]

It might not be that he is so powerful that he can bend without the full moon - it may be he's found a way to do the same thing using less energy. Same with lightning being once-rare but now a common fire-bending practice - they've had 60-70 years to work on it. Find a way to do the same thing with less energy, maybe you don't need as much moon or sun.

[mentalguru]

Oh go DIAF Tarrlock.

And make it Korra be the one who wields said fire.

/joking

But great episode all in all and I freaked out a fair bit at the blood bending.

[rosabelle]

Gaaaaaaaaah. So good.

"You're our Avatar, too."

[killerkaleidoscope]

ALL THOSE PEOPLE. And poor Korra, and all her scared sad faces. (And the one 'dying of Ikki-induced embarrassment' rageface--Ikki, you and Meelo are an adorable force for evil and I love you. Then Korra and Asami do the pretending-that-never-happened thing in the hope that it just never comes up again and I smirk into my steepled hands in anticipation for the episode where they work out that old issue and ~*bond*~ some more. By telling each other how awesome they are and touching each other... with their faces. >:D)

On a more serious note, I'm pretty sure having a huge crowd of people look at Korra with hope and terror in her eyes as she tries to save them--and then having them watch her fail--is among her worst nightmares. She grew up wonderfully confident in herself as the Avatar, but that resolve has been getting torn apart since the day she showed up in Republic City. The culmination of that in the near-brawl with Tarrlok in front of the trapped crowd must've nearly killed her inside.

Where was her coat, though? Where were everyone's coats, out and about on that cold night? Korra knows that weather can kill you if you're not prepared, and I would have loved to see the return of Korra's Southern Water Tribe parka as a visual reminder of why the deliberate power outage was so horrible and how keenly Korra feels what depriving people of heat can do to them. I also just liked getting a good look at everyone's different clothes. What do Mako and Bolin's coats look like, I wonder? I would have liked seeing some of Asami's winter styles. She had all those trunks, after all! (Lazy visual joke, IMHO. I have decided some of those trunks contain mechanic's tools and whatever suspicious paperwork Asami didn't trust the police to handle or decode properly.)

Damn, Tarrlok is creepy. He even has Kingpin's office! I was kind of hoping Korra would do something with that giant water feature besides cut it off, as a kind of fuck-you mirror to that we're-not-so-different speech. However, her approach was tactically sound, even if it ultimately failed.

[ardhra]

I kind of loved this episode for the fact that it threw Korra's inadequacies in her face. I was getting tired of her everyone-listen-to-me-I'm-the-Avatar entitled jock manner, and wondering when Bryke were going to break out the political trip-wires they used in 'City of Walls and Secrets' and complexify what seemed a very one-sided depiction of the conflicts in Republic City.

The shot where Korra was looking at the statue of Aang made me tear up - I miss Aang! But at the same time, he was also just as crap at dealing with bureaucratic power as Korra seems to be. I'm really interested in seeing how LoK deals with it, as opposed to A:TLA, where the kids just ran away from occupied Ba Sing Se. I hope we see a maturity in Korra that Aang seems to have not mastered, in understanding the political reality of large groups of people and concentrated power, without a deux ex machina to force a recalibration of that power. I've also read the first 2 editions of The Promise, and I really hope the conclusion deals with these things too.

[sholio]

WAAAAAGH. Next episode now plz!

I love how they're complexifying up the political situation. My theory up to this episode was that Amon and Tarlock (however you spell his name) were in cahoots, but it doesn't look that way -- they seem to be at equally fanatical but opposite ends of the spectrum.

I am even more sure now that the flashbacks are going to end in the death of everyone in that room, Sokka and Toph included. ;_; Which seems hideously dark for what is basically a kids' show, but with the bloodbending and the fact that all of the characters we've seen in that room are dead in the present day ... agh!

The airbender kids are completely adorable, and Asami is awesome!

That is all. :D

[kaberett]

Yakone == 42 years ago

Korra == less than 42 years old

therefore not EVERYONE dies rite rite please tell me I'm right

[sholio]

*facepalm* You're absolutely right! I hadn't even done the math on that one; I was just thinking that all three of the original A:tLA characters that we saw in that room are dead in the present day, but you're right, Aang had to have died 16-17 years ago in order for Korra to be the age she is now. (Assuming that Avatar reincarnation is more or less immediate, I suppose ... but the general impression I get from the show is that there is not a gap between one Avatar and the next.)

[kiezh]

My theory up to this episode was that Amon and Tarlock (however you spell his name) were in cahoots, but it doesn't look that way -- they seem to be at equally fanatical but opposite ends of the spectrum.

I think they're using each other as the provocation necessary to increase their own powerbase: Tarrlok uses the threat of the Equalists to make everyone fall in with his plans, and Amon uses Tarrlok's draconian measures to stir up further unrest. Both of them are working to polarize Republic City, but not as allies - they just both think they can win the resulting war. And Tenzin has been an ineffectual peacemaker, unable to win anyone to his side.