Avatar, Book 3: My feelings so far.
Crossposting from the Avatar thread at TWOP forums. Somebody asked for opinions on a subject, and I wound up writing more than I'd planned to. Then I figured, why have a Live Journal if I'm not going to post my long-winded opinions about works of fiction on it?
On the subject of how I felt what had aired of Book 3 so far compared to Book 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender:
So far (and I think it's important to consider that there's still more than a third of a season left in which this could change), I think Book 3 has been weaker than Book 2. Yes, I still love it and I still love Avatar, but I feel that it hasn't been up to the potential that the show has previously displayed. There's several reasons I feel this way.
First, there's the way they let the rising tension of the story arc dissolve. Book 2 ended very powerfully: the storytelling had become serialized, the tension had been rising, the finale was epic and defied expectations. But then, with Book 3, it wasn't like that anymore. When there should have been rising tension building towards The Day of Black Sun, instead our heroes were moseying along as casually as they were in the earliest days of the series, as if they had all the time in the world. Yeah, Appa flies at the speed of plot and all, but the characters don't know that. Coming out of the intensity of Book 2, the sudden downshift to the low-key attitude of early Book 1 was downright jarring.
Then, and this is of a particular annoyance to me, is the way it feels like the character development all got reset and the continuity of characterization didn't reemerge. Aang's feelings about losing at Ba Sing Se and almost dying last for all of an episode, and then vanish. I thought he'd been growing and coming to terms with his responsabilities all this time, but in Book 3 he's just as incapable of prioritizing and staying focused as he was when the series began. Katara's as naive in The Painted Lady as she was in Imprisoned. Sokka's just as hapless and useless in Sokka's Master as he was before The Warriors of Kyoshi, and suddenly expresses a bender-envy that was never present before. Plus he goes ten episodes without any outward sign that he remembers that his girlfriend his missing. That he flips out once she's mentioned was great, but then he went right back to not showing any sign that he remembers her. Which is nothing compared to how, after the entire group's parents, friends and allies are captured, it's only mentioned briefly before being ignored. No one's clamoring for a rescue mission, or even saying how they can't risk a rescue mission. Katara tells Zuko she'll be watching him like a hawk and kill him at the first sign of betrayal, but in the next episode she lets him go off alone with Aang? In an ongoing story, character is key, so it's a little frustrating.
Finally, they aren't turning classic plots and tropes on ear like they used to. As opposed to Imprisoned, where a few stirring words wasn't enough to inspire broken-down prisoners to risk their lives, in The Painted Lady a speech or two is enough to get a whole village to ignore the fact that the group are agents of a nation they're at war with. In the bonfire scene of The Beach (one of my least favorite Avatar scenes ever) we learn that Mai and Ty Lee's personalities are the result of issues with their parents, just like almost every other character in the series. Way to get creative, writing team.
Sure, I've got a few other pet peeves. It bugs the hell out of me that the lesson we seem to take away from Sokka's Master is that if Sokka wants to be useful, he'll have to give up any sort of individuality in his fighting style and weapon choice and use a jian like every other character in every wuxia film ever. (It doesn't help that, since getting his new sword, Sokka's had less participation in fights than ever.) And while I like dorky, redemption-seeking Zuko and think he's a lot of fun, I would really like to see some of the screen time he's getting go to Katara, Sokka and Toph. Especially if it meant they could actually spend some time on that emotional character stuff that I complained earlier is being ignored. But it's the three things I listed above that make me feel that Book 3 hasn't equalled Book 2 yet. Especially the characterization stuff.
I'm not the only one, either. A friend I was showing the series to asked me if they had different writers for Book 3, because it felt so different. My personal theory is that the network execs freaked at all the complex, serialized storytelling at the end of Book 2 and demanded that they make things more episodic and continuity-free. (It wouldn't be the first time. It happened to Farscape in season 4.)
I don't expect everyone to feel the same way I do, but that is how I feel. Book 3 is still enjoyable, and I'm still eagerly waiting to download the next new episode as soon as it airs, but it isn't living up to Book 2 in my opinion.
On the subject of how I felt what had aired of Book 3 so far compared to Book 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender:
So far (and I think it's important to consider that there's still more than a third of a season left in which this could change), I think Book 3 has been weaker than Book 2. Yes, I still love it and I still love Avatar, but I feel that it hasn't been up to the potential that the show has previously displayed. There's several reasons I feel this way.
First, there's the way they let the rising tension of the story arc dissolve. Book 2 ended very powerfully: the storytelling had become serialized, the tension had been rising, the finale was epic and defied expectations. But then, with Book 3, it wasn't like that anymore. When there should have been rising tension building towards The Day of Black Sun, instead our heroes were moseying along as casually as they were in the earliest days of the series, as if they had all the time in the world. Yeah, Appa flies at the speed of plot and all, but the characters don't know that. Coming out of the intensity of Book 2, the sudden downshift to the low-key attitude of early Book 1 was downright jarring.
Then, and this is of a particular annoyance to me, is the way it feels like the character development all got reset and the continuity of characterization didn't reemerge. Aang's feelings about losing at Ba Sing Se and almost dying last for all of an episode, and then vanish. I thought he'd been growing and coming to terms with his responsabilities all this time, but in Book 3 he's just as incapable of prioritizing and staying focused as he was when the series began. Katara's as naive in The Painted Lady as she was in Imprisoned. Sokka's just as hapless and useless in Sokka's Master as he was before The Warriors of Kyoshi, and suddenly expresses a bender-envy that was never present before. Plus he goes ten episodes without any outward sign that he remembers that his girlfriend his missing. That he flips out once she's mentioned was great, but then he went right back to not showing any sign that he remembers her. Which is nothing compared to how, after the entire group's parents, friends and allies are captured, it's only mentioned briefly before being ignored. No one's clamoring for a rescue mission, or even saying how they can't risk a rescue mission. Katara tells Zuko she'll be watching him like a hawk and kill him at the first sign of betrayal, but in the next episode she lets him go off alone with Aang? In an ongoing story, character is key, so it's a little frustrating.
Finally, they aren't turning classic plots and tropes on ear like they used to. As opposed to Imprisoned, where a few stirring words wasn't enough to inspire broken-down prisoners to risk their lives, in The Painted Lady a speech or two is enough to get a whole village to ignore the fact that the group are agents of a nation they're at war with. In the bonfire scene of The Beach (one of my least favorite Avatar scenes ever) we learn that Mai and Ty Lee's personalities are the result of issues with their parents, just like almost every other character in the series. Way to get creative, writing team.
Sure, I've got a few other pet peeves. It bugs the hell out of me that the lesson we seem to take away from Sokka's Master is that if Sokka wants to be useful, he'll have to give up any sort of individuality in his fighting style and weapon choice and use a jian like every other character in every wuxia film ever. (It doesn't help that, since getting his new sword, Sokka's had less participation in fights than ever.) And while I like dorky, redemption-seeking Zuko and think he's a lot of fun, I would really like to see some of the screen time he's getting go to Katara, Sokka and Toph. Especially if it meant they could actually spend some time on that emotional character stuff that I complained earlier is being ignored. But it's the three things I listed above that make me feel that Book 3 hasn't equalled Book 2 yet. Especially the characterization stuff.
I'm not the only one, either. A friend I was showing the series to asked me if they had different writers for Book 3, because it felt so different. My personal theory is that the network execs freaked at all the complex, serialized storytelling at the end of Book 2 and demanded that they make things more episodic and continuity-free. (It wouldn't be the first time. It happened to Farscape in season 4.)
I don't expect everyone to feel the same way I do, but that is how I feel. Book 3 is still enjoyable, and I'm still eagerly waiting to download the next new episode as soon as it airs, but it isn't living up to Book 2 in my opinion.