Greetings, Kotaku, and welcome to Friday night's off-topic thread. You know what I want to talk about for the off-topic? I want to talk for just a second about The Legend of Korra.
I'm a serious fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I think it's one of the best TV shows I've ever seen, and I've seen pretty much every good TV show. Avatar was a thing of beauty, an organically grown show that took three seasons to slowly, surely build a complex, beautiful world that I understood almost intuitively, all the while filling it with characters that I grew to love. It was funny, cathartic, emotional, astonishing, and entirely unexpected. Before I first watched Avatar, I knew that a lot of people loved it, but I honestly wasn't expecting it to be as flat-out good as it was.
So I was pumped for The Legend of Korra, the recent not-so-mini miniseries that just wrapped up its first season on Nickelodeon. Unfortunately, with the exception of one very good episode (that would be episode 10, "Turning the Tides"), the show was something of a mess. Unfocused, rushed, weird love triangles and not enough time spent on world-building or character development. What a bummer, right?
Legend of Korra had a tough row to hoe, since it was a show that had grown more adult than its predecessor but was still saddled with a Saturday-morning half-hour requirement and even fewer episodes per season than The Last Airbender. I don't know how likely it is, but I would love for the showrunners to acknowledge that Korra has outgrown its cartoon roots (just as Avatar eventually transcended them), and let the show have hour-long episodes.
Okay, them's my thoughts. Some of them, anyway. Anyone agree? Disagree? Anyone out there not yet watched Avatar, and wondering what all the hype's about? (If so, you have got a treat in store.)
Feel free to discuss that, or anything else. Have a lovely weekend, everyone.