Episode 1

the intro

they gave the opening monologue to Kyoshi instead of Katara and believe me I love Kyoshi as much as the next guy but at least when Katara was the one giving the intro it conveyed that our main characters knew something about how the world works. Visually it looks okay but the monologue less concise.

Also there was no mention of it being 100 years just that the avatar wasn’t reborn into the cycle. Katara doesn’t mention how she still is hopeful that the avatar returns(part of her character gone) and is also no mention of why their dad left. They also mention Sozin  name immediately.

the siege of the air temple

Aang literally flies(put in footage) off to a fantastic start already no need for that glider I guess.

all the air band or are in one place when they get killed not quite sure if that’s reasonable to assume that’s what happened. (Due to this new comet Festival idea)

I don’t like that they blatantly come right out and say that the fire nation is coming to attack them. In the original show the monks were just speculating saying “storm clouds are gathering” which could mean anything. The foregoing by what live-action is saying that means Aang didn’t doesn’t have the guilt of running away he just goes out for a walk to clear his head and it just turns out to be bad timing.

Aang’s to the siblings introduction

the first thing I noticed about the village is that it is massive compared to the original show. The original village was an island with one igloo and a bunch of tense surrounded by a small snow wall. Additionally in the original show Sokka is the only boy above the age of seven, in the live-action there’s another boy that slightly younger. This messes with the source material because Sokka’s father and all the other men left him to look after the village.

This is part of his character arc, he feels he needs to be strong because his father put the responsibility of protecting the village on his shoulders. Having another boy there they could do a similar job takes away from that.

I didn’t like Aang’s introduction he passes out and slides down the hill and then just wakes up back at camp.  There’s no sense of wonder or fear of this figure coming out of the iceberg.

But I guess it’s not as necesary to have an introduction just like to show since we Artie got a feel for his personality. I just wish he flew them back to the village.

I didn’t like how Gran gran literally rattled off the entire opening about “the four nations living together in harmony” to tell everyone about Aang. It’s nothing but lazy filler and went on for way too long. I much preferred the conversation in the sunken ship when Katara explains that he’s been in the iceberg for 100 years. Instead of that later when they do go to the ship we get another display of terrible water bending and then the fire nation just shows up out of nowhere no booby-trap or signal flare required.

I like Sokka actually fought Zuko and didn’t just get kicked into a pile of snow. I like how when Aang is in his cell uncle iroh is friendly to Aang offers MT and says he will forward to talking with him(need to double check exactly what he said) but it plants  the seed to the viewer that he’s not a bad guy and just looking out for Zuko. I did prefer the way they did his capture in the show he tells two guards he can take them with his hands tied behind his back and does it easily it shows he’s not afraid. Also he takes down Zuko slaping him around with his mattress lol.

Nope Katara can’t water  band good yet (save them when they were flying away from the ship) she could barely pick up a ball of water and then she pulls the Kaiser when there hundreds of feet in the air. I would’ve preferred why can the show Aang deflects the fireball but what I thought was going to happen was the bison was going to take of its tail and deflected that way.

The Southern Air Temple

the gang goes to the southern air temple they rush this next section quite a bit. Instead of Aang being really excited about going home and Katara subtly trying to tell him about what happened to his people they get there and immediately see charred bodies and fire nation uniforms. No arable or the avatar statue room. Anxious find his master and immediately goes into the avatar state, the worst part is that when he gets upset Katara isn’t the one that comes him down and tells him that they are his family now he just has a flashback of his master telling him that they will always be friends. This takes away from the bond that he and Katara will have and makes me wonder what they’re going to do when appa gets taken or he goes into the avatar state again.

Episode 2

 already off to a bad start, Aang stole the book from Zuko  while he was on his ship the first shot of the episode is of Zuko throwing a tantrum over it. Tells him to go to Kyoshi to find somebody to help them master the avatar state. head in my hands… We don’t even get a name for the avatar state until book 2 and now this random notebook they have is already telling them that he needs to control the avatar state. I will remind everybody that the reason they originally went there was to ride the Elephant Quay fish.

 next the siblings have a argument about whether they should stay with Aang on his journey they were never given talk by their grandmother about their destinies being intertwined… Katara thanks that the reason she pulled that geyser out of nowhere is because Aang was here.

Momo just randomly shows up in Katara bag along with the water bending scroll I guess that means no pirates sad. So I guess they did get their grandmother blessing to go with Aang, but it would’ve been so much better if had that talk with the two of them and just gave them the scroll.

The island

 the gang arrives at the island and the island looked pretty good you can see the statue from the air. One change that they made is that the statue has emerged into a shrine. Sokka attempts to go into the shrine and that’s when they get attacked by the warriors.(I would have much preferred if they got ambushed like in the OG) The warriors tells them they are trespassing on sacred ground and that’s when the statues eyes begin to go and shine onto Aang. After that they meet with their leader. But for some weird reason they only give them 48 hours on the island.

Katara starts practicing some techniques from the scroll she was given. She doesn’t appear to be struggling like she was in the original show and Aang doesn’t practice with her just the missed opportunity. Because he should’ve really showed her up. This show probably isn’t going to have much conflict between team avatar beyond the siblings arguing. Still disappointed that I probably won’t get my high-risk traders.

Sokka appears to be throwing his boomerang in the middle of the woods doing some training. Suki shows up and there is kind of a running gag where she sneaks up on him it’s kind of funny.

It’s unclear whether that actually has boomerang because he’s not throwing it and having it come back to him the only reason I bring that up is because Suki throws her fan and has it boomerang back to her so we know that they’re not above that.

She chokes him out he taps and runs away in shame. I would have preferred genuine fight since that’s kind of a part of his character arc.

We cut to Aang and Katara what appears to be the shrine. Aang talking about how he’s upset how he can’t find something to help him control the avatar state which contradicts the original show when he was afraid of it only after he won the battle for the north pole. He had to be bullied into attempting to learn to control it after the general convinced him to. He has a flashback while talking about how he was so powerful he had to learn to control his “powers” like his regular bending outside of the avatar state. I hate calling bending powers because it’s more of a skill you have to develop (I would consider the avatar state power because it’s an innate ability he has that he doesn’t have to develop and has no control over at the time.) Anyway the flashback it shows him blasting multiple people off the cliff. This is just a side effect of the show being rushed were already panicking over the avatar state.

Katara does quote avatar Kyoshi “only justice will bring peace”. That quote is from book 3 when he asks his past lives what to do about killing the fire Lord. It’s kind of empty outside of that context. It’s justified killing the fire Lord after all the terrible things he’s done it’s not justified desperately seeking extreme measures over mastering the elements like he’s supposed to.

Aang sits beneath the shrine and contacts avatar Kyoshi in what I’m assuming is the spirit world. I really hope they don’t replace Roku with Kyoshi. Unfortunately this might be the case because Kyoshi gives Aang the same line about his past lives working through him allowing the avatar state.

This is a shame because Roku pulling Aang out of his body to give him the rundown on the avatar state was visually very interesting and very well explained.

Sokka and Suki train I think it’s a much better foundation for their relationship. In book 2 and they need up just before the serpents pass it does make you think they build relationship that quickly over doing what? No complaints here.

Side note ironically the prayers did everything they could to make Sokka less sexist but they make Suki infatuated with Sokka

Zuko and uncle

Uncle and Zhao don’t know each other for some reason but Zhao does refer to uncle as the Dragon of the West.

Originally the ship would’ve been damaged by Aang deflecting the fireball and damaging the ship with ice. That would incentivize them to port and get repairs done but now they are there underling guide of needing information. Instead of Zhao catching in a lie and luring them into his quarters for a drink and interrogating his crew while they’re away he just finds out later that they lied to them. Really takes away from his intelligence and intimidation factor.

Zhao doesn’t confront Zuko or uncle about lying to him. We just hear from some random civilian that he headed towards the island because of a “flying cow” which reminds me uncle and Zuko found out that Aang was on the island through word-of-mouth and then went to the shipyard for repairs. I think this would’ve been a much more efficient use of their time and would’ve been executed much better.

Uncle makes a Pai Sho analogy which made me smile.

The siege of Kyoshi Island

Zhao confronts the Islanders and asked to have a look around. They agree but as a soldier walks past the matriarch grabs a soldier with one hand and throws him 10 feet….

We cut back to Aang in the spirit world maybe, Kyoshi talks tough but she doesn’t quite have the voice for it talking about how he needs to be a warrior blah blah blah… She gives him a vision of the battle of the North Pole don’t really, don’t like that. Avatars can see the future now?

Side note if we’re in the spirit world now what are they going to do when that forest spirit(look up the name) forces him into the spirit world? Because I know he’s in the show I saw him in the trailer.

Sokka and Suki fight together and it’s pretty cool, Sokka blocks a fireball with Suki’s fan.

Zuko conference while Aang is still in the spirit world she fights back with some really terrible water bending. I should also mention he did not look or sound intimidating. He sounds like a child when they’re getting angry and just think wow this is awkward.

Kyoshi takes over Aang body and these were my exact thoughts. Wearing his body like a meat suit with a coat of Kyoshi paint over top. Literally flying, grabbing soldiers with water and creating tornadoes. The Islanders thank Aang like it was all his doing and everything is right with the world. This takes away from Aang’s heroics he fights the soldiers  snacks around Zuko for the second time puts out the on fire village with that sea monster thing(look up spelling of the name.)

I know what you’re thinking this avatar thing where he takes over someone else’s body Roku did that during the solstice it’s this thing. No… That was a special event and Roku wasn’t flying around grabbing people. That was a bad adaptation and didn’t need to happen I said it once and I’ll say it again They are going to replace Roku with Kyoshi. Fan of Kyoshi as a character but it just out of place, Roku was the last avatar and has the most connections to fire Lord and the war so it makes sense if he delivers the exposition.

Zhao lies to Zuko and tells the fire Lord that the avatar is returned. I think having the statues at the temples glow when entered the avatar state was better because it showed there was more magic in the world rather than somebody crossing their fingers behind their back.

Episode 3

they somehow managed to Frankenstein together pieces of jet, the mechanistic, Omashu in the cave of two lovers. That last one baffled me the most. I’m just going to summarize this because it is a lot of subplots to this story happens over the course of two episodes.

Up until this point I’ve been watching then pausing taking notes. But this Frankenstein’s monster was so unpredictable I couldn’t tell what a good stopping point was to take notes just sat and watched saying no and why and how could you do this. So most of this is from memory.

The gang sneaks into a Omashu with the help of a merchant I think this is a fine change since having Aang wear a wig made of Appa’s  fair  wood not translate well to live-action. I think the trying as hard as they can to not have Appa on screen is much as possible

But he does walk around with his tattoos exposed.

The mechanistic and his son live in Omashu which is a fine change to me were on a time crunch after all. Where we were in and the problems is the mechanistic still giving the fire nations weapons though he doesn’t tell us what exactly. There’s no fight like we see in his episode and we don’t see the war balloon.

We randomly find out that the mechanistic is a traitor when Katara randomly stumbles across jet tailing him and talking to a fire bendor. He’s just in a red hood and randomly produces a flame in front of the mechanized which just had me shaking my head so lazy.

They follow the fire nations spy into the woods and he just so happens to walk where the rest of Jets crew is waiting to ambush them… Ok no comment. And then jet takes Katara to their playground I mean hideout it literally looks like a playground.

Jet helps to target through some sort of mental block with her bending by “remembering how her mother lived not how she died.” Which would be fine if it wasn’t something to do with her bending. Takes away from Katara being determined to learn these skills and having a lot of potential she just needed a proper teacher. Especially because we haven’t seen Aang try water bending yet so they never trained together and learn from each other.

No time and practice or study just it was in you all will you just gotta believe in yourself man, or have a Aang around so you can pull gigantic geysers from out of nowhere.

Even as someone who didn’t enjoy jet as a character I still enjoyed him as a fighter. His original introduction was miles above this random nonsense. Which means we obviously didn’t get a whole arc of Sokka being insecure and suspecting Jet.

I don’t remember how this next part happened exactly. Jet has plans to kill the mechanized and King Boomy by blowing them up. To root out the spies in the city(I understand the mechanistic but why the King?) But both the siblings go with their respective sides for some reason until it’s revealed jet and grew are making blasting jelly underneath the city when Aang go down there for some reason. And then ensues this whole complicated scheme to switch one of the mechanisms inventions with a bomb and have long shot light it on fire with an arrow.(Why not just strap explosives to the arrow?) Katara puts out the arrow and saves the day…

Another part of Sokka arc that is gone, he doesn’t stand up for the old man in the woods therefore doesn’t have the credibility to save the whole village of people.

Zuko and uncle are here for some reason. Aang and Zuko fight in the middle of town fire bending alerts the guards. Uncle creates a distraction so Zuko can get away and uncle and Aang get arrested.(I don’t know why team avatar can’t just have time away from these two hunting them.)

Something happened while these two are in the cell together dialogue wise but I can’t remember

Aang is removed from the cell and introduced to King Boomy and it just immediately revealed that he is undeniably his old friend… Which reminds me at the beginning of the episode they straight up said they were here to visit an old friend so just killing off any sort of mystery right off the bat of who could this king be. I just couldn’t remember because I was trying to keep track of all the random plot points today Frankenstein into this. In the original show this was just a pitstop an excuse to ride the mail system.

Boomy is an asshole

constantly talking down to Aang saying how he doesn’t know what it means to be the avatar. Which is true but each is being cruel for no reason. Saying how he abandoned everybody. Just randomly twist with Aang making him choose his meal, and randomly makes him walk through a hallway that spawns a whole bunch of those growing crystals. But hey at least you reference the crystals, lettuce joke and said “throw them a feast”….. He just insults him, he doesn’t teach him anything and when they fight boomy is just like let me die you gotta make our choices. He doesn’t even beat him the siblings have to jump in and save him.

uncles transport

uncle was being transported to the “pit” some random place the big city (look up the name.) This is another piece of the spirit world episode transplanted into this abomination. The soldiers deny him food, water, and punch in the stomach. He drops a lotus tile instead of a sandal so Zuko can track him. Uncle antagonizes the soldier and the soldier almost crushes him. Zuko rescues him though he doesn’t kick a boulder out of the air like in the original show but at the very least uncle uses his chains to fight. They when uncle spares a soldier in the escape.

The Cave

this subplot is a Frankenstein’s monster of the “cave of two lovers”

Sokka and Katara go into the caves to sneak into the palace to go rescue Aang. They run into the hippies they sing that song because they had to do that… And give the back story of the city. Just keep in mind that this this pot doesn’t happen until book 2.

I was just thinking the whole time. I really hope they don’t go where I think they’re going to go with this.

Put out their lights and in the crystals light up but they don’t lead anywhere…what!

They get into an argument about how they don’t was into each other scream at each other, get lost, find out the tunnels or changing, get cornered by the badger moles. They hold hands and apologize to each other right before they’re about to get attacked and the badger stops when they talk about how “love is brightest in the dark” and how the badgers can sense love……………………. wait!

Anyway the badgers help them out and they go to the arena where they are fighting. They save him he gives a speech about his friends. Aang learned nothing and they took Boomy from a mentor figure and turned him into a jerk well-done crew.

Also I forgot to mention jet was defeated just like how you was in the og show one positive thing out of this whole episode

The spies are gone………. Slow clap these are the worst two episodes so far and I’m glad it’s over.

Episode 5

They find the burned forest it’s almost a shot for shot and line for line remake of what happened in the og show. Sokka finds a random girl, she has a doll and he says we can come up with a name for him “Pippinpaddle Oppsokopolis”….. I hate when they make overt references to the show just for the sake of it.

They get introduced to the townspeople and the mayor gives them the whole speech about how people were being abducted. They go to investigate by the shrine and all three of them get sucked into the spirit world.(I’m noticing a pattern, it’s almost like the writers are afraid to have the characters split from each other. If one character must be in the episode all of them must have equal parts. They shoehorned in uncle and Zuko into the Omashu.)

A giant owl shows up and explains that the siblings are in danger if they stay here too long and they might have to face the truth. Whatever that means if they somehow merge this into the swamp episode that would be annoying. I really hope this isn’t the same owl with the library from book 2.

Hei bai attacks the group and they get separated. Each are forced into their own dream state. K you with the night of the raid her mother died. S is given a mark of the wise for his ice dodging. S overhears Boto  and his dad talking about how without their help he wouldn’t past(it’s unclear in this version if he already passed his ice dodging and he’s thinking if they might’ve said something along those lines behind his back or it really happened.) At the end of both of the dream sequences a figure that seems to have co defaced stealers mask confronts him.(I was actually wondering if they were going to shoehorn in Co’s motion into this episode based only on the fact that they are in the spirit world.) Doesn’t have a blank expression but doesn’t get his face stolen.

Gyatso actual spirit appears to have crossed over. He tells Anag where his friends and the other townsfolk might be.(The fog lost souls a reference to Kora) Gyatso tells Aang to go to Roku’s to get help on how to rescue the people from the spirit world. He leaves everybody behind. The one time when having the whole team together is really vital. You’re on a time crunch so they needed to get there quickly. S devised a plan to get them to open the doors with five fire balls and Momo’s shadow helped tricked him into opening the door also it’s small but it was something.

It goes without saying but I much preferred the original plot. I think it’s important for each character to have its own space to develop and learn about the world. S got kidnapped and was forced into the spirit world which raise the stakes since the gang had to worry about one of their own being tracked and not just faceless nameless townspeople. I have no idea how they’re going to have Aang discovers the secret of the moon spirit now that they’ve already used Co. I’m not quite sure if this episode is worse than the last two but is still terrible. The more this goes on the more I don’t know if I can finish this.

Episode 6

Aang gets attacked by the fire sages runs away and gets pulled into a side corridor by the one good sage. And just lets him in to the statue room no need to open the door, no need to strategize and trick anybody he just sits down and gets to have his talk with Roku.

But nothing could prepare me for what happened next. Roku starts cracking jokes pretending he doesn’t know Aang is there. “who dares disturb the peace of the avatar” and bow before me and hop on one leg. This is when I had to get up from my desk and take a break. When I got back, I went to the original show and compared. And funny thing is he did bow but anyway the tone is just completely off. I guess Roku is just a comedian now.

Roku told Aang about the totem he took from Co of his mother(she was introduced in the comics) I don’t care anyway he can maybe trade it for the people. No mention of the comet the only reason we have any sense of urgency is that one his friends were taken by a spirit who shouldn’t have even been here at this point and an avatar decided to predict the future about the North pole siege. I guess they wanted to give that honor to Kyoshi.

By the way the totem is on a shelf in the back of the room with a bunch of random knickknacks….

After Angus done listening to Roku’s comedy routine he comes out of the shrine and find all the sages paralyzed by that bounty hunter lady’s animal. She captures him. She flirts with uncle I didn’t need to see that…

The bounty Hunter turns Aang over to Zuko more terrible dialogue ensues.  they get ambushed on the road by Cmdr. Zhao they tease me with the specialty archers from one of my favorite episodes.

Aang gets taken to the stronghold and Zuko shows up in his blue spirit outfit. The mask looks the part and thankfully doesn’t have that weird wig portion from the movie. The commander confronts Aang doesn’t look angry and doesn’t threaten to fight him like in the original show. He doesn’t even get knocked up against the wall, just slightly messes up his cape.

Speech: ironically is no fire in his line delivery.

• sons and daughters of fire
• superior element
• we will cel-e-br-ate (literally each syllable)

nothing about burning the big city to the ground, added a decent amount to the world building without doing much. We had never heard of that location before and so it made the world feel much larger and lived in.

The rescue is fine, when it gets to the and when they’re cornered and about to be blasted the commander delivers line “Hold your fire I need the avatar alive.” Not “the avatar must be captured alive!” When the swords are put to Aang throat he asks “what are you doing” this show just can’t have the characters have a confused facial expression they have to verbally tell us they are confused. But when the commander in the original show told them to open the gate quietly and with authority they make him scream it. He doesn’t say anything about this “requiring precision”

the storm Zuko banishment

Zuko is taken to a location to recover, the two of them have this ridiculously boring and out of character discussion about calligraphy brushes.. Zuko fire bends Aang counters knocking him out and saying “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Instead of bolting like he should have you take him back to his canoe and tell them about his fire nation friend and asks if he thinks they could have been friends? So not only are we clumsily shoehorning random callbacks to the show Aang is an idiot with no self-preservation. He fire bends again and we get this ridiculous backflip which pushes him out into the water.

This is when we hear Zuko’s back story about how he was banished and why he’s hunting him.

• The part where he stands up to the general talking about how he hated that he would betray the newer recruits. They draw this part out. Saying it multiple times how terrible of a plan it is (mumbling it under his breath at times)
• During the fight with his father he actually evades and fights back instead of staying on his knees.  At one point he even seems to get the upper hand. The whole reason he was banished was because he showed “shameful weakness” by refusing to fight at all. Not because he shows too much compassion and that’s why he is weak.
• His father comes in and talks to him and tells him he is banished but he doesn’t use the word banished for some reason. He needs to go on a journey to strengthen himself or something along those lines. Very unintimidating. (I always believed that his father gave him that task because he knew it was impossible so he would be rid of him.)
• One interesting detail is that he is given the division of recruits that he stood up for as his crew. Just to really set him up for failure. (This isn’t in the original show but it’s a nice detail.)

While he was gone uncle told the crew that they are the division of soldiers Zuko stood up for. They  (once again we have to say it out loud like yeah we know that we just watched the flashback)bow in respect to him as he walks back onto the ship. Which would be nice if we didn’t already have the storm episode where he saved his crew got them out of the storm rather than choosing to chase the avatar.

To wrap up this dumpster fire of a episode Aang delivers the totem and the people are free. Gyatso is gone from his spirit hut thank God that can of worms was sealed shut. Uncle finds the blue spirit mask which is great because having the audience wonder in book 2 about how uncle found out he was the blue spirit was too much! Oh yeah uncle just saw him coming back and found the mask while putting him to bed! He completed a secret mission without anybody ever finding out! (The Adm. does eventually confront him about it but who cares he died) Zuko secretly being two criminals at once later in the series is just too cool of an idea!

Just two fantastic episodes ruined. The blue spirit episode starts out unassuming and the action sneaks up on you. Aang’s friends were sick he needs to find some frogs to heal them. We find out that Aang can run like the wind. The commander gets promoted to admiral and enlists the help of the archers to track down and capture Aang(an interesting new enemy type). When captured Aang shows he is not afraid and blasts the admiral against the wall in defiance. The admirals speech gives us insight into how the fire nation sees the other nations and introduces us to the big city (Google name). Zuko comes up with a desperate plan to rescue Aang so that he can have him for himself. We also find out he’s not just a mediocre fire bender but a skilled swordsman.

The Storm episode did a much better job showing both their back stories side-by-side and lets them in a small way redeem themselves in the end. Aang saved the fisherman and the brother and Zuko guided his crew out of the storm. Small detail but we also get the first time uncle redirects lightning.