I haven't mentioned how the "previously on" segments in this show work. They're done in 20's newsreel style, with the Pro-Bending announcer speaking over them. I mention this because this one... is very telling. It starts with the page quote.
It also includes blatant lies. It talks about how Korra "only had eyes for one fella: Mako." Um, I guess. I mean, with all the plot and pseudo-rape that happened last episode, I didn't really notice. Then it says that "The feeling seemed mutual..." What the hell show was he watching? I was watching the show where he thought Korra was beneath his notice, then gradually accepted her as a person. That's a hell of a long way from returning her affections. To me, Mako seemed decidedly uninterested in Korra.
So the announcer asks the ludicrous question, "Will love prove to be Korra's most formidable foe yet?" That's right, it's a shipping episode.
Be afraid; be very afraid.
We begin with normalcy: the Fire Ferrets practicing. They knock each other down simultaneously, to show how well in sync they are, then Mako calls them over for a group huddle. In the huddle, Bolin smiles at Korra, who's a bit confused, but she smiles at Mako. Who's very confused, thus making me very confused at the announcer for not paying attention to his own show.
Mako gives a speech, which Asami interrupts to deliver their new uniforms. Mako and Asami make cute with each other, while Korra gives them a look and gags. Mako then leaves with Asami. Bolin tries to subtly hint to Korra that he wants to make time with her, but she heads back to the Air Temple.
Cut to that night, where Mako's cooking dinner for the two of them while Bolin is trying to wash his Ferret. Bolin asks for advice about whether he should get involved with Korra. Mako thinks he's talking about himself, so he says that he prefers sticking with Asami. After getting that straightened out, Mako says that Korra's not really girlfriend material. Bolin then lists how much they have in common, ending with how gorgeous he is. Mako just says that it's best not to date a teammate, but Bolin doesn't listen.
Cut to Korra, who's apparently leaving some fruit out for birds or something. She's with Tenzin's daughters; Jinora asks about Mako and the time they've spent together. Korra denies that she's interested, then says that he's into someone else. Oh? Well... good. We can move past the shipping into- "But let's just say for a second I am interested in him: what would I do?" Shoot me in the head; just get it over with now.
Jinora talks about a book she read, where a woman fell in love with a general who was promised to marry the princess. So the woman rode in on dragonback, burned down the country, and threw herself into a volcano. And the woman's name was Azula. OK, no but it may as well have been. Ikki suggestions a magic potion leading to nonsense so oddball that it makes self-immolation make more sense.
Pema was listening to this nonsense, and she decides to share how she got Tenzin. Time once was, Tenzin was with someone else, and Pema was nervous and didn't say anything. But eventually, Pema decided to confess her love, and that's how she got pregnant. Or something like that; I may have fallen asleep in there from the banality of all this. The girls all think this is romantic, so mercifully, the scene ends.
Cut to the Pro-Bending arena for the match. Hurray, something not terrible. We get a good minute of solid action as the Ferrets easily take out the competition. The point of this scene being to show how well they work together as a team. I could already tell that the point of this was to later contrast with how well they don't work together as a team.
So, in the locker area, Mako says that they were "connecting" well as a team. Korra agrees, and suggests seeing more of each other. When Mako reminds her that they spend plenty of time practicing, she has to spell out that she wants to spend time with him. He's unsure about that due to Asami, so Korra just blurts out, "Look, I really like you and I think we were meant for each other." OK crazy lady, whatever you say. Mako apologizes for not sharing her feelings.
Asami comes in to congratulate her man, much to Korra's distaste. Bolin decides that now's the time to ask Korra to dinner, but Korra says she doesn't feel "dateworthy." Bolin rattles off a list of her positive qualities; her ego suitably stroked, she agrees to go out and have some fun with Bolin. Mako watches over his shoulder.
Cut to a restaurant. Korra compliments Bolin on the authentic water tribe food, and Bolin points out that it's his favorite. Korra then notices some guy in the corner who keeps staring at them. He's very pale and is wearing black; ergo, he's a badguy. Bolin says that it's Tahno, leader of the Wolf Bats, the Pro-Bending champions 3x over. Korra makes a face at him when Bolin suggests not making eye contact. Well, Tahno isn't going to stand for that, so he comes over to them.
Tahno looks like an emo douche and plays the part too, running down the Fire Ferrets and so forth. Right, because the opposing team can't just be the opposing team; they have to be assholes. He even mispronounces Avatar, possibly in a slight to The Last Airbender. Then he makes a suggestive sexual comment. Eventually Korra gets up into his face, and he offers her the first blow. But Bolin knows what he's trying to do and tells Korra that they'll be kicked out if she attacks him. So instead, she calls on her dog to snarl at him, which makes him leave.
Cut to Bolin and Korra drinking some form of soda. Bolin lets a belch slip and is embarrassed, but Korra takes it as a challenge. So they try to out-belch each other, which Korra naturally wins. Korra and Bolin then visit the not-Eiffel Tower.
Cut to Mako on the steps of the Pro-Bending arena. Korra approaches him, and he curtly asks what she's doing hanging out with Bolin. He thinks she's only going out with Bolin to make him jealous. Korra starts thinking that he is jealous, but he says he's just looking out for his brother. Korra then starts saying things like, "when you're with her, you're thinking about me," to which Mako says, "get over yourself." I have never agreed with your more, Mako. They yell at each other some more, then storm off.
Cut to the next match. They're fighting against an older, more experienced former-championship team. During the match, Korra runs into Mako, which results in all of their team getting pushed out of their territory and them losing the round. Between rounds, Bolin tells them to get their act together. Bolin brings on his A-game, giving them victory in round 2. Despite... not having advanced territory. Screw the rules, we've got shipping!
Round 3 ends with neither team gaining ground, so it goes to our first tie-breaker. There's a coin-toss; the team that wins the toss picks an element, and the two benders of that element face off 1v1. The Ferrets win the toss, but Bolin suggests Mako step aside and let him handle this, since Mako's clearly not playing well, while Bolin actually showed up today. Bolin is able to pull out the clutch victory.
Why can't they just do 22 minutes of Pro-Bending? It'd be a hell of a lot better than shipping.
Cut to Korra outside the arena. Mako shows up to talk, but Korra doesn't really want to hear it. He tells her that she's infuriating, but great too. Naturally this makes Korra think that he wants her. But Mako is still indecisive about this, and he says he's confused. So Korra kisses him.
So, when Katara was confused and Aang randomly kissed her, she didn't like it, pulled back, and walked away. When Mako's confused and Korra randomly kisses him, he kisses her back. Um... uh...
Oh, Bolin was watching. He cries and runs away, while Mako says that it's not what he thought. I love how Korra doesn't try to say anything to Bolin at all. Mako complains to Korra that it's her fault for kissing him. So she says it's his fault for kissing her back. Avatar Korra: master of the second grade comeback.
Cut to Mako going to Bolin's favorite restaurant in the morning. Bolin's apparently drunk; I'll assume the manager cut him off earlier, rather than believing that he's drunk on noodles. Bolin delivers some drunk lines abusing Mako and crying, so Mako picks him and carries him home. Well, that was 30 seconds wasted, moving on.
Cut to the arena that night. Korra comes into the locker room to see Bolin sitting down, bent over. Mako says nothing to her as she gets her uniform. In the actual match, the Ferrets are losing and get pushed back to their last zone, but are saved by the bell. Which is the first real indication that rounds are timed. You'd think having seen 4 matches before this, they'd have indicated that fact better.
In the second round, the Ferrets are doing no better. But this time, Korra commits a foul by grabbing a guy's leg and bouncing him up and down. When called on this by the ref, she splashes water at him, prompting me to yell, "come on, ref, red card!" So the ref pulls out a yellow fan. Setting appropriate, but wrong color; I'm pretty sure attacking the ref is a red card offense.
I guess a yellow fan means losing the round, as they're now down two rounds and need to perform an All-Kill to win. Bolin and Mako are pretty defeatist about this, but Korra tries to raise their spirits and push them to victory.
In the third round, Bolin takes a hit to the shoulder, which puts a stop to his offense. Mako is quickly ejected for paying attention to Bolin's injury, followed by Bolin, thus leaving Korra in the ring. Since we all know what's going to happen, the writers spare us much of her fight, focusing instead on Mako and Bolin reconciling. Sort of. But we still see the last bit of Korra dancing around, lining the other team up, and All-Killing them in one shot. All in the last ten seconds of the round, for maximum cliché.
Korra returns to the rest of the team, so they can throw praise at her victory-by-authorial-fiat. Korra says that she wants to stay friends with them, and they agree. Korra even manages to say something nice about Asami.
Then Tahno and his Wolf Bat buddies arrive. He makes a lame crack about how the Ferrets stink of losers, which forces the master of the lame comeback to demonstrate how to deliver a lame line. Asami arrives to congratulate her man, but she also gives Korra props for having the writers let her win singlehandedly.
Korra then demonstrates her healing abilities by healing Bolin's arm. Oh, and we even find out that Katara is "the best there is" at healing. So she took a whole afternoon of training in the Northern Water Tribe in the children's class, and that was enough to make her the best healer in the world. Korra then apologizes to Bolin for what happened, but he says he'll survive. She even pays him a compliment.
Meanwhile the Wolf Bats won their match with a first-round All-Kill. Wow, you mean that, as a team, they're as good as Korra by herself?
Shipping... Again
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Here we are, the worst episode in the entire series (or at least Book 1, though I hope later seasons don't get worse than this).
Now, worst is relative; we're talking about the least good of a 12 episode series. And while it's definitely in the "not good" category, ATLA has done
quite a bit worse than this. On a more objective scale, it's mostly tedious and annoying, rather than The Firebending Masters level of rampaging stupidity and basic structural failure. It's more in line with A-plot of The Cave of Two Lovers, not unsurprisingly another shipping episode.
The biggest crime this episode commits is that it is a waste of time. ATLA had 61 episodes to screw around, so they could afford to have some pointless ones here and there. Korra has 12 episodes, and that's it. It has to tell a full and complete story in that time frame. And they couldn't afford to waste 1/12th of their running time on pointless BS.
While the story itself is not horrendous, this episode made the series as a whole worse by simply existing.
And it's no coincidence that the worst episode is a shipping episode. We are talking about shipping in the fifth episode of the series. It's just too early for that sort of thing. We've barely had character establishment here. The main object of Korra's affections has only really been prominent in one episode before now. That's not much to go on. ATLA didn't start pushing shipping until The Fortuneteller, episode 14. And even then, it was more of a recurring element rather than the focus of that episode.
The biggest failure of this episode is the characterization. Bolin's character has been scant until now. He had a thing for Korra in their first episode, but there was no real time to follow that up. Further, because Bolin hasn't been seen very much (we spent most of The Revelation looking for him), we just don't know very much about him. What we know are his general mannerisms and basic personality; that's it. So when Bolin sees Korra and Mako kiss, there's not nearly as much impact as there needs to be.
Mako is worse, as his basic personality is... bland. Bolin's at least the fun-loving guy; Mako's serious. And boring. Indeed, my biggest question from this episode is this: why is Korra attracted to this guy? Now, you could wonder why Aang was attracted to Katara, but The Fortunteller made it clear that Aang thought she was hot. And while that's shallow, it's something, unlike the nothing Korra has. The only indication we have that Korra thought he was handsome was second-hand, from Jinora and Ikki.
This series is really focused on Korra's character. And yet, the writers never give us insight into why she wants to be with Mako. That's not a good thing; it weakens all of Korra's attempts to make time with Mako. Unlike the last episode, where her thoughts were really explored in detail, here it's just "she like Mako; hijinks ensue!"
And the worst part: just like The Cave of Two Lovers, this episode ends with the shipping issues effectively unresolved. Yes, the Bolin/Korra issue effectively dies here, but the triangle between Korra/Mako/Asami will be alive and grating through most of the series. So, outside of the fact that the Ferrets are in the finals, nothing was advanced here at all; the episode started pretty much where it ended.
But why is Mako without personality? Well, besides weak writing and not having enough time to flesh him out, my guess is this. Mako is put in the position of having to choose between a hot, rich, kind girl, and a hot, sassy, badass girl. This is very much a male fantasy; two very different, but equally desirable women want him. Men will therefore want, not to identify with Mako, but to be Mako. Thus, he has no personality because leaving him without one makes it easier for the male viewing public to put themselves into his shoes and live through him.
In short, Mako is the male version of Bella Swan. And writing those words made me die a little inside...
Comments
