Back in January I made an essay
What Really Hurt The Legend of Korra. I recently realized a few more things that held this series back.
Let's get the bad stuff short and to the point, I want to focus on how the episode could be improved more for everyone's sanity.
Also warning: this part unlike the first has spoilers.
This episode was not just the worst episode of Korra, but the worst of the avatar franchise. At least “The Great Divide” could be completely skipped and didn’t make the characters extremely unlikable to much of the fan-base.
That episode would be “Spirit of the competition”
At first I didn't think this was the worst episode of the franchise, but looking back I've never seen so much hatred come from just one episode.
Hell, I feel like a lot of the decisions made later wouldn't have had such an extreme reaction either if it weren't for the train wreck of this episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae5oovf1CEo&feature=emb_title
watch at the 15:40 mark.
The editor Juleesia explains how shipping wars start.
I knew the ship wars were bad in the avatar fan-base, but the Voltron ship wars were worse!?
While there were no issues with age differences in the main cast, the relationship statues of each weren't developed very well.
Dating someone doesn't make you someone's boyfriend/girlfriend right off the bat. Bolin and Korra were dating, however how serious the relationship was, was not clear.
While you can be ambiguous in other parts of stories, you should never be ambiguous about relationships.
Communication is everything in relationships in real life and it is everything in storytelling, a miss communicated love story is BAD combination.
Korra got the most hate out of all the characters, but this one episode made everyone look horrible:
- Korra and Pema saw no problem with over stepping other people's boundaries. Korra got the hate for forcing Mako to kiss her, this was uncalled for from Korra but a lot of the haters also took there hate a bit too far...
- Pema's advice to Korra to ask a guy out in a relationship out was horrible- For several years I didn't understand why everyone got so angry over this, but let's just say a year ago I was on the receiving end of Pema's "advice."
- Korra got all the hate for taking bad advice, but she was a dumb teenager who was clearly never in a relationship before. Why didn't all the hate go to Pema for that? Pema is a married women with three kids and was expecting fourth at that time, what was she thinking?!
- Mako being the most mature of the group wasn't stern enough with Korra, he should have told her to take his relationship seriously or be kicked off the team. That should have been the end of that.
Now with that out of the way...
How the episode could be improved
I'm not really a fan of any kind of romance, but let's see if even I can fix this.
Having romance in the plot isn't a problem by itself, but it should have been a subplot in this episode instead.
If you have to have a love triangle have Korra still date Bolin, but instead of Korra kissing Mako, have a scene were Korra tells him she doesn't know what she wants and that they should just be friends for now. Conflict could still happen from this by Bolin being bad with rejection still, that way we can still have the scene with Bolin being drunk after eating
The episode should be clear cut about Bolin and Korra’s relationship: are they serious? or are they just going on casual dates?
In part one, I explained that the biggest problem with Korra's writing was not exploring the political/social issues as well as it could have. If you have Mako dating Assami, do people take issue with their relationship in world because one of them is a non-bender and the other is a bender?
One scene I came up with that could have demonstrated this:
Mako and Asami could be out on a date and a group of Mako's fan girls could sneak up on them. This scene could start out as funny, but then turn into conflict when a fan girl starts to harass Asami for being a non-bender dating a pro-bending player. Maybe Mako not wanting to escalate the conflict in his fans is unsure of what to do.
Korra could have been hanging and seen this and could have scared off the annoying fan girls, this would have also shown Korra as a bit more noble. At this point she doesn't really like Asami, but is still willing to stand up for her.
Most importantly, completely cut scene with Pema talking about relationships with Korra and her daughters. Nothing good came of that scene, cut and make room for other plot points.
Shipping wars in fan bases are to be expected but these above choices would have at least softened the blow.
Maybe I didn't win any new fans with the above, but this next part I think most of us can at least agree on.
The main plot should have built up the tension on the pro bending arena.
Not only did the romance being the main focus hurt the everyone's views of the characters, it also took away tension that should have been built up leading to the attack on the arena. Let's not forget that this episode also was tonal whiplash from the last episod,e when Korra experiences fear for the first time in her life.
Some fans have taken issue with the pro-bending being too controlled of an environment, which took a lot of the tension away in the plot.
Funny I'm not a sports fan either, but even I know that lacrosse and Football (American Football to the rest of the world) are dangerous sports even with with safety equipment. Back in the 1920s when Korra lives, these sports were even more brutal with equipment that could break much easier than what players have now. Have this episode (and the others) could have show equipment being blasted into pieces from the force of the elements during the game, making injures players get more serious.
Speaking of which if Korra really had make a stupid move on Mako, maybe she could have admitted she had feelings for him while she had a concussion.
Cheating was explained in the next episode, however it showed the Wolf Bats as being the only team to do this.
Had cheating been a common practice in pro-bending in many teams, the equalists would use this as an opportunity to use pro-bending as a viable target, turning non-benders away from the sport and turning pro-benders themselves against each other.
Mike and Bryan have joked about giving the franchise a “George Lucas” treatment, this episode should be the place they start.
This series has its flaws, but its not irredeemable crap like many people claim, just by changing a few scenes this series impact could be greatly improved.