As always, I watched these two episodes back-to-back, and I'm glad I did. It means delaying my Korra fix for a week, but you end up getting a much juicier story as a result. But I was particularly nervous this time around given the dramatic improvement in the show and my hopes that the quality would remain high. I was nearly about to call it quits only for The Sting to end up surpassing my expectations, followed by the Beginnings two-parter, which completely blew me away. So I had my fingers crossed that these two episodes would continue to buck the trend. And they did!
Even better, I was completely unspoiled for the appearance of Iroh. These days, spoilers are well-nigh impossible to avoid. There are articles and interviews and promotional material that seem determined to give away every tiny surprise and plot-twist before it airs, and even if you manage to avoid all that, there's always the (good) chance that if you delay watching even for a single day, you'll accidentally end up seeing or hearing what happened on-line.
Spoilers are the bane of my existence, simply because I think they're the bane of storytelling's existence, but that's a rant for another day. Suffice to say that when Iroh appeared out of the darkness, I was genuinely and whole-heartedly surprised, not only at his appearance, but at the fact I didn't know it was going to happen. And I can't remember the last time that I was allowed to be totally unaware of where a story was heading. It was such a nice feeling.
Plotwise, we finally have a definite sense of what's happening and why. Unalaq is in cahoots with Vaatu, attempting to open the second spirit portal so that the dark spirit might be freed – though his reasons for doing so and the nature of his end-goal remain unexplained. (Hopefully it won't involve Daddy Issues, because oh boy am I sick of that excuse).
Meanwhile, having remembered the circumstances of her very first incarnation, Korra knows that she must head into the spirit world to close the portal, thereby keeping Vaatu trapped and thwarting Unalaq's plans. To do that, she first heads to the Air Temple to reconcile and seek help from Tenzin.
Elsewhere, Mako is continuing to investigate his suspicion that Varrick is behind the explosion at the Water Tribe Cultural Centre, and though the likes of Bolin, Asami and Lin continue to be singularly unhelpful (and marginalized) at least the story is heating up.
Honestly though, most of our interest lies in the spirit journey that Korra and Jinora take in order to find and close the first portal. It was great to see more of Jinora, though I'm not entirely sure a) why the writers wasted time on a Meelo subplot when they could have been establishing Jinora's rapport with the spirits, and b) why Korra even needed Jinora in the first place.
Presumably she was "the guide" of the episode's title, but on reaching the spirit world they were immediately separated. Korra ended up where she needed to go entirely without Jinora's help. And then the poor kid was turned into a liability when Unalaq held her hostage. This more than anything was the glaring narrative flaw of these episodes.
But all that aside, once the two girls reach the spirit world we're treated to what can only be described as an Asian-themed Alice in Wonderland with a side helping of Hayao Miyazaki. It was absolutely entrancing: the setting, the animation, the surrealism, the direction – I watched it once and then immediately rewound for the pleasure of seeing it all over again.
But as lovely as eye-candy is, you can never rely on it to maintain your characters and story (looking at you George Lucas and Johnny Capps). Thankfully, the Korra writers knew exactly what they were doing; using the backdrop of the spirit world to do what immaterial landscapes and the fluidity of reason/logic have always been used for: shining philosophical insight onto life and its people. In no other setting could we see the internal effect that being separated from Jinora has on Korra: her reversion back into a little girl.
This relationship that exists between internal emotions and the external manifestations of the spirit world continues throughout the episode, and is a natural continuation of what was established in Beginnings, in which we saw benevolent spirits transform into dark creatures when in the presence of negative energy. Here however, it would seem that the Avatar's influence on the spirit world is even more profound, with spirits changing shape and form the instant that Korra gets agitated or upset. (It kind of reminded me of the relationship between Peter Pan and Neverland in the 2003 film, in which the weather would respond to his moods).
Conversely, by taking Iroh's advice to heart and responding to threats with kindness and openness, she manages to quell dark spirits into revealing their more benevolent interiors. Heck, the theme is even apparent when Iroh serves her a drink poured from the teapot in which Raava was transported in, telling her that a person can still taste light in the tea that is brewed within the vessel. Likewise, in Unalaq's presence the spirits take on more malevolent visages, including the friendly Furry-Foot. Much like the transformation of the lemur spirit in Beginnings, it's a genuinely scary moment to see a friend instantaneously become an unrecognisable enemy.
I suspect that this theme of the bond that exists between internal emotion/external manifestations will be key to the story's resolution: this idea that inner light is the only way to battle outer darkness, though how it will play out on-screen remains to be seen.
Until then, there was enough in these episodes to tide me over for a while: the irritable "get off my lawn!" meerkats that become terrifying in a heartbeat when they create a whirlpool in the earth itself, a malevolent sea creature whose insides are a series of rivers and currents swirling down into an abyss, and the return of Wan Shi Tong's library, last seen sinking into the desert sands and now suspended upside down in the middle of a forest, tree roots poking through the hallways and bookshelves.
The writers/creators took particular interest in spatial relationships and shifting points-of-view, from Furry-Foot's change in size from a small dragonfly to a giant rabbit that can be ridden, to the "movement sweeps" where a character is transferred over tracts of land without ever moving (seen when Korra farewells Iroh and later when she confronts Raavu).
In short: this was the most concentrated amount of imaginative force I've seen on this show for a long time, and long may it continue.
Miscellaneous Observations:
J.K. Simmons had this week's utterly thankless job of expunging exposition and emoting forced sadness that he's not the spiritual genius his father wanted him to be. Where has his sudden inability to commune with the spirits come from? It's not that we've ever seen him excel in this area, but neither have we ever seen him struggle. The real interest lay in his reaction to Jinora being more of a spiritual prodigy than he is, and Simmons was finally allowed to actually voice act when he realized that his little girl was still trapped in the spirit world.
Still, he got in a few good lines: "this is why schedules are important" and "I knew this would happen!" after Korra's convoluted story of the trouble she's gotten herself into (even if they stole that last line from The Simpsons).
Desna and Eska finally become proper characters! The moment when Eska puts her brother's need for a healer above her father's demands was a strong one for her, though I'm disappointed that Unalaq continues to be rather bland at this point. He doesn't even have the striking design or powerful voice of Vaatu to compensate for his one-dimensionality.
Beyond Kya intuitively realizing that Jinora is more in tune with spiritual matters, Kya and Bumi still haven't done much. That goes ditto for Bolin and Asami, who are stuck in comic relief and replacement love interest roles. (Seriously Bryke, you're bringing the love triangle business back AGAIN?)
Beautiful line-reading from Varrick when he told Mako: "we need you. Me, Asami, Bolin, we're all on the same team here, we want you to join us! You wouldn't want anything to happen to Asami, would you? Or what about your brother? I'm saying that I want your help to protect them." So subtle that Mako didn't even recognise it for a threat! Come to think of it, neither did I considering it's obvious in hindsight that Varrick hired Bolin and struck a deal with Asami in order to get them in his power, much like Masterson did with Louis's friends in Dancing on the Edge.
All the set-up concerning Tenzin and Korra finding an appropriate place to meditate and the attack of the bat-like spirits may have stretched on a little too long. That time could have been better used to explore just what Jinora was capable of.
The show was consistent in remembering that bending isn't possible in the spirit world, though they added a new dimension by demonstrating that it can be done if you enter physically, as Unalaq did. Yet having entered the spirit world by leaving their bodies behind, shouldn't Korra and Jinora have been blue spectres, as Aang was in The Winter Solstice two-parter?
Interesting that when Iroh appears, he's wearing Earth Kingdom clothing rather than Fire Nation gear.
There was a fairly blatant nod to Lewis Carroll what with the tea party outside Iroh's cottage. God I love cross-culture literary references.
Having seen Wan Shi Tong's library in the trailer, I had wondered to myself whether they would slip in a reference to Professor Zei. And they did! His skeleton in fact. Tiny nit-pick though: I wish that Jinora hadn't identified him by name. The odds of her actually knowing about him are somewhat slim (albeit not impossible) and it would have been nice for the audience to have been trusted to figure out his identity by themselves. It does make me wonder though: did he live down there for a while or was he killed almost instantly after the Gaang made their escape?
Wan Shi Tong. What's his deal? He seemed oddly benevolent with Jinora at first, particularly after his fury at humans the last time we saw him, but here he didn't even request that she provide him reading material as he did to the Gaang. And then it turns out that he's in cahoots with Unalaq...?
Still, his line: "Apparently I have been fed some misinformation about the existence of tiny men within radios" was hilarious, all the more so due to the fox's ashamed reaction.
Unalaq's hypocrisy is apparent when he says of Tenzin: "what kind of a father is he?" after he himself left his own son injured in the spirit world. I'm still hoping that there's more to unwind concerning this character. Having him as Raavu's servant diminishes him a bit, so fingers crossed that he'll have a few more layers to him before the show's end. There's still no evidence to contradict the theory that on some level he thinks he's doing something good.
Finally, I thought it was fascinating that Korra immediately says: "my teapot!" when she spots it on the table. Not Wan's teapot, but my teapot. We've never seen an Avatar have that sort of immediate emotional reaction to a past life before; Aang in particularly often seemed to speak of his past lives as though they were people quite separate from himself. Likewise, that Vaatu addressed Korra as "Raava" was a spine-tingling moment, and vaguely reminiscent of Dumbledore's insistence on addressing Voldemort as "Tom."
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