The End of Avatar... [benlehman]

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was just kinda bad.

Compare it to "The Siege of The North" at the end of Season 1, which was shorter, had more character development, better characterization, wrapped up more loose ends, and managed to contain more drama and a chunk of exciting action.

edit: Talking with Alexis, I sum thusly: "In the whole two hours not one character was ever faced with a meaningful or significant choice or obstacle." Compare, again, to the ends of season one and two.

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There are 18 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

"In the whole two hours not one character was ever faced with a meaningful or significant choice or obstacle."

Yeah, the more I reflected on it the more it gave me the "Matrix 2" vibe. Bleh.

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It's sad, because season one (and, for the most part, season two) are so very, very good. Lots of character conflict, significant obstacles, rising action, crazy creepy things in the spirit world, and humanized villains.

Bleh indeed.

yrs--
--Ben

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I can't help but feel like this is a weakness that plagues nearly all fiction aimed at children. Well, and all fiction aimed at adults I guess but it's like even the really good children-stuff just can't help making everything a little too simple in the end. The beginning and the middle often escape the trap, but almost never the end.

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They are certainly limited by the constraints of ostensibly being a show for children: no one can die, no can be killed, and most "mature" themes (i.e. sex and violence) are off limits. In many ways, I surprised they got away with as much as they did.

Ultimately, I think they wanted to wrap up the storylines, so they made very definitive choices to further that goal. Toph got backgrounded, Sokka's relationship with Suki solidified, and Azula went down the only path that didn't involve compromising her character or killing her off.

I kinda compare the series to the original Star Wars trilogy: solid first season (New Hope), bad setbacks at the end of season 2 (Empire), and sweetness and light ending (Return of the Jedi). Minus the Ewoks, thankfully.

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Azula went down the only path that didn't involve compromising her character or killing her off.

Hahhahahahahahahahahahah!

So, did I just miss the place where she backstabbed her incompetent father and took over as the primary villain?

How about where she expressed all the human emotion clearly bubbling up inside of her? Did I miss that, too?

yrs--
--Ben

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I think you expected too much from a show airing on Nickolodeon, regardless of what you think about the creators' awareness of their audience.

I will admit, I had hoped that season three would open with Azula using her command of the Earth Kingdom to give dad a run for his money, but that was too much to ask. As for "incompetent father," where are you seeing that?

And I think you got all the "human" emotion you were going to get out of Azula in "The Beach." Frankly, I found her later dissolution believable and beautiful.

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This has crap-all to do with the audience. Compare to season one of the same show.

Season one: Humanized and intelligent villains, no pornographic focus on confronting them in one-on-one duels, villains fighting vying for power, sometimes violently, among themselves, actual tragedy, actual choices and conflicts.

Season three: Dehumanized and stupid villains, pornographic focus on confronting them in one-on-one duels, villains inexplicably cooperative and obedient within hierarchies, moral choices of only the "I have my cake and eat it too" variety.

Basically, see: this (http://lumpley.com/creatingtheme.html)

And if you tell me, again, that I'm "expecting too much out of a kid's show" you seriously need to watch seasons one and two again.

yrs--
--Ben

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The gap between second and third season was when the creators seemed to realize that their audience was mostly adults.

I was responding to this comment of yours, below.

I think the creators set the bar very high with seasons one and two and fell short of it in season three. The first two seasons established an unrealistic expectation that the show's ending failed to attain. They took the easy way out, several times.

Your link to Vincent's essay is well-taken; I'm filing that away for my current design, because it's damned useful. But I'm willing to live with the Avatar ending I've got, rather than choosing an arbitrary point in the show to stop watching. Yes, it dilutes the whole somewhat, but I'm willing to trade that for a "complete" story. I freely admit I'm a lot more forgiving than many people when it comes to animation.

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They are certainly limited by the constraints of ostensibly being a show for children: no one can die, no can be killed, and most "mature" themes (i.e. sex and violence) are off limits.

Yeah, that's not really what I meant, though. Adding 'adult topics' does not result in an adult treatment of character, and I didn't feel like the show lacked at all in terms of needing more people killing and dying. It just felt like, as with so much entertainment aimed at children or otherwise, the show felt that it always had to spell out exactly what was going on at any moment -- there wasn't much ambiguity or doubt, and when push came to shove problems turned out to have easy solutions.

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Fair enough, and I'm never one to assume that the presence of child protagonists automatically relegates something to the confines of "young adult fiction," for example. (Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is not young adult fiction, to my mind.) But published fiction and television broadcasts have different standards, and I think that's where Avatar ran afoul. I think Avatar as published fiction could have done what needed to be done, but broadcast Avatar could not.

Third season definitely pulls its punches. I would be curious to read how you (or Ben) might have executed the ending differently. Where does it come off the rails for you, and why?

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No, it's a flaw at shows aimed at geeks (characters cannot face meaningful choices or obstacles). The gap between second and third season was when the creators seemed to realize that their audience was mostly adults. Thus, the maturity level goes down (no meaningful choices, characters become pigeonholed, female characters get increasing sidelined and ignored) and the "adultness" level goes up (more fighting, violence, and explosions.)

yrs--
--Ben

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If you're saying geeks have similar expectations from shows as the ones people think children have, I'm all for it. I was not talking about "adultness" in quotations, though -- I agree there was as much or more of that going on by the last season.

And I feel like even the beginning of the third season was doing okay, but there was a huge gap there so it's a little blurry.

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Is this Avatar the Last Air Bender?

aumshantih has mentioned that I ought to see it. Sounds like if I do I should skip season 3?

Be well.

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My advice is, yeah, stop at the fall of Ba Sing Se. You will go "but ..! I need to find out what happens next!" But the show is basically downhill from there.

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And you didn't think that Aang spending a good 1/2 of the finale figuring out if he was actually willing to take a human life in order to save the world to be a meaningful choice or obstacle?

I do agree it's not quite as good as the finales of the other two books, but I think you are being way too harsh on it.

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You mean, the choice that was immediately rendered meaningless by a deus-ex-machina?

If he had decided not to kill the dude and that had had any effect on his actions in the future, it might have been interesting.

yrs--
--Ben

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Thanks. I've been trying to figure out why I was so dissatisfied with the finale, and you hit the nail on the head. I couldn't get much past, "Man, all that set-up for two dudes punching each other?"

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Word.

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