The End of Avatar...

[benlehman]

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.

Comments

[icecreamemperor.livejournal.com]

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.

[semioticity.livejournal.com]

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?