Why I Liked The Second Season of Netflix's Avatar The Last Airbender (And How NOT To Criticize An Adaptation)
I recently finished watching the second season of NATLA, and unlike most people, I didn't binge it one day. I spaced it out over multiple days because I loathe the Netflix model of dropping all episodes at once. It makes people rush through the series so they can talk about it and avoid spoilers, but at the cost of ruining any sense of pacing the series is trying to establish.
I thought the first season was mid, but was pleasantly surprised by the second. I'd probably give it a 7/10. Good, but not great, and definitely not a masterpiece.
The Positives:
Pacing:
The first thing I want to talk about is the pacing and runtime of the story. Both the cartoon and live-action series have similar runtimes for season 2; around 7 hours. And yet, I felt the live-action story was more concise and gripping in terms of pacing. So I thought back to the cartoon, and I understood what I was feeling.
Let's not kid ourselves, guys. Season 2 of the cartoon had a lot of bloat; at least in the first half. Even though every episode technically advanced the plot and the worldbuilding in some sense, most of these episodes were quite self-contained in their stories. For example:
"The Cave of Two Lovers" was mostly a side-quest on the way to Omashu. The only plot-relevant things were the establishment of the Kataang romance and the start of Zuko's arc, but those didn't need the whole tunnel adventure to happen.
"The Swamp" was mostly a plot device to direct Aang to finding Toph (plus retraumatizing the main cast, and the return of the blue spirit). Once again, a very "side-quest"-y vibe.
"Avatar Day" was mostly filler. The only plot-relevant thing that happened was Zuko leaving Iroh to journey on his own.
"The Tales of Ba Sing Se" was mostly filler as well (though it helped as a breather before the last stretch of the season).
"Appa's Lost Days" explained how Azula's gang got the Kyoshi disguises, introduced the Guru, and explains Appa's current whereabouts. But Appa's not a character, so his horrible experiences don't come into play later.
The cartoon was written as an episodic kids show, so this structure is understandable.
But live-action series tend to have a more serious tone by comparison. This usually brings with it more tension, and thus, more serialization. If you expected the same whimsy from live-action, I don't know what to tell you.
I'm saying all this because there are advantages to tightening up a story, and people should have an open mind about this fact.
Acting:
My biggest gripe with the first season was with the acting of the main cast, especially Aang.
I hated the way Aang's lines were delivered. He had this annoyingly monotone way of speaking, and this weird up and down head movement he'd do every time he spoke. It took me out of most scenes.
But I'm happy to say that it's much better this season, although he still shows traces of this issue in the quiet and vulnerable moments.
The chemistry, charm, and comedy of the cast feels better this time around. It toes the line between the silliness of the original, and not overly serious like in a lot of live-action shows. Sokka's funny, Katara has much more personality this time around (though could still use improvement in delivery), Toph was excellent, and Zuko had great line deliveries.
Heart:
Even though the season mixed, matched, and cut a lot of plots from the show, they adapted the major beats pretty well, such as:
Zuko Alone
The blue spirit's return
Wan Shi Tong's library
The loss of Appa
Jet's death
Aang's fear of the avatar state
Sokka's mourning of Yue
Aang's "death" in the finale
and so on
Here's a [handy article](https://mashable.com/entertainment/avatar-the-last-airbender-season-2-netflix-episode-guide) that breaks these down
But not only that, I found some of the changes they made to be compelling, such as:
Having Katara's "Painted Lady" arc happen at the same time as Zuko's "Blue Spirit" arc. It made for excellent setup for them to collide in the finale.
Making Long Feng not obviously evil at the start, then finding out how he's been subtly sabotaging team Avatar was pretty good.
The fire nation district in Ba Sing Se being used to add more nuance to the fire nation's evil (while also having Katara, Zuko, Jeong Jeong, and Jet clash).
Iroh being a lot more guilty and traumatized by his past does tug at your heartstrings, and is obviously set up for him to find the motivation to take back Ba Sing Se in season 3.
Jet's death being a deliberate sacrifice instead of an accident was a great sendoff to his character.
I like that Aang didn't get cheap shotted immediately by Azula. Instead, he only lost after holding back from killing her, which makes more sense for his character.
I found myself able to look past the superficial material changes, and into the heart of what this season was trying to do. And I think it did it well.
The Negatives:
Now for the things I think could be improved.
Action:
Watching this season, I felt as if Zuko's actor was the only one who could actually do martial arts, or at least pretend they can.
Watching Azula firebend filled me with apathy. It always looks like someone waving and flailing their arms without any power or skill involved. All the while, the special effects try to convince you that she's a prodigy. Similar with Katara. And Ty Lee's special ability isn't chi blocking, it's wire work.
A lot of the fights also felt cramped to me. Most of them take place in such small areas (like Earth Rumble and the final fight), and it's frustrating.
The choreography of the fights rarely impressed me, and that's a shame for an action show. I know live-action is limited compared to animation in terms of crazy stunts, but still.
Visuals:
Live-action shows have *got* to stop desaturating. Every. Scene. Everything looks so washed out, even when the tone of the scene is cheerful, and it annoys the hell out of me. Just because they're in the Earth kingdom, doesn't mean everything has to be grey, brown, and muddy.
But my biggest problem is the CGI. The bending effects, the animals (like Appa and the serpent), and many of the backgrounds just look uncanny, and made it hard for me to get immersed. Although it did make Wan Shi Tong look scary, so I guess that's a plus.
Adventure:
Most of this season takes place in Ba Sing Se, which hampers the worldbuilding and sense of adventure. I know the cartoon spent a lot of time there too, but not *this* much of the season. The adaptation doesn't do a good job of making the different parts of Ba Sing Se feel unique enough (visually). I hope they improve this in season 3 when they go to the fire nation.
Side Characters:
Way too much screen time was spent on Sai. I'm sorry, but I didn't find his romance arc (if you can even call it that) with Amita to be compelling in the slightest. I wouldn't mind if he was just a plot device for exposition and progression. Sai's arc in the first season was good enough, and I didn't find his scenes with Sokka to be all that memorable.
I wasn't feeling the fire nation general Tran either. Once again, he gets a good amount of screentime with Azula, but I don't find his contribution to the plot to be worthwhile, and he's not compelling in any way. It seemed like they set him up to be a competitor to Azula, since Ozai stole Azula's plan and give it to him. But then it turns out he's completely loyal to Azula, with no hint of betrayal.
Professor Zei was alright, but I didn't find his ending satisfying. He helps out team Avatar, then betrays them despite the friendship he had with Sokka, then dies immediately because of a technicality in Wan Shi Tong's rules. He probably didn't think Wan Shi Tong would try to kill them, but it still felt out of character for him.
The Criticisms:
Now, here's what really inspired me to write this piece.
After enjoying the second season, I was excited to see what my fellow fans thought, so I checked out my socials. I was expecting mixed reception, but mostly positive.
So imagine my surprise when I saw that the most vocal people found it to be bad, some even saying it's worse than season 1. But okay, I thought, maybe fans were seeing something I wasn't seeing, so I looked into the discussion surrounding the hatred.
And oh boy, what a dumpster fire!
Superficial Changes:
The vast majority of the criticisms are people complaining that something wasn't done exactly like in the show. That's not an inherently bad criticism, because an adaptation does need to resemble the spirit of its show. My problem is that most of these complaints are about *every* little superficial change. Here are a few examples I've seen just you can see how ridiculous it's gotten. You've got people complaining:
That The Boulder is fat instead of muscular.
That Toph can read braille and write using earthbending.
That they didn't show every second of Aang breaking into Omashu to find Bumi.
That the effects of the cactus juice weren't as extreme as in the cartoon.
About the most *minute* of deviations in pretty much every scene that was adapted from the cartoon.
"Character Assassination":
Then you've got people complaining that the characters have been butchered compared to their cartoon counterparts, but then failing to understand why those changes were made, and why they actually *have* captured the essence of those characters. For example:
Claiming that Zuko stealing from the pregnant lady at the beginning of episode 2 was character assassination (I'm serious). The same scene in the cartoon was already partways into his arc, whereas in the adaptation, it was at the BEGINNING. Zuko is made to feel guilty, and it comes full circle because he returns the baby rattle later in the season. In the cartoon, Zuko stole the horse-thingy from the girl whose leg got burned, after that girl showed him hospitality. This isn't out of character.
Claiming that Iroh has been assassinated because he's not as joyful this season. But obviously, they were going for a _far_ more guilty and conflicted Iroh this time around, since he spends more time in Ba Sing Se this season. Cartoon Iroh felt guilty too; he just kept it bottled up. But he's still the same character. He still enjoys tea and opens a tea shop, he still helps out the guy who tried to mug him, he's still a good mentor to Zuko, he still has that heart-to-heart with Toph, and he still helps Aang in the finale. I think people are upset because show Iroh doesn't appear to have the same inner peace as cartoon Iroh. But I don't see why it's a problem to add more layers to a character, while maintaining their essence from the cartoon.
Claiming that Ozai was ruined because he's not the one-note sadistic monster from the cartoon, and instead has more humanity to his character. But the thing is, he's _still_ a monster. He just doesn't want to believe it and hides his nature behind principles like "family", "strength", "prosperity", etc. He deliberately plays his kids against one another. These additions make him even more hateable, because his evil is so much more personal, in addition to being political.
That Aang was out of character for getting mad at his friends. Except he gets mad at his friends in the cartoon as well. And they do a good job of setting it up by showing how much pressure he's under, how many secrets his friends have been keeping, and how much Aang depends on Appa for comfort.
I could go on, but I hope you see my point. It's one thing to claim that you don't like these changes. Fair enough, you're entitled to your feelings. It's another thing entirely to claim that the writers assassinated the characters, but then provide no real justification beyond "it's just different from the show", or "show [character] wouldn't do that."
Straight up not paying attention:
And finally, you've got people straight up asserting plotholes in the story that can be easily refuted with a few seconds of thought, or paying the slightest attention to the show. For example:
People claiming that the serpent's pass was a waste of time because they could've just rode Appa. But the scene literally shows that Appa's saddle is full of people, forcing the rest to travel through the pass. And no, they couldn't just go back and forth with Appa because the fire nation was right on their heels (Aang literally says this).
People saying that Aang didn't have to fly back and fight the serpent after they crossed the water. Except if you use your eyes, you'll see that the refugees were nowhere near far or high enough to avoid the serpent. In fact, the serpent nearly gets them right before Aang hits it away.
That Toph shouldn't have been able to fight in the earth rumble because she was standing on sand. Except the scene literally shows people picking up ACTUAL ROCKS from under the sand. And big ones too. So it's obviously not ALL sand.
That Toph should've been able to sense the people kidnapping Appa outside the library since it wasn't surrounded by sand. But Toph doesn't recognize faces or outfits, so she wouldn't have known it was the Dai Lee. The reason they're kept out of view is so it's a mystery to us viewers.
There's some more examples, but those are the major ones I've seen.
The fact that so many criticisms are of this fallacious kind says to me that this hatred isn't coming from a good faith attempt at understanding what the adaptation is trying to do. And that sucks, because it sets up a catch-22 where if the adaptation is different in any way, it gets hated, but if it's the same, then haters will be like, "What's the point of this adaptation!?"
Show, Don't Tell:
Another common set of criticisms is people crying "too much exposition!" and "show, don't tell!".
"Show, don't tell" is one of the worst pieces of writing advice to ever circulate. It's a thought-terminating buzzword that people bring up any time they don't like a scene where a character is explaining something to another, but don't really understand what it means.
Let me set the record straight. This kind of criticism only makes sense when the "exposition" is unnatural for the characters in that scene. For example:
A character explaining something that the other characters should already know.
A character explaining something completely unprompted by the context.
A character talking in an unnatural way so that the author can explain it without having to set it up properly.
The dialogue halts the momentum of the episode with overly wordy explanations and damages the pacing.
Repeated explanations of the same thing to viewers, with the assumption that they have short-term memory problems.
Important events that should be on-screen being relegated to words without enough justification.
I found that the instances of these in the second season have dropped drastically compared to the first, yet the complaints don't seem to have dissipated. The few instances that do exist are heavily exaggerated in their severity. People are parroting around this criticism, but no one does a good job of explaining where and why it's a problem. In fact, many scenes have good subtext and subtle details to them that you have to pay attention to notice, but the fact that not many are praising or even noticing them makes me wonder if Netflix is on to something with their recap mandates.
Once again, I'm disappointed.
Disappointed because the people with earnest criticisms seem to be the least vocal, whereas the haters are not only extremely vocal, but also hostile and condescending to those who feel differently. I wish I could say to ignore these people, but they're so many that I think there needs to be some pushback. That's why I wrote this, so thanks for reading.
Some highlights:
The scene at the end of the first episode where Iroh and Zuko go their separate ways was hard to watch in a good way. And while Zuko was a jerk, it wasn't a contrived anger like a lot of shows do to cause conflict.
"I've never said that!" - Zuko in episode 2.
The Boulder and Toph's teacher teaching Aang to earthbend while fighting him.
The wall of names was an amazing addition!
The haiku battle between Sokka and Toph was really cute and wholesome.
Zuko having the opportunity to capture Aang but choosing not to. I think this was an adaptation of him setting Appa free, and an homage to him kidnapping Aang from season 1 of the cartoon (which didn't happen in the live-action).
I like that the Earth King isn't some buffoon, but was genuinely misled.
The Team Avatar argument broke my heart, especially seeing Aang crumble after losing Appa. I think this was an homage to the scene from "The Chase" episode of the cartoon, where Toph leaves after their sleep-deprived argument.
Everything with Zuko and Katara in prison
Some lowlights:
Sokka's gag with the "Jing" in the first few episodes wasn't funny at all; it was actually annoying.
Katara tells Toph at the party that they've been through a lot to get to Ba Sing Se, so that makes them friends. But this dialogue happens one episode after they meet her, and they really didn't go through much together besides briefly fighting Azula, and they haven't had any one-on-one screen time since. This could've been developed more.
How on Earth did Suki solo Mai and Ty Lee in episode 4, when in episode 2 she, Sokka, and Katara struggled against them?
Toph talking to Avatar Kyoshi felt forced. They had no reason to talk to each other besides being earthbenders, and it seemed like the only reason they spoke was so that Kyoshi could tell Toph about the eclipse. It didn't feel earned.
I wasn't feeling Azula's "Parable of the Two Dragons" story. She monologues on and on for like 3 minutes, telling a whole story that I didn't find that interesting, just so she could say she wanted to kill Zuko. Then she doesn't kill Zuko when she has the chance.
"I'm Toph Beifong, and I invented metalbending!"