Week to Week: THE LEGEND OF KORRA #1.7, “The Aftermath”

Korra and her crew pretty much step in it while trying to sniff out an Equalist traitor on The Legend of Korra. Image: Nickelodeon

Quick update for those who care: My review of the Person of Interest season finale is running late due to a busy schedule and realizing that I don’t have much to say about it.  I’ll try to get it up by Sunday.

Meanwhile, yesterday morning’s outing — the last one before a Memorial Day Weekend hiatus — was a solid, entertaining plotmover that ultimately felt more slight than it should have.  Gather round and I’ll tell you all about it.

The closest real-life equivalent to the character of Hiroshi Sato is of course Henry Ford, the inventor of the automobile.  Ford was an innovator who also came up with the concept of assembly lines, which supercharged the production of his Model T and allowed them to be distributed all over the world.  Without Ford, we wouldn’t be as evolved as we are today, and without Hiroshi, the world of Avatar may not have changed much from The Last Airbender.

So it makes sense that in yesterday’s episode, Sato’s been revealed as Amon’s chief engineer, who hates benders just as Ford hated the Jews.  There’s a couple of interesting diversions from Ford, though; Ford’s hatred was completely irrational and born out of paranoia.  For instance, he thought the sinking of the RMS Lusitania was actually a Jewish plot, done to push the United States into entering the war, which they’d be able to make a tidy profit off of.  As far as Ford was concerned, those tricksy Jews were always looking for new and deplorable ways to make a buck.  But even when he blamed them for pretty much anything and everything, he never advocated for violence against the Jews; in fact, the infamous anti-Semitic publication that he sponsored, The Dearborn Independent, explicitly condemned the pogroms of its time.

Sato, on the other hand, is a little simpler: firebenders killed his wife, Asami’s mother.  Just like they killed Amon’s family and Mako & Bolin’s parents.  And he’s built a bunch of unbendable platinum mechs for the violent fascist oppressor who’s always on the go.

Of course, there are some key differences in the situation — mainly that the Jews were more of a minority in Ford’s world than benders in Sato’s world — but all the same, which person’s hatred is more interesting to you?  Personally, I take Ford.

Though it would have been a lot cooler to see more of Ford’s mindset borrowed for Hiroshi’s characterization, it doesn’t mean that it was a bad move to make him an outright villain with simplistic motivations.(*)  I get how there’s so much to tell and so little time to tell it in, that more time spent with Hiroshi to lay the ground for his betrayal might have led to more important aspects of the story being marginalized.  Still, so many big things happened as a result of this heel turn: Asami has turned her back on her father, showing herself to be an excellent non-bending fighter in the process (possibly filling the non-bender role that Sokka had in the original series).  Lin Beifong, who we learn has picked up her mother’s gift for earth-bending sight, is resigning as the Chief of Police, choosing to go rogue instead (though it remains to be seen how different this is from the warrantless raids she was previously running).  Bolin, Mako, and Asami are all moving in with Korra and Tenzin.  Korra’s pushed Mako into Asami’s arms so that she can have someone to hold close in the wake of major upheaval.  These are all moderate to massive developments, and they should feel as such, but instead I’m left feeling like I just saw a really good filler episode of The Last Airbender.  I suspect this would all carry a lot more weight if we got to know Hiroshi a lot better.

(*Point in fact, I can’t help but wonder if the common firebending backstory isn’t leading to something else.  Going back to The Last Airbender: Aang and Zuko learned that the purest form of firebending has nothing to do with anger, but many firebenders have honed their gift through their rage and pain.  Add to this that one of the issues being skirted around is that spirituality has a reduced, if non-existent role in modern bending, and I get the impression that the ground is being laid for something.  Could be wrong, though.)

But again, if it felt like a filler episode, it felt like a really good filler episode.  The fight sequence in Hiroshi’s secret lab was nice and tense, and the culmination of Asami essentially swearing off her father’s path was powerful, adding serious dimension and pathos to a once-bland alternate love interest.  Bolin’s comic relief is the strongest its ever been; in particular, his use of Pabu was absolutely adorable.  Even Mako started showing some mild signs of life, a trend I hope to see continue.

All told, it’s still a great way to go into the hiatus, even if it could have been a whole lot more.  What’d you guys think?