Week to Week: THE LEGEND OF KORRA #1.8, “When Extremes Meet”

Korra has a few gripes with the way Tarlokk does business in Republic City.  (Image: Nickelodeon)

After a somewhat disappointing episode, followed by a Memorial Day Weekend break, The Legend of Korra comes roaring back to life this week with a tremendous outing; short on tact and finesse, but plenty long on payoff, plot movement, and wicked action.  More after the jump.

Last time I complained about the lack of finesse that was used in revealing Hiroshi Sato’s role in the Equalist movement, which made the whole thing feel slight despite all the important advancements that spun from it (many of which were paid off this week).  This week, two things are becoming clear:

1. Korra doesn’t do narrative subtlety all that well, and
2. It doesn’t always matter that Korra doesn’t do narrative subtlety all that well.

You could have drawn a toothbrush mustache onto Tarlokk, have Tenzin ask if he had no shame, or had a scene where a female metalbending cop poses for a personal picture next to a pile of unconscious non-benders in their boxers, and the outright evil and parallels to history on display STILL couldn’t be any more obvious than they were here.  And yet unlike “The Aftermath,” it barely even registers because the surrounding material works so well.  On the surface, you had fantastic banter between Team Avatar in the front half, the highlight of which was Ikki casually blowing Korra’s crush on Mako to Asami (which was followed by Korra’s incredible reaction, mercifully giffed by seravid over at Something Awful).  And then in the back half, with Tarlokk having dismissed Korra as “a half-baked Avatar in training,” we got two spectacular set pieces with her.  In between, Tarlokk’s relentless thirst for power reached its natural conclusion: the police state that Amon warned everyone about has come to pass, and Korra’s friends get caught in the mass arrests that are born from it.

The two most dangerous people in this world are the two people promising to save it, and Korra and her friends have finally had enough of that shit.  Their ride to apprehend some Equalists attempting to break their own out of prison was nearly as kinetic and hair-raising as the arena battle just two episodes prior.  Part of that is, despite working together last episode, this is the first time the so-called New Team Avatar is doing anything on their terms; it is satisfying to watch them work on the offensive for once.  The team has officially formed, and while there might be plenty of internal strife in the future (can’t forget Asami’s glance as Mako helps Korra into the back of her car), there’s an inherent excitement in knowing that this is likely the first of many outings.

And that wasn’t even the best fight of the episode; it got dwarfed by the absolute show-stopper that was Korra vs. Tarlokk, culminating in the final reveal that Tarlokk can bloodbend without the assistance of a full moon.  My first reaction is that it makes perfect sense; the world has obviously evolved from what we saw in The Last Airbender.  Where there was only one metalbending master in the first series, now there’s a whole police force full of them.  And while we only know of two bloodbenders in the first series, both of them unavailable or unwilling to teach it, I’m willing to believe that someone else must have picked up on it and passed it down, adding to the teachings as it went along.  (In fact, many of Korra’s visions show the contorted faces and bodies of bloodbending subjects.  Tenzin suggested that Aang may be trying to tell Korra something through these visions; it might have been a warning.)  Still, this is a massive development; the most exciting part of this episode is actually wondering where they’re going to go with it.

But of course, there were massive developments in the last episode, too.  Why did that feel slight when this felt epic?  Buildup, buildup, buildup.  We had little time to get to know Hiroshi before he was revealed as a traitor; in his short amount of screentime, he registered as a blank personality-wise, giving me no reason to care when he turned out to be an Equalist.  (Of course, I imagine that it was a necessary sacrifice, given how much more story there was to be told in a mere 12 episodes.)  Obviously, a key difference with Tarlokk is that he was expected to be bad news for our heroes from the moment he was introduced.  But I knew how he worked; I formed an opinion of him beyond the basic “Oh, he seems like a nice guy/kind of a dick,” and that helped to build anticipation.

Going back to the obvious parallels, it was pointed out to me that in their own ways, Tarlokk and Amon represent what I imagine is a simplistic view of McCarthy and Stalin.  Stalin vied for power under the auspices of equality for all — Communism — whereas McCarthy rebelled against all things Communism to the point where he was essentially advocating for Fascism.  Both men wanted power and attention, yet I can imagine that deep down, both men had to believe that they were on a righteous path.  So it goes for our antagonists here: when Korra accuses Tarlokk of being no better than Amon just before their fight, you can see how much it stings in the shocked, angry look that washes over his eyes.

It’s nuance, shade, character.  As obvious and blunt as the narrative is at times, it’s easy to overlook when the characters it involves are so interesting and entertaining.  And while not all the characters are uniformly great (Hiroshi and Mako fall short; Asami started out flat and only recently became somewhat interesting), this episode shined the light on some fantastic, entertaining characters and pushed them farther than we’ve seen them go before, physically and emotionally.

So what did you guys think?