AWKWARD ZOMBIE

All very interesting ideas... that weren't explored. So many interesting themes... squandered.

It's not done yet, quit whining. Remember that Bloodbending was just a footnote in the original series till Legend of Korra. It's not squandered till it's been off the air as long as Pirates of Darkwater.

I am pretty sure non-benders had/still have pretty good arguments for equal rights and representation. A council of five people, all benders, isn't exactly equal. And I think that non-bender rights weren't actually threatened. It's just that they are pretty under-represented and don't have many people in actual authority looking out for them. The non-benders had/have zero representation on the council, the entire police force of Republic City mainly consisted of/was/is entirely benders, and that non-benders most likely face job discrimination in some areas because they can't fire off elements.

The jobs involving bending can be good, but they clearly aren't all luxury. And Sokka was his nation's representative so there is at least some history of nonbenders as leaders.

Aang's Son may as well be the nonbending representative, there's only like 5 airbenders.

His nonbending son, Bumi is certainly in a prominent position.

In fact, Sokka, Tarlok, and Tenzin are the only council members we know are actually benders. The others never show signs of being either, unless I missed something.

Not to mention that Amon was essentially creating these issues. Non-benders had the same rights and such, but the main issue was that people with bending could naturally easily harm non-benders in a lot of ways. It's less about rights, more about the fact that if someone can throw fire around their chances of trying to use the people who can't do so increases drastically because that's just how power works. There's no rights issues that Amon didn't just flat out lie about. Protecting non-benders has always been a theme of the series since the first episode, so I'm not entirely too worried it's just gonna disappear.

But I wonder if they'll bring up the fact that nearly or maybe even the entire police force is full of benders and there is little non-bender representation in it. Sure, Bei Fong is the Chief and she would crack down hard on corruption and you need benders to properly defend people against other benders, but it would still be pretty disconcerting if you were a non-bender living in Republic City.

Maybe they can start recruiting more non-benders or start a non-bender police branch and equip them with reverse-engineered Equalist tech to give them equal footing with benders as well as an edge against other non-benders?

I refuse to stop whining. No one should have to wait for part 2 for a story to get good. Maybe it can be 'saved' but that doesn't make the first book better.

But Book 1 wasn't bad.

I thought the story was plenty good.

"I'm the Avatar, you gotta deal with it!!"

Book 1 is good. End of story. Could have been better. I'll buy that argument.

For a season written to be self-contained and short, only for them to find out it was gonna continue AFTER the fact, it was pretty daisies good

I liked it better than Book 1 of the original series.

Especially the plot pileup that was the season finale.

My memory of Book 1 in AtLA is too clouded by nostalgia to remember how good it actually was.

If Korra is anything like it, though, the other seasons will make up for the first's flaws. I hope so.

Book 1 can be hard to get through at points because there are just so many episodes that just feel like a waste of time. Just like the first 4 episodes or so of Book 2, until Toph shows up.

But a lot of that is just because you know how phenomenal the show will get and filler episodes just stand out that much more.