and things went downhill from there

One of the series on Netflix that I'd been meaning to watch when I got the chance was Avatar: The Last Airbender. To that end, I binge-watched the final 15 episodes of it last night and this morning.

Verdict: It's very good - if you haven't watched it yet, I recommend it.

I have a few comments and quibbles though, which are going to have some spoilers mixed in with my rambling thoughts, so stop reading here if you plan to watch the series and know nothing about it.

...

...

...

Obviously, no series is perfect, and there a few things that bothered me about this one by the time I got to the end.

I think foremost is that for all of the good characters in it, the only one who had a real character arc was Zuko. He started off as the main antagonist in the show and by the end of the show, he had gone through the kind of redemption arc that they could base writing guides around. I really enjoyed the rather dark episode where he finally earned the forgiveness of Katara - the last of The Airbender's team who was willing to extend it to him.

Not coincidentally, in my opinion Katara was the other one who had a legitimate arc to her character - though as with the others, it was mostly just a case of her maturing over the series. Even at that ...

I think that neither Toph nor Iroh really needed any character development as they were both there to serve specific roles, but I was really disappointed by Sokka.

Sokka was definitely the comic relief character in the series, but even so, he was one of the main people in the show, and I really felt like he deserved some development. He was the biggest disappointment in the series.

He didn't change. For every advancement he made, he would backslide again by the next episode - or even in the same episode. By the end of the series, he was the same whiny, immature twat as he'd been at the start. It didn't matter how much training he received from elite masters, by the next battle he was as useless as ever until the plot required him to make a smart move. They devoted an entire episode to him training under an elite master, culminating in him forging his own black sword out of metal recovered from a meteorite.

That was the entirety of this sword's importance to the show - it was forged to be inconsequential. He lost it during an airship battle in the final showdown and ... there was no fallout nor impact from this. He was just like, "Bummer, I lost my cool space sword." and then he carried on as if it had never existed.

I understand that they didn't develop his character because his immature antics were there to be comedic, but they weren't even that funny most of the time. Just irritating. I know that the show was written for a younger audience, but even so, I think the writers underestimated the ability of their audience to appreciate humour beyond the level of, "Hey, look, Sokka ate some blazing fire berries and burnt his tongue ... again."

Overall it was a great series. I just wish they had given a bit more love to some of the characters in it.