hanshotfirst1138

Clip shows by nature are inherently annoying, time-wasting, and designed to save a show money and almost never benefit the viewer.

RocShemp

I have to agree. Although I did enjoy the Varrick portion of the clip show episode, given how it was essentially a fuck you to clip shows. They should have deleted everything that came before the Varrick segment and released his part as a little webisode on YouTube or wherever.

In any case, I just finished watching the fourth season and, even though the last three episodes were mostly an improvement, overall it's the worst season of the series. It's even worse than the wildly inconsistent second season, given that this one was consistently mediocre.

I liked some individual moments but never any whole episodes. And the story arc wasn't particularly compelling or well developed. Hell, Kora's monologue about Kuvira would have been better served as flashback material earlier in the season or even a Kuvira-centric episode. Having Kora spell out the moral G.I. Joe style really didn't work.

Also, the last episode is grossly overrated since it all felt a bit rushed. I get that people probably ignored how much it glosses over because they were thrilled with the final scene. However, given I was never invested in Korra's love life, I was mostly concerned that it was too brief an epilogue.

That and the whole "new spirit portal" business felt tacked on. Likewise with the return of the spirits after Korra and Kuvira found common ground. I get what the writer's were going for but frankly I feel they bit off more than they could chew and seemed more at home with an endless barrage of action sequences than tackling any meaningful message.

I think if I ever revisit this show, I'll only watch it until season two (but most likely skip all the Korra-Mako relationship drama scenes).

Baron Of Hell

It was either that or fire people. I think they made the best choice given their options.

RocShemp

Why not skip the episode entirely (thus distributing the production costs/time to other episodes)? It added nothing to the season.

EDIT: I just read about their reasoning (not letting go of their crew months early) but given that the only real money saved was on the animation department (which explains the lazy static shots during the last two episodes), they could have gone the extra mile and ditched the episode altogether and rescheduled everyone's projects regarding the remaining episodes. There were many ways to get around this.

Baron Of Hell

That wasn't a option. They had to do a episode. Did you miss the part that they had to do a set number of episodes according to their contract. Nick forced them to make this choice. For one reason or another Nick F over the show on purpose. There really was only two options clip episode or fire people.

Jackskeleton

There really wasn't a way to get around it. You get contracted for X amount of episodes and then they cut your budget, you still have to produce X amount of episodes ordered.

RocShemp

I see. Well, in that case I can forgive the shittacular clip show.

Doesn't excuse the mediocrity (in terms of writing) of the rest of the season, however.

Jackskeleton

I thought the 3rd season with the anti-avatar anarchy group was probably the best of the show. The thing that suffered from the last season was that it took a long time to get the team back together. But still, as a whole, I loved this series and am grateful that we got what we did.

The way they handled female characters and gave us strong female roles both as heroes and villains. Just look at the main players for that final season. the majority of them were strong well written female characters.

hanshotfirst1138

I didn't know that the budget got slashed part of the way through, did they switch to a different studio? I remember the opposite problem a few seasons ago when the animation was subpar and they switched studios.

RocShemp

Overall, the third season was indeed the most consistent. However, it did suffer from Lost syndrome since most of the problems would have been easily resolved if the characters weren't constantly keeping vital information from one another for no other reason than the script demanded they do so.

I agree that most of the female leads were strong and well written but feel that Kuvira was not. She was a generic power hungry bad guy, despite a last minute attempt to give her depth via Korra's soliloquy after their last battle.

Also, Su Beifong was poorly written in the final season. All she was asked was to be interim leader of the Earth Kingdom. A task that really only required her to restore appointed government officials (by next in line in order of succession, if need be) and enforce previously existing laws. Instead the writers had her go on a rant about forced subjugation that came out of absolutely nowhere. If the writers were going to reveal that Su wasn't as benevolent as she presented herself and, in turn, this influenced Kuvira (being Su's closest disciple after all), I would have accepted it. Instead, it was just a normally level headed (except when dealing with her sister) character behaving like an idiot for the sake of giving the antagonist an opening to go about her business.

I get the theme this season was about fascism but the writers were incredibly ham fisted about it. But then these are the same writers that felt the need to list the themes of the previous seasons when Korra was training in "Dagobah".

RocShemp

As far as I know, Studio Mir animated the entire fourth season. Which is why, except for the clip show and some static shots (that they tilted in post to give the illusion of animation) during the last two episodes, the animation was almost of theatrical quality.

Supermallet

I watched season one of Korra when it aired, and I liked it but didn't love it. I didn't bother with the other seasons until now, and I binged watched all three over about a week.

I'm surprised to see so many people say that season two was inconsistent. For me it was the single best season of Korra OR TLA. I loved delving into the lore of Wan and the spirits. The final battles were absolutely epic.

Season three wasn't too bad of a follow up, but season four felt really shoddy. I liked the time jump but it seemed like there was something missing. After the revelations of season two and three, I would have thought that season four would have Korra learn something truly important, but it seemed like it just came down to stopping the giant mech. And IMO the ending didn't go far enough.

I really adored TLA and I still think it's the more consistent show. Korra is far more uneven but I appreciate another look at that world and a different take on the Avatar. And season two really is spectacular.