Yeah, that was a lovely bit of implied backstory that builds nice continuity with Zuko Alone: the already close filial relationship between Zuko and Iroh and the possibility that Lu Ten was something of an older brother/hero figure for Zuko.

Observation: Zuko's horrific facial deformity doesn't seem to hurt him with the ladies. Sandor Clegane needed better lessons in sexy brooding.

I'm pretty sure it was always going to be 3 books. I actually feel like this first half of Season 3 tends to drag, since it's mostly stand-alones (albeit very good stand-alones) until the halfway point.

Shit, Disquis won't let me edit on my iPad. I just wanted to add that for Azula, Zuko (at least subconsciously) is the available stand-in for Ursa. She hates him because her mother adored him. She needs to rehabilitate him (in a way that keeps him 100% in her power) to recuperate whatever it is she lost when her…

This is a very persuasive reading. While I think it's easy to read Azula as a psychopath, this moment as well as her eventual breakdown suggest that she's motivated from a deep self-loathing rather than malignant narcissism. It's not a simple as, "Oh, she's just an insecure teenage girl." Rather, her unique talents…

According to the Avatar wiki, the Avatar is the embodiment of the planet itself in human form. I have no idea if that's canon or not.

I think you're ignoring the Dumbledore and Grindlewald subtext here.

Just to be clear, I don't pirate content, unless watching a show in someone else's house counts as pirating. But the reason I don't have HBO actually has very little to do with HBO. I would love to have HBO. The $14.95/month my local cable company charges for the premium tier is, I think, a perfectly fair price. It's…

Exactly. Since most of the shows I watch are available through network sites or on Hulu, my cable subscription is just there to give me access to premium channels and a few basic cable networks like AMC and FX. Cable subscriptions are either going to need to become less expensive or more customizable to get people…

The networks almost certainly will need to adjust to the new reality, but I would also assert that the cable providers themselves need to get with the program or risk becoming completely obsolete. The provider that has a monopoly in my (rural) area is expensive ($120/month for my cable package), uses outdated…

This is exactly what I was thinking. I'm not going to defend Lana Del Ray or Bon Iver—I don't really know that much about them, for one thing—but I'm not sure that a shitty television performance indicates that a band isn't "ready for prime time."

I must in bitterness point out that you were better off. I forgot that the trailer was attached to Wing Commander, that similarly disappointing pile of garbage. I adored those games as a kid. My Dad and I used to play them together, and I wanted so badly for the film to be good. No wonder I managed to erase that…

I fell in love with Walter Farley's The Black Stallion at about the age of 8 and was thrilled to discover that the were so many sequels that it seemed I would never ever run out of reading material. Unfortunately, after about Book 3, the franchise was subject to diminishing returns, and I had to force myself to read…

The Jon Ronson book "Them: Adventures with Extremists," which is excellent, pretty much arrives at this very conclusion, that the fact that no one is really in charge is actually in and of itself a pretty scary realization.

HOW HAVE I NEVER NOTICED THIS???

I saw some leaked panels. I like the story, but the dialogue, in my opinion, suffers because it's written at an elementary school level. And the Kataang stuff is insufferable, and I am, in theory, fine with that pairing. It is true that happy couples make for boring narrative.

Apparently Nick mandated a "green" episode as part of Earth Week. Admittedly, Avatar should have been able to do better than this, but I like to think of the tacit endorsement of eco-terrorism as a subtle "fuck you" to the network.

That episode is blatant filler, but it's one of my favorites just for its delightful dadaist weirdness. The fight scene between Samurai Appa and Samurai Momo is epic.

Since I usually skip The Painted Lady on re-watch and am never the worse for it, I prefer this approach.

I'm starting to wonder if the REAL problem here isn't the conventions of storytelling on television but the conventions of television criticism. On this site, I will occasionally see an episode of television that I enjoyed described as "difficult to evaluate as an episode," and I understand how—like trying to evaluate…