Yeah. I second this. Disney has let it go to dark places before, but the combination of the car alarms, helicopters, the hellish, monotonous whine punctuated by non-ironic screams of terror, the red, flashing lighting and NO MUSIC. That's pants-filling terror on a scale that this show hasn't touched yet. Close a…

If he was doing it deliberately or was blissfully unaware of the consequences of his behavior then he would. But in each case we see him affected by the hurt he's caused first. It's only when he's refused from being given the chance to atone for those mistakes while having the one thing he realizes he needs most…

Dipper pining (no pun intended) for Wendy isn't any creepier than your typical prepubescent, awkward crush. Which is to say, it isn't. And the Summerween episode was just as much about trying to appear more adult than his age as it was about impressing Wendy.

Except that Mabel reneged on her part of the agreement after Dipper had already upheld his part. She has benefited greatly over time from Dipper always ending up conceding his wants for the sake of hers. The show recognized this by offering her the chance to do the same for him. I don't think that makes Dipper…

It only matters that each of their goals were important to them, equally. And Dipper has always ended up conceding to Mabel in the past to the expense of whatever he wanted.

I don't think it's fair to say dipper turned around and started believing the agents. It took several reveals of new evidence for him to believe it, and it wasn't until he saw that Stan had been withholding the two other journals that he crossed the line into absolute distrust and unwillingness to believe anything he…

Put another way, consider how well the writers of A:TLA set the groundwork for Toph's being the one who is most trusting and willing for Zuko to enter the group in season 3 and is the one who is probably most responsible for convincing the group to give him a chance. It's because of a couple of scenes in which she…

Yes, I know. It's just that seeing a picture in a book doesn't really do much to foreshadow it's eventual use in the story, given that it's more of a "hey, look at this picture of a lion turtle" than anything that would hint towards what the significance the lion turtle plays in the mythology of the world and how it…

Or perhaps that Ryan Sanderson would have written a better story for Unalaq than the actual writers did. The writers did a great job in setting up the potential in the situation, but that potential has to become realized on screen in order to be satisfying. Because the setup was done so well, but the payoff being…

I'm afraid I don't follow how that makes the events in the finale make more sense.

There was still plenty of good writing, but unfortunately it was deeply inconsistent. They conjured several good and well developed individual episodes this season, but in terms of telling the overarching story of the season, it suffered way too much from cramming all of it's plot strands together into a space too…

All of this feels like the "what" of Unalaq's evil rather than the why.

Yeah, but that doesn't make him very interesting. That's one dimensional. Clearly his own children were shocked at his change of demeanor towards their own well being. That actually makes one think that Unalaq wasn't always this obsessed and power hungry. This leaves a big gaping question unanswered at the end. …

I'm thinking in terms of as a percentage of the total run time. If they tried to cram all the plot of those three seasons into 14 episodes while simultaneously not cutting back proportionally on any of the love subplots, you'd get what this season felt like, in my opinion, and the relationship stuff takes up a much…

What can I say. It worked. It made sense within the context of previous events in a way that didn't feel forced, but like a telling of ancient legends that sounded plausible (again, within the context of the universe). Not saying everything they did worked, because clearly it did not this season, but that was one…

I agree, but for different reasons. They just had way too many subplots that, in the final analysis, aren't really required or come into play in the resolution of the main plot. Virtually everything that happens in Republic City this season had zero impact on the final conflict. Three of the subplots on their own…

Ironically, in retrospect this season did manage to make the Lion Turtle from the original series feel less like a Deus Ex Machina, if you viewed "Beginnings" before A:TLA.

2 is what I was thinking.

Even so, the original series knew the place for such shenanigans in the midst of world-altering events. Katara put it best when she told Aang that they were in the middle of a war and that there were bigger fish to fry than figuring out personal romantic issues. Having it here amidst arguably bigger stakes than even…