Legend of Korra - Episode 10 Review and Recap

Turning the Tides

- Recap: The episode opens up with a concerned Mako watching over the sleeping Korra, who is recovering from the events of the last two episodes. Asami watches Mako watching Korra, and then walks away sadly, with her suspicions over Mako possibly cheating on her with the Avatar weighing on her mind. Tenzin, meanwhile, checks in on his family, who are all asleep in the same bed. Jinora wakes up first, and explains that they had stayed up for him, and that they were worried that Korra isn't wasn't going to come back. Tenzin reassures her that she's alright, and promises that everything is going to be alright from this point on.

Later, when Korra's awake, she catches up on the several days worth of food she'd missed while locked in Tarrlok's box and brings the others up to speed with what she knows, like Tarrlok being the son of Yakone, Amon debending Tarrlok and kidnapping him, etc. News about who Tarrlok's father is shocks Lin and Tenzin, but they do admit that in hindsight it's kind of obvious. Amon kidnapping the bloodbender worries Tenzin though, as he fears that it means that he's becoming enboldened, and is heading towards his endgame. 

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Asami is helping out Pema when she starts going into labour. Asami, being sensible, asks whether she should go and get Tenzin, but Pema fobs it off as the baby kicking "really hard" and tells her it's no reason to worry. Mako then comes into the kitchen, and loudly asks for more hot water for Korra's tea, and Asami angrily reminds him that he's a firebending and that he can boil water himself. Pema, sensing the tension in the air and realising that she might be somewhat to blame for it due to the advice she had given Korra, quickly excuses herself from the room to allow the couple to talk in private. Mako asks her while she's being so moody, and Asami asks him whether he has feelings for Korra, which he denies. Asami says that she likes Korra, but says that her real problem is Mako holding the truth from him, and when he says he doesn't know what she's talking about, she reveals that he knows tha the pair kissed during the tournament. Mako gets annoyed that Bolin told on him, but Asami tells him not to blame his brother when he was the one who did something he shouldn't. He then asks if they can sort of their relationship problems later, when the city isn't in peril, and she stomps off, saying that there might not be a relationship later to sort out.

Outside, Tenzin prepares to go and gather up the rest of the Council for a meeting, and asks Lin to take care of his family while he's away, which she agrees to. Pema decides to seize the opportunity to rope the metalbender into helping her out around the place, including giving Meelo a bath (while he shouts about needing to poop), to Lin's dismay. On the mainland, the Fire Nation representative on the City Council gets ambushed by the Lieutenant who comes to her door in disguise while pretending to be an exterminator, in a scene that seems bizarrely like a parody of an 80s porn film... Tenzin, meanwhile, almost gets jumped by some Equalists pretending to be windowcleaners, but he easily defeats them using his airbending mojo. Tarrlok's former PA shows up, claiming to be relieved that Tenzin is okay, as apparently Chief Saikhan called him to say that the entire Council, except Tenzin, have been kidnapped by Equalists. The PA tells him that he's now in charge of the City... just when dozens of bombs start going off in buildings all over the city while about a half dozen Equalist airships start approaching the city from the mountains.

The explosions can even be heard on Air Temple Island, where the Order of the White Lotus guards meet with Lin and Team Avatar to see what's going on. Lin tells the airbender kids to get inside, and explains to Korra that Republic City is now under attack. On one of the Equalist ships, Hiroshi Sato is looking sadly at a photograph of his family, including his dead wife, possibly to remind himself why he's overseeing the bombing of his former hometown, before returning his attention to the task at hand. He says that he can't believe that after so many years this day has finally come, and Amon agrees that today is the day that Republic City will fall to the Equalists. This results in a weird look from his techguy. Anyway, the citywide terrorist attack naturally is causing a lot of trouble, with ambulances and other emergency vehicles zooming around the place to try and temper the carnage, and Team Avatar also shows up to try and help out too.

They find the Korramobile crashed into a lamppost, where Korra had parked it. Asami makes fun of her parking job, and Korra reminds them that after they got arrested she was left with the car and that she'd made it abundantly clear she doesn't know how to drive. Bolin asks them what they're going to do about all of the resulting parking tickets, and gasps as Mako just burns them, the firebender saying that the police have more important things to worr about at this time. The angry Asami tells Mako to ride in back with Korra, who is kind of bemused as to why they've suddenly started acting like this. Meanwhile at the Police HQ, Saikhan is trying to coordinate the police against the Equalists, only to find that they've already put things in place to ensure the police aren't as effective. Sabotaging ALL the river rescue boats so that they can't rescue crew of downed police airships, for example. Tenzin arrives, to Saikhan's relief, and he explains to the councilman that the Equalists have launched simultaneous attacks across the city and that the policeforce is spread too thin to combat them effectively. Tenzin ponders for a moment, and then tells the police to wire the general of the United Forces...

Just as the message goes out, the Equalists launch a gas attack on the police HQ, along with cutting their power. Tenzin realises that it isn't safe in the building anymore, and begins evacuating, using his airbending to keep the gas away from him and the others. They get outside, only to find a bunch of Equalist mechs there waiting for them. This time the mechs are armed with giant electromagnets, which they use to snatch away the metalbender cops (they're in metal suits, see?) and stuff them all in a van to be taken away and debended. Tenzin is left with only a few of the regular police people, and although he puts up a good amount of resistance, he's unable to stop Saikhan from being taken away, just as chiblockers kidnap the people who he was trying to keep safe. He's slammed against a wall, and just before he passes out he sees another of the police airships crash while the mechs close in one him... Only for Team Avatar to come to the rescue, yay! Asami gets Bolin to make a ramp, and she takes out two mechs by crashing the Korramobile into them, after they jump to safety first obviously. Learning from the mistakes they made the last time they fought mechs, the manage to actually do really well against them, with Mako redirecting their electricity back into them to burnt out their electronics, while Korra forces water into the exhausts to make the engines shut down, and Bolin just knocks them over so they can't get up again. Asami, meanwhile, rescues Tenzin from the Equalists' truck (which has the nonbender police in it) who quickly comes too, thanks her, and rushes off to join the fight once again. They defeat the mechs in short order, much to the annoyance of her father, who had been watching from his airship who still can't stand to see his daughter fighting on the same side as benders. Amon promises to have them all captured, and her returned to him "soon enough".

Tenzin thanks the gang for rescuing him, but Mako points out that he shouldn't be so quick with the praise, as it seems that an Equalist airship has stopped over Air Temple Island. The OWL guards see the Lieutenant and Co. arriving, and angrily head off to fight them, while Lin tells Pema and her kids to go and hide inside. Only for Pema to go into labour, and be lead off by some female Air Acolytes. The OWL guards manage to slow the Equalists down slightly, but the arrival of a second airship of Equalist reenforcements clears them out of the way fairly quickly. They then have to face off against Lin, who manages to take out most of them by herself, but is overcome by the Lieutenant's electrosticks of doom. Then the surprising thing of the airbender kids coming to her rescue happens, and by some shred of awesome the combined work of Lin, the airbender kids and the OWL actually manages to subdue and tie up the Equalist invaders.

Tenzin arrives shortly afterwards, and is justifiably is annoyed that Lin let his kids fight, but he calms down when she admits she would have been toast without them, and that he should be proud that he taught them so well. He rushes off to see Pema, who has just given birth to another son, who they've named Rohan. Or Rajan. It's a nice quiet moment in the episode, but it's broken by Korra, who apologises but says that there are more airships coming towards the island. They file outside to see the airships coming towards them, and they ask Tenzin what he wants them to do. He says that his first priority is to get his family to safety as soon as possible, and that he's going to meet up with the United Forces leader and return with reenforcements. Lin says that if he's going then she has to as well, as he and his kids are the last Airbenders in the world, and that she can't let Amon get his hands on them because of this. Korra, meanwhile, he tells to be patience and hide until help comes, and then they can make an effective strike back against the Equalists. A little after this, Tenzin, his family, Lin and the Air Acolytes are all packed up to leave on his air bison, they bid fairwell to Korra and Co. before leaving. But two of the airships turn to follow them as they leave... uh oh.

The second attack on Air Temple Island begins, and the OWL guards sacrifice themselves to give Korra and her friends a chance to run away. Aw. The Lieutenant attempts to jump them by leaping at them from a cliff on the road to the docks, but he's smacked out of the air by Naga, who throws him off another cliff into some bushes. Team Avatar get to the ocean, and Naga swims them to shore, while Korra waterbends an airbubble around themselves so that they can get there underwater, thus hiding from anyone attempting to follow them. They end up having to hide in the sewers, and Mako's overt affection for Korra continues to bug his ACTUAL girlfriend. Back with the airbenders, Lin notices that the Equalist airships are gaining on them, and after pausing for a moment to glance at Tenzin's family, she tells them that no matter what they can't turn back to rescue her, but launching herself at the bad guys. She manages to destroy one airship, but she's captured while attempting to tear apart the second. Back on Air Temple Island, the captive Lin is brought before Amon, who offers to let her keep her bending if she tells him where the Avatar is. She responds with "I'm not going to tell you anything, you monster!", resulting in Amon debending her. Boo! And the scene is played like an execution, yikes.

The episode closes out with a man running up to the man who is evidently the head of the United Forces, and he's given a telegram from Korra, who explains that Amon has taken the city. The general tells the messenger guy to tell her that he'll be arriving in three days time, and that he looks forward to taking Amon down together with her. And the man is called Iroh, he's voiced by Dante Basco, and he's at the head of a huge fleet of warships, yay!

- Review: I thought that on the whole this episode had a lot of good stuff in it, but on the whole I feel that due to the series only originally intended to have twelve episodes the plot may be advancing too quickly without giving much room to breathe, if that makes sense? I mean, although some of the filler episodes in the only series were really damn annoying, the Divide for example, they at least served the purpose of building character even if they didn't advance the plot much. What I'm saying is that as good as the show is, I'd possibly like it more if it was spread more evenly over fifteen episodes rather than twelve maybe.

Anyways, actual stuff to talk about. I liked that the love triangle stuff was handled better than I thought it would be, with Asami not deciding to hate Korra for "stealing her man", rather being angry at Mako for being deceptive about the whole ordeal. Lin was awesome in the series, and was indeed a hero. Kind of getting the impression that Amon's power might not be as permanent as it seems though, as I'm not sure if they'd actually take her bending, particularly since the show's been renewed for another season. I also liked the effectiveness and actual cleverness that went into the Equalist's attack on Republic City, which had a bit more organisation and finesse than the previous villains plots in the show. The final reveal was great, though I think that Dante Basco's vocal range meant it was a little weird to hear a "teenage" voice coming from a grown man.

Can't wait until next week.