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Know what’s the most ironic part?
The Legend of Korra was the only Nickelodeon show to get an Annie nomination this year
The other four shows in the category were Adventure Time and Over the Garden Wall by Cartoon Network, and Gravity Falls and Wander Over Yonder by Disney
Yeah, but an Annie honors the creators, and provides no profit to Nickelodeon, so they don’t give a fuck. Goddamn Nickelodeon.
Where can I see this statement they posted?
Here: http://bryankonietzko.tumblr.com/post/103173899927/a-few-preemptive-words-about-episode-408
Oh its Opal
meme?
I’m surprised they didn’t mention anything about Korra finding Raava again. But at the same time… not surprised, since they don’t often talk much about those big flying kites. You know what, they should do that, honestly. I’m curious what they think of those two spirits, them being the most powerful forces in the show (not to mention the world-building that came with those two.) I personally love Raava and Vaatu, but Rob and Doug rarely talk about them.
Ok this may have been explained somewhere in the series and I just missed it. So sorry if I sound stupid asking this, but why isn’t Zuko Firelord anymore?
Three weeks without really seeing Kuvira, that doesn’t seem right somehow, seeing as how she’s the main antagonist.
That whole thing between Korra and Zaheer, with Zaheer now helping her. It had kind of a Thor: The Dark World vibe to it. It’s probably an idea that’s been done before that, but that’s the first thing the popped into my head.
Bolin is fucking stupid, you really think the best way to win Opal back is by lying to her and making her worried for no good reason?
I also didn’t like that final scene, I’d already guessed that Bolin was going to do something to make right what he’d done to Opal’s family. But I was kind of hoping that his motivation to do this, would be just that it was the right thing to do, and then once it was over Opal would be like “ok I guess you’ve earned another chance.” But the way Opal flat out tells him “do this and you might just win me back” makes me think he’s not going to be focused on the mission, but instead it will be all about the prize to him, it almost seems selfish of him to only do it for Opal’s love. Also the fact that they are going together makes me worried that there is going to be a lot of awkwardness! But let’s be fair and see where they go with it.
I’m sure it was just an age thing and his daughter was clearly old enough to take over.
I think it was stated on the Nick website back in season 1 exploration game thing that he stepped down to be an ambassador of the Fire Nation to Republic City. He was wondering around somewhere.
OPAL okay, her name is opal….. come on guys.
Honestly… I find that the “excuse” blogs were bad form. It smacks of creators knowing their work sucks and looking for someone to blame it on. The last line of the episode, the MST3K mantra, is the last straw for me. “Eh, just enjoy the show.” No. No, I can’t, when it’s terrible. The clip show episode wasn’t even all that bad. It’s just a fact of modern animation. What was BAD about it was recalling all the idiotic plot points of the previous series. Yeah, as if I wasn’t already sick of my teeth of the love triangle, now we had to recap just how stupid it was. Oh, but Mako “learned” from it. Yeah, if by that you mean his characterisation flip-flopped and let’s peg that on bullshit storytelling, sure.
The WRITING for the show is what’s sinking it, not the budget or executive meddling. Having seen the last three seasons, I can concede that Season One may have been good in its own way, for people who like crapsack, disempowering stories. I hated it, but I can concede that it was at least well written. The same cannot be said about any of the following seasons, and now Season Four’s dialogue reads like a first draft somebody wrote the previous night and submitted the next morning with no proof-reading. Four episodes from the end, there is STILL not a sign of any kind of plot. We’re just sitting on our hands waiting for something to happen and none of the characters are compelling.
Hell, the last episode (the one that aired this past Friday) could have been good if it weren’t all easy resolutions achieved in a few seconds through dialogue that spanned maybe a couple of sentences. And the whole “Opal hates Bolin” plot point is just dull, dull, dull. It’s a beat-for-beat retread of “Katara hate Zuko,” except with none of the weight, none of the build and none of the emotional investment. Manufactured drama FTW! This whole show has been one long string of tedious, pointless manufactured drama which comes out of nowhere, goes nowhere and achieves nothing.
O noes! They lost the funds for an entire episode. OK, then why not slash a few of your tumorous B-plots? This show is simultaneously rushed in the extreme and insubstantial all but completely. They’re always tripping over themselves to deliver exposition, but it’s exposition for meaningless subplots to do with boring, irrelevant side characters which are only related via deus ex machina at the end. Yeah, you wanna’ skip an episode? How about you skip the one with Tenzin’s bastard children? How about that?
I really disagree. I think seasons 1, 3 and 4 have been really well done, and season 2 was enjoyable, though tedious at times.
You talk to Malidictus, he has long been considered Korra as bad show and nothing will convince him to the contrary, whatever the authors have done with the story of the show. Clipshow episode for him is just another proof that Korra is “crap”. As far as I remember the last time he said he stops watching Doug vlogs about Korra, because they supposedly are not “objective”, but it seems that he must express his negative opinion wherever he can.
As for your opinion on the show, I agree completely.
You do know who you are talking to right? That guy is the biggest troll this side of 4chan.
@Malidictus
This is supposedly your so-called “objective” opinion? I still do not understand your enormous, not to say irrational hatred of this show (though again you have such an opinion about many classic movies that many people love, I guess you’re enjoying the fact that you have a completely opposite opinion than others). In previous comments you complained even about the smallest things and details, nitpicking even the smallest alleged failure of the plot and making him into some alleged huge problem.
Korra does not deserve such treatment because it definitely is not a bad show, no matter how much you tried to denigrate it, stop running your opinion as purely objective, because it is not.
I think it’s the executive meddling that screwed the writing a lot. Yes, the love triangle was stupid and the creators fault and no elses. But how it was resolved was due to the fact that they never knew how much seasons/episodes they were going to have. At the beginning they thought they’d only have 1. So it probably wouldn’t have been as bad had the network not dicked them around so much.
I think we can see that the story flowed a lot better these last two seasons, where they knew how much they had left and thus could plan out what they were going to do. There might still be some stupid stuff in there (I agree on the Opal and Bolin stuff), but most of it is pretty great.
Also remember, these are the same writers who created Avatar: The last airbender, which was a great show through and through. So I’m pretty confident they could have made something very good here as well, had the network not dicked them around all the time.
dude, Malidictus everyone knows you’re a giant fucking troll. You have a /reputation/ for it, for crying out loud. No one cares about your pathetic excuse of critique/analysis, lmao bye~
“And the whole “Opal hates Bolin” plot point is just dull, dull, dull. It’s a beat-for-beat retread of “Katara hate Zuko,” except with none of the weight, none of the build and none of the emotional investment. Manufactured drama FTW!”
Opal and Bolin were in disagreement since the first episode, it all culminated when Kuvira had taken metal clan city and captured Opal family, it seems to me as if this actually has some kind of build and emotional investment.
“Manufactured drama” Well, technically all fiction has manufactured drama because you know, we’re talking about fiction.
Your arguments I can easily use to trashed any fiction including the original series , for example I can take the same things to say about Shakespeare, I mean, come on stupid end of Romeo and Juliet, Manufactured drama FTW!
“This whole show has been one long string of tedious, pointless manufactured drama which comes out of nowhere, goes nowhere and achieves nothing.”
Empty words with no real arguments.
“Yeah, you wanna’ skip an episode? How about you skip the one with Tenzin’s bastard children? How about that?”
You mean the episode when Tenzin send his children to find Korra? What is wrong with that episode? Except that for some reason you hate these characters and call them bastards, which is pretty stupid insult, which is why I can not doubt that you’re just pathetic troll.
Do anyone think Suyin is the leader of the red lotus because she did a crap job on save Korra life.I find she was make it look like she was save Korra but leave small bit of poison in her hope to kill her or make her weak. So far every things that happen earth queen die and kuvira take the earth kingdom it Suyin who have grain the most.
the also images of suyin and zaheer together in the past.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vg0BK6eSOmo/hqdefault.jpg
I find all the constant whining about Nick screwing Korra over tiresome and annoying at this point. Yes, they could have done a lot better. But they could also have done insanely worse; many great shows have been outright cancelled halfway through with no warning whatsoever. Nick at least had the grace to order three more seasons than the show’s creators had actually expected to get, and pulled through on them. In spite of the massively dropped number of viewers, the company was still invested enough to have the whole show come out.
So please, stop whinging about that whole dull mess-up, and focus on the show itself, OK? Listening to even justified complaining gets tiresome after awhile, and compared to how some networks treat their properties when they stop making top dollars, Nick has been practically saintly with Korra.
Sainty? ATLA was the best show ever on television and the creators should be given awards not dicked around by Nickelodeon. Somebody is trying to put some good on that godforsaken network but they need to replace it with ten more fucking so-called ‘Sit-Coms’.
I think this is different. If a station just cancels a show, that usually means that they haven’t renewed their contract. With Korra, they actually ordered three more seasons after Book 1 and are now not standing by their agreement. If you order something you are supposed to pay for it. Obviously I’m not asserting that Nickelodeon is breaking any contracts here (though I do think that either reading fits with Konietzko’s blog post), but it still takes a special kind of cynic to be this reactionary about TV ratings.
It would be nice to live in a world where network executives show a little recognition of the talent and potential in the people they employ. As it is, I expect the (IMHO) two best cartoonists working today to seek employment elsewhere soon.
Well considering that my Internet provider has blockade Nickelodeon, which by the way the had been keeping up with Korra is using a different site, the same website that I use to keep up with all my anime that I don’t not like springing looking for every different channel, although I still contribute to some of the other companies that filmed the animate, though either these guys are gonna be moving to Cartoon Network(please give them a DC show for that.) Or more likely there will be moving over to Disney(10 bucks says they’re given the new guardians of the Galaxy TV series! Or in a few months will get the new fantastic four by them, because Fox is losing rights in a few months!]
rather Adult Swim or TBS or FX got ahold of them.
Imagine what they could do with less restrictions and Channels that……….well, aren’t dicking over every show not named Spongebob.
Hey Rob and Doug, you need to do a Nostalgia critic rant about this. Do a ‘Disney Afternoon’-esque episode where you kidnap the ‘charts’ guy who works for Nick, beat the shit out of him and have a go at him for ruining Nickelodeon. This could be a sort of response to your Nickelodeon Month from ages ago as well as an end to the Avatar Review Trilogy (Not sure if the editorial counts).
I really wanted a third and forth sequel series to Avatar exploring the Earth and Fire Nations, both are huge and we can’t have seen the all, plus we are only in the era of the world when they have 1920’s technology, I want to see the 70’s – Avatar in space, and the communication era. Fuck Viacom!
me to man…….me to.
And this is why Doug and Rob will never work in Hollywood. Good thing, too.
Wow I had no idea it was this bad. I wondered too, but I just figured they needed a breather or something, but to pick between a clip show or firing people is insane. Aren’t they still getting Avatar: Last Air Bender money? How can they be so strapped for cash…
Anyway, it just sucks mostly because as I feared, the latest episode seemed very rushed as you guys said. Tenzin I remember says something like “No Korra you can’t do this!” and Korra says “But come on!” and he immediately says “Well okay!” Little things like that irk me in the dialogue that I hadn’t seen in the season before. Another was when she can’t get in the spirit world and is complaining, but Zaheer says something and suddenly it’s like “By jove you’ve got it!” Not very well written at all.
Pretty much everything you guys mention… But anyway, hopefully now they’ll get back on track.
cool video 🙂
At least we still have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Penguins of Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda… and maybe even Power Rangers… then again those are the exceptions of good shows on Nick rather than the majority so… yeah Nick is really falling apart.
Doug and Rob said it best, ‘Don’t associate yourself with Nickelodeon. Only then will you have peace.’ DO YOU HEAR THAT SABAN? CUT YOUR TIES WITH NICK. ONLY THEN WILL POWER RANGERS STOP SUCKING.
Yeah, ever since Spongebob went bad, Nick has become crazy (and not in the good way). Now to make matters worst, their insanity seems to be going to their business practices. Spongebob was like their King and once the King dies, the rest of the kingdom falls with it. D:
The Varrick scene in the re-cap episode was indeed the best…
I hope someone on youtube made a single recording of that telephone scene.
Zaheer does emote his guilt for a moment. He seems to blame himself for what happens to the Earth Kingdom.
I can see why, his mission after all was to change the landscape of power. End the rule of a Queen, end the Avatar cycle.
But never expected such a turn of events with Kuvira.
I’m really blown away by the writing with Korra and Zaheer, now that I think of it. In so little time, they managed to show the complexity behind Zaheer’s actions and beliefs. So many other shows would categorize things into “good and evil” so simply. Thank god we have shows like this to show the more complex side of things. I mean, Zaheer’s still a pretty darn psychotic person, (he doesn’t seem to think twice about killing people) but even people like that have some structure to their actions.
welp, it’s official, Nickelodeon has screwed their channel and shows more than Cartoon Network did a few years back, maybe even worse than when CN did that at that.
Hear that Nick? your worse than Cartoon Network now. You have utterly failed.
For some reason I have not been able to watch any of the videos on this site. Turning my laptop on and off, logging out, logging in, etc. For some reason blip doesn’t like me. On top of that channel awesome isn’t uploading most of their videos on youtube so I can’t watch them there either. Any suggestions on how to remedy my issue with blip/channel awesome?
The thing that really sucks is that Nick still expected the creators to come up with 13 episodes for this season, because they were under contract. If they just went and cut out one episode and made this season 12 episodes, Nick could’ve sued them. So they’re options were: 1) Fire a bunch of people and still finish up 13 total episodes *with a slashed budget*, 2) do a clip show that everyone is gonna complain about, or 3) risk getting sued by doing only 12 episodes. It was a lose-lose situation, and Mike and Bryan chose the situation where people lost the least, but it still sucks. Once Korra is over, I am done with Nickelodeon forever. I love Avatar and The Legend of Korra, but I hate Nickelodeon for what they’ve done.
My first impression in this episode- Tenzin is still a massively useless lump.
No seriously, when was the last time he managed to help Korra, or do something that was even remotely useful to the plot or affected anything? Season three’s stand against Zaheer was the final impressive thing I can recall him doing, and even then that was largely useless- him fighting the three of them changed nothing of their plan, Kai escaping was all Kai’s doing. And here he says that the Airbenders shouldn’t be used as an offensive force when they have pretty much been a police force for the world up until this point, so consistency where? He’s been a pretty useless mentor for Korra overall, hell in this episode ZAHEER of all people is the one to help her break through her own mental blockade- in a very rushed manner.
Now… I can to a certain degree understand the choice here. Korra is someone who needs to confront her problems head on, so letting Zaheer sit and stew and then get a pep-talk from Tenzin that helps her reach the exact same conclusion as the talk with Zaheer (to learn to accept her loss, accept that she was weakened but also to find pride in the strength it took to overcome her loss and work her way back up) may not have been “her”. She needed to confront Zaheer again, because Korra isn’t the type of person who could simply let him be and work out things without him- it was too personal for her. Granted that I still would have liked to see her at least talk with Tenzin first, then confront Zaheer and have him try to challenge her, and then she could decisively show him that she had reached a new understanding of herself, and in doing so truly defeated him. Instead, the show seems to want to portray Zaheer in a more sympathetic light and show him help her overcome her issues.
But I don’t really care about Zaheer? The reasons why are longwinded and not really important to the point, so in tl;dr recap version- I never bought that he got so good with airbending so fast, I couldn’t understand where the Red Lotus drew all their resources from so it felt like they just could do all the stuff they could do because the plot SAID they could, none of the characters had interesting personalities, and the one point I could give them, the murder of the Earth Queen, didn’t really feel big or awe-inspiring because the Earth Queen was such an incompetent villain that her death just made me go “meh”. I didn’t care about her, and I don’t care about anything related to Zaheer and him saying he’s “changed” just feels like Varrick- poorly written and unbelievable.
Now, maybe having Korra tie up that part of her arc is an impressive feel-good moment for fans of Korra the character, but I find myself unable to care. It just felt like all she had to do was get past the fact that she lost in a fight, and then boom- she’s all better. You could say that’s making light of Korra’s plight, and you’d have a point. Getting captured, beaten down, poisoned and slowly recovering and working her way back from the brink is an impressive feat… but it feels like that’s ALL there is to Korra’s story here. And that’s just not enough for me. It just feels like a way to pad it all out, make her weak so that she can rebuild herself and make a triumphant comeback, because people like triumphant comebacks, right? So we’ll write one of those and everyone will not really mind that we already had her save the whole world back in season two, and this will totally be the coolest way to end it all!
I don’t know. It just feels like there’s no real point to it all, you know? Like Kuvira is just gonna be a big bad evil nazi-communist Korra has to take down because she’s the good guy and Kuvira is bad- not an actual character with motivations of her own which Korra might have to challenge by standing for a different philosophy, like every other big boss fight before her. It just… feels like Korra is always defending status quo, somehow. Like she’s always on the side of those who would want to keep the world as-is, despite it’s flaws and that’s never really challenged or addressed. They show us how the world has flaws that need fixing, but then never really seem to show Korra addressing or fixing the problems- they just disappear off-screen so that Korra can concentrate on participating in sweet fight scenes. That’s all there is here- a succession of sweet fight scenes, sound and fury that signifies nothing. From Bolin’s unfunny jokes and stupid actions, to Opal going “If you want to win me back, help me free my family” instead of “if you want to prove you’re sorry, help me free my family” (which comes off as super-manipulative and not at all what her character has seemed like so far) and everything Wu says making me groan… it was just the kind of episode that makes it really hard to care about anything related to Legend of Korra, or feel hyped that she’s reached some big inner revelation of inner strength or whatever. I dunno. Just a really “bleh” episode.
The funny thing is that the team can do a great retrospective, as evidenced by The Ember Island Players, so it’s clear that any shortcomings from this were intentional. That said, the Mover 3rd-act is all kinds of awesome. I really wish the whole episode was a Mover version of the series instead of forcing those other two acts into it.
Hey, its been a while, I know you got lots of stuff to do, you might want to get on this one, YOU NEED TO DO THE NEXT EPISODE, ITS ONE OF THE BEST KORRA EPISODES THAT HAVE RECENTLY CAME OUT!!!
Are you giving up on LOK just like that?
You’re 2 Episodes behind.
Rather pointless to comment on this video at this point but alas.
the clip show was probably as good as it could have been, maybe the varrick part should have been the entire episode, but then we would have missed the great self deprecation of the mako part.
Overall considering what they were given I actually think the episode was pretty good, I still wish that nickelodeon could go one season without screwing over korra, and I really hope that if avatar ever returns to television it does so on a different channel.
For me zaheer helping korra didn’t feel rushed, I think it’s because zaheer has always been presented as a guy who puts his ideals above anything else, I do agree that korra got over her problems rather quickly.
Besides that this episode was pretty great, setting up the last few pieces for the grand finale, I do hope that after 9 episodes korra has finally defeated all of her inner demons.
Opal, her name is Opal. It’s ok. Some names just don’t stick. I particularly like the name Opal. It’s pretty much the only reason I remembered. Lol
You’re telling about the Beyond the Wilds and you DO NOT INCLUDE THE ‘I’m gonna poke it with a stick’ joke? D: