So, here's a link to this and the next episode. They all show in the same window, so just watch the first half if you for some reason only want to see "Skeletons in the Closet".
I decided to write separate reviews for the final two episodes of the season, even though they were shown consecutively on Nick, and they're being streamed consecutively on Nick.com. My reasoning for that is, if the creators had truly wanted the audience to consider the final two episodes as part of the finale, they would have made them into a two-part episode (a la "Siege of the North" or "Day of Black Sun"). Anyone who picks up the series later on, in whatever format is most convenient, will not know that the final two episodes were shown as a pair, and will consider each accordingly.
That being said, I can see why Bryan and Mike wanted to put this episode together with the action-and-revelation-packed "Endgame". This episode, although important to the advancement of the plot, was kind of boring on its own.
Broken down, "Skeletons in the Closet" has three main acts. Act I shows what happens to General Iroh and his fleet of gaudy ships. Act II shows our heroes planning out their final strategy against Amon. Act III is the sad, sad story of Tarrlok & Amon. I'd like to deal with their success or... not-success, in that order.
Act I: The firebombing of Iroh's fleet
As we left off last week's episode, Zuko's grandson Iroh, general of the United Forces Naval Fleet, was headed for Republic City, supposedly to be its salvation. When he arrives, he finds it strange that there is no outward sign of hostile forces waiting for his ships. Then, they run into mines. And biplanes. By the end of the sequence, the United Forces has been rendered a nonentity in the fight for Republic City. While some of the action is exhilarating, the obvious fate of Iroh's fleet means that a lot of the consequences don't feel very... consequential. Iroh himself has only been defined by four or so lines at this point. I don't have any stake in whether or not he does anything awesome, because there's no life in him yet.
Another point of concern is the large usage of time that this fight requires to essentially change nothing about the situation in Republic City. We sit and watch eight or so minutes of the episode that maintain the status quo established so far in the previous episode. If some character development had taken place, I would actually rejoice--but none occurs. Korra is the same impulsive-yet-eager-to-help girl that she has been all season. As usual, Mako, Bolin, and Asami sit on the sidelines and watch. Hiroshi's angry and wants to hurt benders. Woo boy.
There has to have been some other way to get General Iroh into Republic City and define his character more clearly than this. Time being at a premium this season, there was a better way to use the first 1/3 of this episode than dropping bombs onto ships.
Act II: The Hard Goodbye
Well, after Korra drags Iroh out of the bay, the freedom fighters regroup in Hobotown.
Small note on Hobotown: In the beginning of the episode, Gummo, the hobo with whom we're acquainted the best, tells our little group that benders and non-benders live together peacefully in Hobotown. So who are all these people that support Amon? It's not the lower class. The upper class usually is not peopled by the Hiroshi Sato-driven-by-revenge type, so I can't imagine too many of them are supporters. Middle class? Maybe, but other than that scene where Tarrlok turns off their power, I can't see too many examples of middle class bending-haters. Who do you think is going to these Pro Bending matches, after all?
Okay, back to Act II.
The group decides to split up, so that Korra can go challenge Amon, face-to-face. Even though hot-headedness and pride have been her problems the entire run of the series, her "gut" tells her that she needs to man-up and fight Amon, so that's what she's gonna do. Mako tells her that he's going to go with her to face Amon, and that pretty much breaks up the relationship that Mako had been in with Asami. I guess it no longer "makes more sense" for him to go after Asami, since she's no longer wealthy. So Korra and Mako go to face Amon, and the rest of the group goes to the airfields (which they find surprisingly easily, considering all they had to go on was Mako's "I think they came from that direction"). Not much to this act, as it was mostly to set up the structure for the rest of this and the next episode.
Act III: Who Amon really is
So after Korra and Mako go to Air Temple Island (disguised as Equalists) to confront Amon, Lt. Mustache Guy tells them that they better get to the Pro Bending Arena for Amon's big rally. Then, they go upstairs in the Air Temple and find Tarrlok. And Tarrlok spills his guts about the true identity of Amon.
Before I get to that true identity of Amon, I'd like to point out that my complaints about Korra having no agency still hold true in all of this information dumping. She doesn't seek out any additional information about Amon's plans, nor about his true identity--she just happens to be in the right place at the right time, just like she was in the Sato Mansion. The only ideas that ever cross into Korra's mind are "fight" and "smooch Mako". For how so many people have been raving about what a strong female lead Korra has been, this seems pretty insulting. How about if she decides there's more to Amon than what he's telling everybody, and she decides to go on a mission to figure out what it is? How about letting Korra control her own destiny for once?
Okay, now that I've got that out of my system, let's deal with the flashback. As a rule, I am not a fan of exposition dumps, especially when they take the form of flashbacks that don't involve our main character. Amon has been a nebulous villain throughout the series, and Tarrlok was a side character up until "When Extremes Meet". It's lucky, then, that this flashback is so compelling and movingly-told. Single-handedly, it nearly saves the entire episode from being a throwaway set-up to the main event. It makes this episode worthy of standing on its own.
At first, I cringed when Tarrlok admitted that Amon was his brother Noatak. "Did we really need any more coincidental family connections?" I thought to myself. The idea of Amon avenging their father's dismissal from Republic City was too trite, too cartoony, to be a powerful motivator for a villain in this universe. The Fire Nation's war carried back to a time when Sozin thought up the idea of manifest destiny. Encroaching upon other sovereign nations is not a laudable activity, it's true, but at least he had high ideals. Long Feng thought he was protecting Ba Sing Se from invasion from the Fire Nation by keeping it insular. Since the Fire Nation had never been able to broach its walls, it must have seemed like the most logical conclusion in the world to just sit behind them and wait out the war. In fact, it's only after Long Feng is overthrown that Ba Sing Se is sacked.
Point being, villains in this universe usually don't have purely evil goals. Thankfully, Amon follows this trend. Although he and Tarrlok are indeed Yakone the Gangster's sons, they both hate him. Neither boy wanted to learn to bloodbend, and both hate doing it. So Noatak (Amon's name before he put on the mask) gets it into his head that the Avatar's power to remove bending is the true noble power. We are to suppose that he went in search of such a power, and developed his bloodbending capabilities to such an extent that those abilities would allow him to wield that power himself.
The entire sequence is chilling. The two boys, vulnerable and alone in the night (pictured at the beginning of the review), have to sit and hear their father tell them that he's one of history's greatest monsters, and then have to hear that they're going to be forced to learn the same skill that earned him banishment from Republic City. The sequences of bloodbending, too, become more brutal as each lesson is shown, beginning with Noatak bloodbending a bison into a standing position, then showing him forcing a pack of wolves into bowing to him., and finally culminating in a sequence where the two sons are told to bloodbend each other. Noatak does so, but Tarrlok refuses to reciprocate, saying that it feels awful, and that he didn't want anyone else to have to feel that. Perhaps mirroring the paths that the two brothers followed into the future, Tarrlok is the boy with the bigger heart.
Finally, Noatak bloodbends his father in order to protect Tarrlok, then runs away. Just phenomenal storytelling for Mike and Bryan. If it hadn't been preceded by fifteen minutes of filler, I would have applauded this episode, but it came at the end, almost to make us forget that those fifteen minutes had even happened. Try harder next time, guys. Give me 22 minutes of solid plotting and character growth, and I will gush praise.
Observations:
- Was there ever a character as pointless as General Iroh (II)? He's so generic that there really could have been anybody commanding those ships. He doesn't carry any of the pathos of Zuko, and he had not been introduced to the audience in any dialogue prior to his reveal last episode.
- Lovely desolate landscapes in the flashback. You could feel the boys' isolation from the rest of the world, both physically and spiritually, in those backgrounds.
- Well, it's fortunate that Gummo the Hobo is also an ex-telegraph operator, because otherwise, how would Korra and Iroh have sent messages to the fleet? These things work out so well!
- Oh yeah, I guess Mako is now openly trying to get with Korra. Slipped my mind. I wonder why.
- Boy, we sure were all wrong about this being an "Aang Gang" flashback episode. Not that I would have minded.
That's it for this episode, but I'll try to get up the review for "Endgame" as soon as I can. Maybe tonight, maybe Wednesday night.
All images are the property of Nickelodeon, Inc., Bryan Konietzko, and Mike DiMartino. All rights reserved.
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