Intros. Yeah. They are nice. And such. Wow, I'm almost as good at playful banter as Mako is! That was a joke. You know. Jokes. Like Amon. He tells good jokes. That was sarcasm. Yeah.

The beginning has some nice humor with the airbender kids, and for some reason the line "I'm a boy!" from Bolin cracks me up. He just assumes that this is not known information and Jinora must be informed of this fact. Also, I'm sure someone has estimated the size of Airbender Island and thereby the whole city via that information about trees. It is probably HUGE by that measure.

Tarrlock has officially graduated from sleazebending into outright jerkbending. He's half Azula, half Long Feng, and all terribleness. He brings Korra to freaking tears. NOT COOL BRO. Part of the reason why Korra is so likeable is because she knows she's a failure at airbending and spirituality. And it gets to her. It really does. Thankfully her friends are there to help, and decide to form the new Team Avatar! Oh yeah, and Sokka...

Hi I'm in white

“Enough with the Team Avatar already! No matter how many times you say it, it’s not going to catch on!”

Don't worry about that. I'm still calling them Team Korra, though. It's less confusing to me. Also, Asami

is totally a hairbender, and owns the Batmako-mobile! And all of this fun comes to an end when Sifu Jerkbending arrives at the scene. Non-benders, who already appear to be segregated by income into the slums, now have strict curfew and are rounded up and arrested if they are caught outside at night. Do you just LIKE giving the Equalists good reasons to exist? Republic City reminds me more and more of Ba Sing Se each moment. Less brainwashing, more police brutality, though.

Tenzin is the best. I have a feeling that he is a brony.

The best scene in this episode, however, is easily the confrontation between Tarrlock and Korra. It's interesting how each of them have strong adverse reactions to being compared to certain other people; Korra hates the idea of being like Tarrlock, and Tarrlock vehemently denies the obvious comparison to Amon. I will be upset if it turns out that Tarrlock was Amon the whole time. Too easy, too simple. My headcanon is that it's Naga, but I'm not sure the show will back me up on that one.

The bending battle is intense. Korra is very much the opposite of Aang; she was most certainly intending to kill Tarrlock (Kyoshi approves of this sentiment). Korra behaves much more like a native earthbender than a waterbender, and this is shown by her brute force method of fighting. It works though, until..

.

I will perpetually use this image for every shocking plot twist of anything

BLOODBENDING. One wonders how Tarrlock learned it. Maybe he heard of Katara using it, which, if true, is on equal grounds with Chi-Blocking in levels of "WHY DID X CHARACTER HAVE TO LEARN THIS IN A:TLA WHYYYYYYYYY". The very Amon-like pose as he lunges over her makes me seriously think that they are going to reveal that Tarrlock and Amon are the same guy.

This was a dark, dark episode, and I loved it. MOAR.