The new Team Avatar has finally been officially formed and Tarrlok has a few shady schemes he's cooking up.
I think at this point Tarrlok has supplanted Amon as the villain I want to watch more. Amon is out there rallying people to his cause to bring down the bending run government and other establishments. Meanwhile, Tarrlok is corrupting everything from within, and right out in the open. Not only is he quickly consolidating power, but he's doing it with the permission of the the other council members and the police force. I find that vastly more fascinating to watch than Amon's plan to remove all bending.
Amon is a man who spouts high minded ideas that, as of now, we don't know if it's just rhetoric or actual beliefs. Tarrlok does the same thing, but while it's still not entirely clear whether he believes or not, since we've seen more of him over the course of the series, I'm leaning towards he's saying anything he can to move up in the ranks. Throughout the episode, Tarrlok's move possibly suggested working with Amon. Antagonizing and then rounding up non-benders is exactly the kind of thing that is going to drive people straight to the Equalist cause. When Korra mentions to him that he's worse than Amon, though, is what finally sets him off and he attacks her. I'm glad they aren't doing that. Tarrlok working with Amon makes everything too easy, and I really like the morally ambiguous space he was in. He's moved from "ambiguous" to "wrong" in this episode, but because of his ambitions, not because of working with the enemy.
This certainly was a schizophrenic episode. Before we got to the darkness of the latter half of the episode, it was pretty light and fun. We had the hilarious Irri and Bolin interaction. I hadn't realized before how much alike those two were, but it makes perfect sense. Meelo was back and hitting on Asami in the cute/creepy manner that only Meelo can pull off. They even give us a few quick fantasy clips when Irri reveals Korra's crush on Mako to Asami and Irri gets shut out of the room. I really liked Asami's reaction to the revelation. Pretty much, "yeah kid, I had an idea, but that's not cool bringing it up." Asami is the wall between the Korra-Mako shippers, I'm glad they're not giving into cliche and making her horrible.
Things start to turn darker when Team Avatar takes to the streets to help with stopping crime outside the purview of Tarrlok's task force. They certainly make a great team, already in complete sync with everyone knowing exactly what to do to take down the bad guys. It doesn't last long before Tarrlok has most of Team Avatar locked up. That is what leads to the fight I mentioned earlier. And what a knock down, drag out affair that was. The two of them certainly did a number on the council building, I spent most of the fight wondering how Korra was going to explain all the damage. Turns out that wasn't going to be a problem because Tarrlok had a trump card, bloodbending. When Korra said that he didn't have any water left, I should have seen it coming, but it still caught me completely by surprise.
Now Korra is trapped, but maybe it will give her time to work on those visions she's been having which now seem to include Tarrlok and a bloodbender. The last shot pans up to the crescent moon, just to drive the point home that there was bloodbending outside of a full moon.
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