Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
Perhaps. I don't doubt every one of them could have been improved with more episodes with which to tell the story. One thing that notably differs between The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, I feel, is that the former had much more time to tell small, character-centric stories, and focus on building the relationships between the characters. I'd hazard a guess that this is because of a combination of the shorter seasons in Korra and the fact that each had its own individual plot, as opposed to being just one part of a larger story. The first season of Avatar was almost nothing but stand-alone episodes about the misadventures of the gang as they traveled from the South Pole to the North, after all, giving the characters plenty of time to develop and grow on the viewer along the way. But they could never do that with Korra, because each season's plot needed to be introduced, developed, and concluded in barely over half the time they had for any season of TLA. And episodes like Aapa's Lost Days or Tales from Ba Sing Se in the second season just wouldn't be able to fit into a season of Legend of Korra, due to not being important enough to the overall plot - despite them being excellent episodes that are part of what made the show great. (Though on the flip side, they did give us a whole episode of Korra's first season devoted to nothing but her going out with Bolin while trying to get together with Mako, but I imagine most people would agree that was a bad idea.)

So yeah, I definitely think that's a fair assessment. They may have gotten much better at pacing things in the third and fourth seasons, but the shorter format never did work out perfectly for them, and each could've benefited from more time.
LoK was always going to be a different show than ATLA. Less meandering, more focused. But even for that, 12-14 episodes a season just weren't going to cut it - that's not to mention the less-than-skilful pacing. In Books 2-4, it's a problem. Book 1 is hit with it like a crowbar to the kneecaps, since, like I said, it just has more to do than the others. It's not just about the Equalists, but also about introducing the cast, and showing how the world changed since the original show. If the Equalist revolution had been faced by the Gaang, or if the Krew had been already established, it would have been a different story.

As far as bender/non-bender relation go, one thing that might have been cool to see is chi-blocking and modern weaponry being intentionally suppressed because the bending elite don't want to lose their advantage. Which means non-benders in law enforcement and the army face a glass ceiling. Which also means that non-bending civilians are unhappy about being protected from the bending Triads by other benders. And an internal sabotage by disgruntled non-bending soldiers would have been a much more interesting counter to the United Forces than a fleet of airplanes out of nowhere.