Don't get me wrong, I love the new series, but from the start to the Season 1 Finale this morning, something has been bugging me. I couldn't quite figure out what it was until now.
The original series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, focused at least 95% of its time, dialogue, fight scenes, etc. on children characters such as Team Avatar, Azula, Ty Lee, Mai, and Yue. Occasionally, we'd have scenes like the White Lotus liberating Ba Sing Se or… well, that's really the only major all-adult action that comes to mind. Mostly everything else is centered around someone 16 or younger. When Ozai and his generals met, Zuko interrupted. Hakoda and his men hardly did anything without Sokka being involved. The point is, it was clear that the main characters were kids, and the kids got most of the lines.
For The Legend of Korra, things are different. It seems like Tenzin and Lin have more lines than Bolin or Asami. We saw Lin do something with metal cables more than Bolin did something with rocks or Asami shocked someone. All-adult scenes lasted for a substantial amount of time, like the first Council meeting, when Tenzin was ambushed by Equalists, or when Saikhan and Tenzin ran through the headquarters and were captured by mecha-tanks. We even saw a lot of fighting between Iroh and Hiroshi's planes. In the original series, we had Azula, an teenager. This new series featured no teenaged villains, just adults like Amon, Hiroshi, and Tarrlok.
All of this adult action, in my opinion, took away from characters like Bolin, Asami, Mako, and even Korra at times. There were a few occasions in the show that made me question who the main character even was. It reminded me of the last Harry Potter movie. Am I the only guy who thinks Ron and Hermione were hardly in it?