A few months ago, I became an ardent fan of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was something I'd been only peripherally aware of until the release of M. Night Shyamalan's reviled live-action adaptation. I never saw the film, but review after scathing review took time to point out how well executed the original series had been, which piqued my interest. Finding myself in need of something to obsess over after the completion of a six-season Lost binge, I spent the next several weeks streaming the entirety of the Airbender series on Netflix. For those who have not seen it, the world of Airbender is every bit as charming and funny and touching and dark and thoroughly imagined as anything J.K. Rowling has come up with. (It also, unfortunately, shares the Potter series' reliance on deus ex machina and heaps of clunky expository dialogue, but in both cases the material is intended for still-developing minds, so these may be necessary evils.)

I bring this up because, in a fit completionism, I must have added the Shyamalan adaptation to my Netflix queue, and today it arrived on my doorstep. I am used to inferior adaptations of things I love, but I have been told that the film version of The Last Airbender is so bad it might even tarnish my fond memories of the cartoon.

To view, or not to view....