Yeah, both indulging our worst impulses and making doing the right thing easy seem like copouts to me. I mean maybe Aang wouldn't have resolved his moral dilemma over killing Ozai the way he had if ATLA weren't a children's show; DS9, decidedly not a children's show, resolved a dilemma with similar parameters in the opposite direction and that was valid and interesting too.

Nevertheless, and I think loopy777 was the one who said this, criticisms of ATLA as being limited because of its rating don't really ring true to me because so few adult shows with all the range of expression at their disposal went anywhere near depth and heights ATLA did. The show set the standard for the portrayal of complex subjects like war, genocide, and abuse, and showed you don't have to be grimdark to deal with dark subject matter in an interesting way. It's like the anti-Game of Thrones that way XD