it works pretty well as a recap episode, and as a teaching moment. covers, broadly, the events of the show up to that point (which, remember, is several years of airing and you might have missed a chunk of it), all while coating it in propaganda for the characters to reflect on and for the viewer to learn about. i remember being a kid and being outraged that the events were being portrayed wrongly, and it was a big learning point for me.

One thing I kept thinking about while watching this new show is how much you end up missing Toph. You still get interactions with Zuko, which I thought were fine, but something is still missing, and it's Toph.