lol I'm going to use the term 'moneybending' now thanks for that. But agreed it's extremely imbalanced. At this point it's too late to have them get better I guess unless season 4 has a decent time skip where everybody went to train on their respective bending in the meantime. And sure Lin is better, but so was the watertribe guy who taught Katara and Azula, but we never see him again and the other was an enemy. Lin can be better since she's not part of the korra krew.
I consider Lin part of the Krew, atleast part time, since she shows up and plays a role with them pretty much every season. I am not sure who you mean if they taught both Katara and Azula, but if you mean Pakku, he served as a mentor for 2 episodes out of 60 and never interacted with the Gaang again, even if he participated in the war on a different front. He wasn't part of the team.
The real problem is that the Krew was overinflated before it even began. Like, look at this rundown:
Aang, Katara and Sokka set out and are the main cast for the first season and a half. Zuko is also a focal point character, but since he plays the role of the antagonist, he's not part of the Gaang despite being part of the story. They go around the world, meeting a LOT of characters, including ones that will show up and join the Gaang later, but for now, they are episodic appearances. Lets count only the characters that both showed up in recurring episodes AND had a major impact on the overall storyline.
So, we have a total of 5 main characters, roughly speaking: Aang, Sokka, Katara vs Zuko and Iroh. Later in season 1 we also get Zhao who is the enemy of both the Gaang and Zuko, bringing the count to a total of 6 indispensable recurring characters over the course of 20 episodes.
Now lets examine the first season of Legend of Korra, that had a mere 12 episodes. We had Korra, Tenzin first introduced + his kids. Mako, Bolin and Lin soon join, and it is revealed that Amon is the villain. Amon has that Luitenent guy, but since he's mostly an elite mook and not a real character, we won't count him. Tahno was also given a deal of screentime, but his role could have been fulfilled by any random jock archtype, so we won't count him either. Then there is Tarrlok, who plays both Ally and Antagonist to various characters at different points in time. And of course there is Asami and Hiroshi.
So we have a total of 11 main characters in the first season alone: Korra, Tenzin, Mako, Bolin and Asami as the main group, with Meelo, Ikki and Jinora closely related, with Lin as a rough ally vs Amon and Hiroshi. You could theoretically group Tenzin's kids into 1 character since they all play the same role despite different personalities, so you could tentatively say you have 9 main characters in 12 episodes.
I think it all comes down to the fact that the writers bit off more than they could chew in season 1 of LoK. Keep in mind that a good deal of those main characters have allegiance shifts and even those that stay allies have interpersonal issues, unlike the Gaang, Zuko, Iroh and Zhao, who had their alliegances remain consistant through the entire run of the first season (barring extraneous circumstances like the blue spirit). The writers clearly wanted to have a more complex plot in a much smaller time frame, and we ended up with a lot of superflous junk. The characters of the first season all serve simple but vital functions in TLA. Aang is the hero whose perspective we get behind. Katara and Sokka function both as support and as informants of a strange world that is unfamiliar to both Aang and the viewer. They also served the more superficial roles of love interest and comedic relief, obviously, but I would not say it was their primary purpose. Zuko is the antagonist and Iroh provides a contrast and mentor role for him. Zhao has the simplest task of just being a bad guy so that Zuko can have an enemy we can root for him to beat.
So, knowing what we know of LoK season 1, what characters were necessary? Korra is obvious the hero here. Tenzin is supposed to play the mentor role. But both of them have a blindspot for the current problems the city is facing, with her being new and him being old. Mako and Bolin should have done a fusion dance, and we could have been left with 2 characters that provide a complete perspective of the city: The rich, more cultured view with Asami and the dirtier, rougher view with Boko/Malin/buttface. Amon and Hiroshi could remain enemies, with Amon providing the political/philosophical angle with Hiroshi being the emotional that's connected to a protagonist sympathetically. Lin and Tenzin's kid's should have been background characters until a time that they actually had a purpose to serve in the narrative, and it would have allowed Bolin and Mako to fill more roles than Love interest and comedic relief, which is what they were defined by for 2 seasons before given more to do. And Tarrlok should have never existed at all, since his role was ultimately to just to drag out the facade that this is a poltical story and then provide a last minute info dump on Amon's backstory. We should have come out of LoK with no more than 4 main characters and 2 villains at best.
