Even with each of its eight episodes clocking in at about an hour each, it would have been difficult for Netflix’s Avatar to hit all of the same beats as the lengthier cartoon.
Ah well theres your problem. I was actually rooting for this to be good but surprise surprise, Netflix is still shit.
I mean, to be fair, 8 episodes at 1 hour each is more or less the same runtime that 20 episodes of ~20 min each. The problem is not the amount of episodes, it's just bad direction.
That's more because they have an allotted time slot on their TV network. Like Nickelodeon gave Spongebob 22 minutes per episode but they only wanted to write 10 minute episodes, so they did 2 per episode. That's not really relevant on a streaming service where they have total control over the episode pacing. They can even do weird stuff like having different episodes in a series run for different durations.
Better direction would probably help but fitting multiple episodes from the original into a few here seems like its asking for issues. But as you said, bad direction is more the issue. Im sure someone will make a better ATLA live action at some point.