I'm probably going to get some flak for this, but here goes... *deep breath*
I honestly don't get why everyone is hating on this series. It's certainly not the original, and it's obvious they're not trying to make it like the original, but you know what? That's a GOOD THING. If they'd tried to make the same kind of series again, they would have failed. Plain and simple. If you take a series as good as ATLA, and try to use the same formula again, it will simply not be as good. Honestly, a new style was needed, and that's what the new series did.
Furthermore, a lot of the complaints I've been seeing are about the end of the first season's finale, and how Amon should've/could've just come back and bloodbent them after Korra knocked him out of the building, but think about it: he was evidently incredibly shocked that she was still able to use bending after he took it away, and because of that, was less able/willing to fight. Also, it had just been revealed to his followers that he had been lying to them the whole time, so even if he'd come back and fucked shit up, there would've been no point; he'd already lost his following and thus his whole plan had been ruined. So, like any crafty villain would, he decided to cut his losses and get the hell out of town; remember, he was a tactician and a schemer, so there's no way he would've done anything that wouldn't benefit him, let alone something potentially suicidal.
Now, about the whole romance thing that a lot of people are complaining about, it's not like it actually obstructed the plot in any big way (as some others have already pointed out), so why complain about it to this extent?
Honestly, it seems to me that a lot of the complaints are only because people were/are too obsessed with wanting it to be like the original, which, like I established above, would have in all likelihood actually done more harm than good. Before I watched Korra, I rewatched Book Three of the original series to refamiliarize myself with it. It was an amazing show, even better than I remembered, but even so, it was not flawless (damn close to it though, admittedly). The main problem, in my opinion, was the feeling of rushedness of the final episode, and the lack of closure regarding Zuko's mom. There were some other things, too, but they were pretty minor. So, yeah. Rant over.