You guys continue to boggle my mind. The same people who bashed the awesome Bleach 121 are giving praise for this episode of Naruto??

The animation was decent, the story moved along nicely, but the fights and meetings were dull and had a poor pace. It was like they tried to draw out everything, including the messenger bird scene. I understand the need, but they could at least make it interesting and have the characters use some varied dialogue and act like trained ninjas.
Like ?igma said, the timing of everything is frustrating. Let's hurry to organize everything, then stand around and chat for a while.

The Sasori vs Kankurou fight was so blah, no background music, no interesting action. It was sort of cool to see Kankurou's different attacks, but he was obnoxiously over-confident that he would win, then be totally amazed that his opponent didn't die. Then he wonders when he was poisoned?? Umm, maybe it was when that big ass tail blade stabbed you in the gut, you idiot.

I've only watched the first half and I'm already bored with it.