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1) water healing Percy

Not much to complain here. You can clearly see what's going on, they zoom in his cuts and show the water healing him as it passes over his wounds.

2) Percy controlling water on purpose for the first time

Show!Percy actively uses his powers for the first time in waterland to save both him and Annabeth from drowning. I can't make a gif look good to save my life but I turned the brightness and saturation up and its still hard to see what's going on. The scene is dark, there are a lot of bubbles in front of his face. We see Percy extending his arm, then the water moves in what seems to be a jet and... Nothing. Cut to black. Percy and Annabeth are now on land, soaked, and she looks at him and asks "Did just pulled me out of there with that water power stuff?" And Percy answers "I don't know." Now WHY would you do that? Your protagonist uses his powers in purpose for the first time and instead of showing us you have the characters talking about it?

Now with movie!Percy, this happens at the museum, when they're battling the Hydra. This scene doesn't exist in the book but again, neither does the golden chair one from the show.

He needs to get the pearl, but the monster cornered him. Now look at what happens: movie!Percy notices the drinking fountain. You can see the idea forming in his mind. He extends his arm, closes his eyes and concentrate. Boom, the water explodes. He moves his hand towards the monster and redirects the water to form a shield. He gets he pearl and run, then the shield fall apart after he's gone.

Now, maybe there's more water than realistically would be inside a drinking fountain, idk. But it looks cool, and, more importantly, you can see what is happening. You can see his concentration when he's calling the water, and you can see that it worked instead of cutting to black. This is very much in line with book!Percy's narration when he's trying to use his power.

3) using his powers in battle

Show!Percy uses it in the fight against Ares on the beach. Despite the coloring being quite dull (thank you, volume stage) you can see what's happening with no trouble. Percy stands there, glowering at Ares as the water surges behind him in a great wave. There's an effect showing some kind of air pocket shielding him from the impact and the wave crashes against Ares.

It's... Fine. It's pretty much what happens in the book. It could have been more interesting of Percy had made some gesture with his arms or hands to guide the wave instead of standing there and they could have dragged the scene a little longer, but it's fine.

But it's not nearly as visually interesting as what happens in the movie. Again, movie!Percy closes his eyes in concentration, again, he extends his hands towards the water source — a water tower. The water circles the rooftop around Percy, then he moves his arms towards Luke and the water follows his movements. We can see Luke struggling, drowning, then Percy opens his arms and the water receeds, forming an arch around him. Hate this movie all you want, but this scene looks cool as fuck.

4) controlling the waves to steer a boat

Show!Percy does this in the Sea of Monsters to escape charybdis. And here comes the lighting problem again. I get that they are in the middle of a storm, but i need to see what's going on. The first time I watched the scene I genuinly couldn't see anything other than show!Percy standing on the deck aura farming. Later, I increased the brightness on my screen and could see the waves moving in front of the ironclad. I really think they should have made Percy's powers more obvious. I liked the acting here, he was clearly struggling for control against the raging sea but maybe they could, I don't know made the ship spin because of charybdis whirlpool and then righting itself for the few seconds Percy managed to shift the current. Maybe show Clarisse missing a few shots with her Canon then suddenly being able to aim because Percy managed to keep the ship on course before everything exploded. I thought of this in 5 minutes, couldn't anyone involved with the show come up with something similar?

Movie! Percy has an easier task because he's not in the Sea of Monsters and we can see better because there's no storm. But again, the movie makes what he's doing much more clear. He's concentrates, the waves start slowly, then increased intensity until the Princess of Andromeda is rocking against a very agitated sea. Plus, him riding that wave to escape? Very cunty of him.

Now, only compared scenes that had a similar context in the movie and the show. That means left out movie!Percy healing Annabeth and making a Trident out of water and show!Percy accidentally attacking Nancy and the supreme lord of the bathroom incident. While I do like the bathroom scene, with the water coming out of the toilet and hitting the campers, I thought the one with Nancy was a bit confusing. At first glance seems more that show!Percy has telekinetic powers than anything related to water.

I already talked about him on the Ironclad, but another scene that was terrible directed was the one with the sirens. I hate this scene for many reasons, but this one has the same problems of the one in waterland. What do you mean your protagonist is using his powers to save his friend from being devoured and you don't show it? I'm not even talking about the lack of bubble, but why, for the love of god, the camera was focusing on his back?

This is awful. There's a fanart showing that scene from another angle and its so much better. Why didn't they show their faces? Why they were only there for 3 seconds before they decided to focus on the bottom of the ocean? The sirens ate a lot of demigods, we know, we get it! We literally watched a demigod get eaten and circe talked about this ad nauseam just a few minutes before. They didn't have to waste like 10 seconds showing us the junk at the bottom when they could have focused on Percy's powers.

Coming back to people's defense of Percy's powers in the show, if in season 1 he made that giant wave, the natural progression for season 2 should be something equally, if not more, impressive. I liked that Percy's mood affected the water in Circe's Island, but other than that they were even less creative with Percy's powers this season.

There were 2 episodes with fight scenes on Princess Andromeda this season. In the first one Percy was literally flanked by a pool on one side and the ocean on the other. He was getting his ass beat by Allison, he could have used his powers. Instead of him tackling Annabeth out of the way and Allison falling over, he could have washed her away with a wave or a jet, something like this:

Same with the fight against Luke... There was no water inside the coffin room, but again, he was on a ship! He could have used his powers to hold Luke back as he ran with the fleece.

But I really think he should have used his powers in the season finale. They were already pulling shit from botl, might as well go all in and have Percy controlling water to drive the monsters back. I talked here about how it makes no sense that they just cut the scene to black after Percy passed out and didn't show us how Camp drove the Titan Army away. A recent interview revealed that the Party Ponies were supposed to show up as reinforcement and were cut for budget reasons. But they could have easily fixed by changing the order of events. Percy could have impaled the fleece with a spear and tell Clarisse "wait for my cue" or something of the sort. Then he could call a massive wave to push the TA back, and after they were outside of the border, Clarisse hit the tree, restoring the barrier and freeing Thalia. Only then, the lightning and Percy passing out.

It might not be a genius idea but it makes more sense to me than having the TA scrambling away from the tree right before the scene cuts to black and we never see how Camp managed to win the battle.

tlt:

"Your father and Zeus are having their worst quarrel in centuries. They are fighting over something valuable that was stolen. To be precise: a lightning bolt.’ I laughed nervously. ‘A what?’"

"I laughed. ‘You? An architect?’"

"I smiled uneasily at the fat lady."

"I picked up the scarf. It shimmered pink, and the perfume was indescribable – rose, or mountain laurel. Something good. I smiled, a little dreamy, and was about to rub the scarf against my cheek when Annabeth ripped it out of my hand and stuffed it in her pocket."

"I thought he was asleep, but he mumbled from the corner, ‘I was pretty amazing, wasn’t I?’ Annabeth and I laughed."

"I took the big stick out of my backpack – a bed post I’d broken off Crusty’s Safari Deluxe floor model. I held it up, and tried to channel happy dog thoughts towards Cerberus – Alpo commercials, cute little puppies, fire hydrants. I tried to smile like I wasn’t about to die."

"‘Reconciliation,’ she said. ‘Athena and Poseidon together.’ My face felt a little warm, but I managed a smile. ‘Thanks.’"

"She pursed her lips. ‘You won’t try anything stupid during the school year, will you? At least… not without sending me an iris-message?’ I managed a smile. ‘I won’t go looking for trouble. I usually don’t have to.’"

som:

"I gave [Clarisse] a grudging smile. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just good to be home.’"

ttc:

"I cracked up, and I probably would’ve kept laughing all day, but then I heard a noise. ‘Moooo.’ The smile melted off my face."

botl:

"[Calypso] would look at me and we’d share a smile"

"I laughed. ‘Yeah. He throws really good rocks. Come on, big guy. Let’s have dinner.’"

"‘I smiled. ‘Maybe it’s okay to still be a kid once in a while,’ I tossed [Nico] the statuette."

"And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile."

tlo:

"I was afraid I knew why Nico was here, but I tried for a smile"

"I couldn’t help but smile. Paul was a pretty cool guy, even if he was my English teacher as well as my stepdad."

"That didn’t exactly reassure me, but I nodded and tried to give him a confident smile."

"‘I tried not to smile. ‘Cows? In San Francisco?’"

"Despite all the serious stuff going on, I had to smile. Two years ago we’d spent a lot of time trying to save the Ophiotaurus from the Titans, and I’d got kind of fond of him."

"I might have even laughed once or twice – a crazy laugh that scared me as much as it did my enemies."