Avatar: The Last Airbender, Episode 3x01
Oct. 2nd, 2007 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockHmmmm. It was alright. It wasn't as cool as season 2's opener, because it was pretty much nothing but exposition of the missing weeks (less than a month?) and summarization of Whats Happened So Far. Still, a lot of what it conveyed WAS interesting.
Spoilery comments:
Aang's insistance that he needs to restore his honor is such a fascinating little parallelism idea that I'm disappointed it only lasted for about 8 minutes. I'd rather they stretch that out over 2 or 3 episodes. However, it's clear why they didn't-- Aang, like everyone's favorite vampire Slayer, Buffy, needs his circle of friends for support, emotional and physical. Not only does he depend on them, but at his current age, experience, and maturity levels, their friendship and love makes him stronger and gives him the greatest motivation to succeed. The show has reinforced this and the theme of family many times, so of course he has to have them along and so pursuing his honor alone is counter-productive to the plot and out of character for Aang. Given that this is pretty obvious, I wonder why they bothered with the idea of restoring his honor at all. It rang false, and then they never took any time to make it wring true, so what's the point? Still, it would have been cool.
Could be a neat AU, where Aang really does leave them all behind and has to survive along, injured, and impoverished in enemy territory.
Aang and Katara's interactions were pretty good; it almost looks like she's become more concerned with him since his injury, while he's less concerned with her after his failure. That makes sense; Katara mothers him (this is a realistic observation whether you ship them or not) and she's going to be more clingy after such a loss, as you would when you almost lose someone you love so much. Still, she's taking it better than he is, having had a few weeks to get over the shock of it.
I liked Katara's confrontation with her father, though I could sense we were only seeing a fraction of a larger conflict that had existed for weeks on that ship. A necessity for condensing time in the plot, I suppose. It didn't really resolve anything, and I'm not sure Katara's even forgiven her father any more or less than she had before yelling at him, but at least she let all that out and can have some relief.
And wasn't her bending amazing? What an improvement. She certainly appears to be a master, now. I love that we get to see how she bends with all the water she needs at her disposal; it's quite a bit more dramatic than what she can do with a canteen- or basin-full, and really makes her look like a prodigy for controlling so much water at only 14/15.
How old ARE the kids now? Zuko has to be 17 by now given the times dropped by Iroh and other characters, but I wish we knew when the others had birthdays. I like to think that nearly a year has passed, so unless everyone had just turned their ages by the time the show started (unlikely) they'd all have had birthdays by now... except maybe Toph who came in halfway. At least Katara and Sokka should be 15 and 16.
Sokka was pretty cool; I like his plan of "rag-tag" group of invaders, but I also like that it failed. Because it did sound like a first-draft kind of plan, and not too sophisticated. Katara was clearly chafing under it, though that might be sibling rivalry with the newly returned parent figure more than plan legitimacy.
And now to the fire kids. I first though Zuko's public introduction was a fantasy, but turns out that it's real. Interesting. He and Mai are clearly together, though Zuko hasn't really demonstrated as much excitement about it as she has. Still, he did try to open up to her, and that's something. One could look at her reaction in two ways: either she shut him down because she was being insensitive in her usual characteristic way, or-- and I think this equally likely--Zuko mopes a lot and she has heard that self-pitying introspective talk before. It's probably both.
I guessed Azula's tactic right off; it was pretty obvious, and should have been obvious to Zuko since he is the only one who actually KNOWS the Avatar had a potential way to survive. Still, that boy persists in not seeing what's in front of his face. Nevertheless, at least he saw the deception in it, this time, and pursued. I'm going to assume that he didn't contradict his father and tell him the truth about the battle, so now it stands that the Avatar is likely alive and Zuko was caught lying about it. Pity. If he were a brighter kid, he'd have told Ozai the truth straight away, and called out Azula on lying to the Fire Lord. It was her strike that did it, and if Zuko had said so, I doubt his father would have reacted to negatively. Instead his focus would move to this lie that Azula gave, and his father might actually respect Zuko for a) telling the truth as a loyal son ought to do, and more importantly b) going after Azula for once instead of the other way around. But Zuko wants approval so much that he took the easy road she gave him, as Azula knew he would. She's way more politick than he is.
Parting thought: Where is Iroh?
Spoilery comments:
Aang's insistance that he needs to restore his honor is such a fascinating little parallelism idea that I'm disappointed it only lasted for about 8 minutes. I'd rather they stretch that out over 2 or 3 episodes. However, it's clear why they didn't-- Aang, like everyone's favorite vampire Slayer, Buffy, needs his circle of friends for support, emotional and physical. Not only does he depend on them, but at his current age, experience, and maturity levels, their friendship and love makes him stronger and gives him the greatest motivation to succeed. The show has reinforced this and the theme of family many times, so of course he has to have them along and so pursuing his honor alone is counter-productive to the plot and out of character for Aang. Given that this is pretty obvious, I wonder why they bothered with the idea of restoring his honor at all. It rang false, and then they never took any time to make it wring true, so what's the point? Still, it would have been cool.
Could be a neat AU, where Aang really does leave them all behind and has to survive along, injured, and impoverished in enemy territory.
Aang and Katara's interactions were pretty good; it almost looks like she's become more concerned with him since his injury, while he's less concerned with her after his failure. That makes sense; Katara mothers him (this is a realistic observation whether you ship them or not) and she's going to be more clingy after such a loss, as you would when you almost lose someone you love so much. Still, she's taking it better than he is, having had a few weeks to get over the shock of it.
I liked Katara's confrontation with her father, though I could sense we were only seeing a fraction of a larger conflict that had existed for weeks on that ship. A necessity for condensing time in the plot, I suppose. It didn't really resolve anything, and I'm not sure Katara's even forgiven her father any more or less than she had before yelling at him, but at least she let all that out and can have some relief.
And wasn't her bending amazing? What an improvement. She certainly appears to be a master, now. I love that we get to see how she bends with all the water she needs at her disposal; it's quite a bit more dramatic than what she can do with a canteen- or basin-full, and really makes her look like a prodigy for controlling so much water at only 14/15.
How old ARE the kids now? Zuko has to be 17 by now given the times dropped by Iroh and other characters, but I wish we knew when the others had birthdays. I like to think that nearly a year has passed, so unless everyone had just turned their ages by the time the show started (unlikely) they'd all have had birthdays by now... except maybe Toph who came in halfway. At least Katara and Sokka should be 15 and 16.
Sokka was pretty cool; I like his plan of "rag-tag" group of invaders, but I also like that it failed. Because it did sound like a first-draft kind of plan, and not too sophisticated. Katara was clearly chafing under it, though that might be sibling rivalry with the newly returned parent figure more than plan legitimacy.
And now to the fire kids. I first though Zuko's public introduction was a fantasy, but turns out that it's real. Interesting. He and Mai are clearly together, though Zuko hasn't really demonstrated as much excitement about it as she has. Still, he did try to open up to her, and that's something. One could look at her reaction in two ways: either she shut him down because she was being insensitive in her usual characteristic way, or-- and I think this equally likely--Zuko mopes a lot and she has heard that self-pitying introspective talk before. It's probably both.
I guessed Azula's tactic right off; it was pretty obvious, and should have been obvious to Zuko since he is the only one who actually KNOWS the Avatar had a potential way to survive. Still, that boy persists in not seeing what's in front of his face. Nevertheless, at least he saw the deception in it, this time, and pursued. I'm going to assume that he didn't contradict his father and tell him the truth about the battle, so now it stands that the Avatar is likely alive and Zuko was caught lying about it. Pity. If he were a brighter kid, he'd have told Ozai the truth straight away, and called out Azula on lying to the Fire Lord. It was her strike that did it, and if Zuko had said so, I doubt his father would have reacted to negatively. Instead his focus would move to this lie that Azula gave, and his father might actually respect Zuko for a) telling the truth as a loyal son ought to do, and more importantly b) going after Azula for once instead of the other way around. But Zuko wants approval so much that he took the easy road she gave him, as Azula knew he would. She's way more politick than he is.
Parting thought: Where is Iroh?
