Welcome back for another weekly review of Avatar! This week, our heroes find themselves stranded in a desert. Read on to see how the episode holds up.
1. Trapped and Useless.
The set-up for this episode happens fairly quickly: the team is stuck in a desert because Appa is gone. Now they have to get out. Building off what was established last episode, we realize that what used to be mild annoyances have turned into major obstacles. Katara can’t waterbend if there is no water in the desert, rendering her abilities useless. Toph really can’t see because the sand is too shifty to give her a good feel of the ground’s vibrations. Aang has become enraged after losing Appa (more on that in a second). And Sokka, the only one of sound mind and ability here, throws his mind and abilities away once he starts hallucinating on cactus juice.
With all four characters rendered effectively useless, the episode becomes a tense thriller. We genuinely don’t know how they’re going to get out of this.
2. There is no love stronger than that between a boy and his flying bison.
We got a little preview of this back when Toph insulted Appa back in “The Chase,” but hoo boy, is Aang protective of his animal companion. I think this is the most unhinged that Aang becomes in the entire series. He spends the episode running off to do ineffective things out of anger, yelling at his friends, and desperately obsessed by the thought of what horrors Appa is being subjected to. He can’t sleep. Despite being a staunch vegetarian monk who values all life, he callously strikes down the buzzard wasp that almost made off with Momo, even after the creature retreated. He even starts to go into the Avatar state once he realizes the sandbenders were responsible for Appa’s disappearance.
Aang’s love for Appa is one of the strongest bonds on this show, up there with Zuko and Iroh or Sokka and Katara. Appa is one of the few beings in the entire world still living after Aang’s hundred years in the iceberg, and he’s the only one who stayed the exact same. I think any pet owner would understand the terror and grief of losing their pet, and Aang’s bond with Appa goes far beyond that. It’s no surprise this situation led Aang to lose himself a little.
3. Katara the leader!
So, above I said that everybody was useless at this point. Well, it turns out that wasn’t entirely true. Katara might not be able to bend in the desert, but she’s the only one with full mental and physical capabilities otherwise. So, with Sokka flipping out over giant mushrooms, Katara takes it upon herself to act as the group’s tactician.
And it turns out, she’s pretty good at it! I had a lot of notes in season one about how Katara never seemed to take off as a character, but with her becoming a stronger waterbending master and getting spotlights like this, we get to see how essential she is to the team. She strategizes, and she decisively acts. She doesn’t exactly have Sokka’s boundless ingenuity, but she does have his resolve, and that gets the team through their struggles. It’s also interesting to see how her leading style heavily focuses on seeing each person as an individual and working with their emotions, whereas Sokka’s leadership tends to think exclusively in terms of each person’s practical abilities. The best part is that one isn’t necessarily better than the other, and both work to achieve their ends. Katara will go back to primarily being a bender and the emotional support next episode, but it was great to see her lead the team here.
4. Desert landscapes? Still beautiful.
Since the majority of this episode’s A-plot takes place in a desert, you’d think the background design would feel barren and boring. Well, it does convey the barrenness of the landscape, but it’s far from boring. With a range of shots from close-ups to long shots to overhead shots, we get a great sense of how overwhelmingly huge this desert is. The episode also takes place over the course of a day, meaning the sundown changes the colors from solid yellow into deep orange with contrasting purples in the sky. Just when you think you’ve seen enough of the desert, you get a new angle to appreciate.
5. “The white lotus opens wide to those who know our secrets.”
Secret societies? Aw hell yeah.
We always knew there was a ton of background to Iroh that we hadn’t learned about yet. Who would have thought he was part of a secret society with an outpost in the middle of the Earth kingdom’s desert?
This B-plot does so much to expand the idea of Uncle Iroh as a well-traveled and well-respected man, and it gives a greater significance to his earlier obsession with pai sho (including that time waaaayyy back in episode nine, “The Waterbending Scroll,” where Iroh freaked out about losing his white lotus tile). It also opens up the idea of an inter-elemental society, at a time when the elements are fairly segregated. Oh, and this gets Zuko and Iroh away from those two dudes who were looking for Toph and pushes our Fire duo towards Ba Sing Se.
So it seems these people do positive work, at least for their members. But these people also seem like dorks, in the best possible way. I mean, that whole pai sho demonstration? And probably my favorite exchange in the episode: “Who knocks at the guarded gate?” “One who has eaten the fruit and tasted its mysteries.” Secret society bullshit doesn’t get much better than that.
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What did you think of the episode? Did it feel empty, or did you enjoy the switch of team dynamics? Excited about the White Lotus Society’s future? Let me know in the comments!
