It’s late, I have some urgent chores to attend to, and I don’t have much to say about these two episodes as I think they are fairly weak.

As I wrote in my ATLA notebook as I watched Ep 5, “This ep is not working as well for me.”

As Aang, Katara, and Sokka (and Momo) enter the city of Omashu (where not that much plot-wise actually happens) I reflect on the apparent lack of women in the city, which makes me note that the adult women in Katara and Sokka’s home village seemed to have the function of the “mom at home” — that is, her job is to send out the actual active people to have adventures while she remains behind.

Except for Katara’s conversation with her grandmother, I don’t think this show has passed the Bechdel Test so far.

I know that this is supposed to get better in seasons 2 and 3, but I can’t help notice here and in so many other film and tv venues the lack of adult female role models for boys and girls alike. It’s as if GIRLS can now have adventures, but older women remain invisible?

In fact, in ep 6, Imprisoned, there is indeed a Mom-at-Home character who implores her rebellious son to “be quiet” and “don’t talk like that.” Eh. I understand her function in the plot, but, eh.

However, this is a more interesting episode if fairly predictable. It’s quite tightly plotted, and works as a standalone episode within the larger plot. The faked earthbending is amusing. Katara gets to make a great speech to the prisoners who have lost hope, and we see played out an interesting expression of resistance versus “you-can’t-win-this-fight” endurance. There are a few earthbending women seen in the background.

Best of all, Zuko gets Katara’s mother’s necklace. Can’t wait to see what comes of that!

Last week I meant to discuss Episode 4, The Warriors of Kyoshi, at the same time as Ep3, but I found I had enough to write about Ep3 that I left Ep4 until this week. Which is a good thing, because I really adore this episode for three reasons and so have a lot to say about it.

A quick precis: Our heroes arrive on Kyoshi where Aang shows off for Katara to impress her and almost become a snack for a large sea creature (as yet unseen). They are captured by warriors who are, as it happens, girls–in part, one suspects, because an earlier Avatar came from Kyoshi and she was a woman. Sokka makes an ass of himself by predictably figuring he can beat them just because they are girls. Prince Zuko gets wind of where they are and attacks the village, and Aang has to deal with his guilt about how by sheltering him, the village suffered, just as anyone who aids him in times to come will be vulnerable to attack by the Fire Nation.

“Look what I brought to this place,” he says. I predict this thematic material will be delved into further as we move into the series. One might call it, the price of doing the right thing or the price of speaking up or the price of standing up. I need to note that Kyoshi had, before this, stayed out of the war and that, furthermore, no one seems to have any bending power at all, which means they have no special powers to deploy against the Fire Nation.

Rhi commented: “The uncle makes the angsty teen boy much more bearable.” There can never be enough Iroh love.

First: I adore the animation in this episode. The unagi (the giant eel) is gorgeous.

I would like to note the classic three part structure of the unagi’s plot. In its first appearance it does not appear but menaces from beneath the waves, while all you see is its fin. In its second appearance it rises out of the water quite gloriously, but threatens our hero. In its third appearance, our hero has figured out how to use it to drive away the ships of the Fire Nation.

I also love the look and clothing of the young women. Which brings me to my second point.

Second: Yes, of course, I am a sucker for Suki and the girls in this episode. Not the younger ones who giggle over Aang; that’s cute and no doubt germane to the larger plot arc of Aang, but as I have said before, at the moment I’m not hugely invested in Aang’s plot arc in a personal way. I don’t dislike him–far from it–but he’s not the character who interests me most although I’m perfectly happy to see that change in the future.

The message might be said to be a bit heavy handed in this episode–channeled through Sokka–but honestly, I do not think the message that girls can do things is one we need to worry about overemphasizing given that there remains so much sexism in the world and in the USA.

The warriors who ambush Aang, Katara, and Sokka are just, in Sokka’s words, “a bunch of girls.” To which Katara ably replies, “my brother’s just an idiot sometimes.”

Sokka is an idiot in this episode, as he has been sporadically in the first three. It seems to be his role, but glimpses of his other side appear at intervals by way of a slow introduction to the ongoing development I expect to see in him.

This episode is full of cheap, predictable humor mostly at Sokka’s expense, and I loved it all. Of course he comes to respect the girls (and Suki). Of course Suki says to him, “I am a warrior but I’m a girl too.” I might have wished they had used “and” instead of “but” since “but” suggests an opposition or reversal. Still, the important thing is that Sokka despite his stereotypical adolescent male tendencies IN FACT is a person who listens and is willing to change his mind and has a deep-seated sense of fairness and justice. Yes, these will matter later.

Three:

In order to be allowed to practice with the girls, Sokka agrees to dress as a girl. This is an unpredictably subversive message, and the writers give it a final flourish. “Girls, come quickly!” is a line directed at all of Suki’s group, which at that moment includes Sokka dressed as a girl. He protests, “I’m not a –” and then he realizes it doesn’t matter if he is mistaken for a girl.

It doesn’t matter. For this moment alone I love this episode. That it doesn’t matter to him goes so against the societal message that the worst thing that can happen to a boy is to be mistaken for or compared to a girl that I love the writers for this so very much I will watch the rest of the show no matter what. Just for that bit. Just for that bit.

Having set up the basic world situation in the first two episodes, episode 3, The Southern Air Temple, offers a bit more backstory for two of the characters, our young avatar Aang and the angsty Prince Zuko. This episode functions structurally as a dual story of, if you will, a youth in conflict with his own past, the thing that has brought him to the difficult situation he is in now.

Aang takes Katara and Sokka to the temple where he was raised and shares with them some memories of the monk who was crucial to his training, which include the monk’s predilection for practical jokes. He has to figure out how to pierce the inner heart of the temple, with its statues of the avatars who came before him, and then he has to face the truth that all his people are gone and his home destroyed.

Prince Zuko must face Captain Zhao, an ambitious man who wants to humiliate Zuko and force him to return to the Fire Kingdom in disgrace. Rather than acquiescing, he fights him, not without aid from the cunning Uncle Iroh. The writers do a particularly nice job of dropping in the crucial information that Zuko was banished from court for an unspecified offense (if it was specified, I missed it).

Since my initial guess was that Zuko had been given this task to prove himself, I was intrigued by this new layer of complexity to his situation: He’s not just proving himself, he’s trying to restore his honor and get back the place he desires, not to mention echoes of a father/son dynamic with plenty of room for drama. It adds a level of interest to his character, not least because now, as a viewer, I wonder what he did and why it mattered and why Iroh is with him and for what purpose. As a writer, I note that these are all excellent questions to have the viewer asking herself because it makes her want to keep watching in order to get her questions answered.

Two emotions stand out in this episode.

First is Aang’s grief. His grief consumes him and, indeed, makes his power erupt. The overwhelming and dangerous emotion is contained by the presence of Katara and Sokka, his new family. This was nice and a little predictable, but that’s all right. I felt we were still getting eased into the larger story.

Zuko, of course, is defined by his anger, which is multifaceted but which swirls around his sense of himself as a failure, a person dishonored. This is the charge Zhao throws at him. But fundamentally for me, while Zuko does find his power and defeat Zhao, he does so in large part because his uncle has stuck with him. Again, the ties of family mean he is not alone. Although he doesn’t really appreciate it yet, he is strengthened and protected and lifted by his uncle’s belief in him.

I really like this underlying message. I suspect it will become one of the main thematic concerns of the series.