Just an advance warning: This post will be discussing animal cruelty. Reader discretion is advised.
Appa's Lost Days
This is another filler episode, for the most part. It's also a grim viewing that made me tear up. And this from somebody who grew up with The Animals of Farthing Wood.
Four weeks earlier, when the party was at the library, the sandbenders who stole Appa sold him to some "beetle-headed merchants". Those merchants subsequently sold him to a Fire Nation circus, where he was mistreated by an animal handler and developed a fear of fire. He escaped from the circus and returned to the desert, where he encountered the buzzard wasps. While searching for Aang in a forest, he's attacked by a boar-cupine and severely injured, retreating to a cave for several days until he's found by Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors. They nurse him back to health, but are confronted by Azula and her friends. Suki sends Appa away, and he travels to the Eastern Air Temple where he was originally raised. There, he meets Guru Pathik, who has had a vision about meeting Aang there. Pathik sends him to Ba Sing Se to find Aang, but he's intercepted and captured by the Dai Li.
While there are some hooks for later, this episode mostly shows what happened to Appa when he was taken, and he was put through the blender. He goes through so much trauma that he's actually afraid of Suki when she finds him. In fact, the episode actually won the Humane Society's Genesis Award for its realistic depiction of animal abuse, particularly in circuses.
There's still some action. It's so cathartic to see that animal handler get star KO'd, and we also get a cool fight between Azula's team and the Kyoshi Warriors. Appa's even willing to help Suki, but she warns him away by waving a torch.
There is a brief moment where Iroh witness Appa flying past the ship to Ba Sing Se while Zuko's asleep. As he's flying to the Eastern Air Temple, he passes several Water Tribe ships, briefly giving us a non-flashback appearance of Hakoda, Sokka and Katara's father.
Other than that, there's not much to be said. All in all, this is still a strong episode in terms of emotion, but it's not one for the faint of heart.
Lake Laogai
Laws and morals are not the same thing.
The party decide to go outside the law to search for Appa, printing and distributing flyers and rebuffing Joo Dee when she reprimands them. They later find Jet, who offers to help them over Katara's objections. Meanwhile, Iroh is offered his own tea shop and accomodation in the Upper Ring. But when Zuko finds one of Aang's flyers, he becomes determined to capture the Avatar once again. While Iroh is content to build a new life, Zuko dons the mantle of the Blue Spirit once more to find Appa.
Long Feng makes a good antagonist, who achieves power through subterfuge rather than conquest (plus Clancy Brown has a great voice) and demonstrates that there are no truly good or evil nations in this world. Wanting to maintain his hold on the Earth King but not wanting to risk direct conflict with Aang, he uses Jet to lead the party on a wild goose chase by showing them an empty warehouse where Appa was once held. A janitor then claims that Appa was sold to a noble on Whale-Tale Island near the South Pole. It almost would have succeeded if Smellerbee and Longshot hadn't caught up with Jet and revealed he'd been arrested by the Dai Li. The party then learn that there's a secret underground facility beneath Lake Laogai.
We also discover another ability in Toph's repertoire; using her tremor sense to detect physical changes when somebody is lying. When Jet offers to help the party, she's able to ascertain he's telling the truth. When Katara expresses her distrust, Toph asks if he was her boyfriend and claims she's lying when Katara denies it. This actually makes a moment in "The Blind Bandit" funnier; when Aang seeks out Toph and claims a mad king and swamp vision led him to her, she pulls a face. We now realise that she knew Aang was telling the truth, despite how absurd it was. Of course, it's not an infallible power, as it doesn't always account for brainwashing. This gets demonstrated when Jet denies his arrest, and Toph senses that both both he and his companions are telling the truth.
The facility beneath Lake Laogai is creepy, as is expected of any villain's secret underground lair. We see that Joo Dee was one of many agents used in his machinations. The party is promptly led into a trap by Long Feng, and we get a cool fight scene as they scrap with the Dai Li agents (who have some pretty cool stone fists that can be used to grab enemies or act like machine guns). They do a lot with it, and then Long Feng lures Aang and Jet into another chamber where we find that Jet hasn't been entirely deprogrammed, resulting in him attacking Aang. The Avatar is able to break the programming, but Long Feng apparently kills Jet and makes his escape. Sorry to spoil it, but that part seemed pretty forced and clumsy.
While all that's going on, Zuko discovers Lake Laogai independently and locates Appa. However, Iroh had followed him and confronts him in a much more powerful scene in which he suggests that Zuko is trying to fulfil a destiny that isn't his own. As the party return to the surface and get cut off by Long Feng, Appa pulls off a "Big Damn Heroes" moment and skips Long Feng across the water like a stone.
While Jet's death wasn't handled particularly well, this was nonetheless a good episode. I'll be back tomorrow to wrap up the second season.
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