I've decided to look at three episodes today, because I've got a two-parter coming up that deserves its own post. Time to wrap up the filler part of the season.
The Runaway
As much as stealing could help the war effort, it also risks drawing too much heat. You can decide whether that was a pun or not.
We open in medias res with Toph being arrested by Fire Nation soldiers, with the reveal that Katara petrayed her. Three days earlier, Toph had gone to the nearby town with Aang and Sokka, where she used her earthbending to outwit a scammer running a shell game. As she starts pulling off more scams, she begins to butt heads with Katara, whose concerns she dismisses as being too motherly. But Sokka then discovers that Katara's concerns are justified when he discovers that there's a bounty for Toph, dubbed "The Runaway".
Most of this episode is dedicated to Katara and Toph's conflicts, stemming from their opposing backgrounds. Katara lost her mother and was tasked by her father with taking care of the village, which has led to her motherly persona. On the flip side, Toph ran away from home to escape her overbearing parents, leading to her rebellious streak. This has previously been explored in "The Chase" and to a lesser extent in "City of Walls and Secrets" and "Tales of Ba Sing Se", but I suppose if the party is waiting around for a spell, conflicts are bound to arise. There is actually a poignant moment where Sokka attempts to resolve the conflict by revealing that he sees Katara as a mother figure ever since their mother's death, to which Toph admits she also admires that in Katara, finding her more caring than her mother ever was.
I do like the humour in the scam montage, which includes Toph inventing insurance fraud by claiming to be knocked down by a cart (with Sokka donning the Wang Fire beard from "The Headband" to pose as a police officer). Although it seems a little out of character for Aang to be involved in the scams. There's also a bit of slapstick when Sokka buys a messenger hawk which Momo picks a fight with.
Anyway, how did the beginning scene unfold? Wanting to prove that she wasn't acting like a mother all the time, Katara proposed her own scam with Toph by handing her in for the bounty. Unfortunately, the scam backfires when they're both captured byZuko's assassin, Sparky Sparky Boom Man Combustion Man. Knowing that Toph can bend metal, he has them locked in a wooden cell in order to lure Aang into a trap. Katara breaks out of the cell with Toph by waterbending her own sweat. Meanwhile, Toph discovers that she can incapacitate Combustion Man by hitting him in his third eye.
All in all, this is a fun one. And it goes deeper into the nature of bending, in a way that gets expanded upon in the next episode.
The Puppetmaster
You know how the human body is mostly water? I'm getting a "Halloween special" vibe from this one.
The party are camping in the woods sharing ghost stories when they're met by an old lady named Hama. She warns them that people have disappeared on nights where there's a full moon, and invites them to stay at her inn. While she and Katara strike up an unlikely friendship, Sokka becomes wary and seeks to investigate the disappearances. They soon discover that Hama is actually a waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe, like Katara.
This is probably one of the strongest episodes of the season so far. It was established at the beginning of the series that Katara was the only waterbender in her tribe, and this episode goes into why; over sixty years earlier, the Fire Nation periodically raided the Southern Water Tribe and imprisoned the waterbenders, including Hama. We've already seen that they've done that with earthbenders, and we know that they wiped out the Air Nomads. It's horrifying.
Tress MacNeille does a great job as Hama. She's set up to be creepy from the get-go, but we warm up and symapthise when we initially learn her heritage. But things return to creepy as she teaches Katara how to use water in the air or draw water from plants (a step up from the vinebender in "The Swamp"). But then she steps into the truly sinister when she teaches Katara a special technique which can only be taught on the full moon, known as "bloodbending"; bending the water inside a person's body to control them like a puppet. Hence the episode's title. Just describing that sends chills down my spine. This is probably the first time in the series that we've had a truly villanous waterbender, which helps establish that no one nation or group is truly good or evil.
The climax is both haunting and incredible. Aang, Sokka, and Toph discover that Hama has been abducting villagers and imprisoning them in a mountain cave, while Katara draws the same conclusion from hearing her tales of bloodbending. Hama then bloodbends Katara, and her stilted movements are unnerving. Katara is able to use her own waterbending to resist, leading to a duel. But when Sokka and Aang show up, Hama bloodbends them, making Sokka attack Katara. And when she tries to make Sokka skewer Aang, Katara is forced to bloodbend her to stop. It's a genuinely poignant ending as Hama is taken away by the townspeople but admitting that she won in teaching Katara how to bloodbend, which leaves her genuinely shaken.
Yeah, nobody should have that kind of power.
Nightmares and Daydreams
This is definitely a filler episode.
The party has arrived at the secluded island which serves as their rendezvous point for Hakoda's forces, and the eclipse is only four days away. Aang grows anxious over the impending invasion, and begins to have nightmares. He grows restless, trains constantly, and soon begins to hallucinate. Meanwhile, Zuko begins to enjoy some of the perks of being royalty as he spends time with Mai, but gets troubled by a passing mention of a war meeting he wasn't invited to (bringing with it his past trauma).
I've said previously that most of Book Three is just killing time before the eclipse, and this episode is by far the biggest offender. However, I still enjoy the episode. As someone who has issues with stress and anxiety, I relate to Aang a lot. And I'm not battling any tyrants. Not directly, anyway. His friends are worried for his wellbeing and attempt to help him relieve his stress through different ways, but none of them seem to work.
There are are some funny dream sequences with Aang confronting the Fire Lord, but is told he can't fight him because he's either not wearing pants or forgot to study for his maths test. The Fire Lord isn't the kind of villain who laughs evilly in real like, but Mark Hamill is definitely channelling his inner Joker in the dream sequences. Although the later ones get vivid and creepy, almost like when Frodo puts on the ring and gets Sauron vision.
Roughly the second half of the episode devolves into a cactus juice trip. Complete with Appa and Momo developing speech and having a samurai duel, and a multi-armed Guru Pathik singing about chakras. Unlike Sokka's trip, we see this one from Aang's perspective as well as that of his friends.
Meanwhile, Sokka is finally summoned to the meeting, being told his father wouldn't start until he arrived. But when he leaves, he's deeply disturbed by what was discussed.
I'm truly hyped for tomorrow.
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