Avatar S2E9: "Bitter Work"
Aang struggles; Zuko struggles harder | Grade: A
Thanks for tuning in to my twenty-ninth of 61 daily reviews of Avatar: The Last Airbender! Yesterday, we watched S2E8: The Chase.
Three episodes after Toph joined Team Avatar, it’s finally time for Aang to begin his earthbending lessons. He’s so excited, but things don’t get off to a great start. As Katara points out, Earth and Air are “opposite” elements. The freedom and movement of airbending is in conflict with the sturdiness and directness of earthbending.
Aang: Maybe there's another way ... what if I came at the boulder from another angle?
Toph: No. That's the problem. You've got to stop thinking like an airbender. There's no different angle, no clever solution, no trickety-trick that's going to move that rock. You've got to face it head on.
In Aang’s training montage, it’s clear that Toph’s abrasive personality extends naturally to her teaching style. She’s not reassuring, like Katara. She pushes and pokes Aang, shakes him, insults him, and tries to knock him down. “Rock-like!” she yells, repeatedly. To be solid like an earthbender, he can’t let any of it phase him. And it seems to be working.
But Aang still can’t take the final step. When Toph sends a boulder hurtling downhill at him, he jumps away instead of standing strong. His teacher is furious, and Aang seems to give up on himself. It doesn’t help when Toph provokes him by using his staff as a nutcracker, but he doesn’t have the willpower to stand up to her. Aang doesn’t want to talk about it, but later laments, “There's so much pressure. Everyone expects me to get it right away.” At least Katara, as the mom of the group, is able to cheer him up slightly.
In the meantime, Sokka has been hunting. He sets his sights on a baby sabertooth moose lion (who frankly, looks too small to eat) but gets himself wedged into a crevice. He develops a friendship with the cute little creature, who he affectionately names Fufu Cuddlypoops. It’s hilarious watching him negotiate out loud with the “karma person or thing, whoever's in charge of this stuff” for his freedom. Does he learn anything in the end? Signs point to no. But it’s good comedy that never feels like it’s overstayed its welcome. Classic Sokka.
Aang eventually finds him, but isn’t yet able to earthbend him out of the hole. And he doesn’t want to get Toph either. You know, because that would be awkward. But things become urgent when Fufu Cuddlypoops’ angry mama shows up. Unlike the handbag-sized Fufu, she looks to be fifteen feet tall, with maybe ten thousand pounds on her, and massive horns and fangs to match! Aang tries to redirect her and distract her, but as if she can sense his hesitation, she keeps coming.
Realizing what he must do, the young Avatar stares down the charging moose-lion and delivers a mighty wind blast at point-blank range. Dominated and shaken, she trots off. The dust clears to reveal that Toph, slow-clapping smarmily, has been watching the whole thing. A fed-up Aang yells at her and snatches his staff back. “Do it now!” she tells him. “Earthbend.” And voila, he does.
Besides finally learning earthbending, Aang’s plot isn’t the most significant, story-wise, but it’s very well-executed. And it’s paralleled nicely with Zuko’s more meaningful plot, which picks up with the outcast prince nursing his unconscious uncle Iroh back to health. And he’s been thinking: it’s time to resume his firebending training, if he’ll ever have a shot at standing up to Azula. Not only does Iroh agree, but he recognizes that Zuko is not destined to run from her forever. “She’s crazy, and she needs to go down.”
Iroh tries to teach his nephew to generate lightning, but it blows up in his face. “Like everything always does,” Zuko lampshades — the metaphor is too on-the-nose. His uncle tells him that in order to learn the technique, he’ll need to resolve the conflict and shame within him. Clearly, the onetime heir to the throne is going through it, as he struggles to reconcile his understanding of himself with his present circumstances. But the only one who’s unable, or perhaps just unwilling, to recognize that is Zuko himself, who insists he’s as proud as ever.
Prince Zuko, pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.
It’s one of Iroh’s most insightful lines. Shame occurs when we place ourselves, or allow others to place us, on a pedestal and at a remove from our experiences of the world. In the long run, we can only fall short, and spend our energy and sanity frantically trying to claw back to somewhere we never were in the first place.
To raise Zuko’s spirits, Iroh decides to teach him a trick we’ve seen the old man do before: redirecting lightning. Not even Azula can do that, because Iroh invented it himself by studying the waterbenders! But first, he gives Zuko a crucial lesson about the four elements that deliberately follows Aang and Katara’s discussion about “opposite” elements.
It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements, and the other nations will help you become whole.
These insights are really hitting right now! It’s this very wisdom that has the potential to elevate Zuko over Azula and the sins of his ancestors. If only he will listen.
The episode ends on a bleak note. Zuko sobs on top of a cliff in a meaningfully raging storm as he begs to be struck by lightning. At the surface, he wants to practice his new moves, but there are darker interpretations for his mental state, too. It never fails to give me chills.
See you tomorrow for Episode 10: The Library! Share your own thoughts on this episode in the comments.
Spare observations
Sokka’s groggy muttering sounds like Joe Pesci as Harry in Home Alone.
In Iroh’s flashback, we see his dead son Lu Ten for the first time.
Toph’s rock armor is pretty cool! But why does she need eyeholes…
“That's why we're drinking tea, to calm the mind.” “Oh yeah, good point! I mean, yes.”
“Now come back, boomerang.”
“It's pretty much my whole identity. Sokka, the meat and sarcasm guy. But I'm willing to be Sokka, the veggies and straight talk fellow.”
“You just stood your ground against a crazy beast. And even more impressive, you stood your ground against me.”
Friends of the White Lotus [SPOILERS]
Zuko never learns to bend lightning in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
But he does use lightning redirection in the dramatic conclusion of The Day of Black Sun.