Netflix ATLA: S2 Ep 1

Well, after 2 YEARS, we're back and it may have seemed like I forgot about this show, but I've had a busy couple of weeks, so it's just that I'm a little late jumping back on this. I found some time to at least review my End of Season 1 notes; Again, not expecting it to outclass the animated show (which the 1st season didn't), but hoping there's upturns for this show because the potential is there. As before, I'll go scene by scene, citing why i like/dislike things, then at the end, list pros, cons & give my thoughts on the episode from the standpoint as someone who hasn't seen the animated series & from someone who has.

This might be me jumping the gun & I'll have to wait for more scenes, but if this new "opening" is anything to go off of, they are HUGGING as close to the original as they can get. Aang already excelling at waterbending isn't a jump either; He already shows natural skill in it as early as S1E9 of the original because he's the Avatar. Playing devil's advocate here: the only potential downside to this could be that they don't show Aang still training in waterbending at all through this season. At the start of the series finale, he's barely learned firebending & Toph remarks that his earthbending could still use work (S3E18), but that works to the climax's benefit. Showing Aang as a barely-together Avatar makes his eventual defeat of Ozai all the more rewarding. It's the underdog aspect of a coming-of-age story; Aang is supposed to be this ramshackle Avatar that had less than a year to master the elements that surmounted all odds, defeated the greatest evil of his time & restored peace between the nations. That's why he's revered in and even passed his lifetime. If he's already making self-propelling water columns (which is a move attributed to master waterbenders in the series) than the threat of Ozai, hell even the threats of this season, won't be as threatening as they should.

Oh boy did Aang's actor hit puberty. I know we can't have a Back to the Future style scenario where they started filming AS SOON AS season 1 wrapped (BTTF filmed their 2nd & 3rd movies back-to-back) and having the same actor is better than a recast. I'm just gonna have to suspend my disbelief, because... that action scene kicked ass. It starting with a joke was a bit deflating but at least it showed signs of Aang still not mastering waterbending (and helped alleviate, though not fully, my suspicions that Aang didn't need more waterbending training). When it picked up though, it was great; the CG while shaky at parts, looked nice overall. The choreo was cool/had nice hallmark moments. The biggest thing it did was show the progression of the group between the seasons. It showed Aang's innate skill in waterbending & his master-level airbending, while having a synergistic moment with & not overshadowing Master Katara. In the original, Katara was named a master by Pakku, a term that isn't thrown around lightly in this world. Rightly so, because she is laying out Fire Nation soldiers in the original's Season 1 finale & here. It also shows Sokka's skill as a warrior, though not taking out as many as the benders/soldiers, something that COULD tie into his seeking to master swordsmanship with Piandao (S3E4). Having Suki here deviates from the original, but again, doesn't interfere with the original. It's likely to highlight her choice to fight in the war instead of safeguard Kyoshi which is touched on in the original (S2E5) & would give Azula, who is in Omashu to recruit Mai, more credence to disguise as Kyoshi warriors later to infiltrate Ba Sing Se (S2E16 & 18). I imagine she'll stick around for this episode, maybe help the Gaang try to liberate Omashu, then continue to help Earth Kingdom civilians.

Those looks from Aang before and after Katara asks if he wants to help heal the wounded guy is strange at face-value. I feel like it was meant as looks of inadequacy, but he's the goddamed Avatar. He's going to eventually outshine Katara at waterbending by every metric. Being afraid to even try to heal (which can be done by non-native Water Tribe peoples as described in the Yangchen novels) is counter to his quick acclimation to waterbending shown in the opening! I'll have to wait and see if they address it & their logic for it. If it doesn't get addressed, then it's a weird decision by the whole crew (actor, director, writer & editor).
And sure, they address the growth spurt, but the whole show takes place in less than one year in universe. They can't chalk up a full 2-3 year puberty growth spurt to a few months. And like I predicted, we're skipping eps 1 & 2 and moving straight to the Fire Nation occupied Omashu. As I said in my Season 1 thoughts, so long as they tag the Avatar State's weakness in another scene/episode somewhere down the line, besides shipping Aang & Katara together with ep 2, nothing of value was lost.

So having Bumi say he surrendered to save his people does a couple things: 1 good thing tied to 1 bad thing & 1 optimistic thing. First, some setup: The talk of jings, or options in fighting which have real world martial art connections (search go no sen) is from the original. This show ties this into a decent reason for his surrender; saving his citizens from the soldiers. It's touched on in the original when the Gaang speaks with the resistance leader, but it's stated more directly here, which is fine. The only problem is that we just had a scene of Omashu citizens (The Mechanist was just in that group the Gaang saved) fleeing from Fire Nation soldiers from fear of death. Kinda defeats the purpose of surrender, doesn't it? Real have your cake & eat it too moment that, hopefully is not signs of narrative choices to come. This does, however, bode well for tying a connection between Toph to neutral jing, which Aang picks up on & is the reason he chooses her as his earthbending teacher (S2E6). Since she's blind, she has to wait, listen & use her seismic sense earthbending technique to fight.

Inoffensive Zuko & Iroh scene. Basically shows where they are by this point in the original (end of S2E1). Not sure I'm fan of this war room scene for 2 reasons: 1) Azula not being in Omashu/New Ozai at this point & 2) Having imprisoned Earthbenders help the Fire Nation take the Earth Kingdom capital. First, having Azula here instead of in Omashu makes her 1st confrontation with Aang highly unlikely. They'll likely have their 1st confrontation be the fight in S2E8, but by that point, the Gaang had Toph. That means either they fight Azula without Toph or they wait until near mid-season for Azula to 1st confront Aang. I'm getting shades of what they did to Zhao already & I don't like it. Second, I can believe some Earthbenders may avoid punishment & death by helping the Fire Nation (S1E6 has a ship production facility fueled by coal bent by imprisoned Earthbenders (Haru & his father Tyro)), but not to take the capital city. Having Ozai be this restrictive of Azula is very different, but I can see the value of it. First, Ozai placing a general in command of the drill operation instead of her sets up either her desire to seek his approval or her potential ruthlessness of going against her father & trying to capture or kill Zuko. Then, he sends Azula to bring a pardoned Zuko home, which is VERY interesting; Having him want to bring the family together is at least what he showed he wanted by Season 3 when Zuko was credited with killing the Avatar, but having it be his mentality a whole season ahead of that may betray the inner turmoil that Zuko is supposed to go through that makes his turn to good more thought out, developed & rewarding. The original had something like this is S2E1, but flipped on its head a bit; Zuko wasn't pardoned & Azula used the lie of Ozai wanting him back to try & capture him. He & Iroh learned of this from a slip mention of "prisoners" from Azula's boat captain & they became fugitives after escaping. We'll have to see if Azula goes against Ozai out the gate & tries to kill him anyway and what this means for Zuko's development. Though this discussion with the general outside the warroom does set up her desire for the throne over Zuko, which is welcome. And this secondary scene with Zuko & Iroh does the same as the 1st in this paragraph, so we move on.

I see the attempt of bolstering Katara's outlook with the woman and the Painted Lady flower (whose look is definitely the White Jade/Dragon flower from S2E2 but whose name is a reference to a river spirit but in the Fire Nation (S3E3)) & with the knowledge of the next scene (The Serpent's Pass (S2E12)), I understand they want to hammer home the feeling of hope, but that hope was correlated to Aang finding Appa after his capture, not to their overall mission. I get that Bumi not teaching Aang makes him less hopeful, but if they have no knowledge of Sozin's Comet, then they don't know of the timetable they're on & there should be no pressure of their overall mission (S3E18 had the Gaang's plan be to defeat Ozai after the comet before Zuko revealed Ozai's scorched earth tactic & made his defeat before the comet necessary). Plus, they have no narrative thrust to go to Ba Sing Se without both the knowledge of the eclipse & Appa being captured. Unless they move the location of the Pass to be before the Si Wong Desert, I don't see how Appa gets captured here. I imagine Sokka not reciprocating Suki's feelings will be the same as the original (happened in the Serpent's Pass ep to boot).

PLEASE don't tell me we only learn of Azula's ruthlessness & skill through EXPOSITION... What ever happened to "SHOW, DON'T TELL"?Again, I see them making Aang feel the weight of the world on his shoulders & that's what the original season 2 did as well. I'll talk about it a bit more when they get to healing the serpent.  I'm getting more and more impressed by the CG this season. The parting of the water is a nice set piece & the upcoming battle with the serpent is pretty good too, though I think the whirlpool was much too small to fling the serpent like that. I guess this pressure results in Aang "killing" the serpent. If hope is the message of this episode & Appa is still to be captured, then again: What is the point of the hope if you have no deadline for defeating Ozai? I guess I'll reserve judgement until we see what occurs & how it's laid out. Nice moment of Aang & Katara working together though.

A Katara & Suki moment is welcome (can't recall a moment these 2 had in the original) and it really punctuates the message of hope they're going for; Katara being hopeful that Aang can stop the war & seeing them inspired Suki to leave Kyoshi Island to be a proactive force in aiding the Earth Kingdom war effort. Her offering Katara to be a Kyoshi Warrior is new, though not a wildly new idea (Ty Lee trained with them after the war). I imagine this is all so she can turn down the offer after realizing she is still needed to help Aang. This scene with Aang & Sokka talking about the Avatar State is also very welcome at face value; Koizilla (Fan-given title of the water being that Aang & The Ocean Spirit made at the end of the Siege of the Northern Water Tribe) was terrifying in the original, then kind of brushed aside like it didn't have major repercussions on a pacifist Air Nomad like Aang. This sets up his desire to control the Avatar State, which comes to a head this season & his desire of not letting the worldly mantle of Avatar overshadow his personal beliefs as a person, not just a conduit of the Avatar Spirit. It speaks to him being Avatar AANG, not AVATAR Aang. Very well done by the writing team here. And then circling it back to Sokka's Northern Water Tribe experience with Yue AND how it affects his potential relationship with Suki? *chef's kiss*.

I guess we didn't get it the 1st 2 times that Zuko has it rough & wants more, so another sub-minute scene to hammer that home. FINALLY they learn of the comet & now we have motion toward Ba Sing Se, a time limit & at least for now, confirmation of trying to beat Ozai before the comet. The only, but BIG, downside I see with this is that they are REALLY diminishing the value & importance of Roku. He should have told Aang about the comet, NOT the siege (Roku has the closest connection to 1) Aang in terms of Avatar lineage, 2) to the comet & 3) to its namesake (Sozin) & the group were already headed to the North to find a Waterbending Master). Plus, this totem rule from season 1 is still making it harder to have him be more prominent & influential. Sokka/Suki moment didn't end in a kiss, but hopeful hand-holding. The audience knows they like each other, so the slow burn is fine. Oof, ending the episode with Aang feeling all this pressure HOPEFULLY means we see an upswing in mood with finding Toph before we get the rug pulled out from us with the capture of Appa... if it's still happening.

So this Azula/Mai/Ty Lee scene is a bit peculiar; Where are they right now? In the Fire Nation (we saw Azula last in Ozai's warroom)? Near Omashu/New Ozai (Mai says Azula "rescued" Ty Lee from the circus as a comparison to Azula rescuing her from boredom as the daughter to the instated governor)? Some nebulous forest? At least it's a nice taste to all of their skills (Mai's daggers, Ty Lee's chi-blocking fighting style & Azula's cold demeanor & manipulation tactics). I'm still left wondering how much of a threat they will be this season, however. This Iroh & Zuko scene has them go their separate ways for a bit (S2E5), but where the original had Zuko leave just because of their conflicting ideologies of a rewarding life, this had the same conflict, but added Zuko blaming Iroh for everything that's happened to him. Misplacing blame is natural for people experiencing sorrow or grief (in fact, a line from the original is what stops Zuko from doing so: "You must never give in to despair. Allow yourself to slip down that road and you surrender to your lowest instincts. In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength.") and I think I'm okay with this; It's a smaller form of what their relationship is like in the 1st half of season 3 (Zuko's honor & title is fully restored, but questions if it's truly the life he wants & Iroh is a prisoner of the Fire Nation, disgraced in the eyes of his country, and frequently visited & sometimes berated by Zuko while in prison (S3E2)), enough that it's impactful now while (hopefully) not feeling repetitive or less impactful should we get it in Season 3.

PROS:
New character beats/interactions: This is something I remember Season 1 excelled at; Further explorations into characters. The Katara/Suki scene, The Aang/Sokka scene & the ending Zuko/Iroh scene. Though not a perfect metric, they are well above the halfway point on these scenes that I like vs. dislike.

The production: Style/CG/choreo all get pluses from me. Again, not flawless, but mostly positive (the serpent looked great).

CONS:
Questionable/unknown choices: Will Azula be a threat before midway through the season? Why did it take so long for the group to learn of the comet? Will Appa still be captured and push Aang further into despair?

Choices of the past lingers: Roku not telling Aang of the comet, along with this totem rule is REALLY hampering the importance of the Avatars of the past.

OVERALL STANDALONE: New objective, new antagonist, new optimism for the show.
OVERALL KNOWING ORIGINAL: Not fully solid, but stable foundations for Book 2: Earth.