Avatar season 2 episode 4: The Swamp
Nov. 23rd, 2009 02:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingAfter a hiatus for a mild blue funk, I am back to watching Avatar! Here are some thoughts on season 2 episode 4:
The Swamp:
1. I love the little world-building glimpses we get via background artwork. The Earth Kingdom village (you can tell it's Earth Kingdom, not a Fire Nation colony, by all the green and brown, and maybe by the simple thatched roofs rather than tile roofs with those little painted/gilded projections) is nicely laid out, with wide, clean streets (though I think they are unpaved, just chalky white soil), lots of trees mixed in with the buildings, and a small field in the middle of town. The rice paddies are orderly. (And you can tell it's early in the year because they are filled with blue water, not green plants and mud.) The streams are clean.
2. Hey, that guy pulling the cart has masks for sale! And one of them is a Blue Spirit mask. I detect foreshadowing.
3. Iroh has a point: they are wanted fugitives, or refugees. They cannot demand; they must ask, politely. On the other hand, I have complete and utter sympathy for Zuko's embarrassment at Iroh's flirting, and for his rage over that jerk who whips out a pair of swords and forces Iroh to dance as he sings.
4. I get the feeling Zuko wants those swords, and some revenge as well. *grin*
5. On a lighter note, Iroh is not half bad as a singer, though obviously not a professional. This is the second time we've heard him sing, come to think of it; the first was music night back on Zuko's old ship.
6. Highway hypnosis alert! (Okay, also creepy mood music. Nothing good can come of this.) Aang, it is not good to zone out while flying.
7. "Bye, swamp!" Hmm, doesn't look like the swamp takes kindly to being ignored... (Yeah, seriously, no good can come of this.) Sentient land features tend to be hostile to travelers, in my experience of fiction. And giant whirlwinds are not what I call a welcome mat.
8. I like the ball of countering winds Aang uses to try to hold everyone together inside the tornado. And it works, until Appa's foot falls outside and gets caught in the drag.
9. Sokka and Katara fall like stones and raise big splashes. Aang falls a hell of a lot slower, and lands with the tiniest ripple. Well, duh: airbender! I do like it when stories remember their own mythology and let characters use their powers in sensible ways.
10. Elbow leech! I am torn between laughing at Sokka's indignant "Why do things keep attaching to me?!" and going "Ewww!" at the giant segmented leech. Actually, I am iffy about the realism of that. Leeches go after wounded fish; they can easily be warded away from humans by stirring the water, or by picking them up around the middle and flinging them away. Sokka was moving around enough that I am doubtful a leech would have gone after him.
(Random true story about leeches: when I was about nine or ten and my sister six or seven, I scarred her for life by putting a leech inside an empty clam shell with a bit of water to keep it alive, walking up to Vicky, and opening the shell right in her face while asking, "Would you like some leech soufflé?" She fell off the dock in her haste to get away, and has been slightly phobic about leeches ever since. I, on the other hand, was thereby forced to get very nonchalant about them very fast, so as to maintain a high ground from which to mock her fear. *grin* Yes, I know, it was mean of me. I don't care; it's a big sister's prerogative to mess her little sister up for life.)
11. Wah, poor Appa is too large to maneuver around the vines and keeps getting caught. *pets him* And Momo is loyally gnawing through the vines and setting him free to try again. Appa is frustrated. And I think Momo is realizing that they need a new plan. (I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I love Appa and Momo and their friendship to pieces. They are so ridiculously cute it is, well, ridiculous. *grin* And I am very fond of Momo's chittering, and the way it almost sounds like he has a proper language that only he and Appa understand.)
12. Why does Sokka have a machete? I thought he had a club and a boomerang? Also, here we have another incidence of Sokka the materialist empiricist vs. Aang the spiritualist and Katara the... well, depending on circumstances, I'd say either open-minded or gullible. (Here, open-minded. When dealing with Aunt Wu? Gullible.) Interestingly, the show has come down more often on Aang's side, but Sokka is sometimes right too, and even when he's wrong, he is not usually denigrated for his views. He is often poked fun at, but with love, and it is clear that at least half of what he's being made fun of for is not skepticism per se, but skepticism held onto in the face of proof, which is then no longer skepticism but dogmatism. Anyway, there is a surprising amount of science and engineering (or at least nods in that direction) in this show, for something so explicitly based in fantasy and spiritualism.
13. Aaand, something is watching them through a screen of vines! Yeah, I knew nothing good could come of this.
14. Oh my gosh, Appa and Momo are just the cutest cute things in the world. Appa crouches to look under the root, pushes up to look over it, and says, "The hell with this" and just flops down. Momo tries to wake him with the whistle (and I love that he can apparently hear it too, and it makes his fur stand on end, all adorably ruffled), and Appa slaps him with his tail. D'awww. *scritches them both behind the ears*
15. Sokka, I understand hatred of flies. (Trust me, you have no idea how much I understand. I freely admit I am irrational about flies. I have been known to stop in the middle of a transaction with several customers standing in line in order to pick up a flyswatter and go after one of the pernicious little beasts if it's landed and looks vulnerable.) But seriously, waving a machete around your head is A) overkill, B) ineffective, and C) going to hurt your or your friends. *thwaps him*
16. Random glowing ball is random. (And had damn well better be explained later on. I am just saying. ETA: It never does get explained. *sigh*)
17. Momo running up and down Appa's back, chittering defensively at the frogs and bugs and other noisemakers of the swampy night is just adorable. And then Appa's ear flicks in irritation and he roars the whole damn swamp into silence. Momo chitters victoriously, curls up and lies down to sleep... and then! Clearly something is about to go Very Wrong. (ETA: Or not. Maybe Momo just got bitten by a flea or something.)
18. The fire goes out, the vines shift, and a tendril snakes out to truss Sokka up. Yeah, Sokka, about that whole 'it's a swamp, it's not alive, it doesn't matter if I hack it to pieces to let us move faster or build a fire' thing? I think you were wrong. (Cut to commercial break.)
19. Sokka cuts the vines with his machete. Katara cuts them with a water whip/knife thingy. Aang could do the same, but instead he makes a raging dome of wind to push them away from his body and leaps out through the temporary gaps. It is interesting to me that while he's learned a lot of waterbending, he still instinctively falls back on airbending unless there is literally no way to achieve a given result without using water. I wonder if he would do that so much if he were not the last airbender left in the world.
20. I like the color fade from the blue-gray of night to the green-gold of day. Very spiffy.
21. Ahahaha, the infamous swampbenders. Dude, they are like Cajun cavemen with umbrella leaf hats. Seriously, WTF?
22. Momo, don't sit on an alligator. Wait, that thing's half fish. Catfish, maybe, judging by the whiskery tendrils around its mouth? Yes, I think so. Catfish-gator for the win! (Except no, really it's Appa for the win. Go Appa! Continue intimidating everything in the swamp!)
23. Ooh, pretty flowers growing on the giant tree roots.
24. Wait, were the flowers just part of the illusion that tricked Katara into seeing her mother? Because they totally just vanished. But what do flowers have to do with Kya? She and Katara are from the South Pole. There are no flowers there. *is confused*
25. Sokka sees Yue, accusing him of not protecting her. He is not unaffected, but unlike Katara, he is also extremely suspicious.
26. Aang sees... a flying pig and a laughing girl in fancy Earth Kingdom clothes. Hmm. Is this a vision of Toph? (I am totally confused about the flying pig, though.)
27. Oh my god, the swampbenders crack me up. And the silly pogo music in the background of this chase scene! *dies laughing*
28. Sokka, still skeptical, makes good points about his and Katara's visions: they both saw people they loved and miss. Aang's, though, does not lend itself to the same explanation, and the way they were all led to the same location... I think the spirits are meddling.
29. Sokka, haven't you learned not to tempt fate yet? (Cut to commercial break.)
30. And cue battle with giant regenerating swamp monster. *sigh* (Randomly, where is Zuko? We opened the episode with him, so what is going on with him and that jerk with the swords? I care more about that than generic swamp monster fights.)
31. I continue to love the swampbending chase scene. They have the magical equivalent of shallow-draft speedboats! And, seriously, "Now what would a lemu need a shirt for?" *sporfle* And the fat one (Tho? Do? Thu? Du? Oh, I am so bad with names... *rewinds* Tho, and the skinny one is Du) catches Momo in a sack, calm as you please. Hmm. This could go bad very easily, but at the moment I am just laughing like a loon.
32. That was some nice teamwork and creative bending to get Sokka free of the swamp monster's chest. Yay Aang and Katara!
33. Ah, so the swamp monster is not really the spirit of the swamp, just a bender who's kind of ticked off at Sokka for his machete-swinging ways.
34. Lalala, interdependent web of existence, lalala environmentalism and spiritual unity, lalala. Dude, I teach this stuff every Sunday. This is, like, the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism. I do not need my own damn religion echoed back at me from a children's television show, thanks awfully. (I suspect I would have more patience for this if I had not taught a lesson on Wampanoag thanksgiving rituals this very morning, and then talked to my aunt about religion tonight. There is only so much spirituality I can take per day, and I have already hit my limit.)
35. "You guys are waterbenders." "You too? That means we're kin!" Katara's expression is priceless, though she is too polite to say, "Um, NO, not in a million years," the way she is clearly thinking.
36. Pet catfish-gator! *dies laughing*
37. Sokka, there is a time and a place for materialism, but in your world, this is not that time nor that place. But I think at least half his insistence is that he doesn't want to think about Yue or consider that her accusation might be how she really feels, up there in the sky (or down there in the sacred pool, swimming around as a fish).
38. Nothing mysterious about the swamp, oh no. And that root didn't just smack the screaming bird all of its own accord. Absolutely not, you must be imagining things. (Actually, that scene is vague enough that it could well have been Hu bending the root to scare the bird away. But it's funny either way.)
39. Oooh, I know this incidental background music. I recognize those chimes. And yup, there's Zuko, in the Blue Spirit mask, doing his ninja stuff on the jerk with the swords. Hee! Oh, I do love this show!
The Swamp:
1. I love the little world-building glimpses we get via background artwork. The Earth Kingdom village (you can tell it's Earth Kingdom, not a Fire Nation colony, by all the green and brown, and maybe by the simple thatched roofs rather than tile roofs with those little painted/gilded projections) is nicely laid out, with wide, clean streets (though I think they are unpaved, just chalky white soil), lots of trees mixed in with the buildings, and a small field in the middle of town. The rice paddies are orderly. (And you can tell it's early in the year because they are filled with blue water, not green plants and mud.) The streams are clean.
2. Hey, that guy pulling the cart has masks for sale! And one of them is a Blue Spirit mask. I detect foreshadowing.
3. Iroh has a point: they are wanted fugitives, or refugees. They cannot demand; they must ask, politely. On the other hand, I have complete and utter sympathy for Zuko's embarrassment at Iroh's flirting, and for his rage over that jerk who whips out a pair of swords and forces Iroh to dance as he sings.
4. I get the feeling Zuko wants those swords, and some revenge as well. *grin*
5. On a lighter note, Iroh is not half bad as a singer, though obviously not a professional. This is the second time we've heard him sing, come to think of it; the first was music night back on Zuko's old ship.
6. Highway hypnosis alert! (Okay, also creepy mood music. Nothing good can come of this.) Aang, it is not good to zone out while flying.
7. "Bye, swamp!" Hmm, doesn't look like the swamp takes kindly to being ignored... (Yeah, seriously, no good can come of this.) Sentient land features tend to be hostile to travelers, in my experience of fiction. And giant whirlwinds are not what I call a welcome mat.
8. I like the ball of countering winds Aang uses to try to hold everyone together inside the tornado. And it works, until Appa's foot falls outside and gets caught in the drag.
9. Sokka and Katara fall like stones and raise big splashes. Aang falls a hell of a lot slower, and lands with the tiniest ripple. Well, duh: airbender! I do like it when stories remember their own mythology and let characters use their powers in sensible ways.
10. Elbow leech! I am torn between laughing at Sokka's indignant "Why do things keep attaching to me?!" and going "Ewww!" at the giant segmented leech. Actually, I am iffy about the realism of that. Leeches go after wounded fish; they can easily be warded away from humans by stirring the water, or by picking them up around the middle and flinging them away. Sokka was moving around enough that I am doubtful a leech would have gone after him.
(Random true story about leeches: when I was about nine or ten and my sister six or seven, I scarred her for life by putting a leech inside an empty clam shell with a bit of water to keep it alive, walking up to Vicky, and opening the shell right in her face while asking, "Would you like some leech soufflé?" She fell off the dock in her haste to get away, and has been slightly phobic about leeches ever since. I, on the other hand, was thereby forced to get very nonchalant about them very fast, so as to maintain a high ground from which to mock her fear. *grin* Yes, I know, it was mean of me. I don't care; it's a big sister's prerogative to mess her little sister up for life.)
11. Wah, poor Appa is too large to maneuver around the vines and keeps getting caught. *pets him* And Momo is loyally gnawing through the vines and setting him free to try again. Appa is frustrated. And I think Momo is realizing that they need a new plan. (I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I love Appa and Momo and their friendship to pieces. They are so ridiculously cute it is, well, ridiculous. *grin* And I am very fond of Momo's chittering, and the way it almost sounds like he has a proper language that only he and Appa understand.)
12. Why does Sokka have a machete? I thought he had a club and a boomerang? Also, here we have another incidence of Sokka the materialist empiricist vs. Aang the spiritualist and Katara the... well, depending on circumstances, I'd say either open-minded or gullible. (Here, open-minded. When dealing with Aunt Wu? Gullible.) Interestingly, the show has come down more often on Aang's side, but Sokka is sometimes right too, and even when he's wrong, he is not usually denigrated for his views. He is often poked fun at, but with love, and it is clear that at least half of what he's being made fun of for is not skepticism per se, but skepticism held onto in the face of proof, which is then no longer skepticism but dogmatism. Anyway, there is a surprising amount of science and engineering (or at least nods in that direction) in this show, for something so explicitly based in fantasy and spiritualism.
13. Aaand, something is watching them through a screen of vines! Yeah, I knew nothing good could come of this.
14. Oh my gosh, Appa and Momo are just the cutest cute things in the world. Appa crouches to look under the root, pushes up to look over it, and says, "The hell with this" and just flops down. Momo tries to wake him with the whistle (and I love that he can apparently hear it too, and it makes his fur stand on end, all adorably ruffled), and Appa slaps him with his tail. D'awww. *scritches them both behind the ears*
15. Sokka, I understand hatred of flies. (Trust me, you have no idea how much I understand. I freely admit I am irrational about flies. I have been known to stop in the middle of a transaction with several customers standing in line in order to pick up a flyswatter and go after one of the pernicious little beasts if it's landed and looks vulnerable.) But seriously, waving a machete around your head is A) overkill, B) ineffective, and C) going to hurt your or your friends. *thwaps him*
16. Random glowing ball is random. (And had damn well better be explained later on. I am just saying. ETA: It never does get explained. *sigh*)
17. Momo running up and down Appa's back, chittering defensively at the frogs and bugs and other noisemakers of the swampy night is just adorable. And then Appa's ear flicks in irritation and he roars the whole damn swamp into silence. Momo chitters victoriously, curls up and lies down to sleep... and then! Clearly something is about to go Very Wrong. (ETA: Or not. Maybe Momo just got bitten by a flea or something.)
18. The fire goes out, the vines shift, and a tendril snakes out to truss Sokka up. Yeah, Sokka, about that whole 'it's a swamp, it's not alive, it doesn't matter if I hack it to pieces to let us move faster or build a fire' thing? I think you were wrong. (Cut to commercial break.)
19. Sokka cuts the vines with his machete. Katara cuts them with a water whip/knife thingy. Aang could do the same, but instead he makes a raging dome of wind to push them away from his body and leaps out through the temporary gaps. It is interesting to me that while he's learned a lot of waterbending, he still instinctively falls back on airbending unless there is literally no way to achieve a given result without using water. I wonder if he would do that so much if he were not the last airbender left in the world.
20. I like the color fade from the blue-gray of night to the green-gold of day. Very spiffy.
21. Ahahaha, the infamous swampbenders. Dude, they are like Cajun cavemen with umbrella leaf hats. Seriously, WTF?
22. Momo, don't sit on an alligator. Wait, that thing's half fish. Catfish, maybe, judging by the whiskery tendrils around its mouth? Yes, I think so. Catfish-gator for the win! (Except no, really it's Appa for the win. Go Appa! Continue intimidating everything in the swamp!)
23. Ooh, pretty flowers growing on the giant tree roots.
24. Wait, were the flowers just part of the illusion that tricked Katara into seeing her mother? Because they totally just vanished. But what do flowers have to do with Kya? She and Katara are from the South Pole. There are no flowers there. *is confused*
25. Sokka sees Yue, accusing him of not protecting her. He is not unaffected, but unlike Katara, he is also extremely suspicious.
26. Aang sees... a flying pig and a laughing girl in fancy Earth Kingdom clothes. Hmm. Is this a vision of Toph? (I am totally confused about the flying pig, though.)
27. Oh my god, the swampbenders crack me up. And the silly pogo music in the background of this chase scene! *dies laughing*
28. Sokka, still skeptical, makes good points about his and Katara's visions: they both saw people they loved and miss. Aang's, though, does not lend itself to the same explanation, and the way they were all led to the same location... I think the spirits are meddling.
29. Sokka, haven't you learned not to tempt fate yet? (Cut to commercial break.)
30. And cue battle with giant regenerating swamp monster. *sigh* (Randomly, where is Zuko? We opened the episode with him, so what is going on with him and that jerk with the swords? I care more about that than generic swamp monster fights.)
31. I continue to love the swampbending chase scene. They have the magical equivalent of shallow-draft speedboats! And, seriously, "Now what would a lemu need a shirt for?" *sporfle* And the fat one (Tho? Do? Thu? Du? Oh, I am so bad with names... *rewinds* Tho, and the skinny one is Du) catches Momo in a sack, calm as you please. Hmm. This could go bad very easily, but at the moment I am just laughing like a loon.
32. That was some nice teamwork and creative bending to get Sokka free of the swamp monster's chest. Yay Aang and Katara!
33. Ah, so the swamp monster is not really the spirit of the swamp, just a bender who's kind of ticked off at Sokka for his machete-swinging ways.
34. Lalala, interdependent web of existence, lalala environmentalism and spiritual unity, lalala. Dude, I teach this stuff every Sunday. This is, like, the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism. I do not need my own damn religion echoed back at me from a children's television show, thanks awfully. (I suspect I would have more patience for this if I had not taught a lesson on Wampanoag thanksgiving rituals this very morning, and then talked to my aunt about religion tonight. There is only so much spirituality I can take per day, and I have already hit my limit.)
35. "You guys are waterbenders." "You too? That means we're kin!" Katara's expression is priceless, though she is too polite to say, "Um, NO, not in a million years," the way she is clearly thinking.
36. Pet catfish-gator! *dies laughing*
37. Sokka, there is a time and a place for materialism, but in your world, this is not that time nor that place. But I think at least half his insistence is that he doesn't want to think about Yue or consider that her accusation might be how she really feels, up there in the sky (or down there in the sacred pool, swimming around as a fish).
38. Nothing mysterious about the swamp, oh no. And that root didn't just smack the screaming bird all of its own accord. Absolutely not, you must be imagining things. (Actually, that scene is vague enough that it could well have been Hu bending the root to scare the bird away. But it's funny either way.)
39. Oooh, I know this incidental background music. I recognize those chimes. And yup, there's Zuko, in the Blue Spirit mask, doing his ninja stuff on the jerk with the swords. Hee! Oh, I do love this show!
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Date: 2009-11-23 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-24 04:00 am (UTC)