Ron Does Stuff

I sat through this new season’s first episode, and I thought it was…okay. The question now is whether this show is ever going to move past okay to great in the episodes that follow. Let’s find out!

While the first episode trudged along at an okay pace, it did end with a high: Zuko telling Iroh that he can’t stay with him anymore and that he needs to go out there and catch the Avatar. At the start of this episode, Zuko’s trudging along what looks to be a desert, so I guess this is going to be the episode where he stays with an Earth Kingdom family. He sees a bag of resources hanging from a tree and decides to steal it from the husband and wife who actually own it, which is definitely not a good look for him. He then sees a boy being bullied by Earth Kingdom soldiers, which prompts him to stand up for him. You’re giving me mixed signals here, show!

We then get a flashback to when he and Azula were kids, showing he’s the good child between the two of them, reinforced by his successfully retrieving the kid’s produce from the Earth Kingdom soldiers. It’s all very morose, I gotta say, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad just yet.

Over at where the Gaang are, there’s talk of jing once again, and I really don’t know why they had to complicate bending any further. Is there going to be a payoff for this in the future? Aang is also chipper in this episode, which is a little off-putting to me. I know he’s supposed to still be chipper, but the first episode already had him being ~serious~, and I wish there was just some consistency.

Elsewhere in the Earth Kingdom, Azula and her gang are killing Earth Kingdom residents as they search for the Avatar. They’re terrifying, which works for the tone of this adaptation. Or at least when the show remembers the tone that it wants. Anyway, they’re terrifying, and if they catch Zuko with this Earth Kingdom family he’s found himself with, that family is going to be dead.

Meanwhile, the Gaang can’t buy food because they don’t have money, since Aang was hoping they’d get food and supplies for free, like they did for Air Nomads back in the day. Unfortunately, back in the day means a century ago, and that’s not how things work now. That’s how Aang finds himself competing in an underground Earth Rumble, which is, of course, where we meet Toph.

Meeting Toph will have to wait, though, because we gotta see what’s going on with Zuko, and what’s going on with Zuko is that he’s doing the dishes for this Earth Kingdom family while he’s trying not to expose himself as the prince of the Fire Nation. Although that totally should have been obvious with the way he “washes” those plates. How are they going to get clean if you wash them like that?

And then we get another flashback to Zuko’s mom, and I honestly cannot remember how they did this in the animated version. I know they did, but I can’t remember if it was interspersed with the things happening in the present, or if it was a standalone episode. There’s also a Blue Spirit “origin story”, but do we really need that?

Then we go back to the Earth Rumble, already in progress. The Boulder is looking for a challenger, and the one who steps up is the Blind Bandit. And I actually enjoyed this bending battle! It may not have been as dynamic as the one in the animated series, but that was animation. I think this show did the best they could. Aang now wants the Blind Bandit to teach him Earthbending, but the Blind Bandit escapes before he can even ask her to do so because a servant of the Beifong family has arrived to invite the Avatar to an ~introductory light meal~.

It’s at this ~introductory light meal~ that Aang finally meets the Blind Bandit, who is actually Toph Beifong. He’s trying to persuade Toph to become his Earthbending teacher, but he’s having a hard time doing that. And he really should be stepping up his efforts because Azula and her gang are getting closer and closer to them.

It’s at this point in the episode that I think I’ve finally figured out what the main problem of this adaptation is — it’s not matching the animated series’ tone. I’m not a purist; I don’t mind if it’s not a one-to-one reproduction of the animated series. But the show fails to recreate the animated series’ lighthearted tone that somehow still successfully tackles topics that are definitely not lighthearted, a tone that, in my opinion, was the animated series’ special sauce. This live-action version can’t figure that out, and I think that’s what makes it inferior to the animated series.

This is especially apparent when the scenes at the Beifong house are followed by scenes of Zuko bonding with the Earth Kingdom family and reckoning with his fucked-up family dynamics. It feels like two episodes mashed together, which it probably is. I can’t be sure since it’s been some time since I watched the cartoon! And I’m not saying that can’t be done, because it can; it’s just that this show hasn’t found the right way to do it, in my opinion.

Back at the Beifong estate, Toph and Aang finally meet in the garden, and Toph shares her bending origin story, as well as how her parents don’t want her bending. And I don’t want any negativity towards Gordon because that’s pinsan, but it’s just not as impactful as the scene between Iroh and Zuko. Or even with the Zuko’s mom scene that follows.

Emotional scenes are going to have to wait though, because Mai and Ty Lee have stumbled on Sokka and Suki, which means it’s time for a fight scene! And it’s a good enough fight scene, but you do really feel that this show was made on a crunch.

Elsewhere in the Earth Kingdom, Azula has finally caught up with Zuko, and of course, the siblings are at loggerheads. Azula tells Zuko that he’s been pardoned and that he can go back to the Fire Nation, but Zuko isn’t about to fall for that. He chooses to confront Aang instead, which leads to the Gaang fighting against Azula in what is admittedly not a very good fight scene. And I’ve been very easy to please when it comes to that!

Azula manages to escape by striking Iroh with lightning, and this whole fracas is what convinces Toph to join the Gaang and teach Aang Earthbending. Of course, her mother isn’t happy about it, and she pays The Boulder to track her down.

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