[7.3/10] There’s a lot to like in this one, but it doesn’t really come together. The thing I liked most was the reveal that Ba Sing Se, despite being the stronghold of the (at least nominal) good guys, is a caste society with strict governmental oversight and plutocracy in action. The Stepford smiling handler, the stratified systems of where people live, and the bureaucratic hurdles to do anything or everything are all unsettling in their own ways, and reveal that the Fire Nation is not the only form of evil in the Four Kingdoms.
But the actual adventures there are only so-so. It seems like there’s a lot of setup for interesting things to come, but it feels like A:TLA has gotten a little more logy as it’s become a little more explicitly serialized. Some of the “Village of the Week” episodes could be dumb or dull, but there was a persistent sense of momentum in the show despite that. Now it seems like we’ve been stuck in the Ba Sing Se portion of the show for a while, and while the episodes have been generally good, I’ve started to get a bit of “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?” impatience.
Still, the setup is promising. Toph and Katara pretending to be high society ladies and Aang and Sokka trying to sneak in as busboys to get an impromptu audience with the king has some good humor to it. The inclusion of Clancy Brown(!) as an autocratic, power behind the throne potentate has potential. And again, the troubling aspects of Ba Sing Se are interesting reveals.
There’s also Jet’s subplot stalking Zuko and Iroh. Iroh’s attention to tea-making continues to be pretty adorable. And while I’m still not sold on Jet recurring this much, his sword fight with Zuko is a definite action highlight for the whole series. The circling shot that zipped around them in combat was particularly cool. For whatever reason, brainwashing people not to talk about the war feels like a bridge to far to me (in a show with magical element powers and cosmic fish – go figure) but I’m willing to see where they go with it.
Overall, this feels more like an introduction than anything else, but it does a good job to that end, even if it doesn’t really stand out in and of itself.
(I did appreciate the group's amazement at the idea of a pure-bread bear rather than some sort of hybrid. They've never really delved into why all the show's animals are amalgams, but I like the worldbuilding involved in Team Avatar's surprise, and even people excited to get a seat near the bear!)
Avatar was always political, there is no two ways around it. It's the rare animated show that actively knows it's politics, though, and actually discusses it in a way that feels mature and nuanced. And this is why the Dai Lee are so scary and ultimately one of the biggest threats of the show yet - it's not that they are this big, overwhelming force like the Fire Nation, but instead they feel more at home, just watching your every move. Ba Sing Se is a police state, and we get to see just how deadly and ultimately destructive that can be on a person on the person we least expect it to.
Poor Jet. Not only is he starting to finally come into his own as a character, but his fight scene with Zuko is downright masterful here and seeing him dragged away only to be hypnotized is disturbing stuff. The main group get more comedic relief, of course, but all of that only serves to highlight the point that not everything is right about the city of Ba Sing Se. After all - there's no war in Ba Sing Se. There is no war in the walls.
When I was younger, The Puppetmaster was the creepiest episode of Avatar, and this one was unremarkable at worst. Now that I am older though, it is this episode that really sends chills down my spine.
This episode does a great job of making ba sing se equally frustrating and unsettling.
The Jet subplot is also really interesting. Seeing him be consumed by his obsession with rooting out the fire nation is a great reflection on the ways experiencing abject brutality from the fire nation can fundamentally disrupt your life. He's incapable of letting his suspicion go incable of allowing himself peace because he's spent his entire childhood looking out for the threat of the fire nation. Such a poignant and sad bit of dramatic irony.
aang before he's the avatar, he's a kid and an entertainer and an animal lover i would war the world for him
“This tea is nothing more than hot leaf juice!”
“Uncle, that’s what all tea is.”
“How could a member of my family say something so horrible?”
The Dai Lee and Ba Sing Se’s terrifying police state are truly the show’s most dangerous — and believable — villains. It sends chills down my spine every time.
"Sick of tea? That's like being sick of breathing!" — Iroh
8/10
Hypnotism! Very original, for this type of show especially.
Shout by BougBlockedParent2020-07-25T16:06:25Z
Thank god, for a moment I thought there was a war in Ba Sing Se