So, remember the vision of a girl Aang saw?  Of course you don’t; The Swamp is a terrible episode.  Well, we get introduced to her today.

Aang continues on his journey to learn Earthbending from the Earth Kingdom gym leader and earn his next badge to the Avatar League.  He receives a flyer for Earthbending lessons and decides to attend.

The teacher isn’t the right teacher for Aang, but they hear about an Earthbending competition: Earth Rumble 6.

The goal of the fight is to knock the opponent off the ring, but the whole thing plays out like professional wrestling.  The obvious favorite of the tournament is an Earthbender who calls himself The Boulder.

Fun fact: The Boulder is voiced by Mick Foley, which makes this hilarious on multiple levels.

Fire Nation Man is just a brilliant send-up of stereotypical “evil foreigner” heels that play up their foreign-ness to get booed.  Fire Nation was such a perfect nationality to use, too.

The Boulder defeats all of his opponents and goes one on one with the great one: The Blind Bandit.

The blind bandit is a very literally blind little girl, but don’t let her enormous cuteness fool you: she’s got a nasty side to her.

The Blind Bandit has completely mastered the art of waiting for the perfect moment to strike, and her bending makes a complete fool of The Boulder.  Then the promoter decides to offer a reward to anyone in the audience who can beat the Blind Bandit.  Will no one take the challenge?

 

Aang steps up and doesn’t want to fight, but ends up in a fight anyway and accidentally beats her.  The Blind Bandit runs away, so Aang has to track her down.  After being rewarded, of course.

They follow some leads and find out the girl they’re after is actually Toph, the daughter of the richest man in the kingdom, Liquid Snake.

Meanwhile, the promoter from Earth Rumble 6 finds it suspicious that the Bandit was knocked out of the ring without being hit by earth, so he things she took a dive.

Toph doesn’t want to teach Aang bending, primarily because she’s also busy pretending to be a sheltered helpless princess that doesn’t know anything about the outside world.  However, she and Aang get kidnapped and held for ransom, and Katara, Sokka, and Toph’s dad head to the arena to pay it off.

And that’s when Toph decides fuck it all and shows off that she can beat all of the Earth Rumble fighters at once with her superior bending.  Her father is impressed and promptly forbids her from ever leaving her house, presumably because she didn’t know her role and shut her mouth like a good daughter should.

Aang and company are about to depart for another teacher, but Toph shows up and says her father changed her mind.  Which is one of the most blatant lies in the series.

Before the end of the episode, her father is shown to believe the Avatar has kidnapped her daughter, and he provides a gold reward to anyone who brings her back.

The next episode is called “Zuko Alone,” which is all about Zuko with absolutely zero Aang.  I see the writers have finally decided to stop pretending Aang is the main character.

We see a hungry Zuko about to rob someone of his food… until he sees that he’s feeding his pregnant wife, and that would be a bit too evil.

So the hungry Zuko and his not-Chocobo ride continue on to the next town.  It is here that it the genre appears to shift into a spaghetti Western.

Zuko helps out a little kid and stands up to some Earth Kingdom soldiers who use their position to bully about the town.  The kid invites him to his home, where Zuko finally gets to rest and eat.

The kid’s family consists of poor farmers and an unseen older brother currently fighting in the war.

While Zuko rests, he has memories of his childhood, and especially of his hot, hot mother.

Azula was always kind of a bully to Ty Lee, and Mai definitely had a crush on Zuko.  Azula had a ploy to get them closer together, but not sure if legit or if it was just an opportunity to bully Mai and Zuko at the same time.

How does this chick have friends?

By the way, we also see a glimpse of young(er) Iroh at the battle of Ba Sing Se.

Back in the present, the kid steals Zuko’s broadswords and practices, either because it’s cool or because he wants to be more like his warrior brother; it’s rather refreshing that we don’t actually get told of his motivation.  Zuko teaches him to treat the swords as one weapon rather than two individual ones.  Then he gives the boy a knife that Iroh gave him as a present.  It has an inscription that says “Never give up without a fight.”  This surely won’t come back to bite him in the ass.

Back in the flashback, we see Azula was an amazing Firebending prodigy, completely outclassing Zuko.  Also, we finally see some details regarding the throne drama behind the Firelord.  The previous Firelord Azulon (their grandfather) was angry at Ozai’s (their father) suggestion that, since Iroh lost his only son and abandoned the siege at Ba Sing Se, Ozai should become next in line for Firelord instead.  According to Azula, Azulon then said Ozai should be punished by having him lose his own first born son.  Which is kind of a dick move.  Must run in the family.  Anyway, Zuko doesn’t get killed, because otherwise we would next be learning that Zuko was a ghost all along.  But Zuko’s mother tells him that whatever happens to her, it’s for his own well-being.  Next we know, Zuko’s mother is gone (and Azula couldn’t give a fuck), Azulon passes away, and according to his last wishes, Ozai is to become the next Firelord.

We don’t know exactly what happened, but we do know SHIT WENT DOWN.  Also, we never see Ozai’s face for what I can only assume is NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL.  What secret about his face are we supposed to be kept in the dark about?  Does he look exactly like Aang?  Is he horrifically scarred like Zuko?  I’m going to be so pissed if we finally see his face and it’s all for nothing but a “oh so that’s what he looks like” moment.

Back in the present, Lee gets captured for pulling a knife on the soldiers when they come bullying the farm for food, so Zuko says he’ll bring him back.  What follows is a Western faceoff.

Zuko easily takes out three of the men, but he has difficulty against the Earthbending leader.  With his ass on the floor, he remembers his mother’s words (and also Mufasa’s) to remember who he is.  So he goes and does the only thing he can to win the fight: he Firebends.

Zuko saves the day, but Lee and the rest of the villagers fucking hate Zuko, so he leaves alone.

Seriously one of the strongest episodes of the series so far, and another reminder that Zuko is the most developed character by a landslide.

In the next episode, Appa is molting.

I realize I should have started this back in “The Blind Bandit,” but back then, I had no idea it would be this blatant and pointless: We get a LOT of closeup shots of Toph’s feet, so starting with this episode, I will be keeping track of just how many of them there are.

Anyway, the major conflict of this episode (“The Chase”) isn’t so much the chase, but rather how much Katara and Toph don’t see eye to eye, and Toph struggles to fit in the group dynamic.

Whenever the group tries to get to sleep, a massive iron train comes straight for their camp site.  It even climbs up freaking mountainsides like those crawling tanks.

Turns out, the train is being helmed by Azula’s Angels.

So, to get away from the train, Appa has to keep flying nonstop.  Along the way, the gang, completely irritable from getting no sleep, has a fight, and Toph separates, no longer able to tolerate Katara’s bitching and the expectation that she should help with the rest of the gang’s chores.

Meanwhile, Aang separates from the group to draw the trackers away, but Azula sees through the ploy, directing Mai and Ty Lee to chase after Sokka and Katara while she goes after the Avatar.

In the battle between Katara and Sokka against Ty Lee and Mai, Sokka actually proves to be helpful against Mai, but Ty Lee disables his limbs with her pressure point attacks, and Katara is pinned by Mai.  But Appa rescues the two because he’s a giant flying beast.

Meanwhile, Azula has Aang cornered, but Zuko shows up to fight… BOTH of them.  Azula because she’s a crazy bitch, and Aang because… um… honor?

Unexpectedly, Toph meets up with Iroh, who gives her a lesson in friendship over a cup of tea.

Toph and the rest of the gang, including Iroh apparently, manage to arrive at the site of the fight and completely surround Azula, who seems to surrender before making an opening by attacking Iroh with lightning.  Because she’s a cold-hearted bitch.

Toph is shocked when she senses something with her feet, but I honestly can’t tell if it’s due to sensing the stranger she met or that he’s dead (but not really).

Katara offers to heal Iroh, but Zuko orders them to stay away, because he’s a different kind of bitch.

I kinda want to say it’s ridiculous that Azula can fend off so many main characters at once, but to be fair, she was a prodigy years ago.  She ought to be leagues better by now.  But it’s still somewhat annoying.

Also, I should have talked about this earlier, but it bears repeating: those archers from way back have a perfect record against Aang (and Zuko) so far.  Why are they not in Azula’s team?  Oh right… nepotism.

In the next episode, Aang finally gets a crash course in Earthbending.

Basically, the key to being an Earthbender is to adopt the right attitude, which means facing adversity head-on.  Aang has considerable trouble with this, especially since he’s an Airbender, the elemental opposite.

Meanwhile, Zuko asks Iroh for advanced Firebending training, which Iroh agrees to because Azula “is crazy and needs to be put down.”  His exact words.

Aang finally gives up, but Sokka’s missing.  Yeah, a while back he started hunting for food and got trapped in a crevice.  I was absolutely sure that Toph trapped him on purpose, but I suppose she never had the opportunity.

When a beast arrives, Aang has to save Sokka, but he can’t free him with Airbending.  When all of his tactics against the beast fail, he decides to resort to a head-on attack that blows the beast away.  Toph applauds Aang for his attitude and tells Aang to try out Earthbending now that he has the right attitude.  It works!

So, Toph learned that Katara’s method of teaching Aang really was more effective for once, and I guess their bond strengthened just a bit.

Meanwhile, Zuko’s lightning training goes terribly.  Iroh believes the problem is Zuko will never master lightning until he resolves his own inner turmoil.  But barring that, Iroh offers to teach him a different technique that Azula never learned, which consists of redirecting lightning.  Zuko seems to master the form, but Iroh refuses to put it to a practical test.  Zuko decides to chase after lightning to test it out, but lightning refuses to strike him as he cries out against the heavens.

In the next episode, Aang and company are on mini-vacations, while Sokka kinda reverts to his early Book 1 self and wants to get shit done.  Specifically, he wants a map to the Fire Kingdom so they can start working on a plan of attack.

In their travels, they encounter an anthropologist who also happens to possibly be the best one-time character ever.

Sokka decides he wants his vacation time to be spent at the legendary desert library that the weird guy talked about, so he can find out about some kind of weakness in the Fire Nation.

They find the library and climb into its highest tower rather than, say, sandbending to reveal the entire building.  More interesting that way.  Also, Toph has no reason to enter the library because she can’t read.

The guardian of the library is a giant freaking owl who hates humans, but agrees to let them peruse the library in exchange for donations.  Also, Admiral Zhao once entered the library, and that’s how he learned about the moon and ocean spirits.  He also may or may not have completely destroyed the entire section of the library that had info on the Fire Nation.

Sokka comes across one piece of paper that talks about the Fire Nation’s “darkest day,” and he intends on finding out about it.  The gang learns that the day was a solar eclipse, so kinda literally its darkest day.  But a solar eclipse also shut down the Firebenders’ powers, so they need to know when the next solar eclipse is.  The guardian is pissed that they’re going to use information from the library to gain an advantage in a war, and he decides to sink the whole damn thing.  While the gang tries to escape, Sokka finds out the day of the next solar eclipse, and, unexpectedly, does NOT lose any of the scrolls or books he stole.  However, the researcher decides to stay behind to read forever.  At least until he realizes there’s no fucking food down there.

Unfortunately, while they were running around, Appa gets captured by sandbenders, and Toph couldn’t stop his capture because she was too busy PREVENTING THE LIBRARY FROM SINKING.

So uh… we gained some and lost some.

This was a very strong run of episodes with great character development all around and massive amounts of humor.  Toph is an outstanding addition to the cast, and even though  Sokka kept getting dangerously close to being completely marginalized, out of nowhere we get “The Library,” which, by the way, I was absolutely into for library-related reasons.  Very much looking forward to the next few eps.