Avatar: The Last Airbender: "Chapter Sixteen: The Southern Raiders" and "Chapter Eighteen: The Ember Island Players"

(This is the 24th installment of my weekly recaps of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Nickelodeon animated series that ran from 2005 to 2008 to much critical acclaim. I’ve never seen it! These recaps are only available to paid subscribers.)

• “Chapter Sixteen: The Southern Raiders” (originally aired July 17, 2008)
• “Chapter Seventeen: The Ember Island Players” (originally aired July 18, 2008)

I really liked these two episodes but for vastly different reasons, so let's take a look at them one by one, shall we?

"The Southern Raiders"

I think American pop culture has sort of perverted the idea of forgiveness. As I was watching this episode with Cassie, she said that she was on Katara's side in the central argument it presents. Katara shouldn't have to forgive the guy who killed her mom. Why would she?

But the definition of forgiveness that Cassie was operating under (and that the show seemed to be operating under) was that "forgiveness" means finding someone who wronged you and removing the burden of that wrong from their shoulders. It's not quite "S'all good, man!" but it is on the same spectrum. Forgiveness is about lightening your soul by letting someone who's done you wrong understand they're okay again. It's more about the feelings of the wrongdoer than the one who was wronged, even if we try to suggest that holding onto your anger is a problem that forgiveness will solve.

But the deeper we get into "The Southern Raiders," the more I think this episode exemplifies a more nuanced understanding of forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't about the feelings of the wrongdoer; it's about the feelings of the wronged. It's about finding a way to shrink your pain down, just a little bit, so you can live alongside it and make it a fellow traveler.

"The Southern Raiders" is one of my favorite episodes of the show. It's one I had heard almost nothing about (whereas I had frequently heard about "Ember Island Players"), but it offers an examination of what it would mean to actually forgive someone. And where it ends up is fascinating. Katara doesn't get her revenge against the man who killed her mother, but she does find a way to set her pain aside while also forcing him to continue to bear it.

The episode doesn't let him off the hook; neither does Katara. But she still finds her way to something like wholeness. You cannot be defined by your anger, by your rage, by the worst elements of your past. You have to learn to  let go of those things but not forget them. Forgiveness can be about healing a relationship with another person, especially a friend or loved one, but so much of the time, it's about healing your relationship with yourself. It's important to feel pain; it's also important to not let your pain become your entire self.

I viewed "The Southern Raiders" through the lens of someone who's going through cognitive processing therapy for extreme trauma in my childhood. What I've realized is that the point of the therapy is not to reach peace with what happened, because reaching peace is impossible. It's about finding a way to live alongside what happened, so that it doesn't define my relationships with other people who had nothing to do with my pain. When you're not able to look at something clearly and let go of its burden, at least a little bit, you have a tendency to over-apply the lessons you learned from that thing indiscriminately, often against people you love or could be friends with.

That's why it's notable that the main relationship healed in this episode is between Katara and Zuko. Yeah, sure, they weren't exactly pals at any point in the series, but there were just enough scenes where you could see that they might get along really well if they could just get past... well, the endless enmity between their two nations, which pitted them against each other in pointless conflict. Zuko is so intent on winning Katara over that he goes along on her revenge mission; in the process, she learns a lesson about what it actually means to let go of the grudges you hold against someone, which ends up helping her realize the bond she could have with Zuko.

(Also, this is kind of off the spine of what I'm writing about here, but the action in this episode is so fucking cool??? I love Azula vs. Zuko fights, and there are some amazing moments with Katara using her powers to do some pretty nasty shit.)

Forgiveness, see, isn't really about a one-on-one thing. We're told that it is. We're told that it only applies in situations in which there is a simple, reciprocal relationship between two parties in a conflict. But forgiveness is really about learning to set bones that have broken in ways that they will heal to be sturdier than they were before. You're not going to lose the hints of a fracture, but you might find a way to build something that lasts anyway. To forgive is not to absolve; to forgive is to soothe. We overlearn lessons from the ways in which we suffer. Forgiveness is a way to make sure the lessons we learn are proportionate to the wrongs we suffered, not the pain we're consumed by.

"The Ember Island Players"

Then this episode is just very fun!

I kind of like the idea of this episode more than the episode itself. It's an ersatz clip show, presented as a stage play, in which all of the characters see how they are being portrayed via Fire Nation propaganda. It's a little silly conceptually. (For instance: Why is the Fire Nation producing a play where the Avatar is effectively the protagonist?) But as a way to remind the audience of the journey the characters have been on so far just in time for the big finale? It's pretty peerless.

It's such a good idea for an episode of TV that I'm surprised basically no other shows have tried to do it. Can you imagine the Lost version of this? The How I Met Your Mother version? The Game of Thrones version? Hell, I would have loved to have seen the Breaking Bad version.

Mostly, "Ember Island Players" is a goof, but it's a goof that I had fun with. And I think it earns its place as an episode of this show and not just a conceptual joy via its ending, in which we see the Fire Lord destroy Aang and Azula destroy her brother. Granted, it's all happening in a play where nothing is "real," but it increases the level of dread that we feel heading into the finale.

However, the other element that the show tries to drill home as we head into the final battle is the idea that Aang and Katara are some sort of weird, destined pair. And while I get what the show is trying to do, I also really do not buy the Aang/Katara romance. It has all the passion of a kid making their action figures kiss. It doesn't feel particularly interesting or story-driven or character-driven or anything. It feels dutiful, especially when Zuko and Katara are right there having such great chemistry.

Mostly, "Ember Island Players" occupies a similar place to this season as "The Tales of Ba Sing Se" does to season two. It's an opportunity for the show to take a break from the gathering gloom and do something else for a change. Plus, if you needed to take a moment and think about how much these kids have changed, well... this episode will give you that. It's a delight without much purpose. But who cares when it's a delight?

Other thoughts I thought:

• Sokka being so worked up about how he's funnier than fictional Sokka is pretty great. I also like how he and Suki are just casually a couple now, and everybody else knowing seems to have mostly happened offscreen. (In "Southern Raiders," they're sneaking around.)
• A lot of my friends who'd seen the show had talked about how Toph inspired big trans masculine feelings in them, and while I got that a bit before, I really get it now that she's so delighted to be depicted by an enormous man who shouts a lot.
• I like how the Netflix captions list all of the characters in the play as "Aang" and "Sokka" and "Katara" and so on. And did you see that Rachel Dratch plays "Aang"?
• Mae Whitman is really just terrific as Katara in both of these episodes. "Southern Raiders" lets her play some emotional extremes, while "Ember Island" gives her some very funny moments to take umbrage at how the play portrays her.
• Aang displays a lot of character growth in "Southern Raiders" that he then kinda tanks in "Ember Island Players" when he's, like, "But the Katara in the play said she didn't like me!" It's such a weird call, seemingly designed only to provoke false drama, and I think it's pretty core to why I find Aang hard to invest in as a character.
• It's sort of amazing how routinely I forget that Aang is a character in a show putatively named after him. I don't dislike him or anything, but I'm so much more into everybody else in the ensemble. The rest of the show evolved, and Aang, to this point, kinda didn't.
• Look, Azula might not be a very good person, but she has some amazing looks. For that, alone, we thank her.

Next week: The series finale! I'll be talking about all four parts of "Sozin's Comet"! See you then!