avatar

Oh, my. I completely cracked while on an Avatar (as in the Last Airbender, otherwise known as the Nick TV show about the bald kid with a blue arrow on his head) high, and watched up to episode nine. Episodes eight and nine have already been released in the United Kingdom (quite lucky, those Brits), so, obviously, they have miraculously appeared on the Internet for our viewing pleasure. I also watched episode seven, but that has already come out in the United States, so it doesn't exactly matter.

SPOILERS FOR UP TO EPISODE NINE



The Runaway

Finally, we get all the Toph we've been waiting for! A Toph-centric episode every now and again is simply wonderful. Toph was, as always, wonderful, humourous, and sarcastic in this episode, but actually showed some emotion (without overdoing it...::hackcoughTheBeach::). I really liked the plot. Toph is wickedly delightful in her play at innocense, while really being conniving and sneaky. Woot for Toph!



The Puppetmaster

THIS EPISODE IS SO MADE OF WIN IT IS ALMOST PAINFUL. Siriusly! Besides "The Avatar and the Fire Lord", this is my favourite episode of season three.

Hama is possibly more frightening than Li and Lo, which is a difficult feat to accomplish, but I believe she did it well. The subtle foreshadowing was brilliant and wonderful on the writers' and animators' parts, and the characters were very in-character (Sokka curious, Toph sarcastic, Aang optimistic and puppy-like, Katara absolutely idiotic), which was nice. I thoroughly enjoyed Katara's story, and I wish they would have changed the release dates for episodes seven and eight, so that eight could have been released closer to Halloween, but it doesn't matter much.

More than anything, I really liked Hama's character. She seemed well thought-out, so that her story had some meat to it, and so you almost felt sorry for her and pitied her. I like that other Waterbenders still exist from the Southern Water Tribe, and how loyal Hama was to her tribe. Because even if she was creepy-evil, she still wanted to show Katara a powerful Waterbending move so that someone else would know it. But she was still creepy. She should team up with Azula.

The flaw I found in this episode is that Bloodbending is an idea born of fanfiction, which makes me laugh more than it makes me 'tsk'. And the entire scene under the moon with Hama and Katara was strangely reminiscent of a Scooby-Doo movie.

Nightmares and Daydreams
I think that someone at Nickelodeon was selling drugs to the writers of Avatar when this episode was being thought of. Or, perhaps, they were giving out free drugs, because someone was obviously on crack when thinking of this episode.

A common NetSpeak term just about sums this episode up nicely: W...T...F?!?!