Noel, Allison, and Kate continue Streaming In Place with Avatar: The Last Airbender season two, episode 16, “Appa’s Lost Days.” Appaaaaaa! At long last, we get an update on everyone’s favorite not-a-taxi, and man, it is a rough one. Tune in for our thoughts on these episodes and come back tomorrow as we talk episodes 17 and 18, “Lake Lagoai” and “The Earth King.”
Shout-out to our Zoom listeners, Keenan, Marcus, and Scottie. Thanks for helping us process this episode and sharing your thoughts.
Normally, we strive to keep Streaming In Place expletive free, but that is not the case here. If any younger viewers are listening, be warned.
Videos referenced: Behind the Scenes featurette about the voices of Avatar: The Last Airbender (Here’s a Dee Bradley Baker excerpt); Great Big Story’s Meet the Voice Actor Behind Hollywood’s Monsters and Creatures, about Dee Bradley Baker
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Like Noel I had also blocked a lot of this out. Conventional wisdom would say that if a missing character gets a flashback episode, while they are still missing, that they should be found by the end of the episode! Calling it Appa’s Lost Days feeds right into that narrative – ALL of Appa’s Lost Days should be covered by the episode, the title is seriously misleading! Denying us a happy ending after all of that is a cruel decision. This episode is draining enough on it’s own, but after the other stressful and emotional episodes lately it’s just devastating.
Azula was incredibly evil in this episode but overall I’m finding her a bit limited as the villain. She’s showing up randomly (and conveniently) at the service of the plot, without enough consistency in her purpose or motivation. She’s also under-resourced which is why she always fails, despite the elite skills of Deathtiny’s Child (did I spell that right?). Of course you can’t have a villain be too powerful or they would instantly vanquish the heroes but gee a few elite firebenders on her squad wouldn’t hurt. I do recall that she gets more interesting as the show goes on so I’m looking forward to that.