Mark Watches ‘Avatar’: S01E14 – The Fortuneteller

In the fourteenth episode of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the trio stop by a local village that operates almost entirely on the directions of a fortune-teller who reads palms, clouds, and bones. Sokka’s skepticism soon proves to be a major force of contention as he wonders aloud if Aunt Mu could ever be wrong. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Avatar.

You know, for an episode that largely has nothing to do with the main mythology, I rather liked “The Fortuneteller.”

First of all, it is a moment for the show to stop and breath after a wonderfully intense run of episodes, and it decides to focus (just a bit) on the relationship between Katara and Aang, which is largely adorable and made me want to say AW SHUCKS every five minutes. Even though the story isn’t as urgent as everything else, there’s a nice little parable here for putting all your eggs in one basket that, while a tad obvious, still was an entertaining twenty-four minutes.

One thing that “The Fortuneteller” sort of made obvious that I’d never really thought about was the dynamic of the trio. (Is there an official name people use in fandom to refer to Sokka, Katara, and Aang all at the same time? I feel like there should be, but you all might be refraining from telling me it because it’s spoilery. So…any non-spoilery suggestions?) In a lot of stories like this, about people with “powers,” I’m used to everyone who is a part of the group having that power. They vary in what they can do, but generally everyone’s close to the same level, with maybe one leaders. Here, though, in Avatar, we have Aang (WHOSE SKILLS ARE AMAZING IN THIS EPISODE) paired with Katara, who is still just beginning to master waterbending, and then Sokka, who has no power whatsoever. (EXCEPT HIS MIND AND HIS WONDERFUL SENSE OF HUMOR.) I guess I didn’t really think about it until that scene when Aang and Katara are bending the clouds into a skull (so goth), which made me give the trio a second look. I like that all three are so different from each other, in personality and in bending ability. Certainly there are multiple things at work to make this show so entertaining, but at the heart of it, the writers have grouped three such disparate people together under one goal, and then they don’t ignore that the three are so different.

“The Fortuneteller” places Sokka’s skepticism against the group as the three of them come into contact with Aunt Mu, the fortuneteller of a local village whose prophecies govern virtually everything, from the years’ crops to the color of shoes a person should wear.

I think the writers were aware that they were toeing a line that shows on Nickelodeon couldn’t necessarily address, and that was inherently in the plot of “The Fortuneteller.” I think this episode is largely about fanatical faith (and “faith” could be substituted for anything, and I’m glad this episode was not so explicitly about fortunetelling) versus fanatical disbelief. The trio discover a man fighting a platypus bear (I WANT ONE!!!!) in the most nonchalant manner humanly possible. In many respects, he doesn’t even look like he’s fighting it; it’s more like he’s blissfully avoiding it. When the trio shout suggestions and the man ignores all of them, Aang steps in to save the man, with Appa providing the necessary throaty growl to scare the beast off. (And leaving an egg behind. I can’t ignore that part because it is so glorious and adorable.)

Here’s a small thing this episode does extremely well to distance itself from being anti-fortunetelling: Throughout this story, Aunt Mu is technically right. The example given right here at the start is that she predicted that this specific man would be safe on his journey. Entirely by his own perception, he certainly was. Which meant that, to him, Aunt Mu was right. Now, I get Sokka’s anger, and perhaps I shared in that vehement anger at one point in my life. But so much of this episode consists of most of the characters being walking HATERS GONNA HATE gifs, if you think about it.

Religion and faith is a weird thing with me, personally, because I know that I have faith in a few tangible things and a few intangible things, but most of my life, I’ve not had the positivity to last that way. Cynicism and doubt are probably right after air and water in terms of Substances I Need In Order To Stay Alive. It’s just who I’ve been for a long, long time, even when I was a Christian/Catholic. When I hear people talk about faith, or finding something to believe in, I’m at a point in my life where I don’t meet it with anger or derision like Sokka does. (Oh, I certainly did, but it’s been a while since I felt that way.) These days, all I get is a pang of jealousy. I sometimes want to know what it feels like when you can have faith in something that gives a person comfort and hope.

I don’t want to get too deep into my own personal beliefs, mostly because I need to save that for when I start Mark Reads His Dark Materials in a couple weeks, when there will be BOATLOADS OF CONVERSATIONS THAT PEOPLE WILL FROWN AT. (I hope not, but, again, hope’s a funny thing for me.) But I wanted to point out that I really loved the way a lot of this were framed. To Sokka, much of what happens in this episode is completely foreign to him. He literally cannot conceive of why people would think this way about fortunetelling. Instead of realizing, like Aang, that different things work for different people, he resorts to something a lot of atheists/agnostics/nonbelievers are guilty of: believing they are superior in thought because they don’t “buy” into something.

It’s not hard to see my younger self in Sokka, especially the angry side, since my years of falling out of the Catholic church, and then Christianity, and then theism in general were wrought with a lot of bitter anger, sadness, and loneliness. And I lashed out at everyone around me because those things people felt were not present in my life. Since I couldn’t experience them, I turned into a five-year-old asked to share their toys: If I can’t have it, no one can.

So, in terms of the metaphor drawn out over “The Fortuneteller,” I felt really good about how balanced the story ending up being. That’s really the conflict at the crux of this: How do you respect a person’s beliefs and stop those same beliefs if they are possibly going to harm someone else?

DILEMMA, Y’ALL.

But that dilemma is resolved in an interesting way, too, since it involves trickery. I LOVE TRICKERY. Not as much as time travel, but it’s a fine thing to put in a story. This trickery is fascinating because it implicitly involves respecting the villagers’ belief to get them to prepare for the oncoming lava surge from the volcano. (On that point, I am so glad that no one protested the reading of the skull in the clouds or this episode could have been straight up irritating. Thank you, writers.) Not only does this open up the story to have Aang step up and GOOD LORD, HE IS AMAZING, but it creates a chance for that fantastic line of Aunt Wu’s at the end. The means by which Aang and his friends arrived at the end of this tiny journey involved three very different forms of beliefs. Each worked for each person, but the real key is that all of them took their “destiny” into their own hands and worked from that place and moved forward.

Now that is something can get behind. I think I would have found it kind of appalling had the entire village forsaken their trust in Aunt Wu and proclaimed themselves nonbelievers because…well, that’s simply not believable. It’s also not the point. It’s about what finding out what works for you and then recognizing that you are one person in a sea of billions. You are not the blueprint for the rest of humanity. (Ok, so I don’t think there are billions of people on this version of earth, but you get the point.)

The other subplot that drives “The Fortuneteller” is the burgeoning feelings brewing in both Aang and Katara, though, at this point, the two of them are alone in how they feel. Aang’s boyhood crush on Katara is SO UNFATHOMABLY ADORABLE. Can you remember the days of puppy dog eyes like that? Ok, that makes me sound four thousand years old, as if I literally can’t remember what a crush is like, but what I mean is that first time you realize you like someone more than just a friend. Aang personifies that here with his boyish charm and that doubt and uncertainty he occasionally shows us when he doesn’t really want to. Aang is a powerful airbender, all right, and I wouldn’t disagree with Sokka on this one. But behind that facade of ability and power, he’s a vulnerable twelve-year-old boy who is hiding guilt and fear, and watching him interact with Katara (and take REALLY poor advice from Sokka) allows that to come out.

Like the main story, there’s a nice balance here to show that both boys and girls can care about romance, instead of plopping that solely in the lap of the gals. Despite that both of them seem to be moving in opposite directions, there’s a lot to parallel between the two of them. (And I’m commenting on this first before addressing the obvious, which will surely drive the shippers wild. I PROMISE TO BE NICE.) The first thing that strikes me is that neither of them is particularly obsessed with the idea in the grand scheme of things. We’ve seen both characters express romantic desire, even if it’s in an entirely non-sexual story. But it’s just a part of a larger story, and I love that the writers have pretty much made this explicit: being interested in another person and doing virtually anything else is not inherently mutually exclusive. Yes, in this story, about half the episode deals with crushes and those fuzzy feelings in your stomach. That’s ok! Despite the many times I’ve publicly stated that ROMANCE IS ICKY and GROSS EW COOTIES, it’s really just because I’m a jealous curmudgeon, straight up. Romance has made up a whopping 5% of my entire life, so it’s very natural for me to be indifferent to it. (This sort of goes with the message from earlier: just ‘cause something doesn’t work for me doesn’t mean it won’t for others!) I actually do enjoy romance in fiction from time to time. (PETER + OLIVIA 4EVA. BROYLES + LSD 4EVA. THE DOCTOR + BOW TIES + RORY + AMY + ME = TRU LUV) I’m glad that they’re simply not ignoring that these people do have emotions other than those they utilize in battle or in traveling. And honestly, it really is that simple. I just want this to feel real.

I can now see where the shipping is really going to come into play for this show. And look, I swear I get it. I ship nonsensical things because I rarely “ship” anything ever outside of canon, and that goes back to the whole “I-am-disinterested-because-I-am-forever-alone” thing I joke about. But over the course of “The Blue Spirit” and “The Fortuneteller,” I do understand where the roots of people shipping Aang with both Katara and Zuko come from. SORT OF. That stops when I have to see fanart of Aang’s bulge or really weird sexual stuff and then I raise my face to the heavens and scream WWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

But just like I live for mythology and plot twists, always loving the fact that I am so utterly unprepared for things, others long for these emotional, romantic moments. And that’s ok. No, it’s more than ok. Because what doesn’t work for me works for other people, and if we are ever to get along on this planet, that’s a message we’re all going to have to internalize to an extent.

(PLEASE DON’T HAVE A SHIPPING WAR ON MY SITE I AM BEGGING YOU I can only tolerate one in my lifetime oh god I am having flashbacks)

“The Fortuneteller” isn’t all that life-changing, but when I looked at the events on the screen and separated them from the larger narrative, I found myself cracking a smile at the whole concept. It’s a good story and really, what else can we ask for besides a good story?

THOUGHTS

• Another use of “crazy” to insult and criticize someone. Writers take note:

• As a twin, I declare: IT’S ALWAYS A GOOD DAY FOR TWINS.
• You know, Aunt Wu’s predictions were almost like ontological paradoxes in terms of how mind-melting it became when you realized that nearly any way you put it, her prophecies became true. OH LOGIC YOU ARE FUN.
• “The fluffy bunny cloud symbolizes death and destruction.” “Do you realize what you just said?”
• Meng is so cute! I kind of felt bad for her by the episode’s end, but I’m glad Aang was respectful to her.
• “It would be nice to have some bean curd puffs.” SOKKA + ME = LOVE FOREVER
• “Can your fortune telling explain that?” “Can your science explain why it rains?” “YES! YES IT CAN!” lol’n until next week.
• Ok, Man Who Does Not Bathe: You are my hero.
• The ongoing joke that Sokka’s anguish is largely self-afflicted was highly entertaining.
• “So how do I look?” “You mean all of you or just your neck?” HOLY AWKWARD