Mark Watches ‘Avatar’: S01E15 – Bato of the Water Tribe

In the fifteenth episode of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the trio come across a group of Southern Water Tribe soldiers that have travelled with their father. Aang becomes jealous at losing his position as the center of attention, and makes a terrible mistake. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Avatar.

“Bato of the Water Tribe” takes the classic Misheard-Conversation-Causes-A-Poor-Decision story and makes it unbelievably depressing. It’s nice to not only return to the group traveling to the North Pole, but in this episode, we finally get some more pieces of the story of Sokka and Katara, giving us clues as to why Sokka might be the way he is.

The story isn’t necessarily perfectly balanced on all the major characters, as the bulk of this sort of has to be about Aang, but so far, I’m quite impressed with how well Avatar cycles through the stories of the people who make up this cast. (LOST, I am looking at you with loving eyes again.) (Why am I so repetitive and predictable?) (I swear I’ve seen more than three shows ever.) (Now I kind of want to write a review with a record number of parenthetical statements.) (Oh god what is my brain.)

Katara and Sokka’s past has only fleetingly been addressed at times. We saw the sadness in Katara when she admitted to Jet that she missed her mother and that the necklace she wore certainly didn’t help her miss her mom less. Sokka’s spoken about his mom, too, but both of them speak with a loving fondness for their father, who we know has gone out to fight the war against the Fire Nation. I know that their mother’s death brings them pain, and “Bato of the Water Tribe” helps to show me that their father’s life gives them hope. The real clear sign of this is after finding the Water Tribe weapons, and then stumbling upon the stranded Water Tribe ship. If I had found an abandoned ship that was part of my father’s fleet, I would not have greeted it with abandoned joy and excitement. But for these two siblings, their father represents the noble and heroic journey to face evil head-on and to do what’s right. Both of them not only love their father, they respect him. I think we all know how different those feelings are and it’s entirely possible to love someone and not necessarily respect.

That’s not the case for Hakoda. That night, after finding the abandoned ship, we get to see the first truly raw and depressing memory Sokka has regarding his father. In a way, I feel it does a great job of providing us with the insight to understand his particular brand of humor and his issues with his own masculinity.

To start with, I believe that both Sokka and Katara are well past that age where you look upon your parents with a mixture of awe and fear. It’s why I believe they respect their father so much. But Sokka’s flashback takes us back to the last moment that Sokka probably felt that towards his father. You can see it in the excitement of his freshly-painted face. You can see it in the way he looks up upon his father’s stoic face. And then you can watch the heartbreak happen when Hakoda tells Sokka that he must stay behind. Sokka’s too young at this point to understand why the war is legitimately dangerous, why it’s not just a game.

But in the same breath, Hakoda gives Sokka a message, tying it in with his role of being his son: He is to stay behind and take care of his mother and sister. I think in Sokka’s mind, this is why his masculinity is so intrinsically tied to so much of what he does and why he’s averse to subverting that. All those years ago, his heart broken, Sokka heard his father tell him it was time to become a man. And ever since then, that’s what he’s been trying to do, using humor to hide the fact that beneath his thick exterior shell, he might very well still be that heartbroken child, wishing he could be at the side of his father.

(I swear, I’m not adding another parenthetical statement just to test you all, but I feel like pointing this out: Now there are two male characters living in the shadow of their father, though for completely opposite reasons. I love when shows draw parallels like this, and this one is particularly fantastic because there is not one single hint towards this within the episode itself. SUBTLETY IS FUN.)

There were years where I lived in the shadow of my own father, but certainly not in a context that resembled what happens here, so I can only understand it to a very limited extent. Being a twin, my father had two male figures in his house that he gravitated towards. My dad’s heritage and culture (being Japanese and Hawaiian) made him always appear slightly distant from everyone. He wasn’t an emotional person, aside from moments of quiet rage or his silly, dry humor. It took me a long time to ever crack that surface, too, so I see bits of my dad’s personality in the way that Sokka closes himself off to other people.

For me, though, I just wanted so many of the stereotypically things I saw in various forms of media that told me what my relationship with my father was supposed to look like. Those quintessentially American images of throwing a football in the yard, or building something together or doing any of those things you’re supposed to do with your father…I did none of them. But it was really my dad’s fault! I mean, big surprise that I turned out gay: I kept telling my dad that I REALLY LOVED POETRY and HAVE YOU HEARD OF THIS POE FELLOW? HE’S SWELL or I DON’T WANT TO BUILD A SHED CAN WE READ F. SCOTT FITZGERALD TOGETHER or DAD CAN WE TALK ABOUT FEELINGS.

My brother was the one who gravitated more towards those typical images of American fatherhood, and while I was jealous to an extent that he was able to bond with my father so easily, I just wanted my dad to be interested in what I was interested in, too. As I struggled with trying to win his affection, I ended up relying on my mother for more of that comfort. Which didn’t work either, by the way, because my mom was the least affectionate human ever until the last few years. OH GOD THE TRAGEDY

But this isn’t time for me to drop another sob story in your collective lap! I suppose this episode just got me thinking about the sometimes-intricate details that make up being raised by a heterosexual couple whose roles in the family were REALLY BIZARRE. I do remember being of the age where I looked upon my father with that same look that Sokka does here in “Bato of the Water” tribe, and this particular episode got me releasing all these ~feelings~ for multiple reasons. This is one of them.

Fathers are weird.

Back to the actual episode. Right, THIS IS A REVIEW MARK, WHAT ARE YOU DOING. Like many of the episodes before this, the writers set up a convergence between Zuko’s party and Team Avatar. I won’t lie. I am looking forward to the moment that this pattern will change and we’ll see a different dynamic. (Perhaps this is season-based? Don’t tell me.) Still, there’s some interesting new things the writers throw at us, mostly the badass June. Who is a badass. And has a creature called a Shirshu that is kind of incredibly terrifying. Also, I’ve been playing the video game Borderlands way too much for my own health, and the Skags totally look like they’re based on Shirshu. ANYWAY. June rides in on this beast and finds a stowaway on Zuko’s ship. I love that the Shirshu’s smell is color based because it provides us with a fascinating visual frame of reference for how this creature works. It also allows us to see Uncle Iroh completely in love with something that is not tea or Pai Sho and more Iroh is always a good thing.

So, while Zuko, Iroh, and June are tracking the steps that Team Avatar have taken in recent episodes, I wanted to talk about the direction that Aang’s story heads in “Bato of the Water Tribe.” When Bato, a friend of Sokka and Katara’s family, comes upon the group, it’s the first chance for those two to get a taste of the home they left weeks ago. I know that we are meant to feel that Aang doesn’t have a part in this because he’s not a member of the Southern Water Tribe, and that obvious context is spelled out for us as the two siblings jump right into the conversations with Bato. They make no attempt to keep Aang in the conversation; I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing in and of itself, but it still leaves Aang feeling left out. However, the really interesting (and completely gut-wrenching) subtext to this is that even if Sokka and Katara made attempts to be inclusive, Aang could never really be a part of this. This was another subtle reminder that Aang was the last of his kind. He had no friends left that he shared a history with, and he had no family left. Everything he had at that point was new.

That is just so…sad to me? And I mean that because it’s precisely how I feel all the time. My detachment comes from the sensation that I don’t share long, emotional histories with people. I am a constant outsider and Aang’s frustration was my frustration. Sometimes that manifests in quietly introspective ways. (LET ME BOTTLE ALL OF THIS UP.) Sometimes I’ve lashed out because the unfairness of it all is overwhelming. (I don’t know that I ever hid a map to someone’s father’s location, though.) But either way, I completely empathized with what Aang was going through here: You can’t manufacture experience, especially the shared variety. It has to be lived, so what do you do when everyone else has that and you don’t?

That’s when Aang makes a poor judgment call. After overhearing that there’s a possibility that they can meet up with their father when a messenger brings a map to his location, Sokka and Katara seem ecstatic at the thought. Disappointed and saddened that his two friends were going to abandon him (FOR A REALLY GOOD REASON, DUDE), Aang runs off, angry that he is going to be alone yet again. Only YOU DIDN’T HEAR ALL OF THE CONVERSATION, AANG. Had he stayed just a few moments more, he would have heard the two of them turn down the opportunity so that they could continue traveling with the Avatar.

So Aang intercepts this messenger accidentally and decides to KEEP THE MAP AND NOT SHOW IT TO HIS FRIENDS. I facepalmed. Sadly, but it happened. Oh, Aang, what are you doing? YOU ARE GOING TO REGRET THIS. Convinced this is the only way to keep them all together, he crumples the map up and stuffs it inside his….outfit? Cape thingy? Ok, so what is that thing called that he wears? I guess I never needed to describe it so I never knew what to call it.

I absolutely adore what the writers do with this plot. Not only do they highlight Aang’s nervous guilt over his actions making it obvious that he knows what he’s doing is wrong, they decide to rub the whole thing in his face. Sokka’s chance to complete the coming-of-age ritual he missed with his father is a fantastic scene that, again, highlights Sokka’s strengths as a non-bender. But Aang is plopped right into this situation, helping Sokka to complete the task with flying colors, and then is presented with his own Water Tribe markings at the end. As Bato was moving the line, giving Sokka his mark for wisdom, and Katara hers for bravery, I knew what was going to happen with Aang. Sure enough: trust. TRUST.

The irony is too painful for Aang to handle and in a moment of panicked guilt, he confesses that he is not all that trustworthy, revealing that he had hidden the map to their father’s location this whole time.

I’m glad the writers don’t shy away from exactly how irate this should make Sokka and Katara. They had every single right to be mad at Aang and, as uncomfortable as it was, it needed to happen. He needed to know the true gravity of what he’d done to them, especially since he didn’t know that they’d already told Bato that they were going to decline the chance to go after their father.

I say it a lot, and I’ve given examples of this, and I’ll do it again to drill the point home: Because I have such a ruthless spoiler policy, I did not know that Sokka and Katara forgive Aang by the end of this episode. Given that a lot of this show is serial in nature, I honestly thought that Sokka and Katara would part ways with Aang to go find their father. That’s the beauty of the chance to watch television (or read a book) in a self-constructed vacuum: I don’t have any outside influences affecting my viewing and I can experience these stories in whatever direction my mind takes me.

Despite that this sensation didn’t last long, I still appreciated it. (And it would have been an awesome plot road to go down.) Instead, we get the FANTASTIC story from Bato about the lone wolf that is SO PAINFULLY BEAUTIFUL that everything hurts. Yes, this show can be incredibly blunt with some of its poetic and visual metaphors, but those metaphors are really, really good. They don’t suffer at all from being spelled out. And then I remember this show aired on Nickelodeon and probably after someone got a bucket of slime dumped on them and my heart weeps forever.

I’m glad this trio is going to stick together. Aang, you were a fool for hiding that map from your friends, but I’m truly glad you will all still be together.

The final battle that happens when June, Iroh, and Zuko discover Team Avatar is yet another glaring example of just how cool all of this is. There are so many different ways for the writers to use bending, and they make it look like highly choreographed dance routines, especially when Aang and Zuko are fighting each other. It’s gorgeous.

And Appa! APPA, YOU ARE MY ~ETERNAL ROCK~. I can’t believe it took that many lashes of the shirshu’s tongue to put him out. WHERE IS MY APPA.

I know I don’t have anything terribly insightful to say about the final battle aside from childish excitement and wonder, but there is something I noticed that was really strange: Is it just me or does Uncle Iroh seem to literally not care if the Avatar is caught one way or another? I mean, he has never seemed all that interested, especially since tea and Pai Sho are greater than Aang every time, but that seem dramatically heightened here in “Bato of the Water Tribe.” I mean….he just sort of stands around and tries to hit on June while this EPIC BADASSERY is taking place around him? God, seriously, he is my absolute favorite. I want to be him forever.

THOUGHTS

• The herbalist and Miyuki return! I want a cat that looks like Miyuki, but that’s mostly because the epic battle I am waging against my cats’ shedding abilities is clearly being lost.
• “He means no offense! I’m certain you bathe regularly.” SERIOUSLY, GREATEST CHARACTER EVER.
• “At my age, there is really only one big surprise left, and I’d just as soon leave it a mystery.” SWOON.
• “Aw, I’d love to help you out, but I’m a little short on money. DRINKS ON ME!” Again, I love June, despite that she’s supposed to be ~evil~. She trolls Zuko so hard.
• KATARA KISSED AANG’S CHEEK oh god it was so cute.
• “Miyuki, did you get in trouble with the fire nation again?” You know, I don’t think this question is a joke. I believe the herbalist actually means it.