Mark Watches ‘Avatar’: S02E14 – City of Walls and Secrets

In the fourteenth episode of the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the city of Ba Sing Se gives Team Avatar a house in the Upper Ring for their job defeating the Fire Nation. They learn how divided the city is by class and how eerily quiet the citizens are about the war happening outside the walls. Meanwhile, Jet moves in to expose Iroh and Zuko. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Avatar.

After a long batch of rather serious and intense episodes, there’s a lot of ridiculous and absurd humor present to not only offset what happens here, but to sort of deal with the uncomfortable nature of Ba Sing Se. But…oh darn, I’M DOING THAT THING AGAIN WHERE I TALK ABOUT THE ENDING AND I JUST CAN’T RESIST oh god i can’t help it what the hell did i just watch

I think that, largely, not only is the humor incredibly entertaining, but it’s acts as a sleight of hand of sorts. As you all know, I have been waiting to enter Ba Sing Se for quite a long time. Every since Iroh mentioned his history with the great city, I’ve wanted to know exactly what this place was and why the Fire Nation had such an intense interest in the place. But even right from the start, there’s a very small vibe that maybe this place is not what I thought it was. Toph’s the first to express her disdain for Ba Sing Se. (Why didn’t she share this earlier???? That seems like a huge deal to NOT MENTION AT ALL.) But right after this, we get the first moment to have a full view of the city. I knew that the city was spoken of very highly, but it was known for it’s wall. Right? So….with all of the attention spent on building the most impenetrable wall ever, surely the rest wouldn’t be the same?

Of course, when Aang is wondering how he’ll be able to locate Appa, we’re shown the absolutely ridiculous and vast empire that is Ba Sing Se. I knew at this point that it wouldn’t be like a giant game of WHERE’S APPA or anything, but this is NOTHING I COULD HAVE ANTICIPATED. It’s gigantic. Unbelievable. Expansive and overwhelming and HOW THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO FIND APPA IN ALL OF THAT.

And right from the get go, this entire experience is also not what Team Avatar truly expected. Toph doesn’t like the city, and we later learn that Aang never visited this place for a reason, but they do learn just how jarring this culture is. The physical geography and layout of Ba Sing Se is separated by this world’s version of class. Just past the first inner wall live those who are among the lower class (and as Katara rightly calls them, the poor), and you can see it in the attitude of the group’s guide, Joo Dee, that these people are meant to be looked down upon. You are meant to be afraid of them.

We haven’t seen much of the air benders and their culture, so even though it was such a small moment, I appreciated Aang’s comment about how the way Ba Sing Se runs counter to what the air gurus taught their citizens. I’m interested to learn what sort of culture they did have and how egalitarian they were. I guess it’s sad to think about, though, because Aang can never experience his culture in the way he did as a child. They’re all gone, and all of it only exists in memory.

GODDAMN IT.

As Team Avatar move further into the city, we see how Iroh and Zuko have already started to assimilate amongst the refugees in Ba Sing Se. I could not imagine a more brilliant thing than to stick Iroh in charge of running a tea house. For being forced out of his home and banished from the Fire Nation, this actually seems like a dream. Unfortunately, this dream is at risk of being shattered because Jet watched Iroh heat up a cup of tea. And here is yet another instance where the writers do not take the easy way out. At first, they seemed to, by presenting us with a fairly sensical dichotomy: we do not want Iroh and Zuko to get caught, and Jet’s obsession with exposing them as Fire Benders rapidly approaches the absurd. That being said, it is still a bit understandable that to Jet, this is the first time he is actually doing something he believes is moral and, from his point of view, I do understand it Well….to a point. And this is incredibly complex to navigate through, too, because the intentions and motivations intersect so often.

BASICALLY I LOVE IT. This sort of storytelling is so much more satisfactory to me. Iroh and Zuko are moving further and further away from the Fire Nation, and I want it more than anything, especially for Zuko. (I have a sneaking suspicious that Iroh has at least divorced him from his nation in his mind, but I haven’t quite had it confirmed. SOON RIGHT. RIGHT. RIGHT. oh god a boy can hope.) Because of this, it’s natural for me to wish that Jet would just leave them the fuck alone. It’s natural for me to side with Smellerbee and Longshot, who are both deeply concerned with Jet’s distracting obsession with Iroh and Zuko.

But…oh damn. Let me get there.

Team Avatar is not finding things any bit more agreeable, and it’s very early that we start seeing just how fucking weird Ba Sing Se is. Sokka makes a joke while they’re on the train into the city that stuff always happens to them, and that weird Twilight Zone music plays when Corn Cob Man sits down next to him. (That’s my official name for him, FYI.) What was a small visual joke there is something in hindsight that is an actual clue to what happens in “City of Walls and Secrets.” I don’t think there was any intentional reference to The Twilight Zone, which, by the way, is one of the greatest shows to ever be a show, and I feel I’m just reading what I want to here. WHICH IS FINE THIS IS WHAT I DO. But there’s a great sense of this story being a giant joke that suddenly becomes very fucking real and disturbing, and it’s that absurd situation that makes this story so fantastic to me.

No, really, it must be said a thousand times right: I am so dearly in love with Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The team’s quest turns to seeing the king of Ba Sing Se, but even that is laced with the bizarre attitude that everything is greeted with inside the city: A nod and a smile. A positive attitude. An eerie sense that everything is just a-ok. With the case of Joo Dee, I initially believed that this all was just a way of parodying how large government can function and the bureaucracy that comes along with it. Well, that’s still the case, and you can certainly believe that this is what it does. It works well! But when the Team realizes that they literally cannot get an audience with the king for SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS, they know that the urgent news that they need to deliver about the eclipse cannot wait for an official meeting.

I have nothing witty or deep to say about it: The scene where Team Avatar act noble and rich is seriously one of the funniest things I’ve seen this show do. And seriously, Momo absolutely steals the show out of everyone, for as serious as they each take it, especially when Toph and Katara come out with those FANTASTIC outfits, there’s that small moment where Momo walks by with a cape flowing from his head and I was nearly brought to tears. Hey, sometimes it’s the little things that get to me.

Toph and Katara, dressed to the nines and aiming to impress their way into a party held by the king (FOR A BEAR OH MY GOD IT’S A BEAR SITTING AT THE TABLE THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW EVER), but, like many things here, this is easier said than done. Intercepted by Long Feng after he helps them get in, they realize that the customs of these people seems to require accompaniment at all times, much like what Joo Dee did at the beginning of the episode. (Oh, how wrong I was.) Forced to deal with the reality that their plan to let in Sokka, Momo, and Aang is falling apart, they have to play the part and “look” for their “family.” But this doesn’t stop the three remaining members of Team Avatar from finding their own way in dressed as busboys.

AND THEN, HELLO DISASTER. Oh, how quickly this becomes absolute chaos. And it’s not just for Team Avatar. Jet, still stalking Iroh and Zuko, decides that it’s time for him to stop waiting in the shadows and he confronts the two disguised fire benders in the tea restaurant they work in. (How rude.) Jet hopes that by provoking Zuko, a young man quite prone to anger, into fire bending for everyone to see. What Jet misjudges Zuko for is his fantastic ability to use two broad swords. I mean, HELLO, the Blue Spirit, were you not paying attention earlier.

Ok, I jest because good lord this is so chaotic. As Jet fights Zuko to the shock of the group of onlookers, Iroh included, I had a feeling that he wouldn’t budge from his stance. He knew that exposing himself for who he was would be an utter disaster, and maybe this is a sign that he is starting to grow in a sense, to control his anger when he needs to.

And while this is happening, we simultaneously begin to realize just how sinister the weirdness of the ruling class of Ba Sing Se is. The Avatar, when exposed by a freak wine accident (Have I always wanted to type this? Probably.), is met with wonder and excitement at first, but that excitement wanes so quickly as we watch all four others pulled away by the Dai Li

We’d seen them before, only in intimidating glimpses, and here is where we learn their true meaning, and the meaning of the otherwise cryptic title of this episode. In one masterful move of writing, the story with Jet and the story with Team Avatar converge as we learn that in the walls of Ba Sing Se, no one speaks of the war. And this is not a metaphorical or philosophical statement. People are literally not allowed to talk about the war.

We cut to Jet and see what his arrest, which seemed slightly good at the time, is actually laced in fear and paranoia. He is strapped into a chair and given a treatment that appears very much like hypnotism, forced to hear a message over and over again about how there is no war at all.

WHAT THE HOLY FUCK

Long Feng tells Team Avatar about the figurehead-nature of the king, how Ba Sing Se is so coveted because it is literally a Utopia, or at least that’s the way it is intended to be. Threatening expulsion if anyone tries to mention the war inside the walls, Long Feng remarks that it would probably be quite difficult to find Appa if they were expelled, wouldn’t it? And then he tells Joo Dee to escort them back to their house and we see that Joo Dee has been FUCKING REPLACED.

my god.

What this twist does (besides rewriting basically everything we’ve just seen) is to contextualize so much of the past. Why do so many people seek out Ba Sing Se? Why did no one on the inside seem to flip out when a drill came right through the outer wall? Why was everyone so goddamn weird about everything these people seem to mention?

It rewrites Jet’s story as well, because now I suddenly feel awful for what’s happened to him. He believed in his heart that he was doing the right thing in trailing Zuko and Iroh and the tragic irony of this all is that he was right, and because of it, he was punished.

Just an unbelievable plot twist that makes this journey so much more difficult than I could have ever imagined. BLESS THIS SHOW.

THOUGHTS

• AN ACTUAL BEAR.
• OMG that student recommends Professor Zei. 🙁 🙁 🙁
• “Sick of tea? That’s like being sick of breathing!” RIGHT
• “This tea is nothing more than hot leaves juice.” “Uncle, that’s what all tea is.” “How could a member of my own family say something so horrible?”
• Sokka, I will never forget the Momo Ghost Plan. Ever.
• THIS SHOW.