Mark Watches ‘Avatar’: S02E17 – Lake Laogai

In the seventeenth episode of the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Team Avatar take matters into their own hands when it’s clear that the government inside Ba Sing Se will not help them find Appa. Unfortunately, when Jet appears and offers to help, no one is sure who to trust. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Avatar.

Hello, Watchers! I have returned to these fine “Internets.” I know that I have a lot of comments to read and conversations to catch up on, but I just wanted to say that it appears so far that there were no disasters whilst I was away on the AIDS/LifeCycle. Which went very well for me, I might add! This was my fourth time completing the ride and thanks to many of you, I also raised the most money I ever have in one year: $3,420. AMAZING. THANK YOU ALL!

Anyway, I’m back, and I know that some of you expected a review of the mid-series finale of Doctor Who, but I’m still sorting out and organizing my thoughts, so I thought I’d jump right into Avatar in the meantime. You’ll have the review of “A Good Man Goes To War” this week, though.

It’s exciting to me that I’m rapidly approaching the season finale because, of course, I REALLY NEED TO KNOW HOW THIS ALL PANS OUT. For now, though, this is a story that directly compliments “City of Walls and Secrets,” continuing the unbelievably creepy undertones set up at the conclusion of that episode. I also didn’t expect the tone to take such a serious turn due to the cold open of “Lake Laogai,” in which we learn that Sokka has the artistic skills of a five-year-old. Which I relate to a lot, for the record, since I, too, cannot draw to save my life. AND I UNDERSTOOD SOKKA’S DRAWINGS, FOR THE RECORD.

As Aang takes off with Momo to drop fliers all over the city, we cut to Zuko and Iroh, where Iroh’s now infamous tea earns him the chance to have his own tea shop in the Upper Ring of the city. The writers use this to contrast the restless nature of Zuko with Iroh’s desire to finally settle down and find peace for himself. Because of this, Zuko is finally able to begin to face the difficult reality this suggests: that his pursuit of the Avatar is slowly starting to destroy him. Iroh can see this when Zuko finds the poster for Appa and knows the boy’s obsession has not lead to a single good moment in his life.

But we’ll get back to that in a bit. Joo Dee (the original one, this time) reappears in the show to give Team Avatar yet another warning about their behavior in Ba Sing Se. And I really want to commend the writers of Avatar for including such a bizarre and potentially disturbing subplot to all of this, especially as it’s one that allows the characters to act on their moral sense of right and wrong. They all know this is not Joo Dee herself telling them that they cannot spread posters of Appa, but at the same time, Aang is furious at the very notion. (There was a brief moment that I thought Aang was going to erupt into the Avatar state when he blew up at Joo Dee and good lord, that would have been an utter disaster.) It’s just that…I have to occasionally remind myself that this aired on Nickelodeon, and for all the visual gags or fart jokes or inane silliness, this show has given us some fairly upsetting, jarring, and bleak stories. For children. I just simply forget some times that the intended audience is people a third of my age!

That’s kind of an amazing thing, isn’t it? Nine year olds are meant to love Avatar, and yet here I am, a twenty-nine-year-old dude, who is just as fiercely in love with it as children. I mean, this has happened before in other contexts, with shows like Spongebob Squarepants or Adventure Time, or any number of Disney and Pixar flicks. (Up comes to mind as a great example of a movie that resonates well with children and made me bawl for ten minutes straight, and there is no dissonance between those two statements.)

But back to Joo Dee. We get our first mention of Lake Laogai from her, and while I initially believed that it wasn’t a real place, I knew the name had real effects for her. We see this just after her first scene, after Team Avatar directly defy her orders, and she reports this to Long Feng. Her failure upsets the head of the Dai Li and we get to see more of him being an unbearably creepy dude. His role as the head of a manipulative government power is certainly one note, but I’m kind of okay with the fact that Long Feng really isn’t developed as a villain beyond this. We already have Azula and the Dangerous Ladies as a much more rich and nuanced antagonistic force, and sometimes a story just needs someone who abuses his power in awful ways. Here, he seems to use the phrase, “The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai” in order to “shut down” the people that he controls.

Seriously. Kids show. Bless all of this.

And to make an already complicated and precarious situation worse, “Lake Laogai” also brings the second return of Jet, though now it’s in a far less sinister role. Well…ok, to us, we know that what he did to expose Zuko and Iroh as Fire Benders was technically right, and we also know that he’s unfortunately been the victim of the Dai Li’s brainwashing. But for Team Avatar, especially Katara, Jet is a reminder of the hope they once had for others to join them in the fight against the Fire Nation and how that hope was betrayed by Jet for his own self-interest in revenge. So, naturally, it’s perfectly understandable to see Katara lash out so angrily at Jet after he broke her heart.

I wondered why Toph had not brought up her ability to read people through breathing and heart beats before, but it is what it is. And it is glorious, providing another chance for her to be a valuable member of the group and to add a new layer of intrigue to the story. Jet has proven to be untrustworthy in the past, but who’s to judge what Toph is able to ascertain from his behavior? And certainly, people can change over time, no matter how rare, so that might also be a possibility, too.

Things look positive when Jet does lead them to a place where it seems obvious that Appa was being held. Conveniently enough, an older man with a broom gives up the supposed location of Appa as well, weeks away from Ba Sing Se on Whale Tail Island, and my own spidey sense tingled. This did not seem right. After weeks of searching, they were able to have a named place given to them in just a few hours? And how could he be weeks worth of travel away from Ba Sing Se when we just saw him?

This complicated set-up breaks into chaos, though, because Long Feng could not have anticipated Smellerbee and Longshot, who show up just in time to express their excitement that Jet is still alive after being arrested by Dai Li agents. Which angers Katara. Which causes Toph to read everyone and declare that both parties are telling the truth. Which causes Sokka to deduce that this is because both Smellerbee/Longshot and Jet believe they are telling the truth.

And now Team Avatar knows what they are actually up against, and it’s far more intimidating than they could have imagined.

Zuko, in the meantime, clashes with Iroh once again, giving up the same tired lines he’s been using for years to justify his crusade against the Avatar. You can see that Iroh is very, very close to losing his patience with his nephew because Zuko has seen and experienced so much and changed so little. Unfortunately, Zuko gives into the same routine that comforts him and appears that night as the Blue Spirit, capturing a Dai Li agent in order to get more information about the location of Appa.

Oh, Zuko.

Back with Team Avatar, the group decides to confront Jet in a way to trigger his actual memories about where he was taken and brainwashed, and I was legitimately surprised that Lake Logai was a real place, not just a phrase spoken to control, and that it is not only where Appa is probably being held, but it’s the location of that green room we saw in “City of Walls and Secrets” where Jet was brainwashed. THAT IS SO EXCITING. (Side note: It was also wonderful to see Katara use her healing yet again, though entirely in a new context than before. It totally makes sense that she could heal the mind or spirit as well as the body.)

That secret base under Lake Laogai is one of the cooler bits of world-building/settings that we’ve gotten from the show and is yet another opportunity for us to see how earth bending can be used, this time in constructing an underground prison of sorts. (Seriously, it is under a fucking lake. This show is so amazing.) I enjoy how massive and overwhelming it feels; we’re forced to take in the enormous size of the entrance chamber, the seemingly endless hallways and passages, the doors that open to ceremonies that are brainwashing young women to be the exact same fucking person. And I suppose that’s part of the allure of this show to me: So often, we are shown worlds or settings or situations that are dripping with impossibility, and yet Team Avatar can always find a way to keep up hope that the small group that they make up can conquer a force or power that is larger, stronger, and more powerful than they are.

As the two stories at work in “Lake Laogai” begin to collide, as so many of the past ones have, I was slightly frustrated at the idea that the writers seem to be teasing specifically me by hinting so strongly that Zuko and Team Avatar will confront one another again. Jet states that he thinks that he’s found the door Appa is behind, and we cut to a resting Appa, who sees a door opening, a figure standing in the light. And it’s ZUKO, not Jet, and FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU PLEASE REUNITE AANG AND APPA PLEASE MY HEART CANNOT TAKE MUCH LONGER.

Jet and Aang take off after Long Feng when Team Avatar is ambushed by Dai Li agents, and it’s here that we get to see just how sinister Long Feng’s brainwashing is when he mutters that controlling phrase, turning Jet on Aang, who is utterly confused as to how he is supposed to fight the guy who just correctly lead him to Appa. And as if I needed yet another thing to make my heart race, over in Appa’s cell, UNCLE IROH SHOWS UP. AND HE IS YELLING AT ZUKO FOR BEING UNABLE TO PLAN ANYTHING AND UNCLE IROH REALLY SCARES ME WHEN HE IS YELLING. omg seriously could he never scold me because I would probably wet myself with fear. But what he chooses to tell Zuko is important, and it goes back to what I brought up earlier: Iroh has finally lost patience with his nephew. The most patient man in the universe has lost it, and that is frightening. And I think Zuko realizes that, as he listens to his uncle tell him that he is pursuing a destiny his unloving father forced him into, and not one he has chosen himself.

Of course, just as I am reaching my emotional plateau at the possible conversion of Zuko away from his father’s destiny, the writers deal a devastating blow: After Aang snaps Jet out of his trance by referencing the Freedom Fighters, bringing back a flow of happy memories to Jet’s mind, Jet suffers an attack from Long Feng that, at first, seemed serious, but not that serious. But I was quickly shown how real shit is getting, because this is not just a wound or a bit of physical harm. As the rest of the group arrives to see Jet sprawled on the ground, Katara tries to heal him. And she cannot.

Wait, I thought. What. WHAT. WHAT. you cannot do this WHAT ARE YOU DOING HE ACTUALLY CHANGED ASDLKFJAS;LDK A;SLKDJF A;SLDKJFA DF;KLAJ

Smellerbee and Longshot tell the group to leave and find Appa, and Jet reassures Katara that he’ll be all right, but Toph reveals, just as they leave that chamber, that Jet was indeed lying.

AND THEN THEY DON’T EVEN TELL US IF JET IS DEAD. WHAT THE HOLY FLYING FUCK this show you are killing me

And yet, amongst all this chaos and tragedy, there is a tinge of victory. When Team Avatar heads to the surface after discovering Appa’s empty cell, Momo takes off into the sky, arriving seconds later on the back of Appa, and I could not help but yelp with joy at the glorious return of that wonderful furry beast. He bites Long Feng (HOW DID THAT NOT BREAK HIS LEG OFF) and then follows that up with a nice fling into the lake, just as Toph and Aang send the remaining Dai Li into that giant body of water. And I don’t want to ignore that while this reunion is amazing, there’s still a huge streak of sadness here as Katara realizes that in Jet’s final hours, she was ruthlessly vicious with him. Understandably so, as no one could have known what would happen, but vicious nonetheless.

For me, though, there was nothing more victorious and intriguing as a fan of this show than seeing Iroh and Zuko come to the surface, knowing Zuko had finally listened to his uncle about what he was doing to his life, and watching Zuko drop the mask of the Blue Spirit into the dark swirling waters of Lake Logai. Basically, I could not be more excited for what is going to come in Zuko’s future.

THOUGHTS

• why was i so excited to hear Longshot speak WHAT
• lolololol Aang was so jealous of Jet and Katara kissing LOL
• I like the Jasmine Dragon more than the Tea Weevil. JSYK.
• Toph is totally punk rock I LOVE HER SO MUCH
• “It looks just like him to me!” “Thank you, I worked really……….why did you feel the need to do that?” BLESS YOU, TOPH.