{"id":312,"date":"2011-04-28T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-04-28T20:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=312"},"modified":"2011-04-28T11:22:47","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T18:22:47","slug":"mark-watches-avatar-s01e11-the-great-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2011\/04\/mark-watches-avatar-s01e11-the-great-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches &#8216;Avatar&#8217;: S01E11 &#8211; The Great Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Georgia} li.li1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Georgia} span.s1 {letter-spacing: 0.0px} -->In the eleventh episode of the first season of <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/em>, the trio arrive at the Great Divide, the largest canyon in the world and what will soon become the most over-extended metaphor of all time. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch <em>Avatar<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Ok. So. This episode. Well. So. Ok.<\/p>\n<p>I have some thoughts. They are there. I know what some of them are. I also know that this episode wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <em>that<\/em> bad, but&#8230;ok. So. Let me organize this.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THINGS IN THIS EPISODE THAT I ENJOYED OR OTHERWISE LIKED<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The colors! I mean, I like that <em>in general <\/em>about this show, but this episode in particular\u00c2\u00a0 was such a jarring change from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jet\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that it was hard not to notice.<\/li>\n<li>The gigantic reference to the fantastic film <em>Rashomon<\/em>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s generally a fun technique to watch unfold (check out \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bad Blood\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in season 5 of <em>The X-Files<\/em> for another AMAZING example of this), but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s used for a less-humorous purpose here. The two tribes, the Gan Jin and the Zhang, have a bitter, violent rivalry based entirely on their perception of this event that happened long, long ago. That perception has allowed prejudiced to run unchecked, since both groups accept their own version of history and use that to act off of it. The irony is that both sides will continue to act as the other expects precisely <em>because<\/em> this loop of assumption is self-fulfilling. That made my brain hurt to think about, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the general idea.<\/li>\n<li>We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever find out <em>what<\/em> actually happened! That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s awesome. Kinda says that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really the point.<\/li>\n<li>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m only putting this here because I like that they were so creepy and terrifying, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily mean that that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a <em>good<\/em> thing to experience all the time, but: The Canyon Crawlers. Absolutely scared the piss out of me. No, seriously, I was watching \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Great Divide\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on my laptop and I had to pee and I was sitting way too close and that first one came out of the dust and I came so close to just letting go that I had to pause and go relieve myself. Bravo, <em>Avatar<\/em>. Also&#8230;TMI? WHATEVER, WHO CARES.<\/li>\n<li>That moment when both Katara and Sokka realize they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re with people who agree with them about their camping techniques&#8230;yeah, that made me smile.<\/li>\n<li>Conversely, though expected, I did laugh when the two of them <em>also<\/em> totally bought into the Gan Jin and Zhang stories and started fighting.<\/li>\n<li>Aang\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes when he spotted the egg custard tart. YES. MORE OF THIS.<\/li>\n<li>I totally did not expect all the variations in animations. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like it at first, but by the time we got to Aang\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s version of the story, I loved that the perspective changed the animation. Nice effect!<\/li>\n<li>Poor Aang. He tried so hard to make these people get along!<\/li>\n<li>Appa has five stomachs!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>THINGS IN THIS EPISODE THAT MADE ME GRIMACE OR SCRATCH MY HEAD OR GENERALLY CAUSED A MILD MALAISE<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>HOW. COULD. ANIMATED. CHARACTERS. BE. SO. IRRITATING. I know that they are <em>supposed<\/em> to be, but there was a point near the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Great Divide\u00e2\u20ac\u009d where I honestly wanted to reach through the screen and crush everyone who wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the Tour Guide or the trio. Oh, and Appa and Momo, of course. Holy god, just SHUT UP. Maybe that is a good thing? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, it made me SO MAD.<\/li>\n<li>It was clear that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Great Divide\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a double meaning of a title. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t include that up above because this neat extended metaphor reached the capacity of being called a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153metaphor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and suddenly became \u00e2\u20ac\u0153why are you you beating this into my skull.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This show isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly subtle, and I actually like that, but this was TOO MUCH. <em>Get it they are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153divided\u00e2\u20ac\u009d let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also <\/em><strong><em>physically divide them, too, in case you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand this metaphor we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spelled out for you<\/em><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>What does this episode have to do with <em>anything<\/em> in the story? Unless I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m mistaken, you could literally remove \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Great Divide\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from season one and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty sure it wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t break continuity. And I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen the next episode! But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so completely detached from the serial nature of the story and that was kind of distracting.<\/li>\n<li>Not enough Uncle Iroh. Sorry!<\/li>\n<li>Ok, some nitpicking, but aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they coming up on winter? How is it the dry season? Where are they that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dry season near the end of the year?<\/li>\n<li>HOW DID THE TOUR GUIDE CLIMB UP THAT CLIFF IF HIS ARMS WERE BROKEN. He is a <em>dirty, dirty liar<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Ok, so this final complaint is a bit more subtle than the others. The message this episode sent confused me. At base, it seemed to be a commentary on prejudice, and how basing judgments on the way a person looked, or their lifestyle, was a bad thing. But once you add in each tribes \u00e2\u20ac\u0153story\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about the origin of their feud, NOTHING MAKES SENSE ANYMORE. Each side\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story makes it appear that their anger is justified, so now my feelings weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as certain. And then, it all ends up not being true? Or maybe one side <em>is<\/em> true, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never know. MY BRAIN HURTS. So where does that leave the moral message here? I would have liked something a little more definitive, like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153STOP BEING ASSHOLES TO EACH OTHER, <em>THE END<\/em>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ok, this review is admittedly very, very short. I understand that, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t force much more out of this episode. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just not <em>that<\/em> much to talk about, you know?<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get the liveblogs up later today for tomorrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <em>Fringe<\/em> liveblog and for Saturday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s liveblog of <em>Doctor Who<\/em> in the meantime, and begin working on the next episode, WHOSE NAME I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T EVEN KNOW. Oh god, <em>so excite<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the eleventh episode of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the trio arrive at the Great Divide, the largest canyon in the world and what will soon become the most over-extended metaphor of all time. Intrigued? 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