Er hi random person dropping in. How did I find your meta? Uh, not sure. Much avatar-related clicking. But I feel moved to comment nonetheless! Because I have STRONG FEELINGS wrt 'The Painted Lady'.
First of all, love this defense of season three. I think people forget how much of a sinister blank the Fire Nation was through the first two seasons - much as it's important that we finally see Ozai's face, we needed to see the day to day life of the Fire Nation. And if 'The Headband' shows us indoctrinated middle-class kids, seeing the oppressed peasantry being all downtrodden was equally important. Yay worldbuilding. Plus, giving each of the gaang (and the Fire kids) an episode of their own after 'The Awakening' really nailed the group dynamic - the better to totally shake it up with the post DOBS Zuko-field-trips.
Having said that ... man is this episode possibly my least favourite. Even more so than 'The Great Divide', which at least gave us Katara totally crushing on naughty-bad-liar-Aang.
It's bad, I would argue, in some of the same ways as 'The Great Divide' - both of them revolve around some really tired kid's cartoon tropes, healing-tribal-conflict and healing-environmental-woes respectively. Because Avatar is awesome, it subverts our expectations at the end of 'The Great Divide' with Aang's 'or you could call it lying ...' gotcha (not that this really makes up for the rest of it being subpar). The same thing kinda happens in 'The Painted Lady' with Sokka being proved more or less right about how do-gooding invites reprisals, not to mention Aang and Katara totally spending their first date blowing shit up.
But ... in the end, 'The Painted Lady' succumbs to the tedium of plucky-kids-curing-pollution. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that it's the 'Katara episode', and Katara is probably the most conventionally kid's-cartoon-worthy character out of the gaang: she's the archetypal brave, headstrong, compassionate modern heroine. Because this is Avatar, she's awesome, but jam her into a familiar pollution-bad plot and ... nothing very exciting happens.
I guess the writers felt they needed to underline this version of Katara so that no-one was too freaked out by the crazy bloodbending-mother-issues-revenge-arc (ie, when Katara gets interesting) later in the season, and the worldbuilding was great, but was it worth a whole episode?
The only other interesting thing about 'The Painted Lady' that you haven't already covered, for my money, was the Painted Lady herself, and how her role - or lack of one - seems to reflect the way the spirit world becomes less and less prominent throughout the series. The first season is full of Miyazaki-esque spirit world shenanigans, but in the final season the Painted Lady is the only full-on spirit to appear, and as you point out she's a victim of steampunk pollution. Sure, there's the Lion Turtle in the finale, but he's importantly *not* a spirit - in fact, he's more of a little world himself. Which is appropriate for Aang coming into his own as Avatar Aang, but which also makes 'The Painted Lady' kinda bittersweet - because although the Lady herself is pretty clearly free to operate once the lake is cleaned, season three as a whole seems to be suggesting that as history marches onward into the steampunky future, the spirit world recedes. Which is such an interesting idea it is wasted on an episode which *also contains Doc*.
Ok, so I'm bitter about the lack of Maiko buildup and COURTLY INTRIGUE that I was looking forward to in season three, but I get that Avatar is TV Y-7. I guess I'm mostly pissed that all the actual 7 year-old girls who identify with Katara didn't get a fantastically amazing episode devoted to her, a la 'Sokka's Master'. Just one which was eh, decent.
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First of all, love this defense of season three. I think people forget how much of a sinister blank the Fire Nation was through the first two seasons - much as it's important that we finally see Ozai's face, we needed to see the day to day life of the Fire Nation. And if 'The Headband' shows us indoctrinated middle-class kids, seeing the oppressed peasantry being all downtrodden was equally important. Yay worldbuilding. Plus, giving each of the gaang (and the Fire kids) an episode of their own after 'The Awakening' really nailed the group dynamic - the better to totally shake it up with the post DOBS Zuko-field-trips.
Having said that ... man is this episode possibly my least favourite. Even more so than 'The Great Divide', which at least gave us Katara totally crushing on naughty-bad-liar-Aang.
It's bad, I would argue, in some of the same ways as 'The Great Divide' - both of them revolve around some really tired kid's cartoon tropes, healing-tribal-conflict and healing-environmental-woes respectively. Because Avatar is awesome, it subverts our expectations at the end of 'The Great Divide' with Aang's 'or you could call it lying ...' gotcha (not that this really makes up for the rest of it being subpar). The same thing kinda happens in 'The Painted Lady' with Sokka being proved more or less right about how do-gooding invites reprisals, not to mention Aang and Katara totally spending their first date blowing shit up.
But ... in the end, 'The Painted Lady' succumbs to the tedium of plucky-kids-curing-pollution. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that it's the 'Katara episode', and Katara is probably the most conventionally kid's-cartoon-worthy character out of the gaang: she's the archetypal brave, headstrong, compassionate modern heroine. Because this is Avatar, she's awesome, but jam her into a familiar pollution-bad plot and ... nothing very exciting happens.
I guess the writers felt they needed to underline this version of Katara so that no-one was too freaked out by the crazy bloodbending-mother-issues-revenge-arc (ie, when Katara gets interesting) later in the season, and the worldbuilding was great, but was it worth a whole episode?
The only other interesting thing about 'The Painted Lady' that you haven't already covered, for my money, was the Painted Lady herself, and how her role - or lack of one - seems to reflect the way the spirit world becomes less and less prominent throughout the series. The first season is full of Miyazaki-esque spirit world shenanigans, but in the final season the Painted Lady is the only full-on spirit to appear, and as you point out she's a victim of steampunk pollution. Sure, there's the Lion Turtle in the finale, but he's importantly *not* a spirit - in fact, he's more of a little world himself. Which is appropriate for Aang coming into his own as Avatar Aang, but which also makes 'The Painted Lady' kinda bittersweet - because although the Lady herself is pretty clearly free to operate once the lake is cleaned, season three as a whole seems to be suggesting that as history marches onward into the steampunky future, the spirit world recedes. Which is such an interesting idea it is wasted on an episode which *also contains Doc*.
Ok, so I'm bitter about the lack of Maiko buildup and COURTLY INTRIGUE that I was looking forward to in season three, but I get that Avatar is TV Y-7. I guess I'm mostly pissed that all the actual 7 year-old girls who identify with Katara didn't get a fantastically amazing episode devoted to her, a la 'Sokka's Master'. Just one which was eh, decent.
Also, fucking Doc. Argh.