How "The Storm" Changed Everything - Avatar: The Last Airbender

[Applause] [Music] this video is brought to you by curiosity stream get access to the streaming video service I'm on nebula when you sign up for curiosity stream with a link in the description below a few weeks ago I talked about the tales of bossing say an incredible episode of TV that to me kind of represents everything I love about Avatar The Last Airbender but today I'm doing something a little different I'm focusing on the episode that really sold me on the show one that may not reach the creative highs of later Adventures but does a really good job of laying out who these characters are in a way that early episodes hadn't done yet more than any other it's the episode that showed the massive potential that this show is just starting to unlock so let's dive into the storm and take a look at the two different but very connected origin stories it gives us Prince Zuko and the Fire Nation are invading only Aang the Avatar can stop them the storm is about insecurity I mean it's about a lot of other things too but I think when you really get down to it insecurity emerges as the overall theme of this episode as the beginning of the story finds both Aang and Zuko feeling like they are being crushed under the weight of expectations they're not quite sure they can live up to and handling it in very different ways Aang has a dream where his friends disappear and he's left to face his destiny alone and he tries to ignore it and move on that might have worked until a fisherman reminds Aang of his complete and total failure a hundred years ago to do anything to help the show always did a really good job of reminding us that at the end of the day Aang is just a kid and he reacts like a kid would he runs away and hides Zuko of course has a very different reaction to his problems worried that the avatar may have slipped through his fingers Zuko doubles down on the pettiness and anger towards his crew and there's a detail that I really love here after Zuko yells that the safety of his crew doesn't matter and storms off deck uncle Iroh immediately tries to deescalate things by saying that Zuko didn't really mean it and at first it looks like he's just attempting to save face but as the episode goes on we see that IRA was absolutely telling the truth he tells the other men of Zuko's banishment and how the thing that started it all was Zuko speaking up in a war council where he interrupted a general proposing the idea of sending an entire group of Fire Nation soldiers to their deaths as nothing more than bait he was punished for that harshly so more than anything Zuko lashing out at his men by saying their safety doesn't matter is really just a teen trying to live up to what he's been told he needs to value much like his sister season 1 Zuko lives completely in his father's shadow but unlike Azula he doesn't really have the stomach for it Zucco's family has a lot of contempt for what most would consider basic human decency to them that's weakness and he knows that which is why he spends most of the season trying to convince himself that he's the kind of person who can order soldiers to their death without a second thought his insecurity in this episode I think mostly stems from the fact that deep down he knows that isn't who he is and Iroh knows it too in fact in this first season it's the belief that Zuko isn't who his father wants him to be that gives Iroh hope Aang is also insecure about not living up to who he's been told he's supposed to be we see that he blames himself for the hundred years of war and suffering that have happened in his absence because it was running away from this temple that caused him in Appa to be frozen in ice for a century and we see why Aang is not Zuko he has no ambitions of power we get the sense that he became a skilled Airbender because it was fun and he was just naturally really good at it one scene here that I've always thought was actually a little sad is when the counsel tells Aang that they knew he was the avatar because out of the many toy actions he picked the 4 avatar relics and Angus said he chose them because they looked fun this is a simple scene but I think it speaks volumes about what haunts someone who is generally a pretty carefree character he's a kid being told that everything in his life and especially the things he enjoys whether it's a childhood toy or a new airbending trick that he came up with don't really belong to him they were predestined part of a massive prophetic world-spanning plan that he plays the key role in but that he didn't get to choose Aang is too young to realize how much this will change his life at first but as his friends begin to pull away and he overhears plans to move him to another temple it starts to become clear to him that his life isn't really his own anymore which really gets to one of his core conflicts throughout the show can he still be Aang the fun-loving kid and the all-important avatar at the same time especially early on he has a really hard time balancing those roles if I have one big criticism of this episode beside the fact that Katara really has nothing to do it's that I think the ankud have been fleshed out more they made a choice to do both his and Zuko's backstory in the same episode and I think that makes sense because they contrast really well when being played off each other but I think Aang's story could have been helped with another scene or two with his mentor because it's being taken away from him that makes anger run away from home we get a decent sense that he's a real father figure to hang but I would have liked them to cement that more here because what we do have with the elders feels a little too generic Jedi Council stuff to me still that is a small complaint in an episode that does so much right as the avatar is learn to respect each of the elements and as a kid you must learn how to be safe around them playing in the water be lots of fun there's also Sokka who has a small but revealing role here going back and re watching these early episodes one thing that's really stuck out to me is how uncomfortable Sokka is with bending of pretty much any kind he's usually really dismissive of it especially Katara's waterbending and I think that makes sense Sokka is someone who doesn't really know where he fits into things he's the oldest and he wants to feel important but he has no real idea how that's an arc that's been built out very smartly from the pilot and it continues here as Sokka tries to be the one to make the gang some money by working on a fishing ship only to see him have to get rescued and not even getting paid honestly I may devote a whole video to Sokka in the future because I think he falls into the category of sidekick who desperately doesn't want to be a sidekick and I find that really interesting Sokka can be a little obnoxious in these early episodes but that's clearly by design he seems to always want to be the loudest in the room and I think that's to convince himself that he belongs in the room at all I said that the episode was about insecurity and they think that's reflected just as much in Sokka story as it is in eggs and Zuko's in the end the storm isn't my favorite episode of season 1 but I do think it's where avatar comes into its own just in time too because it was right after what might be the worst episode of the series the Great Divide the storm managed to show that the characters of Avatar have a lot more depth than you might expect at first glance the seeds might have been planted by the pilot but I think the series really started to grow right here avatar the last airbender has a lot of great looking locales inspired by the landscapes of Asia if you want to see more I really recommend Asia Secret Lives hidden places on curiosity stream it's a streaming service from the founder of the Discovery Channel that has thousands of titles to choose from big-budget documentaries about science history Tech and a ton of other stuff too but now when you sign up you'll get even more by signing up for curiosity streams annual membership you'll also be getting nebula a great new streaming service made by independent creators like Lindsay Ellis CGP grey Patrick H Williams and myself I actually have an exclusive video on the TV show cheers that's up right now and that's just the tip of the iceberg it's a way for creators to go beyond the demands of YouTube's algorithm and create something really new so you can support a lot of independent nebula and to get tons of high-quality documentaries just by signing up for their annual membership which is only $19.99 for the entire year so to get access to all of that and a free trial go to curiosity stream comm slash captain midnight which you'll find a link to in the description and pend comment below already captain midnight new 1940 play patrols you'd better hurry up and join at once because there's a big adventure ahead the thing to do now is to get started because we're going to have not only barrels of fun but loads of free gifts and prizes too

Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 433,956

Keywords: Avatar, Avatar the last airbender, Atla, Last airbender, Captain Midnight, Zuko, Aang, The Storm, episode, clip, review, nickelodeon, cartoon, animation, iroh, sokka, katara, recap, fire nation

Id: AGwsTIhsuJ8

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019