Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show considered by many, myself included, to be one of the best pieces of animated television of all time. Its balance of exciting, colorful action and fun humor, contrasted by a focus on serious themes and deeply emotional moments, have made it one of the most well-loved shows that Nickelodeon has ever produced, with the show having an overall 9.2 rating on IMDb, a score that accounts for over 230,000 different reviews. Of course, even the best shows have their mediocre or less-than-satisfying episodes, and even Avatar isn't exempt from this, and some fans have come to a consensus about what the worst episode of this otherwise-stellar show would be: Book 1, Chapter 11: The Great Divide. Now, in all fairness, "worst" may seem like a harsh word to use, because saying that there's a "worst" episode of Avatar is kinda like saying that you got the smallest slice of a really good pizza. "The Great Divide" is kind of the same way -- hell, going back to the IMDb ratings for a second, the most damning thing you could even say about "The Great Divide" is that it has the lowest individual episode score, and even then, that's still a 7.0 out of 10. So, why do many Avatar fans consider this the worst episode of the series, then? What makes it such a letdown in an otherwise-stellar series that it deserves the damning score of a 7.0, and even a joke at its expense within the show itself two seasons later? Let's break down "The Great Divide" and find out, shall we? Oh, and as always... [ SPOILER SIREN WAILING ]
BIG TIME HECKIN' SPOILERS AHEAD. SPONGEBOB: I don't like you. PATRICK: I don't like you more! SPONGEBOB: I *NEVER* liked you! PATRICK: I a *THOUSAND TIMES* never liked you!! SPONGEBOB: Pink!!! PATRICK: Yellow!!! BOTH: [ grunting aggressively ] So, the episode opens up with Team Avatar setting up camp for the night, and Aang having to settle a couple of disputes among the group, convincing Sokka and Katara to switch jobs when they get into a dispute about the tent and the firewood, as well as getting Momo and Appa to stop squabbling over a melon by cutting it into fair portions for both of them. We cut to the next morning as the group arrives at the namesake of this episode: The Great Divide. They plan to just fly over the whole thing, which...you know, why WOULDN'T you, you have a flying bison -- when they're suddenly joined by a member of the Gan Jin tribe, a group of refugees trying to escape the advancing Fire Nation army. It's not long before we see the arrival of the Zhang tribe, who are also refugees, but live a very different lifestyle than the Gan Jins. The Gan Jins are neat, tidy, and carry themselves with an air of superiority, and look down upon the Zhangs as if they were nothing but animals. The Zhangs, meanwhile, are messy, rough, and boorish, and view the Gan Jins as nothing but snobby, spoiled elitists, who are more worried about being prim and proper than knowing how to survive, and we're told that the Zhangs and the Gan Jins, for some yet unstated reason, have been in conflict for a hundred years. RED ARMY: Wash...your...hands! BLUE ARMY: Never! With both tribes having people who couldn't possibly make the walk on foot, Aang offers to have Appa fly the sick and elderly across, while also helping The Great Divide's Earthbender tour guide escort the two feuding tribes through the canyon on foot, and hey, just like that, we've got our lessons for the episode: the past shouldn't completely dictate the present or the future, don't judge a book by its cover, working together is the only way to succeed, BOOM, themes established, let's rock 'n' roll. And it's like, yeah, those are some great lessons to teach, and, in concept, it's certainly not a bad idea -- hell, it's not even the first or the last time that such themes would be explored in this show, especially about judging people based on where they come from -- but it's the way that those themes are EXECUTED that ultimately ruins whatever lesson "The Great Divide" may be trying to teach. STAN: Well, I guess we learned our lesson. KYLE: No we didn't, dude. No we didn't. Now, something that's pretty crucial to a story like this, where one side or both sides of a conflict have unfair, preconceived notions about the opposing side, is that at some point, at least SOME of those notions have to be proven false, or at least exaggerated, so it can be conveyed to the audience that, yeah, having those prejudices about people ISN'T the right way to go. The problem with "The Great Divide" is that it just never really presents the Zhangs OR the Gan Jins as being anything other than what the other tribe believes them to be anyway, and on top of that, they all just kinda SUCK as people. At no point does either tribe really learn to look past appearances and prejudices when it comes to the other tribe, at least not of their own volition, with the Zhangs believing that the Gan Jins are nothing but spoiled, pompus fools, and the Gan Jin tribe leader finding new and creative ways to call the Zhangs nothing but animals and thieves. It gets to the point where even Aang, who saw this as an opportunity to flex his Avatar problem-solving skills, just says, "Fuck it, just walk on either side of this big wall the rest of the way". But I think the biggest thing for me that makes both the Zhang and Gan Jin tribes so completely unlikable, even more so than their one-dimensional characters, is just how blatantly SELFISH both tribes are, and how that selfishness puts *everyone* in danger. The one rule that the Canyon Guide establishes before the trip begins is that no one's allowed to bring food, with the VERY understandable reasoning that doing so would attract dangerous creatures known as "Canyon Crawlers". We see both tribes hastily eating a bunch of food before the trip begins, presumably getting rid of it all, but not too far into the canyon, hey, whaddayaknow, it's a CANYON CRAWLER. [ radiating sarcasm ] Wonder how THAT got there? Team Avatar manages to chase it away, but the damage is already done, with the Canyon Guide's arms and legs being injured to the point where he can't even Earthbend, presumably leaving everyone trapped in The Great Divide. And later that night, with each tribe having a separate campsite, it's revealed that BOTH TRIBES brought food down into the canyon, despite the Canyon Guide's specific instructions NOT TO DO THAT. And I understand that it's partly meant to play into the idea that both tribes were stereotyping each other as being selfish and not being able to go without food for a day, but it just comes across as... ...well, as both tribes being selfish and not being able to go without food for a day. Look, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show with characters who are full of flaws and shortcomings; in fact, in many cases, it's those very character flaws that make them so compelling. The thing that makes a flawed character so fun to watch is just how those flaws conflict with their good qualities, how the things they do right AND the things they do wrong both stem from the same base character logic and line up with who they are. And hey, that's not to say that every character ever needs to be full to bursting with complex traits and motivations, but in a show like Avatar, where even a lot of the side characters tend to have some sort of interesting nuance to their personality or motivations... ...it kinda just makes these really simple, uninteresting, and annoying cardboard cutouts stick out even MORE. And that's ultimately what both of these tribes amount to; they're not fleshed-out characters, they're just one-note, one-dimensional outlines of characters that the writers forgot to fill in with anything interesting. And I'd like to think that *they* knew this, too, because, when it came time to invade the Fire Nation on The Day of Black Sun, Sokka gave his father a very specific list of people to recruit for the invasion force, and according to Hakoda, he was able to locate everyone that Sokka wanted, which means that he didn't even CONSIDER the Zhangs, OR the Gan Jins, for this absolutely crucial mission. That's how you KNOW these two tribes weren't good characters -- when Sokka wouldn't even bring them on board for what was the most important mission of his life up to that point, not even to act as meat shields in case the Invasion went south, which, you know, if you recall... ...it totally DID. [ ♫ Thompson Twins - "Lies" ♫ ]
♫ Lies, lies, lies, yeah ♫ [ ♫ Thompson Twins - "Lies" ♫ ]
♫ Lies, lies, lies, yeah (Oh, you know I know) ♫ Honestly, even with the Gan Jin and Zhang tribes serving as nothing more than one-note characters to serve as walking plot devices to help drive home the themes for the episode, that's not even its worst character-related offense for me... ...no, see, that distinction belongs to how Aang actually settles this century-long dispute. See, during that earlier campfire scene, each tribe tells a member of Team Avatar the story of how their tribes came to be in conflict. The Gan Jins tell Katara the story about how their forefather, Jin Wei, was transporting a Sacred Orb across the land as part of the Gan Jins' ancient redemption ritual, only to be assaulted and have the Orb stolen by a member of the Zhang tribe, Wei Jin. However, the Zhangs tell Sokka a *slightly* different version of this story, proclaiming that Wei Jin merely come upon Jin Wei by chance, as the latter had fallen over injured, and Jin Wei sent Wei Jin to return the Orb to his village and get help, but as soon as Wei Jin arrived in Gan Jin territory, the Gan Jins just assumed he'd stolen the Orb and locked him up for 20 years. And at the end of the episode, after the feuding tribes worked together to ride out of The Great Divide on the backs of the Canyon Crawlers, the Zhangs and the Gan Jins look like they're about to bury the hatchet... only to decide that they can't change the past and get ready to fight to the death for the second time in about 4 minutes, when Aang does something that, to me, at least, was *completely* out of character. Aang straight-up lies and tells a completely fabricated story about the confrontation between Jin Wei and Wei Jin, claiming that it was nothing more than a game called "Redemption", and that Jin Wei merely dropped the ball, allowing Wei Jin to pick it up, only to be put in a penalty box for about 2 minutes when he stepped out of bounds. And...this...WORKS??? The Zhangs and the Gan Jins completely buy this absolute farce of a story, agreeing to put the past behind them and travel to Ba Sing Se as a single tribe, before Aang reveals that he kinda just made the whole thing up in order to settle their feud... ...and to get his hands on some of that custard tart that he saw earlier. OK, not that I *also* wouldn't make something up as an excuse to get these bickering cardboard cutouts out of my life, but... ...W H A T ? And look, I totally get what some people are gonna say here: "Aang lied all the time in other episodes", and, yeah, that's completely true. But those other times when he lied or withheld the truth usually held some actual narrative purpose, or was at least in line with Aang's character. When Aang didn't tell Sokka and Katara at first that he was the Avatar, that's believable because it stems from Aang's fear of the responsibilities of BEING the Avatar, and the shame and guilt that he felt because he failed to live up to those responsibilities, choosing instead to run away from his destiny. When he lied to Katara and Sokka about not having the map with directions to where their dad was just a few episodes later, that not only stemmed from Aang being a little bit jealous of Sokka and Katara being able to bond with someone like Bato, who was from their own tribe -- something he obviously wouldn't be able to experience for himself -- but it also played on his fear that Sokka and Katara, the only two humans he could, in a sense, call his family, would abandon him the second they were able to find their dad. And when Aang went undercover as a student at a Fire Nation school, it was not only so he could potentially find out crucial information about the Fire Nation for Sokka, and not only because he felt like he could undo some of the damage of the cultural propaganda instilled into the kids of the Fire Nation, but also probably because he never got to experience life just being a normal kid. All three of these instances are totally in line with Aang and who he is as a person, and are actually believable reasons for him to deceive people or withhold the truth. The lie that he tells in "The Great Divide" is completely out of left field; it's a lie that's not only for an entirely selfish and shallow purpose, but you would think, of all people, that AANG -- who was incredibly hostile towards the residents of the Northern Air Temple at first, because he believed their industrialization was ruining the symbols of the Air Nomads' culture and history, wouldn't wanna do anything to potentially shatter a group of people's perception of their own culture and traditions, and yet that's EXACTLY what he did here, by reducing the Gan Jins' redemption ritual -- something that was CENTRAL to their culture -- to nothing more than little kids having poor sportsmanship over a game. Look, I don't care how good that custard tart was, it is NOT worth completely contradicting such a core component of your protagonist. AANG: There it is, guys! The Great Divide! KATARA: Wow...I could just stare at it FOREVER. SOKKA: ...OK, I've seen enough. Ultimately, on top of everything else I've talked about in this video, I think what puts The Great Divide so low in the IMDb ratings for the show, and what lands it so low in the personal rankings of a lot of Avatar fans is... ...just how utterly *inconsequential* the entire episode is. And listen, I don't want anyone to think that I think it's a completely unwatchable episode or anything like that, or that there's nothing good about it whatsoever. It's still got some great action scenes, I like the *idea* of the lessons they wanted to convey, even if I didn't enjoy the execution, and I always love when animators give themself an excuse to experiment with different art styles, like they did during the different retellings of the Jin Wei/Wei Jin story. But this is an episode that doesn't really add anything to the overall narrative, does add anything to the universe outside of the existence of The Great Divide itself, and doesn't give any new meaningful development to the characters we're familiar with, or introduce any new, memorable characters that would actually resonate with anyone. Ultimately, "The Great Divide" is...kinda just a filler episode. And hey, listen, I'm *not* lost on the purpose of filler episodes, alright? It's a necessary thing, and all the great shows have them, and unlike what some people think, a lot of filler episodes or filler arcs can be pretty good and really entertaining, even if they don't offer a lot of narrative progression. And I do understand that there's a good number of Avatar fans that actually like this episode and its themes, and I promise you that the point of this video is *not* to try and retroactively convince you that you didn't enjoy something you enjoyed. All I'm saying is that, for me and for a lot of other Avatar fans, "The Great Divide" isn't as entertaining or as endearing as other episodes of the show, and the lessons that it tries to teach are conveyed much better in other episodes. It doesn't add anything substantial to the characters and the universe, and, ultimately... ...you could cut "The Great Divide" out of Avatar canon and nothing of real value would be lost. Honestly, I know this is a really easy joke to make, but... ...I think the overall legacy of "The Great Divide" was summed up pretty perfectly by the Ember Island Players. EMBER ISLAND AANG: Look, it's The Great Divide, the biggest canyon in the Earth Kingdom! EMBER ISLAND SOKKA: ...Eh, let's keep flying. Couldn't have said it better myself. But now I wanna hear from you guys! I know "The Great Divide", in recent years, has gained a bit of a... ...well, a DIVIDE amongst the fans as to whether it deserves its distinction as the "worst episode of Avatar", so tell me what YOU think of "The Great Divide" in the comments below! Don't forget to "Like" the video if you liked it, and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get notified when I make more videos like this in the future! Thanks for watching. See you in the next video, friendos! Thanks for watching!
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