Avatar, With Fewer Blue Aliens
by Stephen Simons
As I suffer through ten minutes of Pokemon cartoons or watch re-runs of G.I. Joe, Thundercats, and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a simple truth emerges: Children are easily entertained. And yet, these easily distracted minds can still be captured by the right show, knowing what time it plays on TV or where to find it on a streaming site. It must be every cartoon-corporation fat cat’s ultimate dream to actually strike a chord with these fickle masses and score a hit series resplendent with poor animation, bad writing, embarrassing voice acting, and countless toy tie-ins.
Since the target audience of children’s cartoons have little exposure to some of the common tropes and clichéd plot lines that crowd our data-streams, most of the fare is exactly that — tired, re-used derivatives of derivative story-lines that lost their last bit of originality sometime around the airing of the final episode of Twilight Zone. Seriously, I don’t think there exists a single episode of Twilight Zone that hasn’t been repackaged in some other show . . . well, except maybe that pig-faced one . . .
That’s why, when a program aimed at children actually achieves a level of excellence, it should be celebrated. The excellence can come in the quirky, off-the-wall originality of SpongeBob Squarepants (currently the most distributed show on MTV Networks). It can manifest itself in a darkly re-imagined, throw-back Batman series, which proved so pivotal that it gave the voice actors Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, (yup, him), and Arleen Sorkin steady jobs for twenty years!
(Also, it gave us Harley Quinn, easily one of the four most popular villainesses in the entire Batman universe.)
What do you mean Batman only has four female villainess?
Clearly you’ve never heard of Freeze’s sidekick, Ms. Bee Haven, and The White Rabbit (whoever she is). Ok, fine! But the point is, Batman: The Animated Series introduced a new character who became a staple to the franchise.
Apparently, excellence in children’s programming can even be found in such unlikely places as a cartoon about magical ponies that originated from a collection of toys. While I’ll not out myself as a Bro . . . ahem . . . while I’ll not be able to comment on the worth of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic personally, I will say it has an impressive (sometimes creepy) array of fans.
And while we could debate a few other potential examples of excellence in a children’s television show, (for example, anything, and I mean anything the LEGO company has produced in the last five years . . . well, except LEGOs) I have only ever considered one for a TV Worth Watching column.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is the best children’s cartoon I have ever seen. I don’t even like to call it a children’s cartoon, or family entertainment . . . it’s just a great show. And I never even intended to watch it. I didn’t hear anyone talking about it. In fact, by the time I even knew it existed, the third and final season was wrapping up. But thanks to the wonder that is Netflix, the entire series was available online, (now it is streaming from Amazon Prime) and my kids asked if they could watch it.
I generally like to preview stuff for them, so I watched episode one. Then I watched episode two, and three . . . all in one sitting. I finished season one with the kids and then pulled my wife in. Starting over, we watched the entire three seasons together as a family.
Creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko crafted an Asian-themed world with four nations that each possess a specific ability to control or ‘bend’ one of the four elements: earth, fire, water, and air. One person, called the Avatar, could control all four elements and bring balance to the realms.
The first episode begins with the Fire Nation in control of much of the world, having obliterated the Air Nation and subjugated the Water and Earth Nations in an invasion that began 100 years before. All that time the Avatar has been missing. Since the Avatar reincarnates whenever he or she dies, many people hold out hope that he or she is still out there, somewhere.
Then one day, Katara (voiced by Mae Whitman; yep, her), a sixteen-year-old girl from the Southern Water Tribe who has recently discovered that she can bend water, is out with her older brother, Sokka (voiced by Jack De Sena), when they find the Avatar trapped in ice.
Unfortunately, the Avatar is an 11-year-old air bender named Aang, who skipped out on his training to explore the world on his sky bison, Appa. Running away may have saved him, but it also means that he never learned to master the other elements. Aang (voiced by Zach Tyler) is carefree to a fault. He has little interest in taking his responsibilities seriously. He just wants to ride his flying bison on a perpetual sight-seeing trip throughout the realms. Watching his character mature and begin to understand the necessity of shouldering his fate is one of the many joys of the show.
So, a nearby Fire Nation ship sees the release of energy caused by freeing the Avatar and sails to the Southern Water Tribe village to investigate. Its captain, Prince Zuko, has been banished by his father, the emperor of the fire nation, with the Sisyphean task of returning only after he has located the Avatar. While his drunken, disgraced, but world-wise uncle, Iroh, understands the mission was purposely hopeless, Zuko clings to it with a frightening fierceness.
The three-year mission laid out in the first episode (train the Avatar and defeat the Fire Nation) never changes. But the characters involved are too rich and complex to follow such a linear path.
Uncle Iroh’s foolish exterior gradually gives way to a deep wisdom conceived from pain and suffering. As he jokes through Zuko’s impetuous, impatient foolishness, there is clearly a deeper bond of love. Occasionally, hints of the firm military general that was emerge as he tries to impart some sense into a hurting, rejected young man, whose sheltered childhood left him with a fragility that he doesn’t understand, and fights and fears.
As with all the best fiction, the villain’s story becomes so compelling that the audience begins to understand the motivations to his actions and even starts to sympathize, even if they don’t agree with what he does. Zuko is the best example of this I’ve ever seen.
But if you must have pure malevolence, look no further than Zuko’s sister, Azula. From the moment she arrives on the scene at the beginning of season two, the entire story takes on a new sense of purpose, danger, and direction. 
Azula is cold. Even her fire is blue. She calculates with patience, executes plans without remorse, and treats everyone with cruel contempt.
Not only does she have the Fire Emperor’s complete confidence, she also has the intelligence and skill to overcome any obstacle. Azula never comes across as the type of villain that would get caught monologuing.
So every single time she gets close to the Avatar and his friends, you feel a real sense of danger. And every time they escape, you feel a real sense of relief and triumph. Her final scene is one of the most powerful I’ve ever witnessed in a cartoon, nay even in non-cartoon fiction. It’s raw.
Then there is Toph. What can you say about Toph without revealing too much? She is a contradiction in almost every way. The smallest member of team Avatar, she has the biggest personality. Her family is old money, but she is crude and unrefined. Having the greatest disability of anyone in the group, you would expect her to be needy, but she is, by far, the most independent. She’s one of my favorite characters.
As with the other examples of excellence I mentioned above, one almost intangible, definitely qualitative and not quantitative aspect sets Avatar above the regular fare — passion.
No, not that kind of passion! A feeling of intimacy . . . Stop that!
Get your mind out of the gutter; it’s a kids’ cartoon!
I mean the creators loved this story, and it shows in everything. The world feels fully realized; the way people bend in their native elements sometimes surprises, sometimes shocks, and sometimes scares not only the audience, but the characters themselves. The extras who come and go from episode to episode, rather than being stock photos we’ve all seen time and time again, contain enough originality and life that you don’t doubt they have their very own story, off-screen. The writers have an awareness of their creation that allows them to capitalize on the many opportunities for self-referential humor.
And, (an anecdotal observation I can in no way support with science) I’ve noticed that generic shows tend to have characters come and go, but shows where a love between creator and creation exists seem to bring back minor characters from time to time or even often. Why? I don’t know; maybe because they really cared for them. But it makes the world feel smaller, less generic, and gives a totally fictional location a sense of nostalgia for the viewer.
The more we become familiar with the people and locations in their world the more we begin to care about saving it from the Fire Nation, and the more hopeless it seems.
I’ll admit, I think this cartoon series was too short. Aang needed at least another season to prepare for his ultimate confrontation with the Fire Lord. As a result, there are several episodes where skills are mastered too quickly (Sokka becomes a sword master in two weeks). There are some episodes where the story itself was too big to fit within its twenty-minute window. The writers didn’t pull any punches in these situations, but there simply wasn’t enough time for the emotion to gestate, so the climax feels a bit premature.
The bottom line: This show feels like someone cared for it. Unlike Pokemon, G.I. Joe, and Thundercats — shows that fell off the end of a sterile assembly line in a giant factory for cartoons — Avatar: The Last Airbender feels like it was hand-made, in a small kitchen, with lots of flour on the table. That helps us love it, too.
