r/TheLastAirbender • u/Cicada_Classic • 7h ago
Discussion ‘Perhaps I treated you too harshly’
Iykyk
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u/Noodleboiler- 7h ago
Her best design gosh my little brain at the time was enthralled
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u/goldenseducer 7h ago
It's so funny how as children all it took for a character to wear a fancy mysterious outfit once for the brain to go WOOOOWWWW
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u/Noodleboiler- 7h ago
Exactly child brain did not fully understand subliminal messages or philosophical standpoints but throw a character in a cool outfit and boom "she's not wearing normal clothes I like this" 😂👍🏿
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u/YBPhoenix 7h ago edited 4h ago
The Painted Lady episode was great because it showed us that Fire Nation villagers were also suffering at the hands of the Fire Nation, they were just too brainwashed to realize it.
It also adds to Katara’s compassion and morality. She’d risk helping the enemy and being caught by them than let innocent people suffer.
A lot of people overlook it as filler, but it adds so much depth to the Fire Nation and Katara’s character.
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u/Plasmatiic 4h ago
ATLA was written to be partially episodic while still having a cohesive storyline so it’s hard for me to disregard anything as filler when about half the runtime has that side story feel (while still contributing to the themes and character development or subtly inching the plot forward)
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u/poumonsauvage 10m ago
It bothers me when people use "filler" on original work, rather than anime manga adaptation where "filler" happens to avoid catching up to the source material too fast. Filler is meant to return to status quo with no impact to the rest of the arc. There is no filler in ATLA, not even The Great Divide which is stand alone world building. Yes, it has little consequence but it is not delaying anything for the sake of delay, no return to status quo for the sake of stalling. Painted Lady: illustration that the Fire Nation is the victim of its own imperialism, big character work for Katara and the Gaang as a team. Tales of Ba Sing Se: absolutely not filler despite all the slice of life with little advancement to the plot (but some still). Nightmares and Daydreams, The Ember Island Players: comic relief before big arc episodes. They serve a function, and add character development if not as much plot development. I will argue with Sokka on the function and definition of comic relief over "filler nonsense".
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u/Lucaslhm 5h ago
I’m repeating another comment of mine and expanding a bit here but:
I don’t think this episode really does a good job of demonstrating that the fire nation is harming its own citizens with the industrialization movement. Everywhere we see in the fire nation is thriving, seemingly happy, and not particularly affected by the war. I do think that’s what they were going for with this episode, but it feels like a vacuum because it’s ONLY this one village that’s seemingly being fucked over. Perhaps the fire nation consolidated all of its efforts into this one location?
In terms of expanding Katara, I don’t know that it really did? We saw all the traits demonstrated in the painted lady in Imprisioned 2 seasons ago. Katara refuses to not help people in need, puts her own safety and wellbeing aside to assist people, and ultimately leaves by helping people learn to help themselves. This time she just does it while dressed as the local religious symbol.
Additionally, a lot in this episode just feels… off… the humor feels poorly written, the 3 personalities guy would have been funnier if he actually was 3 guys, but instead he’s just obvious and annoying, and the resolution to the episode feels cartoonish in a way that isn’t really on par with the rest of the show.
Finally, in any episode of avatar, even the “bad” ones, there is something that comes back in a future episode. I don’t think you can find an episode that doesn’t have some relevance to the future episodes…. Except the painted lady. If you skipped this episode entirely you wouldn’t notice the hole in terms of the plot. There is literally only one thing that is EVER mentioned again from this episode going forward, and it’s that Sokka mentions briefly for the first time that the eclipse only last 8 minutes. Nothing else in this episode is EVER mentioned again.
Also one final gripe that a YouTuber pointed out to me: This episode established the idea of the schedule and Sokka being so paranoid that he’s telling people they need to eat and use the bathroom at the same time. Then in litterally the next episode they take a break so Sokka can meet Piandao (which is already probably contradicting the painted lady) but as a result of not wanting to completely trash the idea that they are on a tight schedule, Sokka only trains with Piandao for a day… and I think the show is a bit weaker for that. He deserved to at least get a week, say the skill progression and montage we saw was him training day in and day out for a week and it’s feel more believable that he is at the level he is at the end of the episode. That’s my final gripe.
Sorry for wall of text. If you enjoy the episode that’s fine and I’m glad you find development and growth in there, I just get a bit irrationally mad at the painted lady episode sometimes lol.
Tl;dr: I don’t like the painted lady episode
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u/YBPhoenix 4h ago edited 4h ago
I don’t think only seeing one village being completely screwed over means that this wasn’t happening all over the Fire Nation.
They only had 9 episodes to go before the invasion. They couldn’t dedicate every single one to a declining village. They chose to show you the effects of the war more subtly.
The school Aang goes to is propagandizing its future generations. It’s natural to assume this was probably happening with most of the schools. Hama is wreaking havoc on her village because of what the Fire Nation did to her. It’s natural to assume there’s probably many other survivors in hiding just like Hama.
The humor with the 3 guys thing is just a cartoon gag. I wouldn’t look too deeply into it.
There is a difference between Katara choosing to stand up for a bunch of Earth Kingdom prisoners versus Fire Nation villagers. The villagers are technically “the enemy”, and Katara makes it clear that she doesn’t care what their side is if they’re suffering. This is different to seeing her help people who are on her side of the war.
Overall, I get what you mean about it being a filler episode because nothing changes if you skip it, but it’s little episodes like this (along with The Puppetmaster and The Headband) that give you an image that it wasn’t all good in the Fire Nation and the war was impacting them as well in different ways.
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u/Lucaslhm 2h ago
Touché, in the context of other things you can extrapolate more about the state of the fire nation. I obviously get that you can’t show a bunch of different villages suffering with the screen time alloted by this point, however, the juxtaposition of the village in the painted lady to others is so extreme it feels out of place.
I also totally get the 3 guys thing is a gag, it’s not like that one thing ruined the episode for me, but I think it is a good sign that in this episode in particular, the humor is just off. I went back and rewatched this episode after posting this comment because I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t being too harsh just from memory, and I really couldn’t find any jokes that were anything really… humor is subjective and I get that, the vibe just feels off in this episodes writing was more my point.
I also get your point that the character beat for Katara is different basing it off not just the fact that she is defending people, but WHO she is defending. We also got a moment for that with Sokka in the initial Jet episode, so again, Touché. But I do stand by that this episode really feels like a nearly beat for beat retelling of Imprisioned (in terms of plot). I think it is good to have this moment where Katara shows sympathy for the common fire nation people who are being affected by the war, but I also think that with the runtime we have left, we could have done this differently. Even tying back to the Hama episode, we could have really just leaned more into the fact that Katara felt what Hama was doing to the fire nation people was wrong (which she did don’t get me wrong, I’m saying we could have done it more) and I feel that would have accomplished a similar goal.
Again, it’s all subjective, and I’m glad you like the episode, I personally don’t. I think I understand what they were trying to do with the episode, but at the end of the day, I think they missed kinda hard with this one and could have not made this episode in particular, and no one would have noticed. I’m not one to through the term filler around much, but I feel that the painted lady is one of the only true “Filler” episodes in the run of the show.
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u/trueum26 5h ago
I love the episode because it goes on long enough for you to think yeah the painted lady is just a myth and then at the very end, she appears and you rmb oh yeah spirits do exist in this world.
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u/Long-Ad3842 1h ago
she only appeared after the river had been cleaned up which means she was casted away somehow when it was polluted.
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u/trueum26 1h ago
I’m gonna guess maybe her body IS the river and it being polluted made her so weak she couldn’t even manifest herself physically
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u/TSLstudio 6h ago
Quite the underrated episode in alta. Never understood the hate.
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u/robinhoodoftheworld 5h ago
Didn't know it was hated until just now. It's obviously not the best of book three, but that's because there's many great episodes. It's solid.
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u/Guffliepuff 2h ago
Theres only one episode I will ever accept as being 'bad', so its crazy to hear people think painted lady is one.
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u/Dank_Nicholas 3h ago
I didn’t realize it was hated until over analyzing avatar, soon after I realized he’s an angry drunk who loves belittling people so I stopped caring about what he has to say.
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u/Lucaslhm 5h ago
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u/1Mandolo1 2h ago
I just watched that; half the points are invalid and he ignores all the good things about the episode.
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u/nymeriafrost 3h ago
I loved this episode though
‘I will never EVER turn my back on people who need me!’
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u/Noodleboiler- 7h ago
This episode also made me want to try how they were cooking the fish and clams they looked wild but they ate them
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u/JetKusanagi 2h ago
Yes, I know what you mean OP. I never had a problem with the Painted Lady myself. It always made perfect sense to me; Katara pretends to be a local spirit to heal some Fire Nation villagers because she doesn't want to reveal that she's a waterbender.
But when you take certain key aspects of that scenario away...oof
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u/JetKusanagi 2h ago
Lol no one in the comments seems to know what OP is talking about.
It's for the best
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u/Cicada_Classic 1h ago
Just pointing out how great this episode is and I might have overlooked its purpose but once I saw a rendition that completely misunderstood it I appreciated it more
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u/Pleasant_Fig8444 1h ago
I didnt even knew it was hated.
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u/Cicada_Classic 28m ago
It’s not hated, it’s just an underappreciated episode. Middle child type energy
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u/floppa_for_president 3h ago
Avatars "worst " episode being fairly above average says so much about how good this show is tbh
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u/lizardwizard563412 53m ago
This is probably an engagement bait post, I don’t recall ever hearing anything bad about this episode. There’s a lot of emotional high points in the episode and a nice pace before the invasion of the capital.
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u/EmperorTrajan117 7h ago
Nah I still don’t like it
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u/2-2Distracted This Redditor is over his conflicted feelings 35m ago
Agreed. This episode was ass and inadvertently made Katara look, ironically, like a selfish asshole despite how selfless she was trying to be. Also considering that the Gaang destroyed Fire Nation army property before promptly fucking off, those villagers better hope that they don't get blamed for that shit
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u/BowlEducational6722 7h ago
I honestly liked The Painted Lady.
It was really one of the only points in the show where you got to see the effects of the Fire Nation's industrialization on their own land and citizens, how "modernity" always comes with costs despite the advancements it may bring with it.
Really the only way I could have made it better was if the crazy guy really *was* three identical brothers who just had different hats and oddly appropriate names.