Avatar Bad | Episode 3

Hey so I'm not here to be a hater, and I agree with almost everything you say but you said something that's bugging me. In the original cartoon, Jet wasn't going to blow up a village, he was going to blow up a dam that would flood the entire village and yes, kill the people in the village. Which Jet justifies by saying it'll free them from the Fire Nation. His village was destroyed in a fire nation raid, and in his flashbacks we see him being traumatized by the burning down of his village, and the death of his parents. He is trapped by his trauma, constantly seeing his burning village, and his solution? To flood another village that the fire nation has occupied. It's so much more thought out and poetic and sad than this Jet who's just like "lol killing a bunch of people will draw out the spies!"

Another great episode Joel! Loved it

I am glad these reviews seem to make you happy. They make me happy too.

They hang on jet's intro so long like its an avengers movie and you're supposed to wait for the applause to die down

I don't really know why but the look Soka gives in response to being called a gifted engineer just sends me

big joel the player isnt working for me :(

"Comin' where? Goin' why?" Is such a perfect representation of the failure in storytelling that this show is. How is it possible to take such an originally well exposed plot and simply reduce it to nothing? I'm genuinely baffled

Can we talk about Dani Pudi's incredible acting as the machinist guy? He really ran with that role and had so much fun, you can just tell. I wish he was in every episode, hell I wish he played Aang. Anyway great vid as always!

One thing that kills me in this is how bad the music is? Like I know that’s not really the point of your videos usually but when Azula shows up and we couldn’t even get a coherent rendition of her creepy theme I was like what are we even doing here.

This is a weird complaint but it really stuck out to me how it's no longer autumn like it was in the original jet episode. The animated series had a sort of consistent gradient to the wilderness, cultures, and time of year episode to episode that made it feel like they were travelling to and from somewhere. It's very obviously mid autumn in the original jet episode and very obviously winter by the end of the season. The earth kingdom towns they encounter closer to the north seem to have some cultural exchange with the water tribe in their clothing and architecture (look at the people they meet in the first scene of the northern air temple, the closest earth kingdom town to the water tribe). Here it's all just sort of the same interchangeable clothes and environments. No idea why that feels like such a loss to me but it does. I realize it's more of a practicality of filming but there's just a claustrophobic smallness to the world that wasn't present before?

So one thing, I don't think I framed my point about Jet's morality properly, and I appreciate a few of you helping me to articulate those feelings better. It's not so much that I think this new Jet is so much less moral, but that he is presented as a much more normal, rational actor, one neither motivated by anger nor someone whose actions are wholly unjustifiable or strange. Jet has always been a story about political violence, but this episode's treatment feels quite clunky to me. This is honestly a very new way of writing a video for me, essentially just being public with my thoughts and then refining them in text later. Very interesting.

Great as always. One quick note for your longer video, in the original Jet plans to flood an Earth Kingdom town that is occupied by the Fire Nation. He does it to “liberate the town” to which Sokka responds “who would be free? Everyone would be dead” so I’ve at least always interpreted that as both earth and fire nation lives potentially being lost. The show may have been deliberately vague on this but that might be where they got this idea. The OG makes it explicit that the target is the fire nation soldiers, not like, general terrorism on civilians.

Hard, hard disagree on Jet’s second goal being fine. For one, Tao. Killing a child who literally agrees with Jet that the Fire Nation sucks balls is… a bad. Child death is bad. Second, our heroes not being opposed to the murder of unarmed individuals, regardless of their personal affiliations, would be a bad look. Like, Katara even drew the line at the pathetic and irredeemable murderer of her mother in the OG. After some hesitation yeah, but she wasn’t exactly gung ho about killing the Mechanist in the OG either. This just feels like a deeply weird take, and I was hoping you could explain things from your no doubt very legitimate perspect-

Guys, gals and non-binary pals we are eating good tonight

Geniually have no idea why azula is here so early and also with mai and ty Lee. Like her recruiting them in s2 always felt like a good way to establish her like ty Lee is just having a fun time doing her thing and she's just threatening her indirectly every day till she joins up but here they're all together and like for what they don't do anything

I feel like if they really had to structure the plot this dumb way they could've had Katara's objection be more focused on the mechanist's son being in the crossfire of the assassination. Like that would give her an actual viewpoint of being unwilling to trade an innocent life away like that vs Jet's belief that it's a necessary evil. But I guess in this version she's just very opposed to harming authority figures

I watched spy kids 3 last night and that Azula clip would fit in perfectly in that universe

A friend told me they were having trouble with the embedded player. Here's the link, if you need it! https://vimeo.com/935570918/0982a6bcfb?share=copy

I love how Katara gets proof that the mechanist is undeniably collaborating with the fire nation, and instead of rushing to warn Sokka and Aang, she’s just big chiilling with Jet talking about her trauma for like several hours