Book 1 (Water), Episode 9: The Waterbending Scroll & 10: Jet
These are two episodes which both sum up the Moral Lesson Learned at the end. These lessons are "Stealing is wrong...unless it's from pirates!" and "Sometimes my instincts are right. And sometimes they're wrong." Both of which reliably make me laugh out loud because I love that this is the conclusion we get from a kids' show.
These episodes are about Katara being fallible. She's jealous of Aang picking up waterbending faster than she did, and she steals the scroll at least partly motivated by wanting to make herself better for that reason. I like how Aang is quick to notice her disappointment, and tries to reassure her (she never had a teacher!), and she does appreciate it - you can see her trying not to be angry with him. And I love how quickly she and Aang start working together, which instantly becomes this totally natural thing from hereon in every time they need waterbending done.
Jet also goes into the grey areas I really, really love about this show. The freedom fighters aren't automatically right, and even Katara and Sokka, who've lost so much, don't want to hurt Fire Nation civilians. And definitely not Earth Kingdom civilians.
I'm still surprised each time I watch this show how nuanced it is about conflict, and war, and who the "bad guys" and "good guys" are. *hugs show*
COMMENTING RULES
1. No character bashing, please.
2. No future episode spoilers in the spoiler-free thread (and comments containing them will be screened), but expect to find them in others! If you're talking about massive plot twists it's nice to put a spoiler warning in the header, but it's not required.
3. Spoilers for Legend of Korra are also fair game everywhere except the spoiler-free thread; again, labelling them is friendly.
4. Feel free to illustrate your squee with caps. And gifs!
SPOILER-FREE THREAD (Only on LJ; let me know if I need to add one to the DW post too.)
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