The Nuance of Avatar's 'The Puppetmaster'

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One fairly subtle thing I haven’t seen anyone mention yet is when Katara says (in response to Hama killing all of the lilies) “It’s a shame about the lilies though.” And Hama replies, “They’re just flowers”. Throughout ATLA, there seems to be a theme of its villains showing a blatant lack of regard for nature. My dad always said that when he watched that episode for the first time, that’s the moment he knew she was no good.

It's like you knew I was sitting down with food

It is so, so refreshing to hear someone analyze katara’s flaws without deferring to misogyny

You can explain Toph not hearing Hama in the house because she can’t hear/bend through wood. But I think Toph being scared(i.e. distracted) can prevent her from knowing about incoming threats/danger in-universe.

One theory I saw regarding Hama (maybe it was Overanalyzing Avatar) is that she is the reason the Fire Nation just started killing Water-Benders instead of taking them captive. Seeing as the last one they captured and imprisoned busted out of jail and did some crazy shit no one had ever seen before, it would make sense to just start killing them during there future raids.

Katara's internal quest to connect to her culture is what pains me the most about this episode. The horror of Hama is so well written, and I can't help but be sad that she and Katara didn't get to foster a friendship.

The scene that stuck out to me the most with the themes of those episode of innocence vs corruption, the victim becoming the abuser, etc, was when Hamma bent the water out of the flowers killing them. When Katara is sad about what happened to the flowers, Hamma replies with: "They're just flowers." Terry Pratchett wrote in his Discworld series "Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things", or jut something: they're just flowers, they're just animals, they're just peasants, they're just soilders, they're just an inferior culture...

21:03 Although Katara technically mastered NORTHERN Style Waterbending since there were no other Southern Waterbenders to teach her Southern Style techniques, so learning from Hama would mean even more in this regard. (Though it would’ve been nice to show Katara learning from the Swampbenders too, given how she craved to learn as much about Waterbending as possible)

I don't blame Hama for inventing blood bending to escape her prison. Heck, I wouldn't even blame her if she used it save other water benders and used it as revenge on the people who imprisoned her in the first place. The problem I've always had was that she was punishing completely random people in the town that had nothing to do with what happened all those years ago.

Katara and Hama remind me of the saying "The world can be split into two groups. I have been through hell so I will spare anyone I can from it' and 'I have been through hell so I will put anyone i can through it' "

Oh no. You fool. You said it. The mystical, powerful words. “I need to write shorter scripts.” Come back here in two years everyone when Sloan is writing 4 hour dissertations on incredibly niche subjects.

A little off topic but I think this episode has such a underrated moment that I love. It's the moment at dinner when Toph and Aang talk about the food. "I'd steer clear of the sea prunes" "I thought they were ocean kumpquats" "close enough". First of all I love this detail in worldbuilding and mostly I think it's lovely that those two characters are from completely different backgrounds and cultures but at that moment they can relate in both not being from the watertribe. I love that Toph and Aang had that little connection moment and that they gave attention to this (like they didn't need to do that but they did and it makes the world so much richer and the characters and the relationships between them even more fleshed out). Anyway just wanted to share that hahaha

22:22 On the subject of line deliveries, that final line "You're a bloodbender" has been ingrained in my brain since I first heard it over a decade ago and still gives me a shiver every time I think about it

Another point to add: it's interesting to notice that the two episodes you've mentioned that show Katara blindingly trusting someone are also very far apart in their journey. She has been through a lot when she meets Hama and there's this idea that "she should've known better", like literally she has been through this before! However I think that works in two ways: First, as a character, it shows how deeply her innocence and good-natured heart goes and also how deeply she connected to Hama because of all the things they had in common. Her emotions supplanted her experience and any intuition she might have had deep down - even when they were explicitly voiced by Sokka. It also shows how Katara's journey and internal arch is far from over - deep down she's still looking for the same things she was in the first episodes. Second, I believe it shows how one can fall victim to the same thing all over again, despite "knowing better". It's very common that victims of abuse fall trap to the same kind of abuse over and over again and it can deepen the trauma because there's this added layer of "how come I fell for this again", but here is a perfect example of how this can happen. Anyway, great video as always! Your voice is so calming and good to hear and your scripts are amazing!

"Katara's internal journey is finding the strength to end the cycle of violence, not continue it like Hama" is the most beautiful ending for this essay. Thank you so much for the video!

To add to the Hansel and Gretel point, the witch in that story only locked up and fattened up the boy with plans to eat him, she made the girl her helper, which is why the girl was in prime position to betray the witch.

Man, it's so messed up that we never saw the Joo Dee's again. What happened to them? Like, that's the most horrifying thing in the show, the fact we got no information.

On the topic of subtext, I remember reading someone else's theory that the reason Hama started kidnapping villagers was because the loss of the moon spirit finally broke her. We know how traumatic it was for the water benders who witnessed the avatar restore the moon spirit, but Hama didn't know anything about that. One day, the moon just disappeared, and she lost her bending. The only thing that had kept her alive in the fire nation's prisons. Since we know the kidnappings started recently, it's possible that the death of the moon spirit was the trigger for her kidnappings. There's no evidence to say one way or another, but it's always amazing when a show uses subtext so well that viewers start connecting the dots like that. I think good writing involves saying lots of things using few words, but also leaving things just open enough that people can create their own theories by filling in the missing pieces. That's what creates the fandoms that can carry something beyond the basic entertainment value of passively watching.

The move Hama and Katara use to bloodbend is "Needle at the Bottom of the Sea", a tai chi move that is based off of popping the vertebrae out of your enemy's spine while they are kneeling before you...