Civil War - Part 1

[talibusorabat]

I really liked this episode, especially in comparison to the premiere. What did the rest of you think?

At first I wasn't sold on Aang not being a great father, but now I really like the idea. It's a nice reminder that he's not perfect, and it makes sense to me that he would become fixated on preserving his culture over making sure all his children felt equally loved. And it was nice to see an acknowledgement that people can grow up in the same circumstances but remember them differently, and that our memories of the past aren't objective.

I wish we could have seen more of Jinora, though -- I feel a little teased that we got so much great stuff with her last week that still isn't explained, and then she was on screen this week just to explain that Ikki is missing. I don't see how they could have fit her into the episode, really, but I'm still sad we didn't get more.

Comments

[sholio]

I am finally caught up so I can read reactions now, and I'm totally with you on the way they're handing the Aang-Katara-kids family dynamics!

For one thing, I'm really amazed that so many people are assuming that just because Aang's kids don't have good memories of their childhood, it means Aang was objectively a bad father. Aang would have had to spend extra time with Tenzin to train him, especially since he was the youngest so the older kids were big enough to have had their own hobbies and pursuits by that time, and I can easily see "training trips with Dad" blowing up into this giant thing where the older siblings were jealous and resentful, but were too deep in teen angst to actually talk to their parents about it, so they've been sitting on that bitterness all these years, especially since they all lost their dad so young. There was no time to work things out -- they were all busy with their own lives, and then suddenly Aang was dead, and all the conversations they might have had never happened. It's also worth mentioning that not all of the siblings' conflict dates back to their childhood; there's also Kya's perfectly legitimate resentment that neither of the boys helped her take care of their mom after their dad died. There's no way that can possibly be Aang's fault!

Basically it just strikes me as a very believable conflict of the sort that many families, even happy and loving families, can have, based mostly on miscommunication and the different kids' different personalities causing them to react differently to the circumstances of their childhood. And the whole storyline right now is about the grown kids working through their issues and realizing that all families have problems (... does Ikki running away mean Tenzin and Pima are terrible parents? of course not!) and the important thing is that they all love each other anyway.