My '90s and 2000s Experience: Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008, YTV and Nickelodeon)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be taking a quick look at the 2005 Nickelodeon animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender as I just finished watching the entire series from start to finish for the very first time. I'm placing it under the "My '90s and 2000s Experience" banner, because I did see one episode on YTV when I was visiting my grandparents at the cottage one summer sometime between 2005 and 2008. I can't tell you what episode it was, but it was probably a season 2 or a an early season 3 episode because I remember Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee being in it. Anyways, let's get into it.

Aside from that one episode that I caught on YTV sometime in the mid to late 2000s, I completely missed this show when it was originally airing. I was already 18 years old when Avatar started in 2005 and about a year and a half away from graduating from high school, so I wasn't watching what was current children's animated television shows at that time. I had already dropped off Pokemon and Digimon and I wasn't watching Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, The Batman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), even though I'd seen a good chunk of the first season of all of those shows except for JLU. Avatar began the same year as Power Rangers SPD, and I really wasn't sure about the new season of Power Rangers after how amazing I thought Power Rangers Dino Thunder was.

Fast forward to about seven or eight years ago and Brad lent me the complete series DVD set for Avatar. I didn't make it past the third episode. I felt the show was too juvenile and formulaic for my tastes, and at the time I just wasn't into that sort of thing. Especially because it was heavily inspired by Anime, and aside from the ones I grew up with and more recent ones like Haganai and One Punch Man, I'm not a big Anime fan and generally don't care for that style of storytelling.

So then, during the pandemic, but after lockdown was over, I asked Brad if I could borrow the show again, because I really wanted to watch the show from start to finish and see if I'd like it now that I'm almost a decade older than I was when I first tried to watch it from start to finish. Unfortunately, he'd lent it to someone already and hadn't gotten it back yet. That was fine. Brad finally lent it to me a few weeks ago, during our most recent hangout. I'd completely forgotten that I'd asked if I could borrow the DVD again, because other things like Disney+ shows, my VHS collection and my DVD collection has kept me occupied. Especially because I've watched movies for my guest appearances on The VHS Club Video Podcast, and the focus of my blog has been stuff I grew up with in the '90s and early 2000s, so I haven't thought about watching much from 2005 and onward, unless it's brand new like the most recent episode of the current Star Trek shows, Only Murders in the Building, Superman & Lois, and the Disney+ Star Wars shows, minus Andor and The Bad Batch. 

But, I finally watched it, and while it was good, and I obviously watched the entire show, I still have the same problems that I had with it when I tried to watch it in 2017 or 2018. It's too juvenile for an older audience, but too mature at some points for the audience the show was aimed at back in 2005. Which was 6-11 year olds. Which, oddly enough, if Avatar: The Last Airbender came out when I was between the ages of 6 and 11, or I had been between the ages of 6 and 11 when the show began airing in 2005, I probably would loved it because of the voice cast. I mean, you have Mae Whitman as Katara, Dante Basco as Zuko, Mako (replaced by Greg Baldwin) as Iroh, Mark Hamill as Firelord Ozai, Grey Griffin/Grey DeLisle as Azula, and tons of guest stars such as George Takei, Rene Auberjonois, and Clancy Brown.

Speaking of Clancy Brown, the character he voiced turned out to be a bad guy. I saw it coming because Clancy Brown voiced a lot of villain characters in the '90s and 2000s, from Haakon, the leader of the Vikings, in Gargoyles to Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited to Savage Opress in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So naturally, if Clancy Brown is voicing a character, there's a good chance the character's gonna turn out to be a villain.

Because of Nickelodeon's requirement of a maximum of 22 episodes, and minimum of 20 episodes, per season, there were a lot of episodes that felt like filler. Kinda like Pokemon, where Aang, Sokka, and Katara, and then with Toph joining them in season 2, make a ton of stops on their journey to wherever they're going in each season (the North Pole in season 1, the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se in season 2, and then back and forth between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation in season 3) where they end up helping people, or getting stuck in a mystical swamp, and then they might fight Zuko, Azula, or whoever the Fire Nation General of the week was. You know, the usual deterrents.

Season 1 was good. It was interesting, but I didn't like any of the characters. Sokka was a jerk, Aang was annoying (he's 12 years old afterall), and Katara was that 2000s kids TV show girl that was in every show, whether it was a show on Nickelodeon or a show on The WB/The CW or UPN. Don't get me wrong, Katara was my favourite of the three main protagonists, but it was really difficult and took most of the season for me to like her. My favourite character the whole season was Zuko's uncle, Iroh, because he was hilarious but also really wise, even if Zuko didn't listen to him as often as he probably should've. Appa and Momo were great too.

Season 2 was my favourite season of the entire show, and the only season that I genuinely enjoyed. It started out rough, but once Toph was introduced in season 2, episode 6, that's when things started to pick up for me. And by the end of the season I was genuinely excited to see what was going to happen next, even as Team Avatar escaped from Ba Sing Se in the season finale.

Season 3 was the worst season for me. I found it so boring and even the two two part episodes that we got that season had dissatisfying cliffhangers that left me wishing the show would just end. Even the four part finale felt overbloated and dull until Part 3 where Zuko and Katara fight Azula, Sokka, Suki, and Toph fight the Fire Nation Army, and Aang fights Firelord Ozai...sorry, I mean Phoenix King Ozai because of course Mark Hamill voices a villain with delusions of grandeur. Because he's never done that before (I'm being sarcastic). I did like that Aang chose not to kill Ozai at the end, because way too often action shows like Avatar end with the hero killing the villain.

I also really liked how slowly they made Zuko's redemption arc. I was thoroughly prepared to be unimpressed because I thought he was going to turn against the Fire Nation in the season 2 finale, but he didn't, and I REALLY liked that. I also like that he didn't just simply join Aang and his friends in season 3. He had to work hard to earn everyone's trust. Especially Katara's, because of how things went between them in the season 2 finale.

I also got really tired of Katara and Toph bickering with each other after the first couple of episodes where they were at odds with each other. I get that you have to create conflict between characters when you're telling a story, but that trope of women or girls, depending on what age group you're writing about, have to be at each other's throats all the time right? (again, I'm being sarcastic). 

Overall, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a really good show, it's just not for me. I couldn't connect with any of the characters, though Iroh was my favourite character in the entire show, and season 2 was the only season I loved. Like I said, season 1 was fine though it took a long time to actually get the story started, but I just didn't enjoy season 3 at all besides the series finale, and not just because I had finally finished the show. 

Alright my friends that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday to talk about Star Trek, also known as Star Trek: The Original Series for the first in my Star Trek Discussions series. Until then have a great rest of your night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.