Avatar S2E16: "Appas Lost Days"
Appa, no! Appa :(
Thanks for tuning in to my thirty-sixth of 61 daily reviews of Avatar: The Last Airbender! Yesterday, we watched S2E15: The Tales of Ba Sing Se.
I’ve both yearned for and dreaded the day I’d have to review this heartbreaking masterpiece of an episode. Yesterday in The Tale of Momo, which foreshadows this story, I wrote that most shows wouldn’t craft a narrative from the perspective of a speechless animal. But not only can Avatar do it in a four-minute vignette, they can craft an entire episode that brings out the compelling inner life of Aang’s beloved sky bison.
While Avatar is fundamentally a show that runs linearly through time, despite its occasional flashbacks, this episode bucks that trend by setting us back six episodes’ time to the end of The Library, when Appa was captured by the sandbenders. We follow his journey as he’s sold to the beetle-headed merchants and then a Fire Nation circus.
At the circus, Appa is frightened by an abusive animal trainer who relishes in dominating the poor creatures under his control. “I am going to break you,” he tells Appa, and threatens the terrified, caged bison with a fire whip. It’s chilling to witness the ancient and noble creature’s humiliation as he’s trotted out wearing makeup and a comical outfit in front of laughing Fire Nation onlookers.
But as the crowd exclaims, one kind boy can’t bring himself to look. The unnamed boy sympathizes with Appa, whose abuse from the trainer mirrors the boy’s own treatment by his crappy father. (Both father and trainer tell their charges to “behave yourself or you'll regret it.”) In turn, the boy’s laugh reminds Appa of his dear Aang, and he implores the disobedient bison, “go, you can do it!” Appa sends the nasty trainer straight through the roof of the tent with a mighty thwack of his tail, and flies into the night. You think he gets workers’ compensation for that?
Despite Appa’s newfound freedom, things don’t really start looking up for the poor bison. With his legs still cuffed together, he returns to Wan Shi Tong’s library only to find it gone. Rudderless, malnourished, and desperate, he pricks his tongue on a cactus, gets chased by buzzard wasps, and is driven out from his slumber by a pair of fearful farmers who think he’s a monster. Finally, he flies far to find shelter, only to be brutally charged by a boar-q-pine, sending them both tumbling down the mountain. As Appa flings his assailant savagely through the trees, the bison bears a tragic expression that highlights his feelings of anger, pain, betrayal, and deep exhaustion.
Despite not being human, it’s this quality of Appa’s that actually makes his story so moving. We understand the sky bison through tropes of the gentle giant, and of the endling, the last of his kind. As a mythological, almost symbolic figure, that gravitas renders his degradation especially poignant. Throughout Appa’s ordeal, his design becomes dirtier, more ragged, and full of quills — a physical accounting of his trauma. And yet, we still witness his capacity for hope and love through his dreams of his own infancy and the day he and Aang met.
Finally, things start to look up for the downtrodden bison. He finds his way to Kyoshi Island, where Suki has returned only days after the events of The Serpent’s Pass (why she’s back or how she arrived so quickly is unclear). The traumatized Appa is mistrustful, but she slowly breaks through his reservations and the Kyoshi Warriors feed him, unshackle him, and clean him up.
But there’s no rest for Appa, as a familiar, foreboding three-note theme plays. Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee have tracked Appa to Kyoshi Island, unaware that the Avatar is no longer with his bison. But no matter; the villainous girls will settle for attacking the Avatar’s friends. Mai and Ty Lee make quick work of the Kyoshi Warriors as Appa flees. Suki’s dignity is preserved with a pastel-chalked freeze frame as she bravely charges Princess Azula, but it’s not hard to guess how that fight will end.
It’s one horror too many for Appa. The deeply wounded animal has been retreating further and further into the depths of his subconscious, and perhaps without even realizing it, he finds his way to his original home: the Eastern Air Temple. But someone new is waiting there for him: a bushy-bearded mystic named Guru Pathik. The Guru is introduced with a meditative feat, remaining supine all day until the aggressive, bristling Appa finally falls asleep. Pathik approaches him and places a caring hand on Appa’s belly.
Oh, dear. You've been through so much recently. Hurt and betrayed. So twisted up inside. You're still full of love. Ah. But fear has moved in where trust should be.
Guru Pathik explains that he’s been waiting for Aang for a long time based on a vision he had. He leaves a message for the young Avatar on his bison’s horn. At last, the wise old man tells Appa that his and Aang’s energies are mixed, and through their unbreakable bond he can locate Aang. In a moment reminiscent of The Swamp, a trail of energy snakes out like lightning from the temple, and Appa flies dramatically into a moonlit Ba Sing Se.
But the great reunion is not to be. Appa gets intercepted by the cunning Long Feng, who flips both of them underneath the cobblestones. All that remains is a great pawprint, waiting for Momo.
This episode is so memorable not for the specific events that occur within it, but for the way it makes us feel, which lasts far longer. It brilliantly captures Appa’s torment and despair, but never fully strips the noble bison of his dignity. If anything, Appa’s Lost Days is a reminder of what a powerful airbender Appa is, and how much he understands. And the episode throws into sharp relief the inhumanity that humans can inflict on animals. That, unfortunately, is not an invention of Avatar.
See you tomorrow for Episode 17: Lake Laogai! Share your own thoughts on this episode in the comments.
Appa’s great sneeze sends a sand-sailer flying beneath a giant dune, where it eventually saves the Gaang in The Desert. It’s poetic that even when he’s lost, Appa still saves his companion.
As the sandbenders raid Appa’s saddle, they discard Sokka’s club and the umbrella that the Gaang got from Aunt Wu way back in The Fortuneteller.
Even the beetle-headed merchant’s wooden restraints for Appa looks like a beetle.
The merchants use shirshu spit darts to knock out Appa. That venom comes from the same species that June rides in Bato of the Water Tribe.
The circus is the same one that Ty Lee left in Return to Omashu. It seems that there’s a thriving black market across enemy lines.
“Who are you, the Avatar’s fan girls?”
“You’re not prettier than we are.”
For the first time outside of a flashback, we see Sokka and Katara’s father Hakoda as Appa flies over his ships.
As Appa flies into Ba Sing Se, you can see the pygmy pumas from The Tale of Momo watching him from the rooftops.
This episode won a Genesis Award from the Humane Society of the U.S. for its depiction of animal cruelty at the circus.
Azula’s battle with the Kyoshi Warriors has massive implications for the end of the season.
Aang and Appa’s dream about when they met takes place in the Eastern Air Temple, not the Southern Air Temple (where Aang grew up). Many sky bison were raised in the eastern temple, and Aang had certainly traveled from his home many times (he spends Season 1 showing off the places he’s been).
We’ll meet Guru Pathik again in The Guru, where he has (obviously) an important role to play. The guru is able to feel Appa’s chakras, a sanskrit word that refers to points throughout the body where energy is concentrated.
The Guru is a unique character in that he takes inspiration from South Asian cultures, which Avatar hasn’t drawn from nearly as much as it does from East Asia.
Also, Pathik is voiced by Brian George, who played Babu Bhatt, the Pakistani restauranteur who takes bad advice from Jerry Seinfeld in Seinfeld.
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