Book 2, Chapter 4: The Swamp

Just like the banyan grove tree in The Swamp, Avatar is calling me... and I must go. First, I want to apologize to many readers who were eagerly following along and waiting for the best episodes to come. I let you hanging for over 2 years, and I'm sorry. I forgot what a great thing I had going here, and honestly, I forgot that I enjoyed it. Ever since around the time I stopped, I've been dealing with mental health issues and I let most of my life and friends slide. I'm happy to say that I got the help I needed and I've made some fantastic progress! I'm back, and I'm here to restore balance to the world (and my life!). 

 

Once again, many of the characters of Avatar, such as Roku and Iroh specifically, have in their small way helped me on my journey. If there's one thing I want you to take away from my blog, it's this: Avatar is a once in a lifetime show that, if you let it, will uplift you and stick with you for the rest of your days. It has the power to transform. To heal old wounds. And most of all to bring people together in positivity and harmony. 

 

Now onto the review! 😄 

 

  
 I've never pointed this out before, but you can see Aang's tongue in the opening sequence of every episode. 😛 Taste the rainbow.

The episode opens with a panning shot of an earth kingdom town where Iroh and Zuko are seeking supplies and refuge. Notice how detailed and well-realized this location is, considering it has no purpose to the story and is never named or revisited. There's another blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot at the end of the episode that impressed me, more on that later.

When the musical motif from The Blue Spirit episode plays here, the blue spirit mask rolls by Zuko on a merchant's cart. Don't feel bad if you missed it! But wait, what's Zuko's mask doing in an ordinary earth kingdom village? So it wasn't unique to Zuko... perhaps it's even famous? If you think about it, if you're going to use a mask to go undercover, it would be best to use a common mask. Zuko 200IQ! The comics that continue after the show go deeper on what the mask is and what it means to Zuko, but for now, let's just go off of what the show is giving us. More on the blue spirit later.

Nothing like a fat man singing for his dinner!

Iroh and Zuko have been traveling together for a while now, I'm guessing a couple weeks. While Iroh is happy wherever he goes, living a simple life one meal to the next, Zuko... isn't. He looks visibly distraught from having to stoop so low. He was once a prince, now a beggar. It's such a shock to his system that he doesn't know how to deal with it, resorting to bottling it up and letting his anger brew. Anger towards the world, anger towards Aang (WHY AM I SO AANGRY?!?!), anger towards Azula, but no anger towards Iroh. I believe the events of B2C1, The Avatar State, changed his relationship with his uncle. After Zuko let out his pent up anger towards Iroh, uncle had his back by saying family sticks together. It was Azula that stabbed him in the back! At least he has that going for him.

 

Let's talk about the structure of the episode. We start with a short sequence of Zuko and Iroh, the majority in the middle is all about the Gaang in the swamp (not weaving in other story threads), then it ends with a short Zuko sequence. It's interesting because most episodes decide to cut between the Gaang and Iroh/Zuko throughout, or decide to focus on the Gaang entirely. I believe this is due to the tension and eery-ness that the swamp location provides. It's a unique type of location that demands full attention. Just imagine if we cut from the swamp monster to Iroh singing "They kiss so sweet that you really got to meet the girls from Ba Sing Se!" The swamp would totally kill Iroh's vibe! At least, that's my best guess anyway. 

Aang lookin' like he bout to harvest some coffee beans.

Appa doesn't look too happy. But for real though, this episode has some of the best Appa and Momo interactions in the series! They've become a lot more emotive this season, haven't they?

Is that a lemu or a rabbit-bat?

Woah! Nothing spiritual here, Sokka. It's, it's, it's a trick of the light! He's just hungry! Or it's avatar stuff, and we all know that doesn't count! Sokka's perspective represents the scientifically-minded folk watching the show, and the creators knew most viewers would be. They're talking directly to YOU, through Sokka!

I don't know why but I really like them huddled together in fear. It's oddly heartwarming.

Never realized this until now, but Huu (woke swamp monster dude) may have been bending these vines. But did he? Well at the end of the episode, a tree branch slaps that bird in the rear (woah I just wound up... here?). So the jungle plants CAN move on their own. Now that I think about it, it probably wasn't Huu. He wouldn't be up in the middle of the night, nor does this seem like his style of bending. 

I love this timelapse shot of Aang. I wrote about why this technique is subtly mind-bending in The Winter Solstice pt. 1: The Spirit World. Basically, showing a character standing still while the sun moves a lot gives a creepy, other-worldy feeling. Of course this lines up perfectly with the episodes this film technique is used in. 

Oh my God I love the way he says "Dinner." 😂

Appa takes no shit from no catgator. PHUGH!!

I get it now, the director of the movie that doesn't exist only watched one scene with Momo. THIS IS THE ONE!!

Oof. The swamp must have a pretty fucked up sense of humor...

"You didn't protect me."

Everyone out here just having visions. Pigs on the wing? Oh, what could it mean?? Was it all just a dream? Some trippy stuff for a kids' show (tHiS iS nOT a KidZ ShOw). "I'll believe in visions of the future when pigs fly." - Sokka, probably.

Um excuse me, what??? 😂

Love these guys. Due on the left, Tho on the right. Look et there, Tho! The swamp guy designs are awesome! We also get a mention of another avatar mash-up: Possum Chicken.

You've got to keep an open mind, dear reader. There's waterbenders in places you'd never think about. Check out how their bending style differs from what we've seen of Katara and Master Paku. Due uses straight arm circles to propel the boat, and is later seen doing a wild dance with his feet. Northern water tribe bending is much more flowing, like bending the arms and moving gracefully through the stances.

The center of spiritual energy in the swamp: the banyan grove tree. What the spiritual oasis was to the northern water tribe, this majestic tree is to the swamp. Giving me James Cameron Avatar vibes.

So cool. Oh and poor Sokka.

Here's a fun easter egg. This is the same crown that Momo put on Katara's head in The Blue Spirit! She kept it with her the whole time! MY QUEEN! And is it just a coincidence that it's during the same episode Zuko returns to the blue spirit mask? I doubt it.

 

"Now what would a lemu need a shirt fir?"

Katara is getting REAL creative with her bending. I absolutely love this sequence:

Water blade! Katara looks like she's preparing swampy cinnamon rolls.

As a side note, I first thought it was a little weird that Huu immediately stopped fighting when Aang accused him of calling him there. But knowing his spiritual connection to the swamp, it makes a lot more sense. Just the fact that the swamp called this stranger here, to Huu that must have been a sign he was important. Oh, and he's the Avatar? Well follow me!  

We're here at my favorite part of the episode, and one of my favorite scenes in the entire show. I'm so excited! This damn show, man... It introduced a whole generation of western kids to Eastern spirituality and philosophy. As a spiritual seeker myself, it almost brings a tear to my eye. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

"Oh the swamp is a mystical place all right. It's sacred. I reached enlightenment right here under the banyan-grove tree. I heard it calling me, just like you did." says Huu. The ideas of mysticism, sacredness, and enlightenment broadcasted to kids, maybe for the first time in their lives. Wonderful stuff.

Huu continues, "See this whole swamp is actually just one tree spread out over miles. Branches spread and sink, take root, and spread some more. One big, living organism. Just like the entire world."

 

Everything is connected. Everything is both dependent on and supportive of everything else. Society, and you, don't exist in a vacuum. Note that Avatar was made before climate change was such a pressing issue as it is today. What Huu is pointing to is that we are all ONE THING. 

 

"Sure. You think you're any different from me or your friends or this tree? If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together. You can feel everything growing. We're all living together, even if most folks don't act like it. We all have the same roots and we are all branches of the same tree." says Huu. 

 

Did you hear that? You're not different from a tree. Actual heavy stuff, I can't believe they had the balls to put these truths in a kid's program. 

 

The nature of reality is growth and death, flow and obstruction. These processes aren't only individual, they also happen collectively. We all spring from the same source.

 

 

What's actually being said here goes way beyond the physical. Come take my hand into the metaphysical...

 

"In the swamp, we see visions of people we've lost, people we loved, folks we think are gone. But the swamp tells us they're not. We're still connected to them. Time is an illusion and so is death."

 

As a society, we tend to think of time and death as absolutes. Immovable laws of a material world. That's what you were taught from a very young age. But what if they're not? What if it was possible to KNOW they're not, not just as a philosophical musing, but as a deep knowing through direct experience? This is essentially what enlightenment is, and it's possible. Like in The Matrix, Neo wanted to show the world what was possible... but it's up to you to walk through the door. Neo ends the movie with this message into the telephone: "I'm gonna show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders and boundaries… a world where anything is possible. Where you go from here is a choice a leave to you."

 

So what is enlightenment? It's the recognition that all boundaries which you thought were rigid and stale are actually illusions. It's the recognition through experience or pure insight that what You are is not a body or a mind, but that awareness of it all, not located within time or space. Rather, time and space are happening within that eternal awareness which You are. To circle back to the episode, what Huu is pointing to implicitly is that everything is one, which is the realization you have when all dualities collapse. Hot vs. Cold, Life vs. Death, Beauty vs. Ugliness, Other vs. Self, Black vs. White, etc. These dualities are not real, in fact, they are created by the mind, your ego. This concept of one-ness is known as nonduality (not-two), and is the focal teaching of many eastern traditions such as Neo Advaita, Zen Buddhism, and Taoism. Even the Aztecs knew of this, as recorded in their Nahua philosophy.       

Imagine a world where every human being was taught these truths. That they are all connected to everyone else. Feeling a deep sense of nature's wisdom and a sense of duty to care for it and be in harmony with it. In this world, racism could barely be entertained as a possibility, just like we think of slavery today. I know without a shadow of a doubt that's where we are evolving as a species, the question is how long until we fucking wake up? It doesn't seem like it sometimes, but amazing things are happening right now. As Huu said, if you listen closely, you can hear the whole world breathing together. Can you? The breath is the gateway to the soul.   

Aang's connection to Appa, visualized by traveling through the root system which all living things share. Beautiful.

"Set my lines by the river bed! Caught ten fish and I killed 'em dead! Cut 'em and gut 'em and I tossed the heads in the water to keep them catgators fed." 🎵🎶

"That means we're kin!"

HAHA!!

Interesting detail I just noticed on this rewatch: this swamp guy uses waterbending to stir the pot! You can hear swishing sounds as he waves his hand over it. This isn't really a spoiler, but Katara does this later in the series, but somehow I never noticed this one! This show, no, even this very episode, sets up many things so well... Wow, I wish I could talk about them now! I'll remember when the time comes.

Natives who live in jungles build their living spaces suspended above the ground just like this. Great detail!

HA! Oh God... it's cursed!

Bye, swamp. I won't miss this obnoxious bird.

Ok, remember the opening shot of the episode and how I commented on how detailed it was for being so short? Tying back in with architecture, this extremely fast scene impressed me; it's blurry because of how quickly it pans down. Here's this wonderful painting of a detailed city on a hill, and they use it for LESS THAN A SECOND, just to establish the setting for Zuko's return as the blue spirit. How much work went into designing the cities they show for literally one second this episode?? Blows my mind. 

It's the Blue Spirit baby!!! Awesome! But... you may be scratching your head as to why. Well, let's think about it for a minute. In The Blue Spirit, Zuko donned the mask to infiltrate the fire nation prison in order to capture the Avatar to restore his honor blah blah blah. In The Swamp, he wears the mask to mug a guy and steal his dual swords (the same man from the opening sequence). Ok. Does the mask represent honor? Well if it did, then why is he wearing the mask to mug this guy in the night? No, it's not about honor. What if it's dishonor? Selfishness? He wanted to capture Aang for selfish reasons, and he mugged the same guy that (he felt) dishonored him earlier that day. So honing in further, could it be revenge? Zhao took Aang, and Zuko had a beef with Zhao in episodes 3 and 8. There's elements of pride, selfishness, revenge, and dishonor tied to this mask. 

 

So it seems Zuko puts on the mask in order to do darker things. Things he may actually be ASHAMED of doing. You see, if it was just revenge, the classic movie trope is that, at the end, you take off the mask so the person who wronged you gets to see who you are. You want to rub it in their face; you want them to realize they messed with the wrong guy. However, Zuko doesn't take off the mask. It's not about revenge, nor is it just about keeping his identity a secret. What if he wants to hide these acts from himself? Putting on a mask is just a small mental gymnastics routine away from becoming another person. What if he needs to believe it wasn't him who betrayed his nation and stole the avatar away? That it wasn't him who mugged a man and stole his swords? And if that's true, what would that say about Zuko?

Conclusion:

 

The Swamp is a great episode, but admittedly I wasn't the biggest fan of it as a whole until this viewing. Trust me, this one gets better on repeats after you watch the entire show. I couldn't talk about half of the insights I got on this viewing, but fear not, it's stored away in my smooth brain. My previous nitpicks of it were the dull color pallatte (due entirely to location) and relative lack of action, but now I'm seeing that these greatly served the episode. What I found notable was the episode structure, groundbreaking spiritual content that was actually handled well (in a Nickelodeon no less), tons of story lines set up (even more than I thought on a first and second viewing), Appa and Momo's brilliant interactions, and the swamp folk designs. Oh, and Sokka had a nice joke about a tea party.

Bonzu, what about the cyclone? Was that not the question the episode left us on?? Why yes, but I'm going to leave that mystery up to you! 😉

I give The Swamp 8.5/10 catgators. 

Make sure to drink plenty of water, tell your loved ones that you love em, and most importantly, stay golden. I'll catch you on the next one. (This is an Unkle Aege favorite, it just felt right xD).