Sorry to drop in anonymously long after the fact, but I've just finished the series and have been bouncing around the net looking for posts which articulate some of my mingled delight and unease at Avatar's take on gender roles, and yours does a great job, so thanks.
That being said, a few scattered thoughts. First, wrt to Sokka's training sequence: I'm probably willing to forgive it too much because it's just such a pretty episode (the same perhaps goes for the one with Hama...), and I agree that the 'for your first day!' moment is initially a wallbanger. But I'd say they do a lot to dilute the usual power-up fast forward problems: Sokka may be ridiculously handy in his final fight scene, but as you point out, he doesn't win. In fact, I'd say that the revelation that this is a *day long* training montage doesn't so much slip the episode into silly-power-up land so much as it lampshades the fact that it isn't a power-up episode at all, but one dedicated to showing the value of the 'Sokka style' used to such effect when Sokka beaned the library-spirit back in Book Two ('learn it!'). It's all about boosting Sokka's confidence in being the idea guy, not suddenly making him a sword master - as spelled out by Piandao at the close of the episode ('no, it certainly wasn't your skill...'). For me, the 'and this is just the first day' moment highlighted the fact that we hadn't actually seen Sokka do anything that couldn't be done in a day, or that didn't amount to his usual thinking-outside-the-box wackiness. Even the practice sword-fighting looked believably amateur to me. He needed a master, not a sword.
Then, of course, he gets an awesome space sword and a cool fight scene, so, yeah, I'm not claiming this episode didn't have its cake and eat it.
My take on this episode, though, does feed into my general satisfaction with Suki's role in the last few episodes. While I absolutely agree that the Kyoshi warriors as a group pretty much hail from the land of missed opportunities for girl bonding and adult female role models, Suki herself fills a pretty big gap in the final Gaang: she's their Piandao, a non-bending fighter with a sense of storied tradition behind her techniques and persona - not to mention a history of knocking some sense into Sokka. It's not perfectly done - she's still pretty much sitting at the girlfriend table - but I'll take it.
Sokka himself, of course, ends up firmly established as the plan guy - he even has to let go of his weapons (space sword, we hardly knew ye). He's essentially the Gaang's version of the Mechanist - interesting, in that the Mechanist himself is very pointedly not a White Lotus style Old Master, but instead starts out co-opted by the Fire Nation, and makes his bid for redemption in the failed Day of Black Sun invasion. Sokka, in contrast, is a core member of the younger group. It's this sense of historical progression as much as anything else which makes helps make up for the missteps on gender roles in the series as a whole: the wins against sexism on the part of the kids aren't isolated, single-episode aesops, but part and parcel of establishing a new order.
Oh, and another thought re Sokka and 'the power of stuff' - I found it delightful that Sokka and Aang both get important, exciting, dignified fight scenes in Kyoshi drag (well, Aang shucks off the kimono, but still). Even Zuko spends half a series in a fetching apron. And while, yes, Azula's mirror scene did start warning bells ringing for me, it's worth noting that her hair-chopping may be a lady-specific sign of craziness, but it's far from gratuitous: it's a callback to her introduction ('one hair out of place'), but also the final significant haircut in a series which has given at least one to all its male leads. This is a big Unfortunate Implication in and of itself, of course - when Azula does some decisive haircutting, it's a defeat. Equally, Katara's flowing locks in season 3 arguably reinforce the way her (moon-based! female-taught! potentially eeevil!) powers serve to lock her into girl-mode (rather than, say, leader-mode) by the series' end. But Azula's haircut also echoes Zuko's shameful loss of his ponytail-thing at the start of the second season - it's far from being a simplistic marker of lady-craziness. In fact, it's the kind of little physical detail that the series is often more sure-footed with than with bigger stuff - the material world building is just fantastic.
One last thought re Katara - I think her character, and the series as a whole, suffered from her role as 'the girl' in season one. She's a very well-executed example, for sure, but not really a groundbreaking one - even her struggle for her rights in the Northern Water Tribe isn't that unusual for a fantasy heroine - and I think it really unbalanced the series when it came to establishing her relationship with Aang as the show's big romance and paramount emotional arc. It's sweet, for sure, but it doesn't have half the complexity and emotional resonance that the writers managed to give to the relationship between Zuko and Iroh - I'd say it even suffers in comparison to the other romantic relationships, which I thought were very well done. Poor Katara had to be *the* girl of the show in season one, while Sokka and Aang both get to step much further away from the conventional limits of their 'hero' and 'comic relief/sidekick' roles, and while her later development did a lot to show what this would really mean - the ramifications of her 'team mum' persona are particularly well explored - I'd say this came at the expense of showing why this meant she had to be *Aang's* girl, not to mention vice versa. The writers tried - that dance in 'The Headband', for instance - but I never really bought it, and I think 'more girls earlier' might have let the relationship develop a lot more organically, rather than remaining suspiciously close to its roots in top-girl gets top-boy.
Phew! Apparently Avatar is pretty fun to talk about: thanks for the impetus to get all that off my chest.
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That being said, a few scattered thoughts. First, wrt to Sokka's training sequence: I'm probably willing to forgive it too much because it's just such a pretty episode (the same perhaps goes for the one with Hama...), and I agree that the 'for your first day!' moment is initially a wallbanger. But I'd say they do a lot to dilute the usual power-up fast forward problems: Sokka may be ridiculously handy in his final fight scene, but as you point out, he doesn't win. In fact, I'd say that the revelation that this is a *day long* training montage doesn't so much slip the episode into silly-power-up land so much as it lampshades the fact that it isn't a power-up episode at all, but one dedicated to showing the value of the 'Sokka style' used to such effect when Sokka beaned the library-spirit back in Book Two ('learn it!'). It's all about boosting Sokka's confidence in being the idea guy, not suddenly making him a sword master - as spelled out by Piandao at the close of the episode ('no, it certainly wasn't your skill...'). For me, the 'and this is just the first day' moment highlighted the fact that we hadn't actually seen Sokka do anything that couldn't be done in a day, or that didn't amount to his usual thinking-outside-the-box wackiness. Even the practice sword-fighting looked believably amateur to me. He needed a master, not a sword.
Then, of course, he gets an awesome space sword and a cool fight scene, so, yeah, I'm not claiming this episode didn't have its cake and eat it.
My take on this episode, though, does feed into my general satisfaction with Suki's role in the last few episodes. While I absolutely agree that the Kyoshi warriors as a group pretty much hail from the land of missed opportunities for girl bonding and adult female role models, Suki herself fills a pretty big gap in the final Gaang: she's their Piandao, a non-bending fighter with a sense of storied tradition behind her techniques and persona - not to mention a history of knocking some sense into Sokka. It's not perfectly done - she's still pretty much sitting at the girlfriend table - but I'll take it.
Sokka himself, of course, ends up firmly established as the plan guy - he even has to let go of his weapons (space sword, we hardly knew ye). He's essentially the Gaang's version of the Mechanist - interesting, in that the Mechanist himself is very pointedly not a White Lotus style Old Master, but instead starts out co-opted by the Fire Nation, and makes his bid for redemption in the failed Day of Black Sun invasion. Sokka, in contrast, is a core member of the younger group. It's this sense of historical progression as much as anything else which makes helps make up for the missteps on gender roles in the series as a whole: the wins against sexism on the part of the kids aren't isolated, single-episode aesops, but part and parcel of establishing a new order.
Oh, and another thought re Sokka and 'the power of stuff' - I found it delightful that Sokka and Aang both get important, exciting, dignified fight scenes in Kyoshi drag (well, Aang shucks off the kimono, but still). Even Zuko spends half a series in a fetching apron. And while, yes, Azula's mirror scene did start warning bells ringing for me, it's worth noting that her hair-chopping may be a lady-specific sign of craziness, but it's far from gratuitous: it's a callback to her introduction ('one hair out of place'), but also the final significant haircut in a series which has given at least one to all its male leads. This is a big Unfortunate Implication in and of itself, of course - when Azula does some decisive haircutting, it's a defeat. Equally, Katara's flowing locks in season 3 arguably reinforce the way her (moon-based! female-taught! potentially eeevil!) powers serve to lock her into girl-mode (rather than, say, leader-mode) by the series' end. But Azula's haircut also echoes Zuko's shameful loss of his ponytail-thing at the start of the second season - it's far from being a simplistic marker of lady-craziness. In fact, it's the kind of little physical detail that the series is often more sure-footed with than with bigger stuff - the material world building is just fantastic.
One last thought re Katara - I think her character, and the series as a whole, suffered from her role as 'the girl' in season one. She's a very well-executed example, for sure, but not really a groundbreaking one - even her struggle for her rights in the Northern Water Tribe isn't that unusual for a fantasy heroine - and I think it really unbalanced the series when it came to establishing her relationship with Aang as the show's big romance and paramount emotional arc. It's sweet, for sure, but it doesn't have half the complexity and emotional resonance that the writers managed to give to the relationship between Zuko and Iroh - I'd say it even suffers in comparison to the other romantic relationships, which I thought were very well done. Poor Katara had to be *the* girl of the show in season one, while Sokka and Aang both get to step much further away from the conventional limits of their 'hero' and 'comic relief/sidekick' roles, and while her later development did a lot to show what this would really mean - the ramifications of her 'team mum' persona are particularly well explored - I'd say this came at the expense of showing why this meant she had to be *Aang's* girl, not to mention vice versa. The writers tried - that dance in 'The Headband', for instance - but I never really bought it, and I think 'more girls earlier' might have let the relationship develop a lot more organically, rather than remaining suspiciously close to its roots in top-girl gets top-boy.
Phew! Apparently Avatar is pretty fun to talk about: thanks for the impetus to get all that off my chest.