The Beach

Writer: Katie Mattila

Director: Joaquim Dos Santos

Guest Stars: Erik Von Detten (Chan), Ross Thomas (Ruon-Jian)

Overview
''Zuko, Azula, Mai and Ty Lee go on vacation to Ember Island against their wishes. They try to act like normal Fire Nation teens but have little success. They reveal their inner problems and discover more about each other. Meanwhile, Aang and friends are attacked by a mysterious assassin who has a deadly Firebending ability.''

Synopsis
Zuko, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee unwillingly go on vacation to Ember Island at Lo and Li's beach house, due to the fact Fire Lord Ozai is holding a restricted meeting with his advisers.

Meanwhile, Aang and friends rest up in an isolated quarry, where they think they'll be safe from getting spotted. Playing in the water, Aang is accidentally spotted by two bored Fire Nation soldiers, who send a message via Messenger Hawk to Fire Lord Ozai saying that the Avatar is still alive. However, the message is later intercepted by a Raven Eagle, owned by 'The Combustion Man', the Firebender assassin hired by Zuko to eliminate Aang.



Zuko, Azula, Mai and Ty Lee go to the beach to have some fun. Azula nastily crushes a kid's sand castle, while Ty Lee soon finds herself being approached by several boys, who try to please her. Zuko makes several unsuccessful attempts to impress Mai with pretty sea shells and ice cream. Azula pulls the group into a game of Kuai Ball with some other teens, plotting their strategy as if plotting a battle. Using their various skills, they easily overwhelm their opponents. Azula gets carried away, setting the net on fire and sinisterly gloating as if she had just crushed an enemy. Their game arouses the attentions of two boys named Chan and Ruon-Jian, who invite Ty Lee and Mai to a party; and after some persuasion, they reluctantly invite Zuko and Azula as well. Azula makes a point of not revealing her or her brother's royal identity; she explains that she wants to see what it is like to be a normal person for a change.

The group arrive at Chan's house early for the party. Azula tries to compliment Chan's outfit by saying it's 'sharp'. But again she gets carried away, saying it's sharp enough to puncture the hull of a Fire Nation Empire-Class Battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea. Zuko gets jealous of Ruon-Jian, thinking Mai is interested in him. Later, Ty Lee is flanked by a crowd of adoring boys and is forced to render them unconscious to escape. Seeing this, Azula calls Ty Lee a tease and says that none of the boys really cared about her. When Ty Lee starts crying, Azula hurriedly apologizes and confides that she was just jealous, and asks Ty Lee to give her some tips. She tells Azula to just smile and laugh at anything a boy tells her. To practice, Ty Lee poses as a guy, but Azula laughs way too loud, drawing everyone's attention.

Fully confident, Azula asks Chan for a tour of the house, after which they go to the veranda and flirt. After the two share a kiss, Azula loses control of the situation and maniacally exclaims that they could be the world's strongest couple and dominating the earth, while creating a blue fire in her both hands. Chan gets nervous and leaves in a hurry, leaving Azula disappointed.



After fetching her some food, Zuko finds Ruon-Jian talking to Mai. Zuko violently throws Ruon-Jian into a large pot across the room. Disgusted, Mai angrily tells Zuko that his temper is out of control. He tells her she doesn't feel anything and is a 'big blah'. Hurt and confused by this accusation, Mai tells Zuko that their relationship is over. Chan hears the sound of the shattering vase, and after Zuko's accusation by Ruon-Jian, Chan ejects Zuko from the party. Zuko heads off and goes to his family's abandoned vacation house where he reminisces about memories of himself as a child with his mother, father, and uncle. He spots a stone imprinted with his own baby hand print, only for his eyes to be drawn to an old family portrait hanging on the wall.



Meanwhile, Combustion Man arrives near the campsite of Aang and his friends. Toph sense the enemy's approach, commenting that a "metal man" is coming. The Combustion Man attacks, projecting rays of energy from his forehead tattoo that explode anything it touch. His bolts counter anything the gang throws at him, forcing the kids to take cover. Aang tells his friends to get on Appa and get ready to escape as he himself tries to lead the enemy away. Aang uses both Airbending and Earthbending to fend off the Combustion Man's attacks. Aang eventually escapes and rejoins the rest on Appa. Though Toph comments on the randomness of the encounter, Katara says that she feels that this new enemy seems to know exactly who they are.

Azula finds Zuko and tells him to come to the beach with her. Zuko tries to reconcile with Mai, but she is still cold towards him. Zuko burns his family's painting to help kindle a fire to keep them warm. Ty Lee wonders why he would burn something so precious, Zuko tells her to mind her own business, calling her a circus freak. Ty Lee tearfully reveals that she has six sisters exactly like her and went to the circus to be different, so being a circus freak was a compliment. Mai says that this is the reason Ty Lee wants so much attention; she received so little as a child with so many sisters. Ty Lee decides to turn the conversation to Mai, accusing her of having a "dingy, pasty, gray" aura.



Mai says she doesn't believe in auras, Zuko retorts she doesn't believe in anything. Mai goes into her own past, talking about her parents, who gave her everything she wanted so long as Mai behaved exactly as she was told. Her father's political career meant that Mai would always be under a spotlight, and thus could not live as freely as she would like. Azula deduces that that is the reason Mai stifles her true feelings so much and why she can't express herself, finally eliciting a sharp and emotional outburst from the normally indifferent Mai. When Zuko says that he likes it when she expresses herself, Mai refuses to let him touch her, saying that she's still angry. This pushes Zuko into a rant about his own life, where he admits that he's always angry but unsure why. The girls all pressure him into giving an answer, and he finally screams that he is angry at himself because he doesn't know the difference between right and wrong anymore.



Finally understanding what bothers Zuko so much, Mai returns to his side and says that the one thing she cares about is Zuko and kisses him once again. They then turn to the last member of the group; reluctantly, Azula delves into her own past and says that her mother thought she was a monster. Azula admits that this was indeed true, but that it still hurt to hear her own mother say so. With all their secrets out in the open, the heaviness between the four seems to vanish. Ty Lee says she will remember this night forever and that Lo and Li were right about the beach's ability to reveal people's true selves. She also states that she feels all smoothed.

To celebrate their revelations, Azula decides on a fitting end to their night - the four then head back to Chan's party, trashing the house and leaving it a ransacked mess. Together, the four of them forge their own memory of the place, uniting as friends for the first time in years.

Series Continuity

 * Walking to the abandoned beach house, Zuko has the same flashback seen in the The Avatar State and The Storm.
 * Several months later the beach house is once again occupied, this time by the Avatar and his friends, which also includes the newly joined Zuko. Zuko brought them to the beach house as a replacement hideout after Azula had chased them out of the Western Air Temple during "The Southern Raiders". Katara believed it's weird for them to hide from the Fire Lord in his own beach house, but Zuko assures her neither Ozai nor Azula would think to look there, as his family only came there when they were happy. The beach house would act as Team Avatar's hideaway until the arrival of Sozin's Comet.

Goofs

 * In the boat scene, after Zuko tells everyone that they're being sent away on a force vacation, he grabs the window frames. Here we can see there are two window frames between curtains. But when scene changes, there are three windows frames between curtains.
 * When Aang is swimming half-naked, Toph tells Aang to cover up his tattoos. This is a strange thing for Toph to point out, since she is blind and Aang is floating in the water. However, one could argue that Toph sensed Aang disposing of his robes prior to swimming, and thus knew his tattoos would be visible. It is also common sense not to swim fully-clothed. She also didn't sense the walls around them, but she could have just forgotten or disregarded them.
 * In the beach game Azula advises to serve the ball to the "girl with the silly pig-tails's" left. However during the scenes shown, only once does it go to the girl's left. This could be because no one bothers to follow Azula's strategy because their unique skills are superior and do not require it, or they just forget.
 * In one scene, Toph is seen from behind wearing a gold ring around her arm. In the next frame, she's shown in the front, not wearing it. Also, her arm brace is black and made of "space earth", not gold.

Trivia

 * This is the first episode where Azula shows genuine remorse. She does this when she apologizes to Ty Lee for insulting her.
 * The torch behind Azula also burns blue when she scares Chan. Whether she was aware of it is unknown.
 * This is the first and only time we see Ty Lee cry.
 * This is the second known time Ty Lee is called a "circus freak". Katara also called her that once in the episode "The Drill".
 * This is the first time in which we see Mai lose her temper outright, when she berated Zuko for his aggressive behavior, and later when she felt insulted by Azula.
 * Azula's feelings about Ursa are very similar to Zuko's feelings about Ozai. Both of them believing that the parent they feel rejected by favored the other sibling more. The only difference is that Ursa never did anything remotely similar to what Ozai did to Zuko.
 * This is the only episode from the whole Avatar series where we see Azula kiss someone (Chan).
 * In 'The Ember Island Players' Zuko claims that his family hadn't been on Ember Island since they were happy. Fans believe he was talking about his entire family, for Azula and Zuko had been there about a month ago.
 * Due to Azula being a "people person" mentioned in The Boiling Rock, Part 2, she easily figured out the weakness of their enemy while playing Kuai Ball.
 * Zuko's hair looks slightly different in this episode, perhaps because it is windswept.
 * The scene where everyone asks Zuko who he is mad at is similar to a scene in the movie [|The Breakfast Club].
 * The shape of the door knocker on the door of Chan's house closely resembles Zuko's Blue Spirit mask.