The Runaway

"The Runaway" is the seventh episode of season three of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the 47th of the overall series. It debuted on November 2, 2007.

Overview
''Team Avatar is low on money, so Toph uses her Earthbending to scam Fire Nation civilians out of their funds, earning her Katara's disapproval. Toph thinks Katara is acting too motherly, and a rift forms within the group. To patch things up, Katara decides to pull a scam with Toph, but they are caught by an assassin, dubbed Combustion Man by Sokka. He uses them as bait in an attempt to kill Aang, but Katara's quick thinking saves the day. As the group rests for the night, Toph, with Katara's help, sends a letter to her parents.''

Synopsis
The episode opens with Toph hurriedly running towards a statue in Fire Fountain City, trying to evade someone. She is captured by several guards, who trap her in a net, and yells at Katara, stating that she betrayed her. Katara replies that Toph brought this upon herself and that she had no choice. Toph is dragged away by the guards while still glaring at Katara, who stands firmly by the statue.

The episode then backtracks to three days before the incident. Katara and Toph are training Aang, who is blindfolded and must use seismic sense to detect their attacks. When Toph accidentally hits Katara in the chest with a rock, the two start bickering, then start battling each other. Aang, still blindfolded, tries to figure what is going on from a distance. Sokka hides behind a rock, then loudly screams, "Sneak attack!" and makes a failed attempt to strike Aang. Aang then states it's not a sneak attack if he yells "sneak attack".



The fight between Toph and Katara continues with the two wrestling in mud. Aang interrupts them and they stop. While Katara goes off to clean up, Toph suggests to the boys that they should go and have some fun. Aang, Sokka and Toph go into town with only one silver piece left to spend. Toph suggests they get more money from a gambling game below them. She knows through her Earthbending that the Dealer is cheating others. She uses her bending to cheat back, earning them forty silver pieces. When they arrive back at camp, Katara advises them not to do it anymore. However, even when Aang makes an Avatar promise not to do so, they don't listen. Later on, Toph cheats at a dice-like game and a test-your-strength game, winning even more money. She also pretends to get run over by a noble's carriage so that Sokka, dressed as a Fire Nation soldier, can scam the noble by accepting money for silence.

Katara continues to say that these scams are dangerous and immoral. Toph tells her to quit acting like everyone's mother. When Katara suggests Toph is making a fuss because she secretly misses her own parents, Toph angrily walks off.

After going into town to buy a Messenger Hawk, named Hawky, Sokka finds a wanted poster for 'The Runaway' (a.k.a. Toph). Horrified, Sokka tears down the poster and later shows it to Toph who is delighted at the nickname and how much money is being offered for her return. Toph convinces Sokka to keep the wanted poster a secret from Katara by giving him funds for Appa's armor and expensive atlases.



While going through Toph's stuff, Katara discovers the wanted poster and has an argument with Toph, in which Toph angrily replied that Katara is not her mother and should not tell her what to do. The two of them from then on are on strict no-speaking terms. Sokka tries to write an apology message pretending to be Toph sent by Hawky to Katara but she easily finds out because Toph can't write. He later talks to Toph to try to mend the rift between her and Katara. As they discuss how Katara's motherly instincts can also be supportive and nurturing, Katara (who is bathing in the water beneath the cliff side where they sit to chat) listens to them. Sokka reveals how Katara took on the role of their mother after her death, so much so that, to Sokka she eventually replaced the face of their mother. Toph admits that she appreciates Katara's motherly nature, and believes Katara cares for her more than her real mother ever did.

A touched Katara later approaches Toph and suggests that she and Toph work together to collect the bounty that Toph has accumulated as the 'ultimate scam.' The group is very surprised (especially Aang and Sokka, who faint while foaming at the mouth), but Katara is insistent that she can show her fun side.



After Katara fakes handing Toph in to the authorities, which was the first scene of the episode, the entire scenario turns out to be a trap set by Combustion Man. Katara and Toph are placed in a prison made of wood, material that neither of them can bend. As Aang and Sokka battle Combustion Man, Toph and Katara try to think of a way to escape the cage. Katara suggests that Toph uses her meteorite bracelet to make a saw, until Toph says she left it at camp. Exhausted, Katara wipes her forehead and discovers it covered in sweat beads. She then jumps up and starts to run in place. When Toph asks what she is doing, Katara replies, "I'm making my own water!" She then Waterbends her own sweat to escape the prison, earning Toph's praise. Katara and Toph race to help Aang, arriving just in time to save him from Combustion Man. Toph accidentally manages to hit Combustion Man on his third eye tattoo with a pebble, knocking him back. He gets up and attempts to launch another explosion in the group's direction, only to find his chi blocked. The air around him explodes and the group escapes. While running away, Sokka renames their opponent Combustion Man.

At the end, Toph realizes she does not hate her parents after all. With Katara acting as a scribe, she writes down a heart-felt message for her parents that gets delivered using Hawky. The episode ends with Sokka returning and asking where Hawky is, not knowing that the girls used him.

Series Continuity

 * This is the first time Aang demonstrates the ability to use Toph's seismic sense. He uses it again during the finale, "Sozin's Comet, Part 4: Avatar Aang".
 * When Sokka reaches down to grab a paintbrush to write the fake letter to Katara from Toph, next to the jar of ink, we see the jeweled monkey that Iroh bought from the pirates in the episode, "The Waterbending Scroll".
 * Hawks appeared in the Avatar Series Pilot, in particular Zuko's pet hawk and also in the episodes The Blue Spirit and Return to Omashu. Momo and Zuko's hawk had animosity towards each other as Momo and Hawky do in the series.
 * The beard Sokka wears while impersonating a soldier was worn in "The Headband" to impersonate Aang's father, "Wang Fire". It is worn by him again in "Nightmares and Daydreams".
 * First seen in "The Waterbending Scroll", a grinning Monkey Statue was bought by Iroh from the Pirate Ship Boutique. It was seen again, four episodes later in "The Blue Spirit" sitting with Iroh on the ship deck near the end of the episode. However five episodes later when Zuko's ship was blown up, the ominous monkey statue was presumed lost. An exact replica is shown, in this episode while Sokka was writing his letter. Interestingly enough, four episodes later, Team Avatar's invasion plan fails.
 * Sokka's wish to make an armor for Appa became a reality in the episode "The Day of Black Sun, Part 1: The Invasion".
 * Sokka was also shown making armor for Appa in the episode "Nightmares and Daydreams"
 * The method of incapacitating Combustion Man by striking his third eye is used again in "The Western Air Temple".
 * In this episode, Toph cheats a scam artist, claiming that she "cheated a cheater". This is similar to what Katara said about stealing in "The Waterbending Scroll", stating that, "Stealing is wrong . . . Unless it's from pirates!" Oddly, Katara is opposed to Toph's scams, despite this similarity.
 * It's possible the ensuing problems with the Pirates is what showed Katara the errors of her ways, hence her warning Toph that what she is doing will only end in bringing undue attention to Team Avatar - Katara knows first hand that's how things go.
 * In "The Waterbending Scroll," Katara also may have not have opposed stealing from the pirates because the scroll would help teach Aang Waterbending, and she also wished to further her Waterbending skills. Since the pirates had originally stolen the scroll from a Waterbender, she probably saw it as "stealing it back."

Goofs

 * When Katara prepares to bend in the beginning of the training session, the dark red stripe at the bottom of her skirt is gone.
 * When Toph talks about raising the prize from twenty silver pieces to forty, The Dealer only adds about five pieces to the bag, never enough to make it forty. He might have been trying to cheat her again, due to her blindness. This could also be because the Avatar world has a different way of counting currency in single coins. (i.e. a nickel = five cents, or five pennies, etc.)
 * When Toph comes back after getting the groceries, there is a bite on her apple. Afterwards, however, the apple she is eating doesn't have a bite.
 * When Toph stumbles back while holding the huge hammer, she becomes out of range of the platform. She shouldn't have been able to make the distance. Although when she kicks the hammer up it could have pulled her back in range (since her feet do leave the ground).
 * When Katara confronts Toph with the wanted poster, Katara is barefoot, but later in the argument, when we see it at a birds-eye view, Katara is wearing sandals.
 * Toph informs The Dealer that she is blind. But at the same time, she takes a coin from Aang and hands it to the dealer like she isn't blind. When she wins, she announces her victory without anyone informing her, which still contradicts the scam she was pulling off.
 * When Sokka and Toph are talking about Katara, we see that the cliff they're on is too thick for their feet to hang past it. But when Katara notices them from below, she can see their forelegs and feet.
 * Toph doesn't have soles on her shoes. When she gets dragged away by Fire Nation soldiers, though, there are soles on her shoes. The same thing happens when Aang, Katara, Sokka and Toph are running away from Combustion Man after his chi got blocked.
 * At the shop when Katara is collecting the reward money, Combustion Man comes in with a golden/copper-colored arm instead of a silver one, though this could be due to lighting.
 * When Toph is playing the dice rolling game, she Earthbends so that the face-up side of the stick matches the other one that's already landed. However, being blind, she would have no idea which image was face-up at the time, or how far to adjust the stick that was still rolling.

Trivia

 * When Toph is taken by the Fire Nation Police, all three of the officers who arrest her are women, except the one officer Katara speaks to after she "betrays" Toph.
 * Toph pretending to be hit by a carriage carrying a wealthy merchant is very similar to a real insurance scam called a Flopsy.
 * This is the only episode Hawky appears in. After being sent away with a message to Toph's parents, the bird is never seen again.
 * During this episode Toph says to Katara, "Because it's fun and you hate fun," even though in "Tales of Ba Sing Se" Katara says "It's about time we did something fun together", referring to getting their makeovers together. However, Katara and Toph may have different definitions of fun; Toph may already be holding some resentment against Katara against this point (explaining their mud fight earlier in the episode) and therefore be biased against her idea of "fun".
 * Sokka finally thinks of a lasting name for their unknown attacker dubbed Combustion Man.
 * The Fire Nation woman standing nearby when Toph is scamming the circus bell is wearing a very similar outfit to her.
 * When The Dealer begins his game with Toph, rather than remove the rock from underneath the cup (and away from the table), he adds more rocks onto the table. This is to increase the odds of the player winning the first round and draws them into the scam.
 * When Sokka is considering buying a messenger hawk he says that he "wouldn't have to talk to people", he could "just send them messages". This could be a possible reference to how people text message one another.
 * Toph's ability to know when she had won caused authorities to believe she was not actually blind. A section of her wanted poster reads "She disguises herself as a blind person..."
 * According to the extras, the wanted poster had a 1,000 gold piece reward for Toph. When Katara is reading the wanted poster she says, "... you're worth more than ten times that you made in all your scams combined." This shows that between all the copper, silver and gold pieces, she never collected more than 100 gold pieces worth. However, this is probably a lot of money, considering that the economy and the Fire Nation seems to be doing well, and therefore inflation is probably down.
 * It is interesting to note that the officials imprisoned Toph and Katara in a wooden cell, seeing as almost no one outside of Team Avatar is aware of the existence of Metalbending. While it is possible that Combustion Man told the guards about Toph's unique ability, it is unlikely as it was never used in Combustion Man's presence. It is also possible it was simply faster and easier to have made.
 * This is one of the times that Toph shows that she can "see" rocks that are not attached to the ground.
 * This is the first and only episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender that begins in the middle of a story and then flashes back.
 * According to Avatar Extras, the town was once named North Chung-Ling, but the construction of the giant statue of Fire Lord Ozai caused the people to change the name to Fire Fountain City.
 * Though Katara disapproves of Toph scamming the con man, she appears to have the same attitude about stealing from pirates (who are thieves) in "The Waterbending Scroll".

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