The Painted Lady


 * This is about the episode. For the spirit, see Painted Lady.

"The Painted Lady" is the third episode of season three of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the 43rd of the overall series. It debuted on October 5, 2007.

Overview
''The gang arrives at a Fire Nation village populated by sick and starving people. Katara wishes to stay and help them. She disguises herself as the Painted Lady, the river spirit of the village, healing the town's sick and providing food while they sleep. Aang is the first to discover the secret identity that Katara has adopted, and they destroy a nearby factory that had polluted the river, sparking soldiers to attack the village. Katara reveals herself as the Painted Lady and saves the villagers with the help of her friends.''

Synopsis
The group floats downstream on Appa in the middle of a river that seems to be mostly sludge. With little chance of catching any food, they decide to buy some food in the village of Jang Hui shortly after meeting up with Dock. This conflicts with Sokka's "Master Schedule," which plans every minute up to the Invasion Day.

The village happens to be in the middle of the river, which has been polluted by a nearby military factory. They are ferried to the village by Dock, a rather eccentric man. The village is in a deep depression. Many villagers are sick, and there is a lack of food because of the polluted water. Katara wishes to help these people, but Sokka says their overall mission is too important to stop to help everybody they come across. They buy some food from Xu, a shopkeeper who happens to bear a strong resemblance to Dock, except for a new hat. Before they leave, Katara gives one of the fish they bought to a small child, but as she sees him give it to his sick mother, she wishes she could do more.

That night, Sokka is trying to find a way to rearrange their schedule, and mentions that the solar eclipse will only occur for about eight minutes. In the morning, Appa is found lying on his side, looking rather sickly. It is later shown that his tongue is purple, causing concern among the group. Katara suggests that the village might have some herbs that can heal him.



When they get to the village, everybody happens to be in much better spirits. According to Xu, a legendary local river spirit known as the Painted Lady came and gave the village some more food. Given the fact that there is no medicine in the village, as the factory takes it all, Katara suggests letting Appa rest for another day.

That night, a thick fog comes across the village. The Painted Lady arrives and heals several of the sick. The child Katara helped earlier thanks her, and the Painted Lady leaves across the water.

The next day, Appa is still "sick," so they return to the village. The village is in even higher spirits, and the villagers have erected a large statue of the Painted Lady in thanks for healing their sick. Xu/Dock suggests that maybe the Painted Lady could help Appa out. Sokka skeptically notes that the Painted Lady's work will be all for nothing unless she helps them all the time, because as long as that factory is still there, the village is doomed, and he jokingly suggests that the Lady should use her "spirit magic" to just blow it up.



The next night, the Painted Lady turns out to actually be Katara. She once again puts on her disguise, but as she leaves, Momo wakes up, rousing Aang in turn. Seeing the Painted Lady, he tries to ask for her help, but she runs away. Aang chases her all the way to the village. Katara then gets very far ahead, since while Aang was running, he ran into a pole, and she thinks that she has lost him. But suddenly Aang pops out of nowhere and tells the "spirit" (Katara) that he is the Avatar. He then tells her that she was very pretty for a spirit and how the other spirits he meets are not very attractive.

He then eventually starts to see that the "spirit" looks very familiar to him and attempts many times to find out why, eventually Airbending the hat off her head, when he finally finds out Katara's secret: Appa's "illness" was the result of her feeding him berries that stained his tongue. Katara sadly confesses and apologizes for holding them there to help the village, but Aang naturally likes the idea, saying that it was great and that Katara was like a secret hero. Together, the two infiltrate the factory and wreck it, stopping the flow of pollution.

In the morning, the two arrive back at the camp and find Sokka and Toph waiting for them, having found out the truth on their own. As they prepare to leave, they see a squad of Fire Nation troops heading towards the town on Fire Nation jet skis, and realize that they must believe the villagers had sabotaged the factory. Katara is determined to stop them, and despite their argument, Sokka readily agrees to help her once he sees that she's set on helping.



At the village, General Mung accuses them not only of destroying the factory, but also for stealing the food and medicine that Katara (as The Painted Lady) had given them as well. The soldiers start attacking the village, but a gust of wind blows their flames out. Suddenly, a large mist began enveloping the town. With help from Appa, Toph, and Sokka providing spooky sound effects, Aang and Katara stage an encounter with the Painted Lady to defeat the troops and drive them away.

The villagers cheer the Painted Lady, but Dock/Xu notices that her face paint has smudged, and recognizes Katara. Several of the villagers get angry, but Sokka immediately stands up for her, saying that they should be thanking her instead of getting enraged. Before things got worse, Katara apologizes, tells the villagers that they need to deal with their own problems, and offers to help them clean up the river. Dock/Xu goes to get his brother Bushi, which consists of switching hats yet again. Bushi also confides that Dock happens to have Multiple Personality Disorder and is crazy.

The gang stays behind long enough to help the villagers clean up their river. That night, as Katara examines the water, a thick mist appears out of nowhere, and the real Painted Lady appears to thank her before disappearing into the mist.

Goofs

 * When Momo finally catches Aang at the beginning of the episode, immediately before Aang goes atop Appa, when he says, "You found me buddy!", Appa seems to be "lagging".
 * The layout of the town changes from scene to scene. (i.e.: When Katara gives the little boy her fish, to the right of Xu's shop there is a platform with a ramp that is inclined up, but when Sokka buys the two-headed fish the ramp is level with the water.) Of course this may be due to the fact that the entire town is a series of rafts, so it is completely possible to rearrange the buildings on the water.
 * When Katara is running from Aang while dressed as the Painted Lady, the reflection of the moon is a crescent moon, but when Aang discovers who the Painted Lady (Katara) is, the moon behind her is full.
 * When Katara took off her hat after Aang discovered her secret identity, her topknot was missing.
 * When the gang first visits town to buy fish, Xu hands Katara the fish. When she takes the fish her bracelets are missing. In the next scene when she gives the little boy a fish, they are back on.
 * When Katara says she thinks Appa is sick, Toph does not realize that she is lying. This could be because what she is saying is technically true. He could have been sick of the berries.
 * When the group arrives at the top of the river bank, Toph claims she can't see the village, yet it is built on stilts, which means that despite the fact that is in the middle of the river, it is still connected to the earth and therefore should have been detectable with Seismic Sense. It is possible that she sensed it but didn't realize that it was a village, or the fact that the ground the stilts were connected to was underwater may have interfered with her ability to detect seismic vibrations.
 * In the scene where Aang and Katara are destroying the factory, Katara bends clean water and floods the factory, but the river was shown to be polluted. She may have bent the water out of the earth in the river.

Trivia

 * It was stated in Avatar Extras that the Painted Lady is a Water Spirit and that the Moon Spirit and Water Spirit are closely related. This would make her related to Princess Yue.
 * Her mysterious and ominous appearance is somewhat similar to Princess Yue's appearance as the moon spirit.
 * The Painted Lady's makeup somewhat resembles the Kyoshi Warriors' makeup.
 * This episode is similar to "The Blue Spirit" in that a main character adopts a mysterious identity to sneak out at night.
 * The position of the hands on the statue of the Painted Lady is the Vitarka Mudrâ, the gesture of discussion and teaching that can be seen on some actual statues of Buddhas.
 * In the episode "Ember Island Players", Aang is seen wearing Xu's hat.
 * When following the Painted Lady, Aang mentions that he is friends with the panda spirit Hei Bai, who appeared in the Season One episodes "Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World" and "The Siege of the North, Part 2".
 * This is the first time Aang is seen using his uniform belt correctly as a belt, not as a headband.
 * This is the third time a character uses water to cut through metal in a factory. First is Koizilla (Aang and La) destroying one of the Fire Nation ships in "The Siege of the North, Part 2". Second was in "The Drill" as Aang and Katara weaken the braces of the drill that broke through Ba Sing Se's outer wall.
 * It is unknown where Katara got her outfit in being the Painted Lady.
 * Katara saying, "You have to help yourselves", is very similar to what she said in "Imprisoned": "They (prisoners) have to help themselves."
 * This is the first episode in which female Firebenders are shown other than Princess Azula.
 * When the Painted Lady appeared to confront General Mung, a child in the village said, "She's coming" which is very similar to Poltergeist's "They're here".
 * In what is likely another reference to film, General Mung mockingly asks the villagers, "Where's your Painted Lady now?", which echoes Edward G. Robinson's line in The Ten Commandments, "Where's your Messiah now?"
 * Katara is the third character in the series to undergo another alias to achieve a goal. The first person was Zuko, who disguised himself as the Blue Spirit in the first season to capture Aang from Zhao; the second was Toph, who became the Blind Bandit to escape her parents' restrictions.
 * Sokka's "master schedule" is actually a production schedule used by animators to plan out episodes and seasons.

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