The Beach

"The Beach" is the fifth episode of season three of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the 45th of the overall series. It debuted on October 19, 2007.

Overview
''Zuko, Azula, Mai and Ty Lee are sent on a forced vacation to Ember Island. They attempt to behave like typical Fire Nation teenagers, but experience little success. They eventually reveal their inner problems as they discover more about each other. Meanwhile, Aang and friends are attacked by a mysterious assassin with a deadly firebending ability.''

Synopsis
Zuko, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee are sent on vacation to Lo and Li's beach house on Ember Island, due to Fire Lord Ozai holding restricted meetings with his advisers. Zuko expresses his displeasure of being sent away on a forced vacation, stating that he feels as though he is being treated as a child. The boat pulls into the small port and the kids are greeted by Lo and Li. All of the teenagers, except for Ty Lee, express their disdain at their beach house. According to Mai, the pink seashell bedspread looked like "the beach threw up all over [it]". The sisters urge the kids to give Ember Island a chance, as the beach has a special way of smoothing even the most jagged of edges and revealing one's true self.

Meanwhile, Aang and friends relax in some secluded hot springs, where they believe they are safe from being spotted by the Fire Nation. Playing in the water, Aang is unknowingly seen by two bored Fire Nation soldiers, who recognize him and send a messenger hawk to Fire Lord Ozai, reporting the Avatar is still alive. The message is later intercepted, however, by a raven eagle, owned by Combustion Man, a firebender assassin hired by Zuko to eliminate Aang.



Zuko, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee go down 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, and she ends up being shaded and fanned by them. Zuko makes several unsuccessful attempts to impress Mai with pretty seashells 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 has 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; 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 arrives at Chan's house early for the party. Azula tries to compliment Chan's outfit by saying it's 'sharp'. However, 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 care about her. When Ty Lee starts crying, Azula hastily apologizes and confides that she was just jealous, then 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 dominate the Earth, while creating a blue fire in both her 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, smashing it. 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 senses the enemy's approach, commenting that a "metal man" is coming. Combustion Man attacks, projecting rays of energy from his forehead tattoo that explode upon impact. 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 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 joined the circus to mark herself as a unique individual, so being called 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, remarking that, despite Mai having been an only child for most of her life and receiving a lot of attention, she still has 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 she 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 while shooting fire in the air 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 him 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. When the door is answered, Zuko tells him that the party is over and the four of them begin destroying the house leaving Chan sobbing. Together, the four of them forge their own memory of the place, uniting as friends for the first time in years.

Credits

 * Written by:
 * Katie Mattila


 * Directed by:
 * Joaquim Dos Santos


 * Starring:
 * Zach Tyler Eisen - Aang
 * Mae Whitman - Katara
 * Jack DeSena - Sokka
 * Jessie Flower - Toph
 * Dante Basco - Prince Zuko
 * Dee Bradley Baker - Appa/Momo


 * Also starring:
 * Grey DeLisle - Azula
 * Cricket Leigh - Mai
 * Olivia Hack - Ty Lee
 * Erik Von Detten - Chan
 * Takayo Fisher - Lo/Li
 * Ross Thomas - Ruon-Jon


 * Additional voices:
 * Dee Bradley Baker
 * Marc Donato
 * Scott Menville
 * Max Roeg
 * Zach Throne

Series continuity

 * During his walk to the abandoned beach house, Zuko experiences the same flashback seen in the "The Avatar State" and "The Storm".
 * The music played at Chan's beach party is the same music played at Aang's dance party in "The Headband". It is also played a third time in "Sozin's Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King".
 * 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 was weird for them to hide from the Fire Lord in his own beach house, but Zuko assured 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 forced vacation, Zuko grabs the window frames. Here we can see there are two window frames between curtains. However, when scene changes, there are three windows frames between the curtains.
 * At the beginning when the Team Avatar is swimming, Toph tells Aang to cover up because his "tattoos are showing". Toph is blind; she would not notice anything like that. However, this goof can be explained away if she figured out about his tattoos from people talking about his arrows around her and was thus able to realize that his arrows were exposed when he was swimming around.
 * Before starting their match of kuai ball, 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 and Azula herself starts the game by serving to her right.
 * In one scene, Toph is seen from behind wearing a gold ring around her arm. In the next frame, she is shown in the front, not wearing it. Also, her arm brace is black and made of "space earth", not gold.
 * After Aang successfully escapes Combustion Man and lands on Appa's saddle, he embraces Katara. The animators made an obvious mistake, misplacing Aang's hand in an inappropriate location.
 * In the scene where Ty Lee gives Azula boy advice, there is a rug in the background that disappears and reappears several times.
 * After Zuko gets up after his imitation of Ty Lee, his distance from the campfire seems to change with each frame.

Trivia

 * The boat that the foursome travel on is similar to the ferry that Zuko and Iroh traveled in "The Serpent's Pass".
 * This is the only 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.
 * This is the only episode in which we see Ty Lee cry.
 * This is the second known time Ty Lee is labelled a "circus freak". Katara also called her that once in "The Drill".
 * This is the first time 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 to Azula even remotely similar to what Ozai did to Zuko.
 * This is the only episode from the entire series where we see Azula kiss someone.
 * 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", 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 is in the shape of a lion turtle's head.
 * The picture of the Royal Family at the abandoned beach house is very similar to real world photos of actual royal families, mostly the Czars of Russia and Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
 * This is the first episode where Mai's personality and Ty Lee's reason for joining the circus are explained.
 * This is also the first episode when Azula shows pain from an apparent lack of love from her mother, while also stating she's aware that she is troubled.
 * When Zuko takes off his shirt to play kuai ball, a bunch of blushing girls start giggling over him. This is probably a shoutout to Zuko's popularity with female fans of the show.
 * This scene was also a tribute to John Woo's work, as it contained many characteristics reminiscent of his movies e.g. : the pigeons flying in the background.
 * The exaggerated attractiveness of both Zuko and Ty Lee is possibly "fanservice", a common facet of anime.
 * According to the audio commentary, the beach's sand is gray due to volcanic ash.