We start with a history lesson. Tenzin, who can fly, decides to start his new students, not raised by air benders and not used to wearing a uniform and abstaining from meat, with the sad story of a long-deceased Air Bending Guru who fasted. And fasted. And fasted some more. The story is, literally, about every single day that his students begged him to eat, but he didn't need it, because he sustained himself with the energy of the universe.
Is there a special technique to make air bender stories not suck?
No one is really listening. The class looks and sounds like fifth-graders on a field trip, waiting for the chance to go see the dinosaurs, and getting a boring talk instead. Only one student, an acolyte who actually gained air bending at Harmonic Convergence, even wants to answer Tenzin's questions. Bumi is outright eating boogers, which will be theme of this episode. And when he's done feasting on phlegm, he sticks spirit bunny pal Bumju on his head, jacks his shirt collar up, and pretends to be the Air Guru, with the head of a bunny spirit. Even Jinora, raised on this stuff, gives out a giggle. Tenzin is less than amused, but his students seem to perk up.
Come on Tenzin, this is funny!
The students practically riot later in the day, after watching Tenzin do crazy loop-de-loops with a sky bison over the Air Temple. They want to do that! Tenzin knocks that idea down, telling them it takes years of practice to ride a sky bison. And besides, they don't have that many. Kai, ever helpful little urchin, points out a herd floating through the valley the Air Temple towers over. Tenzin, after getting all grammar nerd on Kai, tells his students that those are wild bison, and would take years to train for riding. As they look out wistfully on a new generation of Air Bender Rides, they spot two sky bison approaching.
Like a furry, open top mini van
It's the family! They've brought the vomiting baby, the original new air bender Dan, and the few others who had found Air Temple Island after Harmonic Convergence. Tenzin is happy with the new students, and even happier to see Pema, though she and Kya have disturbing news for Tenzin. They play it down, but note that Zaheer's gotten away and stole a pendant from Tenzin's study. Kya, trying to identify it, butchers the name of the Air Bender Guru it belonged to. Tenzin notes that it's Air Guru Laghima, which sends Kya into a rehash of the Air Guru story she hated most of all. Tenzin is horrified to find out it's the one he was just teaching.
This season has shown Tenzin reacting, usually with shock and sadness, at how little is known about his culture and history, and how little anyone even cares about it. Even other air benders seem bored with stories of gurus who discovered enlightenment. Like a Renaissance Fair goer in a room of Star Wars fans. Will he ever learn how to connect with people whose ancestor wasn't the most famous Air Bender ever?
Tenzin has to cut the talk with his wife and sister short- he's got a call on the Temple Radio. What would Guru Laghima say about a radio at an Air Temple? I think I know, although Tenzin seems content to communicating over radio waves and not the energy of the universe. He sits down for an update from Korra. He's incredulous that Lin willingly took Korra to Zaofu to see Suyin, so Korra kind of has to downplay the recent squabbling so she can give Tenzin the even more interesting news: Suyin's daughter Opal is an air bender, and soon will be at the Northern Air Temple to train with Tenzin. Korra's praise of Opal as an air bender isn't enough for Bolin, who was lurking behind. He forcibly takes the radio mic from Korra to recite an ode of lover's praise for Opal. After grossing out Korra and Tenzin with TMI, Bolin shrinks away, presumably to go worship Opal up close for as long as he can.
Korra asks Tenzin for an update on training the new air benders, but Tenzin doesn't have good news for her. His students just don't seem interested in the wisdom of Air Gurus, and aren't used to the hard work that real air bending requires. Personally, I think the benders see Tenzin's three kids bending and playing like crazy. When they can't do what they see kids doing, they assume they never will. They never saw the kids learning all day, every day.
Korra doesn't tell Tenzin this, but does suggest that Jinora and Bumi be given some teaching responsibilities. Sure, Tenzin could give Bumi extra work- but how to get him to actually do it? Korra suggests giving Bumi the "opportunity" to give Tenzin some advice on motivating his students, and then "let" Bumi implement his own advice. Tenzin is thrilled at the thought of tricking his brother into taking more responsibility, and he's excited that he and Korra can problem solve together. Korra declares conflict resolution her special strength. Although, I have yet to see her resolve a conflict. Mostly just defeat bad guys, or let them blow themselves up in motorboats, or escape from a tyrannical queen.
Let's just say I know how to end a fight.
Kai is restless, and wants to infect Jinora with his inability to seriously concentrate. He's determined to check out the sky bison in the green, peaceful valley dotted with ponds. Jinora reluctantly goes, and is enjoying herself, flying her little glider next to Kai, who's also gotten himself a glider, and a couple of friendly spirits out with them today. Note: Kai, a kid, seems to have developed his air bending faster and more creatively than the adults, even the former acolyte.
Joyride!
Kai is ecstatic when he spots some sky bison calves, about the size of large dogs, playing by the water below. He asks Jinora why they're not flying with the grown-ups, and Jinora tells him that calves can't fly, so the adult herd will stay close by, ready to defend them. Kai, totally ignoring the caution in Jinora's voice, immediately flies down to start playing with them.
They're too cute, and I'm too impulsive
Jinora doesn't like this, especially when she sees what Kai does not: an adult bison has spotted Kai, and decided he's a problem. Jinora manages to swoop down and rescue Kai from the bison's charge. Jinora's still spooked at their close call, but all Kai can think of is what a good air bender Jinora is, and how she must be ready to be an Air Bending Master now. Jinora complains that her dad thinks she's too young. Kai dismisses her dad's opinion. Didn't she just save him? Isn't she just as good as her dad? And doesn't she have abilities with the spirits that he doesn't? Jinora can't help thinking he's right. Maybe she is ready. Maybe her dad is wrong.
Bumi, just as Korra predicted, is a hit with the other air bending students. He's killing with a couple of other students, reciting a probably fake pirate story, when Tenzin decides to have brother to brother talk with him. When Tenzin admits he's having trouble leading, Bumi declares that leadership is about breaking the old people they were down and building back up new air benders. Bumi tells Tenzin to show them just who the Master around here is. Does he know what bad advice this is? To a guy who can't come up with a Plan B, ever, trying to act like a boss is a terrible mistake. But Tenzin is entranced with the idea. Why not come up with an air bender boot camp?
It starts at dawn the next morning. Or rather, before dawn. Tenzin storms into the air benders' barracks (literally, they're in a barracks), blowing furiously on an oversized horn. He's yelling for them to wake up, as everyone, even Bumi, who should know a drill sergeant when he sees one, has no idea what's going on. A ten-mile hike up plateaus surrounding the valley is what's going on. Tenzin easily completes it, with Jinora only a few seconds behind. The others stagger up, already tired. And freezing cold from the winds this high before the sun has risen. Oh, are you cold? Well, air benders can warm themselves by meditation! Tenzin gets right to it, exhorting the students to start right away. One student makes the mistake of wondering if they could wear some sky bison fur. Tenzin is outraged! Tenzin sits facing the Air Temple in the distance ten miles away, as Bumi, already done for the day, crawls up behind him, already regretting his advice yesterday. Tenzin reminds him that it's quiet time.
There's no getting out of your own bad ideas, Bumi
And that's the easiest thing they do all day. Instead of letting them rest after hiking back, Tenzin proceeds directly to a new exercise of balancing on narrow poles. On one foot. With the other bent into the crotch. On top of all this (pun intended), an air bender needs to concentrate on spinning a feather over the palm of one of their hands.
Totally easy, people
No one, except the kids, can do it. Instead of giving them insight on how one achieves this, and encouraging modest successes so students will persevere, Tenzin simply tells them that this is a really easy exercise, and there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do it right away. He's especially harsh on Bumi's failures. And he doesn't seem to care about lemurs chewing on his students, as he tells the students to just ignore the lemurs. Poor acolytes! At this point, Jinora starts objecting to her father's methods. Tenzin brushes aside her concern. He's got breaking down of recruits to do.
The lemurs are just trying to make it interesting
The students get a rest, of sorts, watching Tenzin explain the merits of head shaving while demonstrating on Dan, who looks absolutely miserable at losing his hair just so he can feel every breeze. The other students look on in pure dread. When Tenzin informs them brusquely that it's a personal choice anyway, Dan practically grabs his hair to try to re-attach it to his head. Jinora, once again, asks if maybe they don't just need a break. No, they don't. What they need is an obstacle course.
It's mostly fruit and cactus based, with lots of moving parts, and Iki and Meelo shooting watermelons at air bending students. While the others struggle and plod through it, Kai hops, skips and jumps his way easily through the obstacles. Just as you think he's going to make it through, while hopping on pole tops through a field of cacti, Kai has an unfortunately collision with another air bender, and both topple into the cactus.
Tenzin is only slowly joined by muddy, cactus poked, watermelon soaked air benders. Bumi is eventually left, after getting through the maze, clinging to the rock face he has to leap up to join the others. He's gripped in fear, and only Tenzin's relentless harangue gets him to try to move. But he fails spectacularly, falling in the mud at the bottom of the rock. Tenzin is unconcerned, simply yelling at Bumi to start over. But Bumi's had it. He abruptly quits the training, stomping his feet as he rants at how much he hates this training regimen. Tenzin takes Bumi's quitting like any older brother would, simply yelling back that they're better off without him.
Tenzin's not done venting his anger at how little success he's had. When the students start asking when they can visit their families, or even eat something, Tenzin decides that they need to be yelled at too. Someone mentions that they at least got rest time and meals when they were drafted by the Earth Queen, and now Tenzin's done with his own training regimen. He angrily gives the class to Jinora. Jinora picks the absolutely worst time ever to decide that she must be a Master now. She tries to wheedle Master's tattoos from her dad, but the idea is so new to him, and he's so wound up with anger at Bumi and the recruits, that he angrily demands to know why she's asking for such a thing.
Jinora makes the mistake of mentioning Kai's praise of her. Kai smartly disappears when Tenzin reacts angrily to his name, but Tenzin isn't going to take his frustration out on Kai. He's going to take it out on Jinora. When Jinora plays the I-can-do-more-spirit-stuff-than-you-ever-will card, Tenzin is aghast. When Jinora quits too, even though she wasn't really a recruit, and storms out,Tenzin turns to Iki and Meelo to lead the class. Now, it's Tenzin's turn to storm out. Once he's gone, Meelo shows he's going to be every bit as tough as Tenzin. Look amongst yourselves, he tells them. One of you won't make it out alive.
Future CrossFit Instructor?
Jinora and Kai meet up at a balcony terrace somewhere in the Temple, and Kai says he's sorry for getting Jinora in so much trouble. Jinora is less concerned about following Kai's advice and more pissy that her dad doesn't realize she's growing up. She's still mad, so Kai takes this opportunity to suggest going to see the baby bison again. Jinora's happy to go right away this time, and they happily proceed to the valley. Which they find deserted. No spirits have accompanied them. No bison are anywhere. They start to wonder at it, when Jinora is pinned by a net flying from nowhere. Kai is netted too, before he can even find out what's going on.
They find out soon enough. They've been captured by poachers, who have also put the baby bison calves in cages mounted on trucks. Their leader is wearing a bison pelt, which is like people who have rugs of endangered animals. Not only is he completely tacky, but he decides to kidnap Jinora and Kai and take them to Ba Sing Sei. For who knows what reason.
Meanwhile, Tenzin is ruminating on the many ways Bumi ruins everything, when he's joined by Pema, who kneels down next to him and brings a sympathetic ear with her. Tenzin is at a stopping point. Pema reminds Tenzin of her early days at Air Temple Island at Republic City. Years ago, a naive young woman came to be an acolyte. She was happy to come, leave her old life behind, and life the new simple life of tending to the air benders and their home, and sharing in the enlightenment formerly reserved for air benders. But, even she was homesick and culture shocked. Tenzin tries to get in an aside about hard beds being better for your back, but Pema won't be undermined. Everyone coming is someone not raised in the lifestyle. Tenzin should already have known this, from his failure to entice anyone who already had a life to join him. These people want to learn how to air bend, but the lifestyle takes getting used to. That is the journey Tenzin must lead them on.
Tenzin, realizing he's just been schooled, gives Pema a tender, kind peck on the forehead, and muses that he feels like Korra when he's trying to tell her something important. And then he goes out to the terrace, where he finds Bumi and immediately apologizes for his harshness. Bumi, classic brother that he is, is very snotty as he refuses to forgive, and he saunters off with Bumju following. Tenzin is momentarily frustrated, but decides instead to ask the others where Jinora is. They inform her that she left a while ago with her boyfriend.
Boyfriend? First she wants air bending Master tattoos, and now she has a boyfriend???? What is Tenzin's world coming to? Tenzin is back in pissy mode as he stalks off to find a sky bison.
Jinora and Kai are having no fun whatsoever locked in the cages mounted on the truck, both locked in with a sky bison calf. Jinora tries playing the endangered species card on the leader, but he informs them that the endangered part is what makes their meat so valuable to someone like the Earth Queen, who both Jinora and Kai just escaped from. The poacher figures he can get a bounty on them, too. When the poacher leaves, Kai advises Jinora to use her spirit projection to summon help, but Jinora's too cramped to properly meditate and separate her body and spirit. She does get another idea, and summons a spirit to her, asking it to find help.
Oh, and would you bring me some potato chips?
The spirit, a fluff ball with spindly legs, finds Bumju instead. The blue, winged rabbit is working on Bumi, who still doesn't want to forgive Tenzin, or restart training. He's just too old to start taking orders again. He'd much rather just sit around and tell heavily embellished war stories, since he already knows he's good at that.
The spirits have other plans for Bumi. They play a short game of telephone, with Bumju figuring out that the spirit is a distress call from Jinora, and they'd better find her. Bumi doesn't wait for Tenzin, but goes right to the air bending students, in a balancing exercise with Meelo. He quickly explains the situation to the others, who are impressed that he can understand the spirits. They're not so happy about his message, and would prefer to let Master Tenzin deal with danger. Bumi dismisses their fears. Master Tenzin isn't here. Bumi sends the kids for the sky bison, and insists that they're going to find the kids and save them. Now.
You can take orders from Meelo, or have a crazy adventure with me!
They find the poachers easily enough, huddled behind large rocks by the camp. Now the other air benders are even more scared. Struggling through an obstacle course is bad enough; but now, Bumi wants them to get their asses kicked by mean-looking criminals. Bumi digs deep into himself for a speech that will rouse them. They remind him that he's actually quit the training after failing spectacularly. Bumi decides that the events of the day don't matter now. What matters is that Jinora and Kai are two of them. They may not be master air benders, but they are all each other has. They can't lose anyone, and they can't afford to splinter now from fear. Meelo seconds this, by deciding they're all really like the Marines. And Marines never leave their own behind.
Semper Fi!!!
Kai is already starting the party by hauling out some slender piece of metal, which he uses to pick the lock on the cage. Free, he is about to unlock Jinora's cage when he's caught, and scrambles to his own defense. Bumi and the others use that moment to strike, leaping out and air bending themselves quickly into position. The poachers are earth benders, and use bending to lift rock from the earth that acts like a barrier between them. But Kai is already on their side, and Meelo and Iki already know how to get around and over the barriers. The others blast air around the barriers as best they can. When a poacher tries to capture Dan with a flying net, he has a moment when he realizes he's is feeling the wind behind him, just like Master Tenzin said he would. Knowing from his own scalp where the net is, he turns, lowers himself, and emerges from under the net to whip his attacker off his feet.
There's something behind me, isn't there?
The poachers are defeated quickly, so their leader, he of the messy hair and bison fur, decides to drive away with Jinora and the remaining bison calves. Kai follows on his glider. Tenzin is already in the air, high above, when he's jostled by adult sky bison wanting to get somewhere in a hurry. Tenzin, curious, sees they're headed for the truck speeding away below. He realizes this is bad right away. When he sees Kai following the truck, he decides to go down and help. The sky bison adults play bumper cars with the truck as Kai tries to leap into the truck cab. He has to make a quick exit, though, and he's saved by Tenzin, leaping onto the bison with the Master. When the bison finally hit the truck hard enough to stop it, and Tenzin lands in front to block the truck, Kai leaps off the bison. He furiously attacks the leader, angrily spewing the leader's own selfish, destructive greed right back at him. The leader surrenders, but Kai isn't listening, and Tenzin has to grab Kai to stop him. He admonishes Kai against hitting the unarmed who have surrendered. But Tenzin admits to Kai that he did an excellent job of stopping the bad guys.
The poachers are now locked in the cages while the sky bison, calves and adults, relax. When Kai doesn't understand why the adults are so nice now, Tenzin tells him that they've earned the bison's trust. The bison, he tells Kai, were the original air benders. And the newest Air Nation has shown that they, too, are air benders. Dan is outright bragging about his shaved head, and how it saved him, and plugging it for the others.
Bumi finally has a brotherly talk with Tenzin. Bumi never felt a part of his dad's culture, but Tenzin tells him he's immersed in it now. Maybe there will be a new Air Nation Culture, that makes room for the past of fasting and meditating, but also the fact that these new air benders have to adjust to a completely different way of living. Tenzin's last make-up is with Jinora, who hugs her dad. Jinora's not done bringing up getting her Master's tattoos. This time, Tenzin is a little more accepting that his daughter is growing up. Maybe not today, but the day is coming when he won't be the only Air Bending Master.
I'll still find a way to put it off, honey
He's not the only one who has to adjust to the kids growing up. Kai shrieks in delight; the sky bison calves are finally airborne. A little confused at first, they take to flying right away, already seeing how high they can go. The adult bison watch in wonder and a little sadness. Their kids are growing up too fast too.
Everyone's an air bender now!
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