Not watching it because I don't believe in hate watching, but some stuff about Netflix ATLA season 2 has breached containment and I'm honestly finding some of the creative decisions baffling even just at a first glance.
Specifically, apparently they chose to move The Painted Lady into season 2 instead of keeping it in season 3? And I've seen some folks say that they feel it "fit better" in season 2 in the context of seeing suffering in Ba Sing Se, and I'm going to tell you why I think that's a load of bull. I've seen people call the original episode "filler" and I don't think that could be further from the truth. It has a lot to say and all of it is very relevant to the show's overarching plot and themes.
The Painted Lady NEEDS to be in season 3 because it's doing the very important job of world building the Fire Nation. A place that has, up until Season 3, been a sort of boogeyman that is discussed but never seen outside of very small snippets. And it's... mundane. The people there are not monsters, at least not inherently. They're in the imperial core, and that gives (some of) them privileges, but also unique struggles
In The Painted Lady the Gaang stumble across a completely average fishing village in the heart of the Fire Nation. These are people who Katara has every reason to hate. They are part of the Fire Nation, the country that subjugated and colonized the Earth Kingdom, that destroyed her cultural heritage and denied her the ability to learn about that culture and her own abilities, that committed the genocide of the Air Nomads, that killed her mother.
Yet they aren't monsters. These are people who are suffering too. They don't make the decisions. They aren't soldiers. The reason they're suffering is because the Fire Nation is using their river as a dumping ground so they can construct instruments of war, and stealing their food and medicine to feed and heal the army. All to fuel a conquest that the people of this village never seem to benefit from, despite how it has clearly made the Fire Nation as a whole fabulously wealthy and privileged. It shows how even living in the imperial core can be an experience of suffering and oppression. These people didn't want their livelihoods upended, their village destroyed, their people massacred by starvation and disease. They didn't choose this. They had no say in who became Fire Lord, or what the Fire Lord decided to do with that power once they got it.
The Fire Nation is not just destroying the world; it's destroying itself in its obsessive conquest. That's what the first half of Season 3 is trying to portray. There are rich kids in private schools getting educated, but they're repressed and they're stifled creatively and expressively because creativity and self-expression and free thought are the bane of propaganda ecosystems. The poor and downtrodden are easily exploited and oppressed in the service of pushing the war machine forward. The crown prince has a crisis of faith after having been removed from this bubble, experiencing the world without restriction, and then suddenly being thrust back into the bubble and told to go back to playing a part he no longer fully believes in. The Fire Nation captured the Southern Tribe's waterbenders, and in doing so created an enemy that began killing their people from the inside. The Fire Nation's belief that they are better than the rest of the world cuts off avenues for cultural exchange, learning, and growth.
And that's just what it says about the world. The episode also has a lot to say about Katara herself. She has always been compassionate, but there's a massive difference between being compassionate toward people who you have always identified with, and being compassionate toward those you have biases and preconcieved notions about. It's MUCH harder when you're working against bias as a baseline. This episode firmly establishes that Katara doesn't care that this fishing village is "Fire Nation." She doesn't let her biases get in the way of her compassion. She cares that they're suffering injustice and she can do something to stop it. She gives her compassion to them wholeheartedly because she sees them as human beings worthy of dignity and respect, despite her grievances with the Fire Nation as a whole.
And, this is important, that compassion is reciprocated. Not just in The Painted Lady, but in most of these early Season 3 episodes. In The Headband the children at the school choose to protect Aang and give him the opportunity to escape. They didn't know it, but returning the kindness that Aang showed them meant that he wasn't caught and forced to reveal himself as the Avatar too early. In Sokka's Master, Piandao respects that Sokka is forward with him about being from the Water Tribe, and makes his philosophy clear. In The Painted Lady, the fishing village discovers Katara is a water bender. Initially they lash out against her, but they quickly realize that they're wrong to do that. It would have been easy to turn her in and get back in the good graces of the army, but they don't. They choose to overcome their biases and keep her secret to thank her for her help.
The overall effect is to humanize the Fire Nation, and that's very important for constructing a believable ending to this show. If you believe one side is nothing but monsters, or if you depict one side as nothing but monsters, then how do you sell the audience on an ending where Zuko takes power and makes peace? You don't. If they're all monsters then a regime change isn't going to fix anything. You have to show that the Fire Nation has good as well as bad, just like anywhere else, and give the audience hope that the good can overcome the bad.
Moving The Painted Lady to season 2 and setting it in Ba Sing Se completely misses the point of that episode and destroys the original message. You strip it of the world building, you skip the part of it that humanizes the regular folk living under a fascist regime they did not choose, and you remove Katara's opportunity to demonstrate the breadth and unconditional nature of her compassion, and how that compassion is reciprocated, fosters understanding, and finally leads to change.
I just do not think this change works at all, in any universe, and making it tells me that the showrunners just didn't understand what the original episode was trying to do or why it was important.
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