I feel a little guilty about the way I rewatch Avatar: The Last Airbender.
I count the show among my favorite television series ever. Even as an adult, I’m impressed by the way the showrunners used Aang’s journey to defeat the Fire Nation to thread together an entire tapestry of a world affected by violence and injustice. Its characters’ stories, like the redemption of Prince Zuko, become vessels to craft a story that’s all at once political and personal. Just the mere mention of Avatar can prompt a gush of positive thoughts of why I love the series and want more. But even given all this, I struggle to bring myself to watch a vast majority of the show each time I rewatch it, and I end up skipping a lot of it. Whenever I revisit the series, I start from Book 2, episode 6, an episode called “The Blind Bandit.”
Here is where I admit — somewhat embarrassingly — that I have started three rewatches from this exact point in........