Ahhhhh!

Great as a filler episode but a terrible place for it in the time line. It would make much more sense if this took place before their revelation at the end of the last episode. The "Previously on Avatar" made it sound like they're still waiting to speak to the Earth King (as if that's ever going to happen or if it would do any good if they did) and are just killing time. Major plot hole.

About the sketches, I didn't watch Momo's or Sokka's (I'm not a pure comedy fan), but I thought Katara's and Toph's was stupid and highly out of character. Shouldn't radical feminist/activist/action girl Katara be more concerned with their mission than getting a make-over? And what happened to Toph hating proper society life? Not to mention the group of snobby girls is my least favorite overly used Western trope that has to go!

Aang's sketch was weird, but the return of the drop-in cabbage merchant was cool, and my college is an agricultural/zoo science oriented school, so I naturally found creating a zoo in less than a minute very cool. Not cool enough to disregard the discontinuity with how the bison whistle works and Aang's lack of concern about Appa.

Iroh's sketch was sad and revealing, all right. I guess this is why he was so eager to get to Ba Sing Se so quickly, for this day. I sure wasn't expecting that with all the light-hearted nonsense in the other stories.

Zuko's sketch I found the most interesting (good thing, too, since it's the only one I recorded). My worst fear before this aired was that he would be out of character, which only intensified after seeing the first few sketches (Zuko is not a good character for strict comedy). I was pleased to find Zuko very in-character: still a terrible liar like in COTL, quiet and blunt like in "Zuko Alone." Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seemed like he relaxed after he lit the lamps and they were surrounded by fire, when he was "in his element." I like how the kiss was executed, too. Every meaningful kiss has to start out awkward, of course. They can end awkwardly or sweetly, and this one soon turned romantic and sweet. Since we know he enjoyed it, I think he broke away because he felt guilty, about having to lie about his name, who he was, etc, so it didn't feel right to kiss her/let her kiss him.

My overall conclusion about this episode: the truly well-written episodes leave me breathless at the end, feeling WOW all over, all I want to do is watch it over and over again and again. I just didn't get that feeling from this episode. Placing a filler episode directly after the major plot twist= awkward. Plus, I liked how they were gradually turning Aang's personality and story darker and more mature this season, but this ep took a serious U-Turn back to the days of "Return to Omashu" when only Zuko's side of the story interested me. It could have been much better.