The Blind Bandit

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"The Blind Bandit" *Avatar: The Last Airbender episode*
Dinner with the Bei Fong family
Book	Two: Earth
Chapter	Six
Episode #	Twenty-six
Prod. code	206
Airdate	May 5, 2006
Writer(s)	Michael Dante DiMartino
Director	Ethan Spaulding
Guest star(s)	Mick Foley (The Boulder) Marc Graue (Xin Fu) Cam Clarke (Lao) Sab Shimono (Master Yu)

Previous episode "Avatar Day"
Next episode "Zuko Alone"

"The Blind Bandit" is an episode from the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which airs on Nickelodeon. It is the sixth episode of the second season of the series.

After the Fire Nation's invasion of the Omashu, Aang still struggles to search for an Earthbender who is able to teach Aang the style of earthbending. Aang and company discover an underground earthbending tournament where they encounter a blind girl named Toph with extraordinary earthbending skills. After witnessing her powerful skills, Aang wants Toph to be his earthbending teacher, but other complications prevent the recruitment.

[edit] Episode synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Aang goes to the town of Gaoling to continue his search for someone to teach him earthbending. While searching, he gets a free earthbending lesson from Master Yu, but he finds that Master Yu cares more about having him pay for lessons then he does about teaching him earthbending. Afterwards, they hear from a pair of students about Earth Rumble VI, a tournament featuring several powerful Earthbenders. The boys are not very inclined to help Aang with the location, until Katara uses her "feminine charm," that somehow involves freezing them to the walls, to convince them to tell.

At the tournament, they see a powerful Earthbender named The Boulder, who defeats every challenger he comes across. Sokka completely gets into it, but Aang is not very impressed, saying that the Boulder is "just listening to his muscles". The Boulder defeats several other contenders, until he works his way up to the current champion, The Blind Bandit, a blind Earthbender who happens to be Toph, a 12 year-old girl. The Blind Bandit taunts The Boulder, who originally seemed uneasy at fighting a blind child, before quickly making him perform a painful split and tossing him out of the ring with a jolt from four rock pillars.

The Blind Bandit fights The Boulder.

Aang notices the Bandit's techniques, especially how she listens carefully to the movements of her opponent, realizing that she is just the type of person Bumi told him to look for. He also realizes that she is the girl in white he saw in his vision in The Swamp.

The announcer of the tournament, Xin Fu, offers a large sum of gold to whoever can defeat the Blind Bandit in a fight. Seeing an opportunity to talk to the Bandit, Aang challenges her. While Aang wants to talk, the Bandit is ready for a fight, and she refuses to engage in conversation. Unfortunately, she is not ready to face an Airbender, and is defeated when Aang blows her off the ring. The Bandit takes badly to her loss, and storms off, refusing to even listen to Aang.

Later, Aang and the others return to Master Yu's school to try to find out where the Blind Bandit lives. Asking the same boys Katara "asked" about the tournament (who are now quite intimidated by her), they do not get much information, until Aang remembers the flying boar he also saw with the girl in his vision. The boys tell them that the flying boar is the symbol of the Bei Fong family, the wealthiest family in the town.

Meanwhile, The Boulder talks with Xin Fu about the fight. The Boulder said that he was watching and saw nothing make contact with The Bandit when she was thrown from the ring. Not realizing that Aang was Airbending, they think the Bandit took a dive, so that she could share the prize money with Aang.

Aang and company travel to the family's house, where they are accosted by the Bandit, now wearing the same dress Aang saw her wearing in the Swamp. The girl, Toph, does not want to help them, and calls the house guards to chase them off.

That evening, Toph's family is meeting with Master Yu, who reveals that he is only training Toph at the beginners level, basic earthbending forms and breathing only. Trying the direct approach, Aang uses his name to gain a formal audience with the entire Bei Fong family. He tries to get her father to talk her into helping him, but Toph uses her earthbending to keep him from saying anything revealing. Her parents and teacher are completely unaware about her true skill, and she wants to keep it that way. After numerous earthbending interruptions, Aang retaliates, bringing the dinner to both a premature end and into everybody's face.

Toph tells Aang about her parents' being overprotective of her being blind.

After dinner, Toph approaches Aang to call a truce, and talks with him. Her parents, seeing her as a weak and fragile child due to her blindness, treat her as being far more helpless than she really is. So she began sneaking out of the house and mastering earthbending on her own, secretly competing in tournaments and surpassing her "teacher" in skill. Suddenly, the pair are ambushed and captured by Xin Fu and his stable of Earthbenders, who want their money back.

Katara, Sokka, and Toph's family find a note demanding ransom money for her safe return. The family is ready to pay, but Katara and Sokka want to come too. Xin Fu returns Toph for the ransom, but wants to turn Aang over to the Fire Nation for an even heftier reward. Katara pleads with Toph to help them rescue Aang, but Toph's father refuses to let her.

Toph, on the other hand, agrees, and single-handedly defeats Xin Fu and his entire stable, using a cloud of dust as cover, and taking them out one by one. In the process, she proves to her parents and teacher just how tough she is.

Later, she apologizes to her family, saying that she loves fighting, and she only snuck out because they sheltered her too much. Unfortunately, the recent events have only convinced her family to tighten their "protection" of her, planning to have her watched at all times, and then forbid Aang and the others to return to their household.

As Aang and the others get ready to leave, Toph runs up to them, saying that her father changed his mind, letting her travel with them. Sokka wisely offers to leave quickly before her father "changes his mind again." Toph is ready to go, but she wants to show Aang one thing first. Aang hops down, and she promptly launches him into a tree. Toph, declaring them even, demands to have her championship belt returned. Sokka, sitting on Appa's back [off-screen], throws the belt at Toph, but she, unable to sense its airborne approach, gets struck in the face by it and knocked to the ground. Aang, still in the tree up to this point, finally falls to the ground.

Meanwhile, Toph's father believes that Aang has kidnapped his daughter, when she really ran away, and will do whatever it takes to get her back. He hires both Master Yu and Xin Fu to go after them.

[edit] Notes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Blind Bandit

Earthbender Toph joins the group and main cast.
"The Boulder" is a parody of professional wrestlers The Rock, Hulk Hogan (whose original stage name was also "The Boulder"), and/or Randy Savage. He even goes as far as to talk in the third person. He is voiced by professional wrestler Mick Foley, a former wrestling partner of The Rock.
One Earthbender in the tournament is a traditional heel, dressing and behaving as loyalist of the Fire Nation. (Specifically acting like 1980s heel Nikolai Volkoff, although the more recent Muhammad Hassan may also have been an influence). One Earthbender wears a Lucha libre mask and one other wears a mask of leather straps similar to Mankind's (A clear homage to Mick Foley).
Toph is the only recurring character in the show to have a last name (Bei Fong). Historically, in East Asian cultures, family names were reserved for members of nobility before common people started adopting family names for themselves.
The names of some of the Earthbenders that participated in Earth Rumble are: The Boulder, Big Bad Hippo, and Fire Nation Man.
The "Flying Boar" seal on Toph's estate's entrance is similar in design to John Steinbeck's trademark symbol "the Pigasus."
This episode is called The Earthbending Tournament on iTunes.