The Fire Nation moves to puncture Ba Sing Se's defenses.
"You shouldn't give 100% of your energy into any one strike. You've gotta be quick and accurate. Hit a series of points, and break your opponent's stance. And when he's reeling back, you deliver the final blow. His own weight becomes his downfall. Literally."
— Aang
Aang and his friends have finally reached Ba Sing Se, only to discover that the city is under attack from the Fire Nation, led by Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, who are using a giant drill. Initially, the commanding general in charge of fending off the attack is reluctant to accept the team's help, but after Mai and Ty Lee quickly dispatch the general's "Terra Team", he changes his mind. Seeing that outer attacks have no effect on the drill, and using Ty Lee's chi-blocking as inspiration, Team Avatar goes inside the drill to take out its weak points and hopefully bring it down before it breaches the city's outer wall.
Meanwhile, Zuko, Iroh, and the Freedom Fighters reach Ba Sing Se as well. Jet is set on getting Zuko (or as Jet knows him, "Li") to join the freedom fighters. However, when Jet sees Iroh warm up a cold cup of tea, he realizes Zuko and Iroh are firebenders...
Tropes:
- Armies Are Useless: The Earth Kingdom army is helpless against the Drill, and even the elite Terra Team of skilled military earthbenders is taken down single-handedly by Ty Lee and Mai. Leaving it up to Team Avatar to save the day.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: Sokka's "Now Aang just needs to—DUUCK!" when Ty Lee and Mai attack the group.
- Attack Its Weak Point: The Drill Tank is practically unstoppable from the outside. When the Gaang infiltrate it, Sokka finds a blueprint that helps him determine the best way to disable to machine from within.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted: By the end of the climactic battle, everyone (
excluding Mai) is covered in slurry. - Big Damn Heroes: After Aang and Azula fall off the Drill while fighting, Momo appears and grabs Aang, helping him get back up on the Drill.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: During their fight, Azula has Aang fully disabled, but instead of taking the chance to kill him with a final blow, she takes her time leaning him against a wall which Aang uses to regain his powers and free himself from her clutch. It's possible, though, that she wanted to capture him alive, like Zhao in Season 1 (and capturing Aang, the very task Zuko tried and failed again to accomplish, would be the perfect way of one-upping her brother).
- Brain Bleach: After Zuko sees Iroh flirt with the rather large woman in charge of checking passports: "I'm gonna forget I saw that." Complete with Face Palm.
- Chekhov's Gun: The large boulders the Ba Sing Se soldiers throw down prove useless on their own against the drill. When Aang needs something to hit the exterior weak point of the drill to reach the interior, he finds the boulders become useful after all.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Ty Lee, naturally. "Look at that cloud. It's so...poofy. Poof!"
- Combat Pragmatism:
- Toph elects to try and slow the drill from the outside since she can't earthbend from within. This becomes much less of an issue for her later on, however.....
- Katara traps Ty Lee by bending the liquefied slurry back into the rear of the drill, which further destabilizes the entire works from within when Aang busts its outer shell.
- After several encounters that favored her tactically, Ty Lee's abilities are finally rendered useless when Katara manages to keep her at a distance.
Katara: Why don't you try blocking my chi now, circus freak?! - Covered in Mud: All characters involved in the fight over the drill get eventually covered in slurry.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Ty Lee and Mai make short work of General Sung's top team of earthbenders.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Sokka leaves himself wide open to attack when Ty Lee flirts with him. Katara pulls him out before anything bad happens, though.
- Dramatic Deadpan: Mai: "We lost."
- Dramatic Irony: Toph brings up the Dragon of the West as the only person who has gotten through the "impenetrable" walls of Ba Sing Se. That same Dragon of the West (Iroh) has now successfully gotten through the wall as a refugee along with his nephew. And Toph doesn’t realize she had actually met the man himself.
- Drill Tank: The titular Drill is created with the purpose of infiltrating the city's walls and is completely unstoppable. At first.
- "Eureka!" Moment:
- Sokka has one when Katara describes Ty Lee's method of attack against the Earthbenders, with which he deduces that they can take the drill down the same way by attacking its pressure points from the inside out in the same manner as Ty Lee.
- Aang has one, complete with Idea Ding, when he realizes that they only have to destabilize the beams to some extend for the whole structure to collapse.
- Foreshadowing: Gee, it doesn't seem like Azula has complete control over her troupe, doesn't it?
- General Failure: For the commanding General of an outer wall that's successfully resisted siege for a hundred years, General Sung seems remarkably incompetent.
Word of God says that he was only recently promoted to General and hadn't had much experience yet. - Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Sokka to General Sung, spoken word for word.
- The Great Wall: Ba Sing Se means "impenetrable city" and General Sung boasts that no one has gotten past these walls... only for Toph to bring up the Dragon of the West, which Sung backtracks with a justification that the Dragon of the West was "quickly expunged."
- Idiot Ball: Zuko is shocked that his wise uncle would give them away by Firebending in public.Zuko: (whispering through clenched teeth) What are you doing firebending your tea?! For a wise old man, that was a pretty stupid move!
- Ironic Echo Cut: Aang and Azula are fighting on top of the drill, when boulders start raining down on them.Aang: (shouting to the general on top of the wall) General Sung! Tell your men to stop dropping rocks down here!(cuts to the top of the wall)General Sung: Soldiers! Whatever you do, don't stop dropping rocks down there!
- It Will Never Catch On: A meta example. Katara is confident that the name "Team Avatar" will not catch.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Katara gets some payback against Ty Lee for constantly being on the back foot during their previous fights; here she bends the slurry back into the drill while Ty Lee is still in it preventing her from being able to move and keeping her stuck in place.
- Load-Bearing Hero: Toph elects to slow the drill from the outside since she can't earthbend from within.
- Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer: Aang is the first of the group to spot the drill from high above. When he returns to his mates, he remains vague about his observation ("Something stopped me, something big"). It's only when the entire team reaches the top of the wall, that they see what he was talking about.
- "No. Just… No" Reaction: Mai's response to the idea of going down the slurry pipe after Katara and Sokka. She promptly decides to skip out on fighting for the rest of the episode.
- Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: Qin to Azula because he's so confident in the drill. Followed by a Letting the Air out of the Band. Azula takes the comment as a sign to be even more careful.
- Oh, Crap!: Qin gets a big one when it's reported that someone has sabotaged the inner workings of the drill and attacked one of his engineers.
- Ominous Walk: Azula pummels Aang into near-unconsciousness and then ominously marches towards him while she readies a fire attack, presumably to finish him off.
- One-Man Army: Ty Lee takes down a good twenty earthbenders by herself.
- Properly Paranoid: For once, Jet is right on the ball when assuming Iroh heated his tea with firebending.
- Pungeon Master: While throwing around names for the team, Sokka comes up with this:Sokka: How about...the Boomerang Squad! See, it works because it's got the word "Aang" in it! Boomer-AANG."Aang: I kinda like that one.
- He then goes on to think of Team Avatar and the Aang Gang. It Will Never Catch On.
- Running Gag: Yet again, a joke is made about Toph's blindness, after the Gaang jumps into a pit she creates and closes to hide them from the drill.Sokka: It's so dark in here! I can't see a thing!Toph: Oh no, what a nightmare!Sokka: Sorry.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Or, in Mai's case, not even going there.Mai: [Azula] can shoot all the lightning she wants at me — I am not going in that wall sludge juice. Ugh!
- Shout-Out: When Sokka is throwing around names for the team, he suggests "Fearsome Foursome", the name of the legendary defensive lines of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams in the 60's and 70's.
- Strong as They Need to Be: Given what's been seen of bending before, the Drill shouldn't be nearly as near-invulnerable to the defenders' efforts as it appears. If Aang can stop rivers of lava and Katara freeze or vaporize large volumes of water, as they've done in previous episodes, they should be able to attack it rather more effectively than they do here.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Ty Lee is trapped in the slurry water as Katara and Toph bend it back into the drill, but somehow survives pretty much unscathed.
- Theme Music Power-Up: A rare example for Avatar: When Aang starts running down Ba Sing Se's outer wall to deliver the final blow, the main theme kicks in to accompany him.
- This Is a Drill: There's a reason this episode is named "The Drill."
- Traintop Battle: Azula and Aang's fight on top of the drill. It's a slow-moving vehicle, but still.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: There's the subplot of Zuko and Jet, but it only has a few scenes.
- Victory Pose: A minor example: After Aang is successful, he gives a massive goofy grin, which is all you can see of him under the slurry.
- "With Our Swords" Scene: Before the climax, Katara gives Aang her water pouch, which has been an essential part of her fighting as a water-bender. With it, Aang stands a much better chance facing off with Azula than if he just relied on earth and air.
- The Worf Effect: Ba Sing Se's Terra Team of earthbenders is dealt with in short order by Ty Lee and Mai.
