"Success. We've done it."
Score: 3.5/10
Fortunately, Oshawott deflects the solar beam using its shell. Jesus Christ, is there anything that shell can't deflect? And despite having seen "many Oshawotts" in the past, Cilan has never seen the shell be used to block! What is this. Well, the instant it tries to attack, the shell is knocked out of its hands. Cilan tells Ash that he has no spice and his attacks are bland, causing Oshawott to be boring, while his Pansage is "the most brilliant battler ever!" Wow, what a dickhead. Oshwaott is eventually able to retrieve its shell when it uses water gun to bounce around the gym at impossible to predict angles and hit the shell... somehow. Anyway,
Ash wins. The brothers give Ash the Trio Badge, and when Ash tries to show off to Iris for some reason, she just tells him that had he lost after he voluntarily made the battle more difficult for himself, he'd have looked like an idiot. Ha! I like Iris already. She insults his style so much that he challenges her, but she decides to simply leave. Cilan asks if they're traveling together, but Iris claims they're not. Huh. News to me. Upon learning that Ash is not, in fact, traveling with an attractive girl his own age, Cilan has only one facial expression.
Meanwhile, Team Rocket is infiltrating the Dream Yard (there was a minor subplot last episode that I cut where Giovanni orders them to go there to steal the "future energy" researchers were working on). We don’t learn this for a while, but for pacing purposes, I will tell you this now. Doctor Fennel was conducting research in a facility outside of Striaton City on dreams, hoping to use dream energy as clean energy to power the world. Sadly, some ambitious people got too close to her Musharna, so it accidentally ate their ambition (because ambition is a type of dream, get it?), which caused the facility to explode and Musharna to disappear. Fennel gave up on the dream energy, but some still remains in the area, so Team Rocket uses a machine to gather information on the remaining energy. For some reason, this awakens Musharna, who I guess was in the realm of dreams or something, it’s not really clear.
Meanwhile, Ash meets Nurse Joy, and he mistakes her for the other Nurse Joy. Now, in light of BW being a reboot, you can claim this makes sense, since Ash doesn't yet know that all Nurse Joys look the same... but in light of the continuity reboot not being a continuity reboot, I... just don't know. Also: she comments on the rarity of Pikachu. Cilan also shows up, and starts asking Ash creepy questions about how he trains with his pokemon. Fortunately, this is interrupted by Iris, whose Axew is asleep and glowing pink.
For once, however, it’s not because Iris is a girl and the writers only know how to associate cute things and pinkness with girls, but instead because of outside influence. Doctor Fennel runs in with her Munna, and it eats the dreams of Axew. We get to see Axew's dreams: to evolve into Haxorus and then... stand in one place and say its name. But it says its name threateningly. Fennel introduces herself as specializing in dreams and other mysterious phenomena, because dreams are extremely mysterious if you’re a minimum wage writer of cartoons for children. It’s at this point that Brock’s absence really begins to show: had he been here, he’d have already pulled his hitting on a hot chick gimmick.
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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005