Shapes Of Things To Come!
“You just use whatever move is best for the moment!"
Score: 6.5/10
I love how that’s said, as if it’s not the most logical and obvious way to battle.
The heroes reach Oreburgh City, where they bump into Paul, who’s waiting for Roark, the gym leader, to return from a coalmine (his second job) and take challengers.
The heroes go to the coalmine in time to see Roark remove a Rampardos fossil. He starts rubbing the fossil, saying that he can hear what it's saying and will one day come back to life. No one thinks this is weird. Roark explains that every so often, a fossil is uncovered in the mine, and that there’s a machine that can bring them back to life. The main characters treat this is as new information even though they’ve heard of such machines before.
Everyone returns to the gym, and since Paul was first, Dawn asks if she can watch his battle, and he responds that he "couldn't care less." This angers Ash and Pikachu because... Oooooooh that Paul!
Roark sends out a Geodude, and Paul counters with Azumarill. Despite taking into account type advantages, Azumarill loses easily because Geodude's strategy is much better. Paul sends out Elekid, whose brick break OHKOs Geodude.
Roark sends out Onix. It uses stealth rock, and the show takes like thirty seconds to carefully explain how stealth rocks works. Elekid does well enough, but it takes so much damage that it can barely even stand, so Paul withdraws it. Ash criticizes the decision as Paul not caring “whether his next pokemon gets hurt or not by the stealth rock,” but hell, what is he supposed to do? Elekid is already all but down, so Paul will have to throw out a third pokemon eventually anyway, so there's no way around the stealth rock. Additionally, Ash of all people has no right to criticize this, given that he once sacrificed three pokemon to Drake's Dragonite to weaken it enough for Pikachu to finish it off. And if you’re concerned with stealth rock hurting pokemon, maybe you should criticize the person who used it. Well, anyway, despite the stealth rock, Paul’s third pokemon, Chimchar, downs Onix with little trouble.
Roark sends out his final pokemon: Cranidos. Its zen headbutt tosses Chimchar around like it's nothing, but its blaze eventually activates. Its sped-up flame wheels are enough to damage its knees, lowering its speed and thus its attacks, but Cranidos still comes out on top. Elekid is sent back out, and after a long battle, it triumphs and Cranidos goes down, and Roark rewards Paul with a badge.
Seeing Paul’s battle style (instead of Ash’s) is a nice change. I don’t think we’d ever seen anyone except Ash ever fight a gym leader before, except for the time Gary battles Jessie when she’s in charge of the Viridian Gym, and that was really just showing off Gary’s pokemon rather than Gary’s moves. Still, Ash’s ridiculous criticisms of Paul are just annoying and usually don’t make sense. I know we’re supposed to sympathize with Ash, but he’s so hostile to Paul without any reason to be. Add to that that Paul is utterly unsympathetic himself, and you have an episode where I can’t hope anyone does well.
So it’s more-or-less every episode, really.
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Started: July 6, 2005