Gymbaliar!
"Dustox got dusted!"
Score: 3/10
Team Rocket has set up a fake gym, at which they trick trainers into coming to battle them. Losers have their pokemon taken for “special training” to empower them, but of course, they are simply stolen.
Meowth is wandering the nearby town when he sees a Croagunk. He tries to ignore it, but it follows him to the gym. Croagunk tells Team Rocket that they're boring, and it wants to do something fun, so Jessie agrees to use it in the gym.
Cut to the heroes, who run into a Scizor and its trainer, Minnie, in the forest. Minnie is searching for the newly-opened gym, and everyone agrees to travel together.
First up is Minnie, who defeats Croagunk is about twenty seconds. But James, who's acting the referee, intentionally takes so long to call Croagunk's loss that it has time to recover from fainting. Using poison sting and poison jab against the steel-type Scizor, Croagunk pulls off a victory and Scizor is taken for special training.
Everyone decides to have lunch before the Ash/Jessie battle, a lunch break that lasts as long as a commercial break. The next scene is Ash versus Jessie, so-- that entire lunch break thing was pointless. Gotcha.
Croagunk versus Aipom. Aipom barely wins, but yet again, James intentionally takes so long to make the call so Croagunk can revive. But Croagunk can't revive anyway because it's too hurt, so Ash still wins. How necessary. Jessie quickly changes the rules so that you need to win two battles in a row to win and throws out Dustox, and when Ash tries to use Turtwig, Jessie claims that as gym leader, she gets to choose the challenger's pokemon, and chooses Pikachu. As soon as Pikachu enters the arena, it's grabbed by a robotic hand and taken to the balloon: Jessie had expected Ash to choose Pikachu instead of Aipom to begin with, and waited the entire battle for this.
They escape in their balloon, but decide to leave Croagunk behind because its inflating cheeks creep Jessie out (this is canon, people). Starly and Pikachu blast Team Rocket off, and Minnie agrees to wait for all of the pokemon trainers to come back and give them their pokeballs so the heroes can continue their journey.
Croagunk and Brock share a moment of... I don't even know how to describe what I'm watching here. They just kind of look into each other’s eyes, I guess? But it’s weirder than that; watch the episode. Croagunk allows itself to be caught, but it now takes Misty's and Max's place as the person who stops Brock from hitting on women, this time by using poison jab instead of grabbing his ear.
As the episode ends, the narrator proudly declares that “Truth is stranger than fiction,” something that has absolutely nothing to do with the episode in any way at all.
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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005