GOTTA CATCH A ROGGENROLA!
"Oy vey! It's the twerp!"
Score: 5/10
The heroes are eating lunch when a wild Roggenrola appears and destroys their food in an attempt to get their attention - I've already made a joke about episodes starting with pokemon eating or destroying their food, so whatever. Roggenrola is freaking out and trying to tell them something, so Ash decides to catch it because it's clearly not trying to tell them about something important. Unfortunately for Ash, Roggenrola defeats Oshawott because I guess the writers want Tepig to be Ash’s stronger pokemon after Pikachu, so Ash throws out Tepig. Hilariously, though, Roggenrola kicks Tepig's ass. When Tepig falls unconscious, the heroes are all extremely concerned it's hurt and run to a pokemon center, as opposed to when Oshawott fell unconscious and they were like “Oh, Roggenrola is pretty strong.” Roggenrola keeps trying to tell them something, but they just ignore it and it sadly runs off.
At the pokemon center, Nurse Joy heals their pokemon and tells them that there's no running water. The plumber (who, by the way, will be in almost every shot for the rest of the episode as he travels with the heroes, but will do absolutely nothing) tells her that nothing is wrong with the pipes, so something must be wrong with "the cave." Yes, you see, this pokemon center pipes its water in from a cave instead of, you know… wherever regular buildings get water from, I guess. I don’t really know. The heroes mention the Roggenrola they met, so Nurse Joy, knowing that Roggenrola rarely leave their cave, decides something must be wrong in there. The plumber decides to go to the cave, and since small children are the best back-up ever, the heroes go with him.
Cut to the cave: Team Rocket is stealing the wild Roggenrola. Why? Doctor Monocle has designed a cannon that forces Roggenrola placed in it to fire a powerful beam. This is much more practical than a gun. The heroes reach the cave, where they see the wild Roggenrola. It leads them into the cave, and the plumber sees why the water source is cut off - someone collapsed some boulders onto it. By the way, we never learn why Team Rocket bothered damming up the water source.
Team Rocket appears and reveals their Roggenrola device (by the way, Jessie and James switch their positions between shots). They escape the cave, then use their weapon to collapse the cave entrance. By the way, Ash saves the main Roggenrola, thus impressing it because dammit, Ash is the hero and if you didn’t learn that in the previous seven hundred episodes well then here is a reminder. Fortunately, now that Excadrill is listening to Iris, it and Pansage dig the heroes out with no particular difficulty.
Despite Team Rocket escaping into a nearby abandoned warehouse (in the middle of the woods), Roggenrola can hear where its friends are. The heroes attack, but to literally only their surprise, Team Rocket just uses the cannon again. The main Roggenrola uses flash cannon to counter the beam (because I guess Doctor Monocle’s cannon is as effective as one wild Roggenrola), and Ash takes advantage of the opportunity to tell the Roggenrola to not go along with it. Well, apparently this is all it takes, and they reverse the energy of their cores or something, I don't know, and destroy the cannon. Literally all it took was telling them not to do it. That is just… I don’t know.
The heroes take all of the Roggenrola to Nurse Joy, and we even get the plumber telling us that he wrote a report to his superiors telling them to fix the water supply problem. Wow, good thing we got closure on the water supply subplot.
Roggenrola challenges Ash to a battle, so Ash chooses the worst possible option: Tepig. Tepig wins and Ash catches a new pokemon to never use. Have fun with Pidove and Swadloon, broseph!
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Started: July 6, 2005