Weekend Warrior
"I don't know what to say!"
"I do! Remarkable!"
Score: 5/10
Sorry for not mentioning this in the previous episode's write-up, but May received a mysterious egg as a reward for helping the farmers.
At the Silver Town pokemon contest, May decides to enter, but Jessie decides against it. At first James asks why, but literally no explanation is given. I know the real reason is that the episode didn’t have enough time for another major character in the contest, but literally no explanation is given as to why Jessie ignores one of her biggest priorities in this episode.
One of the contestants, Jeremy, a businessman who's interested in pokemon, barely gets there in time, acting clumsy and goofy.
Jeremy's performance is very strange: he dresses up like a rocker (and like all rockers, he says things like "groovy"), and has his Butterfree use abilities timed to his playing his guitar. His performance is quite good, but his wife and teenage son show up and tell him that he looks ridiculous and needs to stop acting like he's his son's age. In front of the audience, Jeremy tells his family that he's been bored by his job and wants to just try something odd. He tells them that this is about sense of accomplishment, and the audience claps for him. Have you ever seen the episode of South Park where a wrestling executive watches an actual wrestler tearfully complain about how wrestling organizations have ruined a legitimate sport, and is so impressed by his acting that he hires him as a wrestler? This scene plays the exact same way, except it’s completely serious, and worse, about a character we don’t know and have no investment in. This is like in the The Last Airbender movie, where in the third act, Princess Yui shows up and suddenly becomes a major, central character despite never having been mentioned before, and when a certain spoilers event happens with her, we’re supposed to care.
In any case, May, Jeremy, and two nameless extras advance. I wonder who will finish round two. Jeremy's son watches his father battle, and quickly comes to appreciate it.
Finally, we reach May versus Jeremy. His son is now impressed, and his mother remembers to when she met Jeremy, before he became a businessman: he was on stage in his band, and she was apparently a teenage groupie. Because nothing leads to stable relationships in which to raise children than teenage groupies and rockers. Even though her concerns about Jeremy acting like an idiot were in no way addressed, she decides to cheer him on.
Venusaur versus Combusken, but this Venusaur is very powerful and has years of training, as opposed to Combusken's, what, few months? Venusaur proves to just be way more powerful than anyone expected, but after it uses frenzy plant, Ash tells May to pay attention to Venusaur's breathing, and she realizes that it uses up energy when it attacks. I see. Good thing this contest is about May and Ash versus Jeremy and not May versus Jeremy, since that would otherwise mean May had just received outside help and her accomplishment in defeating him is not her own.
Jeremy uses frenzy plant again, and it knocks May's points down to a sliver. But Jeremy forgot that shonen protagonists get stronger as they get weaker (this is actually an explicit, canon rule in Yu Yu Hakusho), and Combusken narrowly wins anyway.
At the end of the day, Jeremy goes back to his boring office job, but his son has a newfound respect for him. Good thing we, as an audience, had so much invested in Jeremy and wanted him to succeed so much.
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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005