For me, robotic minions (even though I don't see them that way) getting their s*** done and having a point > comedic annoyances who exist to pad out the episodes and got old after somewhere around episode 250.
Indeed. For me, outside of the odd episode where one of them got a chance to shine, they've pretty much always been the epitome of the Boring Failure Villain. As they are now, the writers have at least made an effort to get rid of two of the things that contributed to them being boring failures: one, they no longer are made to pad out A-plots of episodes that shouldn't even involve them; and two, even if one might think they're (still?) boring now, at least we can safely say thanks to their B-plot that they're no longer complete and utter failures.
And it's not like their motivation is
so different from before. Since AG, what's been their primary motivation? From what I saw, it was to please Da Boss; things like shadowing the twerps and trying to capture Pikachu were, at least later on, pretty incidental (and, in their minds, would have contributed to the aforementioned pleasing). This hasn't changed; the difference is that now they're taking frequent orders from Giovanni himself, and are actually doing something to contribute to the organization--which is to say,
not chasing after some random ten-year-old kid and his occasionally-above-average unevolved rat.
Also, we need to remember that what we've seen from them so far has been quite literally all business. The little that hasn't been completely all business (BW004, for instance) has seem them acting...somewhat comedic, just not painfully exaggerated the way they were before.
Personally, I don't think their personalities (or comedic tendencies, for that matter) are
completely gone anyways. It's just that we only see them, on average, for a couple minutes each episode, and like I said, it's pretty much been all business.
Basically, it's not that they're gone, it that they're more subdued
and we haven't gotten many chances to see them.
Either way, I think we should wait 'til they've had roles in more than a measly three episodes' A-plots before we attempt to pass judgment. I think that sounds fair. Don't you?
...bah, who'm I kidding? Of course you don't. Otherwise you ingrates might've stopped trying to judge everything
else about the new series.