Absolutely not. It's supposed to imply that I wasn't on the same wavelength as you regarding Tomioka's writing.
Nah, sometimes Tomioka can write decent and even good episodes. And I'm pretty sure "Team Rocket vs Team Plasma" is great.
It's just that the worst episodes of the show almost always have the habit of being written by Tomioka.
The way I see it, Iris has gotten a lot better about at least some of her flaws lately; you certainly don't hear "what a kid" as much anymore. I only wish I could track the same amount of growth in Cilan, who hasn't really changed much at all since the beginning.
Not arguing with you there: Iris does get more character development than Cilan. The same was true between Misty and Brock. too.
What bothers me about Burgundy is that she's never even been allowed to even have a point; all you have to do is look at the Pinot Noir episode to see how poorly she gets treated. At least Georgia actually comes off as a little less of a piece of paper and is given some substance. Burgundy, meanwhile, can't even get lucky when Cilan isn't involved.
Like it or not, that's her character so far. She's a Butt Monkey extraordinaire. But I DO hope she'll get treated better in the future.
I would take the hobbies as a joke if they weren't several times exactly what the episode needs to resolve the plot. He just happened to be a fisherman just in time for Bianca to learn how to fish, was a detective when there was a mystery with the missing Audino, just happened to be an actor when they met Luke , and knew completely everything about the Battle Subway just when there happened to be a heist using it (the most ridiculous one of all; seriously, subway conventions?)
That he can pull out plot-relevent hobbies that he has a passion for is, again, meant to be ridiculous. That last one, as you said, was the most ridiculous of all and was portrayed as such: I thought him going on about how "Metero Conoisseurs" are different from "Train Connoisseurs" "Track Connoisseurs" "Subway Connoisseurs", etc. would have clued you in that it was all a big joke. I mean, it's a kids show: sometimes things like these are meant to be taken lightly.
I wouldn't mind Crustle so much if he actually remembered that he has two other Pokemon who aren't weak either.
He's used Pansage more often than he does Crustle, actually. It's Stunfisk that really gets the shaft.
Aside from his obnoxious behavior while fighting Luke, I should say.
Which I personally ended up enjoying because, again, it ended up working against him.
The weird thing about it all is, it's mostly because the Club Battle and Clubsplosion got all the rivals together, leading Cilan and Burgundy to constantly try to one-up each other while Georgia complains about them both.
Which isn't much different from when Cilan does his Conoisseur schtick solo and Iris complains about it.
It goes back to what I keep saying: Cilan's personality is mismatched to Ash and Iris. If he was around someone as crazy as he is (Burgundy) it would work a lot better.
Or Pinot Nior. But Cilan's personality "mismatched" to Ash and Iris is exactly what makes his place in the group so great and makes for great interaction between all three of them. If you want a group with personalities that blend together perfectly, go back to the DP trio of Ash, Dawn, and Brock, who were all equally bland. I find a group of totally different people interacting with one another to be more entertaining.