This is the second of the two quality pokemon are separated episodes in Sinnoh, the first being the maze episode way, way earlier. What's funny is that when I watched the first one, I felt this was better. And now watching this one, I think the first is better. Lame, isn't it?
Pachirisu and Gliscor get the chance to show off their personalities the best, I think. Pachirisu seems like such a child, and it's main intent is just to have fun; this allows Meowth to really just to have to worry about convincing Pikachu of its motives, since Pachirisu will just follow right along, with a smile. It's a nice contrast, seeing Pikachu's skepticism and Pachirisu's delight in just running around. Gliscor's scene has it's customary crashing into Ash, and then it blows up TR's balloon, after Staravia is lured away by the most random mechanical Staravia that James digs up from out of nowhere. This scene feels like a reference to the scene back in the Doc Brock episode, where Ash asks Staravia to fetch Brock, but it's side-tracked by TR, and Gliscor is the one who has to come through. I think Staravia gets its own type of characterization too, in that Ash isn't too worried about Staravia's safety. He's sure it'll be okay, and he's not really bothered by Staravia's goofiness. I like this scene more for how Gliscor acts, but in fairness, both pokemon make it work, and it's nice characterization for both. I think it's sort of implied that pokemon love wouldn't have worked for Gliscor, as James says he wasn't prepared to deal with it that way- maybe it wouldn't have worked anyway on Gliscor.
I think Croagunk is shown a little too much. I think it's at its best when it's shown only 1 or 2 times for comedic purposes.
Grotle has changed a little from its introduction as Turtwig, when it used to be more of a mediator. Here, it willingly follows Piplup, and also gets quite tired after a while, needing Happiny to pick it up and carry it around. It doesn't seem like the leader it was at the beginning of the region, and I think that's nice too, b/c Bulbasaur will probably always be more remembered for that type of thing. This is more of a unique characterization for Grotle.
About halfway though, this episode shifts gears into a TR disbanding type episode, and this plot in general is WAY overdone in Sinnoh. There's at least 2 more episodes from here that has Meowth consider leaving TR, and that's too many-although one of them is really good; this one and the last one not so much. It's like there needed to be more to fill the time, and so this was what we were given. Also to consider for TR, is that when they lay their hole trap for the kids near the end of the episode, they come walking out of the Pokemon center, in complete uniform. That's quite a sight-I would expect a pokemon center to have more security at the door than that, although this maybe is a great indicator of how minor of a threat TR really is, at least in this region.
Well, anyway, the premise of this episode is that it's important to kick back after all of the serious stuff that's happened recently, and Ash and Dawn are really in that spirit. I think the best example of this is when they both try to convince Barry to take a picture with the group, much to Barry's annoyance. Both of our main heroes have a good deal of confidence, and not much to worry them at the moment- for Ash, the light-heartedness is really felt b/c of how stressful these last few episodes have been for him. It's been a bit of a while since Dawn has really been troubled, and I think she's shown this type of cheerfulness the last few episodes.