"Mao spends the entire episode being entirely in her comfort zone and suffering no more than minor inconveniences and gets a Z-Ring for it. Meanwhile everyone else frantically scrambles to keep the cafeteria afloat and somehow make it work despite every single thing we see of them indicating that they would horrendously fail. The end."
...You know it's a bad sign when the almost entirely neglected B-plot seems far more interesting than what was supposed to be the main story. It's like if we were at the League finale and they decided to keep the entire battle off-screen to instead focus on Team Rocket cleaning the base or something.
I don't know whether that would mean we've got a pretty crappy league or Team Rocket can just inherently make cleaning the base THAT entertaining.
Mallow and Lana feel like the big outliers of this series. SM seems to be really fond of the 'vindication' plot, having protagonists who are bungling underdogs and use all their agency and niches to still somehow prove they can amount to something in spite of working against their own foibles and weak spots. Even most of Team Rocket's limelight episodes tend to have them prove they can get something done in spite of being full on 'losers'.
Mallow and Lana seem to be characters the writers don't really like crapping on or making NOT in control of their world, there's no pressure on them or force to use a more distinctive approach to get anything done, they're never the fish out of water or even have much along the line of flaws or vulnerabilities, which tends to make their approach far duller and less developed. It feels like they just completely gave up trying to make Mallow a wacky character with her own idiosyncrasies as the series went on, she's a complete every girl in this episode. It's maybe why the girls don't often get ensemble episodes, when they want Lillie to bounce off of someone, they just use her family or Ash.
I can't really hate this episode, it was nice they had another episode that just focused on Mallow's actual talent rather than something dull and irrelevant like beating up Team Rocket or some equivalent. The biggest problem was execution, it's odd how little distinct agency they can put into Mallow's cooking and how her Pokemon come into it, Shaymin was once again completely in the background, this is not what the little guy needs at this point. I think the brief shot of Kiawe's team making a pizza had more distinctive use of their abilities than anything Mallow's team done. It's strange because the show has done this plenty of times over with COTD.
The 'off the clock' chemistry with Mallow and Meowth was pretty fun, I find it a real shame this series didn't do this more often with TR over just sticking to formula, it was the perfect series to do so (we need another "Jeeves" appearance
). Odd how Bewear just left Meowth at the bar, seemingly intentionally so Mallow had a functional translator, I get the suspicion that it is in on the deities' plans.
Mallow getting Grassium Z was unexpected. It's not something I can complain too much about, it's a call back to Mallow knowing the move before Ash did, so it's at least something she can do from experience. Odd how Sophocles is the only one without his signature type if characters are allowed to double dip though.
Also seems Primarina hasn't been completely demoted yet. If they can fit Turtonator into all this, they can get her in.
