Can't help but mention a couple of things months later, probably because I'm hilariously biased!
Speaking of, why is Krabby in a bowl? A freaking bowl that it can't move around in?
My theory is that he'd just received them, so he has yet to prepare them for being introduced into a new habitat. It's kinda like how when you buy a goldfish, you introduce them to an aquarium first by sticking it still in the bag into the water so it has time to adjust. Pokémon have a tendency to fight each other when unattended, so the last thing he'd probably want is to let new Pokémon get shocked by being beaten up by other resident Pokémon.
And why is everyone's cook on vacation in this episode? That better be just a dub thing—then again, in the second episode, Professor Oak ordered take-out...
It
is just a dub thing, yep. *nods* The original has him advising Ash not to eat purely fish in the winter months, and Bill's "my cook is on vacation" speech was originally him asking Brock if he knows how to make fried noodles.
Yeah, I don't know why it was changed either.
Then he mentions there being over 150 types of Pokémon.
A lot of people tend to point this out, but it's a little awkward because back then, it wasn't certain as to whether or not the series would continue past the first season/gen. (This is also why there's a Mewtwo on the door: because no one thought there would be a Mewtwo movie.) It's even a little dodgy as to whether or not Gen II was a known thing. Sure, Ho-oh was in the first episode, but it wasn't colored correctly. But more importantly, keep in mind that this episode aired two years before Gold and Silver were released in Japan. So as far as anyone knew, 150 was a good number to land on.
Besides, technically, Bill's not
incorrect, and there's really no way he could have said that there are hundreds of Pokémon. Had he said that, people would've debated against his point back then. The best compromise would have been to leave it out altogether, but this is more of an introduction-to-the-Pokémon-universe episode.
In any case, considering the fact that Bill's from Johto, it's very, very likely that he already knew about at
least 100 other Pokémon. It's just, y'know. Kids from Kanto.
You also have a good point about Dragonite and how someone should know about it because of its size, but ...!
you would think that Bill, the guy who knows more than Professor Oak (whom is well-respected amongst Pokémon researchers everywhere), would know what a Dragonite is.
... Bill can't see it.
The original makes this abundantly clear (In his attempts to get the Pokémon to stay, he actually asks the Pokémon to show him what it looks like, which tells you he knows how tall it is, but that's it.), but even in the dub, he mentions that the Pokémon only appears on dark, foggy nights. Visibility is
very low in those conditions, so.
Of course, the next question is why the beacon didn't illuminate it, but my theory is that the fog was just too thick.
I wonder if they planned on doing something with that Dragonite later on, at least when it came to rare, powerful Pokémon, but it never went anywhere.
It probably helps that that part of the episode was more or less a homage to
a short story, rather than something they planned on going back to. Plots back in that season tended to be a little ... weird like that.
(Its cry sounds a bit like Lugia, by the way. I can't be the only one who's noticed this.)
Nope. b)'')b
Why choose the cliff if they knew they were going to die and are afraid of heights (which I'm questioning due to them using a hot air balloon as transport)?
Stealth. *nods*
Weren't we supposed to learn about how mysterious Pokémon are?
Among other things. *le nod* One of the messages in this episode was also that everyone had a different purpose, and there's no right or wrong way to interact with Pokémon. (Bill brings this up in his speech inside the lighthouse.) So that segment was more or less emphasizing that each character had their own path: Ash with training, Brock with breeding, Misty with ... whatever she does, and Bill with researching.
There's no excuse as to how there can only be 150 species in the Pokémon world.
Well, besides the meta ones, anyway.
But yeah, there were a lot of problems with this episode (such as, for example, how hilariously all over the place it was), but at least
some of the problems could be easier to understand if one realizes that this was made back when Pokémon was still very new. There were talks of Gen II since Gen I came out, but the writers didn't know things like whether or not the Mewtwo movie would be a thing or how many Pokémon there would be in the next gen and so on and so forth. If you watch it while imagining that there only Gen I exists, it's a little easier to swallow.
It's also easier to watch if you keep in mind that one of its biggest problems is the fact that it's apparently meant to be an introduction chapter. Yes, I know. Thirteen episodes in, and we're only getting an explanation for how the world works, but that at least accounts for some of its weirdness in that it's really focused on explaining things like the six-Pokémon limit, the storage system, and how the world works. Even the narrator spends a lot more time talking in this episode than any other because he's so busy explaining what badges are and how the League works, and a lot of Bill's speech (especially in the dub) sounds suspiciously like a thorough explanation to what a trainer is exactly. To be honest, I'm not sure
why the writers chose to write up this explanation so late in the game. My only going theory is that Bill's the first researcher to pop up since Oak, so they can't very well have Oak drop exposition. But that really doesn't hold that much water, given how many characters of the day even the earliest seasons had. Not to mention viewers would have probably figured half of this stuff out already.
Aaaaanyway, otherwise, this analysis is pretty spot-on on the crit I
haven't quoted. I just felt like throwing in my two cents about the other stuff. b)'')b