Zhydra
Master of Chaos!
It was a solid episode. Dunno why people can't just enjoy that. Kiawe got some good development and a new Z-Crystal, his Charizard has proven itself still capable of battling despite its age, we got good battles for Kiawe vs Ash and Kiawe vs Tapu Lele, we got some set up for next week's episode, and Mallow and Lana also got a little bit of development.
It looks like people don't know what they want sometimes. "We never see Lana or Mallow do anything for their goals". They show them advancing and working towards those goals here. "It took away from the episode." While I guess they could throw Mallow a bit more hardships in her goal, her goal isn't really that much pokémon-related and there's only so much you can do with a restaurant goal that stays entertaining and also understandable to a wide audience. We've already had a contest, we've already had conflicts in the family, we've already had missing ingredients. I don't mind them keeping Mallow around as a supporting character to facilitate storytelling and get things going, she's great at that. Here in Poni she's facilitating Hapu growing closer to the main cast after her less than friendly start with Ash. And I'd rather have them do this than try to force more restaurant things in there that would get forced or stale quickly if overdone.
This Poni arc is turning out to be really solid so far. Everybody's getting things out of it. Ash not yet but he will once he gets his Grand Trial obviously. Sophocles and Lana got evolutions, Lana also got a Z-crystal, Kiawe got a Z-crystal, Mallow got new recipes. Lillie hasn't gotten anything concrete yet but she met with Gladion and I'm fairly sure that things with her dad are still coming up. They're setting up a lot of things to pay off later, there's a nice flow in these episodes.
That and something might happen next week to make Mallow stand out more. What makes her family drama... click together. It doesn't change much of what I think about her, but it would give her that boost in similar ways why I like Lana these days!