satopi
Life doesn’t end, …it changes.
I think part of the problem is solved in a way. As in, they made Team Rocket more useful and less of a pain. Look at their chemistry with Team Skull, which was there and had some degree of importance in the TR vs TS episode. I do think that they don't have much chemistry with the SM group compared to OS (for obvious reasons) but they have been settling with the idea of Meowth holding some form of relationship with Ash's then Litten, Ash and Prof Kukui hosting Marieanie in one episode, and Mimikyu having a rivalry with Pikachu. I do enjoy the moments of sassy comments between the group towards the TRio sometimes. They were at their worst in DP by appearing almost every damn episode, diluting back to their ironically unfunny comedic & useless selves in XY(&Z) and the rest of BW2+DA right when they were promoted and took their jobs seriously for once... AND succeeding at it. Here in SM, I feel like they're at the perfect balance. They're not appearing as much (sorry Zoruagible) yet makes an appearance when it's necessary, are given pretty tough Pokémon, and have their personalities in tact. I'd rather the TRio are given decent roles at the expense of not appearing that often as they used to then to be theI think there's also the fact that the old TR formula made for very easy to write plots. Shudo once mentioned that Ash himself wasn't really meant to be that interesting on his own, so TR butting in and making a dilemma was to compensate for that. The thing is that still went into making a good plot a lot of the time in the OS since TR were meant to be stars instead of just plot devices. Hell, for his claims of his 'blandness' Ash had a chemistry with TR in those days. Sure they were nuisances then too, but that was the joke, the twerps' reactions to TR butting in for the billionth time were as much the fun of it ("Oh, it's just Team Rocket"/"Awww not you guys again!"/"Team Rocket eh, hmmm, we don't really have time to fight you today...").
In later series this setup became flat out bare bones in it's purpose, that TR were plot devices there whenever the twerps had a lacking spot or were too bland to hold a story on their own, so they'd butt in and get beaten by them over and over to make them look more remarkable. Even worse they didn't even bother making the twerps interesting as foils against TR, they beat them the exact same scripted way over and over, and their dialogue against them is pretty much just stock hero script. TR are pretty much an excuse for the writers to 'turn off' the twerps for a while, especially during the third act, which is often supposed to be the most culminating and difficult development point of the story, but for this show is usually the most predictable and bland element.
BW had a brief while they revived things to SOME degree, but I think that was because the writers were relishing having comical TR back after so long. Shortly into XY the fatigue started to kick back in ten fold, and the more serious story and characterisations didn't help with TR not fitting in.
SM seems to have caught themselves on this cheapness and tried to make the twerps drive more plots on their own personalities, but even then this problem still sticks out. Neither TR and many other bad guys have much of a chemistry with them, hell the bad guy stories tend to be the worst this series. They still have the problem that TR aren't really meant to compliment the main story, just make it easier and maybe have a fun personality about it to balance it out, and now they don't need them as much they just feel obsolete, with a lot of elements of the show seemingly structured to just keep them from interfering and being noteworthy.
Sometimes it feels like the rest of the characters are meta aware TR have overstayed their welcome as cast members, so haughtily refuse to play along with their shtick or stoop to their level while they ham things up (even when they goof off as much when they're NOT around) and always give them the most bare bones send off. They are DONE with them.
Now that they aren't used as much, not only has been an immense, well welcomed
I disagree that the Team Skull grunts suffer the same issue. They aren't exact replicas of the TRio (aside from being useless but what grunt isn't?) It's hard to tell what they're going to do with them but at this point, they have more potential than the TRio based on their limited appearances alone.
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