It was disappointing that Ash didn't get to battle Giovanni......but he if did, he would've lost to Mewtwo. So I'm kinda happy that Ash defeated Jessie, James and Meowth instead, who were using Giovanni's Pokémon.
I didn't like how they were shocking Ash whenever his Pokémon were getting hurt, Despite TRio's cheap ways, Ash didn't give up and defeated them. I'm glad Ash got the Earth badge, but I didn't like how his Pikachu defeated Rhydon, a Ground-type Pokémon with Thunderbolt despite Ground-type's
immunity to Electric attacks. That's was just bad writing in my opinion, and it's one of the flaws of the Kanto saga.
As usual, Gary was overconfident in this episode, I didn't like how he was showing off his 10 badges to Ash. He (Gary-stu) even defeated Giovanni's powerful Pokémon easily, untill Giovanni send out MEWTWO! Gary tried to defeat Mewtwo, only to be get owned by him.
The best parts of the episode were the scenes with Mewtwo and the scene where Gary's Cheerleaders started to cheer for ASH! That must've been a turn of events for Gary.
Anyway, this was a good episode and also a good setup for the first movie.