So it looks like we've reached our first filler episode—“Clefairy and the Moon Stone” apparently wasn't filler, strangely enough. I personally can't tell for the life of me the difference between filler episodes and regular episodes, even when it's spelled out for me. Apparently filler is used to lengthen the illusion of time in a show, which I personally do like in a way. With Pokémon it makes sense, as it shows just how big the region is, and we get to see interesting sides to this world. Pokémon in particular seems to have some fillers that fans are more fond of than in, say, Bleach or Naruto. (Dragonball Z had some notable ones, though not all of the fillers were well-received from what I've gathered.) It's also said filler does nothing in character development, but I could argue against that here.
Ash got cocky in this episode because he won two badges. A young trainer he battled against was fascinated by his winnings, which made him too proud. As Ash is still considered a novice trainer, the fact that he's gotten as far as he did was getting to him fairly quickly. And as he's striving to become the very best that no one ever was, as he's one step closer to reaching that goal and is excited to get another badge, it's inevitable he'd get a big head at some point. If I remember correctly, this shows back up again when he faces Lt. Surge, but we'll get there eventually. During the battle with A.J., Pidgeotto was a nice choice, but he underestimated strategy fairly quickly, which is odd since he was learning slightly about strategy, but that's what cockiness does to you.
I totally forgot how cool A.J. was from the get-go. He sounds just as cocky as Ash, which I think was the point, but the difference is he's confident in himself, and he knows it. His training methods are rather rough, as they are trained to exhaustion and are made to jump into water just to shake it off (though I have to admit that is clever), but the episode made it clear with the disappearance of his Sandshrew that he does care for his Pokémon deep down. Really a damn shame we never saw AJ again in the anime with exception to the Orange Islands opening theme. Even then, the training reminded me a bit of dojos. Which is interesting as this is the first episode where we see a gym that's not recognized by the Pokémon League. There are apparently a few of these gyms across the region specifically for training, much like the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City (even though it originally was an official gym), and if I remember correctly, we do see these from time to time. Though of course, as we learn later on with Gary, there are more than eight gyms across the region that are recognized by the Pokémon League, but I do believe they say you have to meet the requirement of eight badges from any gym. I really do wish we got to focus on those kinds of gyms more in the anime, especially since the anime's gone on much longer than the intended year-and-a-half.
Back to A.J., I believe he's either an Ace Trainer or Tamer judging from the whip, but he's probably more-or-less just a regular trainer who doesn't identify himself as anything. The move Sandshrew used last made me wonder what it was, but listening to it again, he says “Fissure” (his accent is a bit hard to understand at times), which would explain the ground breaking apart and Team Rocket getting all beaten up. Apparently Pokémon Yellow version makes a reference to him as a Youngster with a Sandshrew that does have Fissure in its move-pool, something I have totally forgotten about. Also, that's really cool to have seen a prototype Macho Brace prior to Generation III. Sure, it's called “Strength Intensifier”, but that's pretty much what it is. So he invented it in the anime-verse, then? Perhaps?
And here we have Team Rocket musing over their motto, and a first instance of their sneaky methods in broad daylight (laying a trap in episode five probably counts, but Ash and Misty were nowhere near it). I've said this a few times, but I'm going to keep saying that I really do love their chemistry here. Makes you wonder why they never explored more of their backstory in this season if they expected this to be only 82 episodes. Them joining Team Rocket would've been shown much more earlier and we would've been able to see how they got to be close friends, but I guess Takeshi Shudo wanted to make them as mysterious as possible. Now for some reason, I didn't notice that James' voice actually changed here at the end of the episode, I actually thought that Ted Lewis was still James, but apparently Eric Stuart took over during the battle at the end. I wonder why that happened. I knew Eric Stuart would be James fairly early on, at least right before “Here Comes the Squirtle Squad!”, but I never knew it was in this episode. He apparently tried to sound similar to Ted Lewis here to make it not as noticeable. Which takes a good voice actor to pull off, and he sure did fool me here. He probably stops sounding like Ted Lewis' James' voice by the next episode.
(Also “pussy-footing” and “moment of tooth”. Wow xD.)
Worth noting is the gag in the gym. I don't know what the gags were in the original (chances are they're a play on words), but they got a bit clever with the mess-up of words. Puns really are hard to translate over, so I feel that one of 4KIDS' few strengths in their dubs is that they were able to make up their own jokes for those particular scenes. Sure, just about every dubbing company does this, but you have to give credit where credit is due, and for the most part 4KIDS was good at writing jokes.
So where Seymour and Samurai fell flat for me, A.J. made up for his coolness, and thus kept the episode from being a bore. I'm actually curious as to who is more popular in the fandom, he or Giselle, though that really should be a no-brainer. There's just something about high-class Lasses with Cubones that stick out more than a random trainer with an awesome Sandshrew. Also, there's this:
“She can violate my rights any time!”
For shame, Brock.