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Worst Episodes

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Brownie

Anti Drew & paul fan
Brownie's Top 8 (So Far) Worst Pokemon Episodes

Hey there Serebii! :D I’m back with a list of my worst episodes (I’ll do my best later), feel free to agree or disagree. Subbed episodes will be included. Also, before anyone comes to the conclusion that I hate the anime, I really don’t. In fact, I would rank it on top if YYH and Rurouni Kenshin didn’t exist. It’s just that, like any other show not named Avatar: The Last Airbender, this has bad episodes too), but then, it has 777+ episodes. Now, without further ado, let’s begin, and I do apologize if you like any of these episodes. These are the 8 worst episodes I’ve seen:

#9: Cooking Up A Sweet Story!

This episode starts off with Ash and Dawn training, when a pretty woman (who Brock falls in love with, who didn't see this coming?) asks to borrow Pikachu. Plot convenience anyone?

Anyway, she leads them to a bakery, where her grandmother is, and it turns out she's been down ever since her Pikachu (named Sugar) just up and left. So they get Pikachu to pretend to be Sugar (Sugar scratched itself with its tail sometimes), and it works for a while. The old lady and "Sugar" then head outside to pick berries...yawn...boring. Team Rocket is shoehorned into the plot, of course, they blast off. Then the old lady asks for a battle, and Aipom is sent to battle Pikachu. The battle is pretty lame, and also short-lived (this is the best they can do with a premise of Ash battling his own Pikachu?). Just when it looks like Aipom has Pikachu cornered, the old woman stops the battle. Ash decides to tell her the truth, but Abigail already knew - Pikachu's method was different from Sugar's - Sugar wasn't strong enough to do it, so she left.

WHAT?! This makes no sense! Why couldn't Sugar just TRAIN? And also, how did she know that Sugar didn't just come back stronger? Ugh...back to the episode. An arm grabs Pikachu, and guess what, it's Team Rocket again. All attempts to beat them fail, until a Raichu, who is revealed to be Sugar, beats them up (Had enough plot convenience? Too bad!), and everything is back to normal. The episode ends with everyone eating cake, praising Sugar, and moving on...

Bottom Line: They wasted Raichu's first DP appearance on THIS episode?!

#8: What I Did For Love!

This episode begins with May entering Eevee in a contest. We find out that Eevee learned Dig. Soon after, a woman comes over and adores the Bonsly that Brock is taking care of. She turns out to be a breeder, just like Brock. He impresses her in various ways, from showing off his Pokemon to knowing the right kind of food to feed them. She then asks him to enter a contest. Yeah, I know, I was shocked, too. After a while, he decides to enter it, basically saying he will win at any cost.

The next scene is...typical Team Rocket shenanigans. Moving on.

After some actually good appeals, we transition to, oh, come on! ANOTHER shoehorned Team Rocket scene? Haven't we had enough of those already?!

Skip...Brock and May make it to the finals, Brock tries to flirt, he gets brushed off, final round begins. It starts off decent enough, with Marshtomp more or less outclassing Eevee. Brock seems to have a natural talent for coordinating (well, they did say breeding and coordinating go hand in hand), but then miraculously, May catches up, and by the time the timer runs out, somehow, May has more points. This, in spite of the fact that most of her moves were countered earlier, and Eevee clearly took a lot of damage. I suppose I should have seen this coming, but they could have done it better, and May just more or less took the spotlight from Brock. After that's over, Yuma (the lady that was admiring Brock's Bonsly) explains that the girl Brock beat in the first round was her sister, who just started off as a coordinator. Brock is left speechless as his one chance to impress a girl is yanked from him by the hands of deus ex machina. He's told that he should consider coordinating, but of course, he was only doing this for love, and can't get over how cheaply he lost (he should be glad he's not Timmy).

We then cut to Jessie- OH, NO, I am NOT watching this. NEXT EPISODE!

Bottom Line: Just because May's a main character doesn't mean you HAVE to give her a DEM. You could have just had Brock win, but decide to stay with his friends.

#7: Axew Get Lost

Now, I’m going to start off by saying that I’m not that big of a fan of Oshawott. That being said, I still don’t like the way gets punished, while Axew basically got off scot-free, despite the fact that he started this to begin with.

This is basically just an episode of generic filler. I don’t mind filler, but this was stupid. And yes, I’m aware that part of a battle was shown, but that doesn’t make it any less of filler in my eyes. Anyway, just like the title says, Axew…gets lost. Yes, folks, this is another one of THOSE episodes. It gets lost while chasing a balloon (REALLY? That’s the best they could come up with?), so Ash and co. have to look for him. You'd think Iris would be able to control Axew; this makes her look bad...will it still be doing this crap when it's a Fraxure? Even a Haxorus? Moving on, Oshawott finds a bunch of apples and eats them, but they belong to Trubbish and Garbodo, and big surprise, they’re angry. The rest of the episode is basically just unentertaining hijinks (this could have been summed up in just a few minutes if Virgil (who specializes in finding lost Pokemon) took the time to help the ones he became friends with. In fact, this could have been a Pikachu short). At the end, everything’s resolved, blah blah blah, they find Axew, Oshawott tries to eat more; Pikachu slaps him on the back of the head.

Bottom Line: Putting Oshawott at the butt of the jokes doesn’t make it funny.

#6: Hoenn Alone

Yawn…yet another generic filler episode. If you don't already know, I am a huge fan of Johto fillers, so I think its saying a lot that this is the only Johto filler that I’ve ever really disliked. Just like LatL above, this could have been summed up in a few minutes. It starts off with Ash and Pikachu on a boat to Hoenn. You’d think this would take just a few minutes or so, before they spend the rest of the episode establishing Hoenn, right? Instead, they slap Team Rocket into the plot, resulting in Pikachu getting caught in a generic filler plot featuring Kanto Pokemon we’ve already seen, and Ash looking for him. Once Pikachu and Ash are reunited, the ending sees Pikachu get sick…they kept us waiting for THIS?

Bottom Line: Tanks a Lot, Team Rocket, for causing this to drag on.

#5: Cottonee in Love

I haven’t seen this episode in a while, so here’s the basic summary: Ash and Iris are training with Scraggy and Axew, Axew knocks it out, a lone Cottonee arrives, it’s trying to impress another Cottonee but it’s not worthy. So far, it’s not that bad. In fact, I like the Cilan and Iris interactions, even though I’m not Cilan’s biggest fan. The thing that annoys me is Ash being more dense than usual, which is annoying, because he NEVER used to be this dense!

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100421024448/es.pokemon/images/2/21/P02_Beso_de_Melody.png

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/answers/2564000/2564072_1333335972484.83res_400_300.jpg

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/EP021

Umm…right, moving on. We have to deal with this more than enough times throughout the episode, with the lame lines of dialogue not helping (I love Sarah, I really do, in fact, she’s about equal to Veronica in BW, at least to me). It ruins an otherwise decent episode. It finally ends with Cottonee impressing the one he loved, and all the couples going off, with Ash STILL thinking he (male Cottonee) wanted to be “buddies” with her.

Bottom Line: Dense Ash stopped being funny…oh, wait, it never was.

#4: Disguise Da Limit

…May did not deserve this ribbon. At all. This episode picks up from where Disaster of Disguise left off, with Timmy’s backstory having been established. We get to the appeals…and it is a mess. While Timmy’s appeal was impressive, May’s was just a messed up Blizzard and juggling balls with her tail. How much worse were the other appeals to the point where she was able to make it? But that’s not even the worst of it. We then get to the battle of May’s Skitty vs Timmy’s Dusclops, where Skitty’s defenses increased to 999. To keep it short, Skitty miraculously manages to withstand many powerful attacks from Dusclops, and somehow wins, because Arceus really hates Timmy (who really deserved to win). The whole plotline was setting up for Timmy to win, with even his mother now supporting him when she didn’t before, his dad lying to help him achieve his dream, etc., and they just hand it to May, who could get ANOTHER ribbon ANYWHERE ELSE.

Bottom Line: Timmy should have been a main character.

#3: To Thine Own Pokemon Be True

This episode is about Ash, Dawn, and Barry getting ready for a ping-pong tournament. This doesn’t sound that bad, in fact, unlike many, I like the idea…the problem is how it’s integrated into the plot. If nothing important happened, it would be a decent filler, but that’s not the case here. After the tournament ends, Dawn decides to leave Ambipom with O (the COTD) because she loves ping-pong more than contests, even after establishing earlier that she loved contests more than battling. The Ash and Dawn trade made SENSE, this is just a plot device to get rid of Ambipom. It’s basically the Primeape release episode, but worse. O said they’d be in Vermilion City, but Dawn never returned there to pick up her Pokemon.

Bottom Line: This is, without a doubt, the worst release episode ever.

#2: The Semi-Final Frontier

I’m just going to say that I can see why people hate this episode so much. I’m sure almost everyone expects Ash to lose every major league by now, but the way this is done is DEPLORABLE. First off, Tobias doesn’t even get disqualified for having brought a LEGENDARY POKEMON, making him look more and more like a Gary-Stu each time. The actual battle is too one-sided and anti-climactic, because he more or less sweeps half of his team with Darkrai, until Sceptile barely beats it. You’d think his next Pokemon would be a non-legendary so Ash could put up a better fight, right? Instead…he sends out a freakin’ LATIOS, which sweeps the rest of his team and ties with Pikachu. Most of them don’t even put up a fight, just pretty much stand there and let Tobias beat them. The thing that really sucks is, Ash really could have won (even though we know they wouldn’t let him) if Tobias didn’t appear.

Bottom Line: Please keep your Gary-Stu/Mary-Sue characters OUTSIDE of canon, thanks.

#1: A Double Dilemma

I really was looking forward to this episode when I read the summary…I really was. But then I watched it…

This episode begins with Ash and co. arriving at a town filled with annoying May and Max fanboys/girls. It starts off okay, with May and Max being piled on by the crowd, but then once Ash shows his badges and announces that he wants to challenge Norman, it all goes downhill from there. What follows is 15+ minutes of Ash torture. This kinda reminds me of the Avatar Day episode from Avatar: The Last Airbender (which is the main reason I wanted to watch it so badly), but whereas the Avatar Day episode was funny, and had a good ending, this was the exact opposite. Most of the humor in this episode derives from Ash bashing, which is one of the lowest forms of comedy.

Meanwhile, Team Rocket (and Wobbuffet) disguises themselves as the Maple family. The human disguises are decent, but the Pokemon disguises aren’t. It wouldn’t be so bad if FANBOYS/GIRLS could recognize them, but no, they don’t. Anyway, back to Ash. The whole town decides that he’s not worthy of battling their “pwecious” Norman (wouldn’t fanboys/girls want to see their idol ‘crush’ Ash?), so one guy with a Golduck challenges him, and loses. Then a bunch of other people challenge him, and also lose. The old lady then gets MAY to challenge him, and since most of his Pokemon are tired out (and they won’t even give him the time to heal them), he is forced to use Taillow. Ash is doing good, but then May spams Torchic’s Ember, and it hits…Ash. This declares May the winner, which is stupid.

To finally put an end to this episode, Team Rocket gets exposed and everyone finds out just who the Pokemon they really are (reference to a lame line from the same episode), Ash has Pikachu beat them, and it looks like the townspeople have finally gained respect for him…but then they praise Pikachu, and STILL brush Ash off. What happens next? Like in most other episodes, they just head off to the next town, without even so much as an apology from EITHER May and/or any of the townspeople.

Worst. Episode. Ever!

Bottom Line: This is a disgrace – to BOTH Pokemon AND Avatar: The Last Airbender!

Side note: Isn't it ironic that the episode with the initials "ADD" is the one I can't sit through?

Honorable mentions: Most training episodes (I would have just put them in to make it a top 10 list, but I didn’t feel like watching them again, nor did I remember much about them.
 
Last edited:

LizardonX

Banned
You ranked Axew get lost 7th?!
 

Ver-mont

Well-Known Member
I’ve heard it’s supposed to be a reference to the Avatar Day episode from Avatar: The Last Airbender, but whereas the Avatar Day episode was funny, and had a good ending, this was the exact opposite. Most of the humor in this episode derives from Ash bashing, which is one of the lowest forms of comedy.

Bottom Line: This is a disgrace – to BOTH Pokemon AND Avatar: The Last Airbender!

Nope.

This aired on March 2004 in Japan, while the Avatar Day episode was first aired on April 2006.
 

Brownie

Anti Drew & paul fan
Alright but you could have used the spoiler tags haha

I honestly don't know why so many people dislike "Cottonee in love" it's like, my favorite filler from the first 51 episodes :p haha

I liked it well enough, but Ash's unlimited density got annoying, tarnishing an otherwise decent episode.

Nope.

This aired on March 2004 in Japan, while the Avatar Day episode aired only on April 2006.

Oh, thanks for that (off-topic: isn't it a coincidence that ADD had a merchant and ATLA has a cabbage merchant?).
 

moneylesswario

Gone But Not Forgotten
lol Axew get lost

Nitpick: ADD and DDL shouldn't have exclamation points at the end.

Other than that, I agree, they do suck. I don't think I've seen the Avatar Day episode :( Axew Get Lost should be higher, Cameron episodes should be on the list, so should Cutting the Ties that Bind
 

DANdotW

Previously Iota
"Avatar Day" aired two years after "Double Dilemma". It is not a reference to anything from Avatar.
 

Brownie

Anti Drew & paul fan
lol Axew get lost

Nitpick: ADD and DDL shouldn't have exclamation points at the end.

Other than that, I agree, they do suck. I don't think I've seen the Avatar Day episode :( Axew Get Lost should be higher, Cameron episodes should be on the list, so should Cutting the Ties that Bind

Took out the !s.

Didn't see any Cameron episodes, don't remember CTTTB (ugh too many Ts), if I've seen it.

"Avatar Day" aired two years after "Double Dilemma". It is not a reference to anything from Avatar.

Fixed.
 
Hey there Serebii! :D I’m back with a list of my worst episodes (I’ll do my best later), feel free to agree or disagree. Subbed episodes will be included. Also, before anyone comes to the conclusion that I hate the anime, I really don’t. In fact, I would rank it on top if YYH and Rurouni Kenshin didn’t exist. It’s just that, like any other show not named Avatar: The Last Airbender, this has bad episodes too), but then, it has 777+ episodes. Now, without further ado, let’s begin, and I do apologize if you like any of these episodes. These are the 7 worst episodes I’ve seen:

#7: Axew Get Lost

Now, I’m going to start off by saying that I’m not that big of a fan of Oshawott. That being said, I still don’t like the way gets punished, while Axew basically got off scot-free, despite the fact that he started this to begin with.

This is basically just an episode of generic filler. I don’t mind filler, but this was stupid. And yes, I’m aware that part of a battle was shown, but that doesn’t make it any less of filler in my eyes. Anyway, just like the title says, Axew…gets lost. Yes, folks, this is another one of THOSE episodes. It gets lost while chasing a balloon (REALLY? That’s the best they could come up with?), so Ash and co. have to look for him. You'd think Iris would be able to control Axew; this makes her look bad...will it still be doing this crap when it's a Fraxure? Even a Haxorus? Moving on, Oshawott finds a bunch of apples and eats them, but they belong to Trubbish and Garbodo, and big surprise, they’re angry. The rest of the episode is basically just unentertaining hijinks (this could have been summed up in just a few minutes if Virgil (who specializes in finding lost Pokemon) took the time to help the ones he became friends with. In fact, this could have been a Pikachu short). At the end, everything’s resolved, blah blah blah, they find Axew, Oshawott tries to eat more; Pikachu slaps him on the back of the head.

Bottom Line: Putting Oshawott at the butt of the jokes doesn’t make it funny.

#6: Hoenn Alone

Yawn…yet another generic filler episode. I think its saying a lot that this is the only Johto filler that I’ve ever really disliked. Just like LatL above, this could have been summed up in a few minutes. It starts off with Ash and Pikachu on a boat to Hoenn. You’d think this would take just a few minutes or so, before they spend the rest of the episode establishing Hoenn, right? Instead, they slap Team Rocket into the plot, resulting in Pikachu getting caught in a generic filler plot featuring Kanto Pokemon we’ve already seen, and Ash looking for him. Once Pikachu and Ash are reunited, the ending sees Pikachu get sick…they kept us waiting for THIS?

Bottom Line: Thanks a lot, Team Rocket, for causing this to drag on.

#5: Cottonee in Love

I haven’t seen this episode in a while, so here’s the basic summary: Ash and Iris are training with Scraggy and Axew, Axew knocks it out, a lone Cottonee arrives, it’s trying to impress another Cottonee but it’s not worthy. So far, it’s not that bad. In fact, I like the Cilan and Iris interactions, even though I’m not Cilan’s biggest fan. The thing that annoys me is Ash being more dense than usual, which is annoying, because he NEVER used to be this dense!

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100421024448/es.pokemon/images/2/21/P02_Beso_de_Melody.png

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/answers/2564000/2564072_1333335972484.83res_400_300.jpg

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/EP021

Umm…right, moving on. We have to deal with this more than enough times throughout the episode, with the lame lines of dialogue not helping (I love Sarah, I really do, in fact, she’s about equal to Veronica in BW, at least to me). It ruins an otherwise decent episode. It finally ends with Cottonee impressing the one he loved, and all the couples going off, with Ash STILL thinking he (male Cottonee) wanted to be “buddies” with her.

Bottom Line: Dense Ash stopped being funny…oh, wait, it never was.

#4: Disguise Da Limit

…May did not deserve this ribbon. At all. This episode picks up from where Disaster of Disguise left off, with Timmy’s backstory having been established. We get to the appeals…and it is a mess. While Timmy’s appeal was impressive, May’s was just a messed up Blizzard and juggling balls with her tail. How much worse were the other appeals to the point where she was able to make it? But that’s not even the worst of it. We then get to the battle of May’s Skitty vs Timmy’s Dusclops, where Skitty’s defenses increased to 999. To keep it short, Skitty miraculously manages to withstand many powerful attacks from Dusclops, and somehow wins, because Arceus really hates Timmy (who really deserved to win). The whole plotline was setting up for Timmy to win, with even his mother now supporting him when she didn’t before, his dad lying to help him achieve his dream, etc., and they just hand it to May, who could get ANOTHER ribbon ANYWHERE ELSE.

Bottom Line: Timmy should have been a main character.

#3: To Thine Own Pokemon Be True

This episode is about Ash, Dawn, and Barry getting ready for a ping-pong tournament. This doesn’t sound that bad, in fact, unlike many, I like the idea…the problem is how it’s integrated into the plot. If nothing important happened, it would be a decent filler, but that’s not the case here. After the tournament ends, Dawn decides to leave Ambipom with O (the COTD) because she loves ping-pong more than contests, even after establishing earlier that she loved contests more than battling. The Ash and Dawn trade made SENSE, this is just a plot device to get rid of Ambipom. It’s basically the Primeape release episode, but worse. O said they’d be in Vermilion City, but Dawn never returned there to pick up her Pokemon.

Bottom Line: This is, without a doubt, the worst release episode ever.

#2: The Semi-Final Frontier

I’m just going to say that I can see why people hate this episode so much. I’m sure almost everyone expects Ash to lose every major league by now, but the way this is done is DEPLORABLE. First off, Tobias doesn’t even get disqualified for having brought a LEGENDARY POKEMON, making him look more and more like a Gary-Stu each time. The actual battle is too one-sided and anti-climactic, because he more or less sweeps half of his team with Darkrai, until Sceptile barely beats it. You’d think his next Pokemon would be a non-legendary so Ash could put up a better fight, right? Instead…he sends out a freakin’ LATIOS, which sweeps the rest of his team and ties with Pikachu. Most of them don’t even put up a fight, just pretty much stand there and let Tobias beat them. The thing that really sucks is, Ash really could have won (even though we know they wouldn’t let him) if Tobias didn’t appear.

Bottom Line: Please keep your Gary-Stu/Mary-Sue characters OUTSIDE of canon, thanks.

#1: A Double Dilemma

I really was looking forward to this episode when I read the summary…I really was. But then I watched it…

This episode begins with Ash and co. arriving at a town filled with annoying May and Max fanboys/girls. It starts off okay, with May and Max being piled on by the crowd, but then once Ash shows his badges and announces that he wants to challenge Norman, it all goes downhill from there. What follows is 15+ minutes of Ash torture. This kinda reminds me of the Avatar Day episode from Avatar: The Last Airbender (which is the main reason I wanted to watch it so badly), but whereas the Avatar Day episode was funny, and had a good ending, this was the exact opposite. Most of the humor in this episode derives from Ash bashing, which is one of the lowest forms of comedy.

Meanwhile, Team Rocket (and Wobbuffet) disguises themselves as the Maple family. The human disguises are decent, but the Pokemon disguises aren’t. It wouldn’t be so bad if FANBOYS/GIRLS could recognize them, but no, they don’t. Anyway, back to Ash. The whole town decides that he’s not worthy of battling their “pwecious” Norman (wouldn’t fanboys/girls want to see their idol ‘crush’ Ash?), so one guy with a Golduck challenges him, and loses. Then a bunch of other people challenge him, and also lose. The old lady then gets MAY to challenge him, and since most of his Pokemon are tired out (and they won’t even give him the time to heal them), he is forced to use Taillow. Ash is doing good, but then May spams Torchic’s Ember, and it hits…Ash. This declares May the winner, which is stupid.

To finally put an end to this episode, Team Rocket gets exposed and everyone finds out just who the Pokemon they really are (reference to a lame line from the same episode), Ash has Pikachu beat them, and it looks like the townspeople have finally gained respect for him…but then they praise Pikachu, and STILL brush Ash off. What happens next? Like in most other episodes, they just head off to the next town, without even so much as an apology from EITHER May and/or any of the townspeople.

Worst. Episode. Ever!

Bottom Line: This is a disgrace – to BOTH Pokemon AND Avatar: The Last Airbender!

Side note: Isn't it ironic that the episode with the initials "ADD" is the one I can't sit through?

Honorable mentions: Most training episodes (I would have just put them in to make it a top 10 list, but I didn’t feel like watching them again, nor did I remember much about them.

Nice list. I used to HATE Sarah's Ash until BW. Now, I actually really like it. I'm still a bit more partial to Veronica, though. :D
 

Herdheaven

Well-Known Member
Does anyone remember that one episode in DP called Try For The Family Stone??? That was the one about Murkrow and Misdreavus and how there owners wanted to evolve them. It's just a generic filler that in the end both of the owners decide not to evolve their Pokemon. The only good thing about this episode was the debut of Giratina even though it was just an illusion. This to me was far worse than half of the ones on this list.
 

Brownie

Anti Drew & paul fan
Does anyone remember that one episode in DP called Try For The Family Stone??? That was the one about Murkrow and Misdreavus and how there owners wanted to evolve them. It's just a generic filler that in the end both of the owners decide not to evolve their Pokemon. The only good thing about this episode was the debut of Giratina even though it was just an illusion. This to me was far worse than half of the ones on this list.

I never saw that one, sounds like a waste of an episode.
 

Brownie

Anti Drew & paul fan
Huh all of those episodes are some of my favorites. :p Except for the battle frontier one. I always liked a Double Dilemma because of Meowth and Wobbuffet. XD;

There is no Battle Frontier episode on the list, or did you mean The Semi-Final Frontier?
 
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