Pokémon.com creates a playlist of the most memorable episodes

[ii kanji]

WOW that list is weak af.

 

[Islander Princess]

Reading through some people's posts, it made me wonder: do you guys have any episodes that are memorable to you because of how bad they were?

Quite a few of you mentioned Down to the Fiery Finish! (XY131) which is pretty self explanatory. I didn't have the same reaction a lot of fans did, but I'll never forget just how angry the fan base was after it originally aired, and I do agree that it was a very poor way to end the Kalos League.

A couple of others that are memorable for me in a negative way:

-The Semi-Final Frontier! (DP189) always bugged me because of the whole Tobias thing. I really enjoyed the Sinnoh League, so I really hated having it end that way. It just seemed so cheap and anticlimactic.

-Dazzling the Nimbasa Gym! (BW050) is another one some people mentioned. I'm a bit more lenient on BW than a lot of fans are, but this is easily one of the worst episodes of the entire series, let alone BW. The fact that Ash expected to beat all of a gym leader's Pokemon with only one of his own...what kind of a writing decision was that, honestly? It wasn't funny, it was extremely OOC for Ash, it added nothing to the episode...I will never understand why they decided to go that route.

-Best Wishes Until We Meet Again! (BW141) will probably forever remain the worst group split up episode of all time. Not only is it the penultimate episode for BW, but it's also basically the conclusion of the Decolore Islands arc (which, in my opinion, is probably the weakest arc the show has ever had) and ends up undoing everything that arc was supposedly leading up to. I mean, seriously, we get almost half a season of the gang travelling through all of these random islands to go to Kanto together, and when they finally get to Kanto, without doing anything...Iris and Cilan decide to dip and go to entirely different regions? Talk about OOC (yes, Iris included) and an overall terrible ending.

Curious to see some other people's "most memorable in a negative way" episodes!

 

[Daren]

Curious to see some other people's "most memorable in a negative way" episodes!

You already mentioned my major "memorable in a bad way" episodes, but I have a bit of a pet peeve from Chronicles; "A Little Skitty", where Meowth is trying to get a date but is constantly sabotaged by an Azuril, then after he snaps and attacks them gets blasted off and crushed by a Snorlax. I sort of doubt the writers intention was for me to think "poor Meowth, I hope that Azurill gets fried by a Jolteon sometime today."

Edit: Also, some may think I'm biased due to my avatar, but I've got no problem with the TRio getting zapped by Pikachu and so on when they're trying to rob people. However, I think that sort of comedy works better when the target is either more unsympathetic or manages to scratch out a win in the end.

 

[Hidden Mew]

-Dazzling the Nimbasa Gym! (BW050) is another one some people mentioned. I'm a bit more lenient on BW than a lot of fans are, but this is easily one of the worst episodes of the entire series, let alone BW. The fact that Ash expected to beat all of a gym leader's Pokemon with only one of his own...what kind of a writing decision was that, honestly? It wasn't funny, it was extremely OOC for Ash, it added nothing to the episode...I will never understand why they decided to go that route.

As bad as that was, I think it was worse that he was allowed to leave the battlefield in order to get his second Pokemon. It was brushed off just because I think Elesa thought he was interesting to do so, but under normal circumstances, that would have been grounds to disqualify him and that should have happened. He wasn't properly prepared for battle and he just left to get a second Pokemon. It was so upsetting. Even if the battle had been good somehow, that one decision would have been more enough to sour it for me entirely.

 

[Rockapheller]

Curious to see some other people's "most memorable in a negative way" episodes!

SM109, The Grand Debut! for me. The supposedly battle oriented episode's first half was just a boring filler and the second half, in which the actual battle took place, was just written extremely poorly. Not only did Ash decide to use an Electric-type Pokémon against a Ground-type specialist, but also the outcome of the victor by Ash happened by a huge lucky chance as he somehow managed to get the Ground-type Pokémon wet and activate Pikachu's Electric-type moves. Sounds familiar? Yes, I know I know. Exactly that one battle repeating itself.

EP197, The Art of Pokémon also leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It is the most boring filler episode I have watched to date, and I never witnessed a 20 minutes in my life which felt like days.

 

[ii kanji]

Electric Seizure Porygon is a pretty memorable episode I’m surprised didn’t get officially selected

 

[P_S_B]

Reading through some people's posts, it made me wonder: do you guys have any episodes that are memorable to you because of how bad they were?

SM109 for the reasons Rockapheller mentioned above and more notably SM133 - Battling on the Wing! for how how damn mean to Hau it was. I didn't like Hau in the games, but the Hau in the anime wasn't a jumpy idiot and had done nothing to deserve to have his victory taken away from him by his own grandfather of all people. It wasn't just the fake-out win that was the issue, the issue was that he was given long enough for the victory to sink in and to saver it, making it that much more cutting when he was told he hadn't won at all and went on to lose. Not only that but it was another example of, "Pokémon A has been losing for 90% of the fight and has undoubtedly taken enough damage to be knocked out at least twice over, but wait! it lands one attack on Pokémon B. Pokémon B fainted!" which are always terrible, the fact that it came on top of the script being needlessly cruel to a character who didn't deserve it just served to make it that much more terrible and arguably the single worst episode in the entire franchise. He certainly shouldn't have, but the fact that the writer literally got death threats for that episode should give some idea of just how objectively terrible it was.

Other episodes that are memorably terrible include "Friend and Foe Alike" for wasting 75% of the runtime on Team Rocket garbage so they could deliver a blink-and-you'll-miss-it battle full of contrivance and rushing. Ash losing because he hadn't trained Charizard was great, but the rest of the episode leading up to it had no place being as bad as it was and "A Unova League Evolution!" for having Ash lose to a complete imbecile who shouldn't have even been in the show in the first place in a 6-5 battle in Ash's favor, mixed in with a ton of stock footage of said imbecile snapping his headband into his forehead which actually hurt to watch that they spammed ad-nauseam across that and the few episodes before it.

With all that concentrated negativity out of the way I think we need a positive note, so I will say that I think putting the two Showcase episodes on there was a good idea because Serena is a memorable character and "A Showcase Debut!" certainly qualifies as memorable for being the the turning point of her character arc, and "Performing with Fiery Charm!" was worth including as well because it follows up on the preceding episode and shows Serena rising back up from her earlier loss instead of just leaving it at that.

 

[Islander Princess]

"A Unova League Evolution!" for having Ash lose to a complete imbecile who shouldn't have even been in the show in the first place in a 6-5 battle in Ash's favor, mixed in with a ton of stock footage of said imbecile snapping his headband into his forehead which actually hurt to watch that they spammed ad-nauseam across that and the few episodes before it.

I have no idea how I left this episode out. Cameron really was probably the worst "rival" (using that title very loosely) over the course of the series, and I forgot how big of a joke that battle was. It's pretty wild just how bad a lot of those final league episodes were.

 

[Daren]

I have no idea how I left this episode out. Cameron really was probably the worst "rival" (using that title very loosely) over the course of the series, and I forgot how big of a joke that battle was. It's pretty wild just how bad a lot of those final league episodes were.

I suspect a lot of the show's poor reputation comes from it's tendency to end regional arcs on a whimper.

 

[KenzeyEevee]

Bad episodes:
-SM126 Pikachus exciting adventure, just weak.
-XY111 Unlocking some respect! Was an odd story
-BW31 Ash and Trips 3rd battle! Feels so unneeded.
-DP046 A-maze-ing race. Typical bad pokemon get lost episode.
-AG009 Taming the Shroomish! Ugh just ugh.
-OS102 The mystery menace! Pointless filler

 

[TheLoonyRebel]

Bad episodes:
-SM126 Pikachus exciting adventure, just weak.

Had they of not doing the voice overs for the Pokémon's during the episode it could of been far better. Island of the Giant Pokémon did a far better job in comparison of handling this compared to Pikachu's Exciting Adventure.

 

[KenzeyEevee]

Had they of not doing the voice overs for the Pokémon's during the episode it could of been far better. Island of the Giant Pokémon did a far better job in comparison of handling this compared to Pikachu's Exciting Adventure.

True true. It was better if not all the pokemon had the same voice over

 

[prog rocker]

This. People who say BW would've been better if these episodes had aired give them FAR too much credit.

I call this "Lost Media Hype Syndrome": When people hype too much something that is lost, only to find out later that it wasn't what they were really thinking. Good examples of this are the "Cracks" short from Sesame Street and Cry Baby Lane.

 

[KnightGalarie]

Watch Pokémon TV

watch.pokemon.com

I’m on mobile and can’t see the list. Would someone please transcribe?

 

[Jakob]

I’m on mobile and can’t see the list. Would someone please transcribe?

Looks like I can't get the link to work anymore.