PJ095: The Good, the Bad, and the Lucky!

is the 5th episode of , and of .
==Synopsis==
After the Prize Master lends Team Rocket some unhelpful Pokémon, the group chases Pelipper to find out who’s responsible for the machine. The pursuit leads them to a café run by their former rival Cassidy, who’s no longer in Team Rocket. As James stays behind at the café, Jessie and Meowth press on, ending up at a bakery run by Butch. Meowth becomes smitten with a familiar-looking female Meowth, so Jessie and Wobbuffet leave him behind to continue chasing Pelipper. But a series of mishaps brings Jessie, James, Meowth, and Wobbuffet back together again, and they realize that their life in Team Rocket is all about luck—good and bad!
==Episode plot==
Jessie and Wobbuffet are seen wandering aimlessly through a desert during a sandstorm, wondering if their current predicament is cruel fate, before collapsing in the sand and bidding farewell to James and Meowth.
A week earlier, Team Rocket is shown working at a part-time job in a factory in Vermilion City to get fundings for their operations. When their shift ends, they go outside and notice Ash's Pikachu, along with Ash and Goh. They quickly seize Pikachu in a net and call down the Rocket Prize Master, but end up getting a lazy Slakoth and Slaking, who both do nothing when commanded to use Slack Off, before returning to their Poké Balls, enabling Ash and Goh to easily blast the trio off with Lucario and Cinderace and save Pikachu. After landing, the Rocket trio decide to blame the lousy Pokémon they got from the Prize Master for their failure and focus their attention on Pelipper. Translated by Meowth, Pelipper says the vending machine is up to code and offers good luck before flying off. The trio pursue Pelipper so they can give the one responsible for the Rocket Prize Master a piece of their mind. While chasing it, they spot a Swablu sitting on their balloon. Since Swablu are said to bring happiness, they attempt to grab it, only for it to dodge them and burst their balloon with Dragon Breath, sending them blasting off once again.
While floating in the middle of the sea, Team Rocket sees Pelipper swimming nearby and chases it again, only for a Wailord to appear and swallow both the trio and Pelipper. Inside Wailord, Team Rocket finds an old rusty ship and a Chatot, which, translated by Meowth again, has been trapped here ever since Wailord swallowed the ship. Not wanting to stay trapped as long as the ship has, the trio decide to use the Rocket Prize Master to escape. However, Pelipper stubbornly refuses to hand the vending machine over and uses Hydro Pump on the trio when they try to force its bill open. Regardless, this attack causes Wailord to squirt the trio, Pelipper, and Chatot out of its blowhole in the middle of a frozen sea. At first, the trio wave goodbye to Pelipper and thank it for saving them, but then remember that they were chasing it and resume doing so, only to run into an angry Mamoswine. By dangling Meowth in front of its face, Team Rocket continues their pursuit of Pelipper on Mamoswine's back.
Eventually, however, the trio lose Pelipper and slip off Mamoswine's back out of hunger near a snow-covered village. They notice a nearby house and try to make it there, but collapse one by one in the midst of a howling blizzard. When the trio wake up, they find themselves in front of a warm fireplace next to a table filled with food, much to their pleasure. They eagerly dig in and thank a woman for bringing them more to eat, before suddenly recognizing said woman as none other than Cassidy, their fellow Team Rocket member. Cassidy, however, makes it clear that, despite her once-elite status in the organization, she is no longer its member, having grown tired of its daily routines, and realized that there is more to life than being Team Rocket. As Cassidy tells them to rest, Jessie insists on them working hard to repay her for saving them, which Cassidy smugly accepts.
Team Rocket starts enjoying their life at Cassidy's café by helping to serve her customers and doing other helpful work. One day, however, when sitting outside to enjoy some food after a good day's work, they start thinking back to how they wound up here in the first place, until Pelipper flies by and makes them remember their chase. They prepare to resume it, but James seems reluctant, having gotten used to living with Cassidy. Jessie and Meowth, having seen how James has enjoyed his new life here, decide to let him stay while they resume their chase of Pelipper, with Jessie bursting into tears as they run off.
Eventually, Jessie and Meowth wind up in a small town beside a seaside cliff, preventing them from going on any further. Hungry from all their running, they follow a delicious aroma to a bakery, where they find not only a Meowth who's a spitting image of Meowzie, Meowth's first love, but also Butch, Cassidy's now-former teammate from Team Rocket. He gives them some bread and prepares to explain why he's here, only for Jessie to cut him off and correctly guess that he, like Cassidy, has realized that Team Rocket isn't all there is to life and left the organization. Although angry at them for spoiling his big reveal, Butch agrees to let them repay his kindness by working at the bakery. Jessie and Meowth end up forgetting about their chase of Pelipper once again, only to be reminded of it when the Water Bird Pokémon flies past the bakery. Having seen how happy Meowth is with Meowzie's lookalike, Jessie lets him stay behind. As Jessie runs away, Meowth gives her a parting gift in the form of a Wobbuffet balloon he had sewn himself. While pursuing Pelipper, Jessie finds the Swablu from before once again on the balloon, having pecked a hole on it this time. She tries to grab it, only for it to once again use Dragon Breath to burst the balloon and send both her and Wobbuffet blasting off for the third time during their pursuit.
Back at the desert from the start of the episode, Jessie and Wobbuffet collapse from exhaustion and bid farewell to their teammates. Jessie dreams of James and Meowth waking her up by slapping her, only for her to actually wake up and find out it was actually a Sandshrew scratching her face. She wakes up Wobbuffet as well, but before they can continue looking for Pelipper, they end up falling into a sand pit, with a Trapinch waiting at the bottom for them as it opens its jaws, likely to eat them. Just as Jessie is about to accept her fate, James, Meowth, and Pelipper suddenly appear at the edge of the pit. They explain that James had been kicked out by Cassidy after his Morpeko ate all of the café's food, while Meowth had found out that Meowzie's lookalike was hanging out with a local Persian, and they had both ended up reuniting and chasing Pelipper together. Jessie tells them to save the story for later and rescue her, but both James and Meowth end up slipping into the sand pit as well. Meowth asks Pelipper to save them, but it refuses, having no room in its bill for both the Rocket Prize Master and them. However, when it sees the trio helplessly sliding down the pit toward Trapinch's open jaws, Pelipper finally lets go of its stubbornness and drops the vending machine onto Trapinch, enabling it to scoop up the trio and save them.
As Pelipper flies off, Team Rocket waves goodbye to it, having finally understood that the vending machine, like life, is up to chance: sometimes you get good luck and other times you get bad luck; and sometimes what seems like good luck might turn out to be bad luck and vice versa. When they start wondering how to get out of the desert, Ash and Goh suddenly appear near them. Seeing a way to get back home, Jessie tells Ash to ask them what they're up to, giving the Team Rocket trio a segue into their motto, fully embracing their life as Team Rocket once again and welcoming Pikachu's usual Thunderbolt with open arms, thus blasting off one more time for the episode. Ash and Goh are left confused by Team Rocket's smiles, while the villainous trio happily crash back into their part-time job factory in Vermilion City.
==Debut==
===Pokémon===
*Butch's Meowth
==Trivia==
*Who's That Pokémon?: Pelipper
*This episode marks the first appearance of Cassidy and Butch since "Sleight of Sand!", 645 episodes ago. It is also revealed that they have both quit Team Rocket after getting fed up with the daily routine there and started a new chapter in their lives. Cassidy is now a café owner and enjoys doing wood carving as a hobby, while Butch runs his own bakery.
**This episode could also explain why Matori ended up replacing Cassidy and Butch as a rival to Jessie, James, Meowth and Wobbuffet at the end of the Diamond and Pearl series. Diamond and Pearl is also the last series where Cassidy and Butch worked as Team Rocket agents before quitting.
*This dubbed title is a pun on a 1966 film .
==Gallery==
==References==
Category:Episodes focusing on Team Rocket
Category:Episodes featuring Champions