Pokemon S01E22 Review: Creepy Dolls

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 22: Abra and the Psychic Showdown

I've seen some people call this next batch of episodes the "spooky three-parter", because... well, it's spooky! And, surprisingly, the spookiest factor in these three episodes isn't the actual Ghost-types that will show up later, but Sabrina herself. We're going slightly out of order compared to the gym's layout of gym leaders, but hey. The very first shot of the episode is pretty creepy, with a long-haired woman wreathed in shadow, while she has a creepy little doll in a dress, whose eyes you can't really see, sitting in her lap. She's not doing anything particularly creepy at this point, beyond apparently having some actual psychic powers and able to see at our heroes as they approach Saffron City. And the little doll-girl manifests in front of Ash, all horror movie style, and very nearly causes Ash to fall into a ravine if he hadn't summoned Bulbasaur. A pretty spooky start to a spooky episode!

Which is why we thankfully get some Team Rocket comedy to lighten up the episode a bit, with Team Rocket dressed as Hawaiian (Alolan, I guess?) dancers, with James, of course, crossdressing once more. They even go the extra mile and kiss Ash on the cheek, something the poor kid is utterly grossed-out by later on. They toss the three humans into a warp tile that teleports them into a room while they kidnap Pikachu, and would probably have gotten away with this particular kidnapping attempt if the creepy little doll girl hadn't randomly teleported in, froze Jessie and James in place, and the teleport our heroes out of the place and in front of the gym.

We briefly meet an enigmatic bearded man with a yellow cap who immediately gets ignored (and, of course, is definitely going to be important later on) and quickly learn that the Saffron City gym is also a place for espers and psychics to train. But unlike the god-like powers that Sabrina (Natsume) has displayed with manifesting her creepy doll-child all over the place, the face-mask dude that talks to Ash can barely bend a spoon. I absolutely love Ash so happily displaying his lack of psychic abilities, but just bends the spoon with his fists.

Of course, Ash blatantly ignores all the obvious warnings, like Sabrina's little crony being absolutely terrified of the woman, or Sabrina herself having her doll levitate the Pokeball containing her Abra into the battlefield. Or, y'know, Sabrina levitating herself into the battlefield. I mean, I guess neither of those are super fantastical when you live in a world where psychic creatures like Kadabra, Hypno and Kirlia are the equivalent of, oh, a weird, rare dog or something, but still, all the talk about "hey, if you lose, be my friend, okay?" really should've ran some red flags.

Anyway, Sabrina sends out an Abra, seemingly pretty weak looking and appears to be sleeping, but it opens its eyes and teleports all over the place to avoid Pikachu's attacks, before Sabrina just straight-up commands it to evolve into Kadabra. And while Pikachu does his damn best, shooting Thunder all over the battlefield, Kadabra just uses his psychic abilities to gather it all into a dragon, and form a giant electric dragon and launch it back to Pikachu. And then in a pretty creepy sequence, Sabrina commands Kadabra to use Psychic to make a battered and barely-conscious Pikachu dance in place, before slapping him up and down the ceiling and floor of the room. But while this is a pretty powerful showcase of Kadabra's psychic abilities... this is still in the realm of Pokemon fights, right? It's like the Gastly from the previous episode. Creepy, but still a Pokemon.

Of course, that is until Sabrina straight up teleports all of our heroes into a random small town that they quickly discover is a Beetlejuice style model of a city, and Sabrina's idea of 'playtime' is to send the creepy doll girl with dead eyes to roll her ball around, which is gigantic and would straight-up kill our heroes and smash them onto the random family picture they find if the mystery bearded man from earlier in the episode didn't teleport them out of the place.

Turns out the random man (who totally isn't Sabrina's dad even though we just pulled the same twist with Brock a while back, honest!) is also a psychic, who tells Ash that they are waaaaay out of Sabrina's league. He notes that he's a weak psychic, but even then he is able to pull literally Ash's pants down telekinetically and make him dance. And after a couple of Force-push attacks to toss Ash around, finally relents and directs the team towards Lavender Town to get a ghost pokemon, muttering that they might very well save Sabrina. I'm... I'm not sure which specific qualities of Ash that Sabrina's not-dad thinks is going to cause them to save Sabrina, but... okay?

Still, it's a really creepy episode for the fact that Sabrina's bizarrely powerful psychic powers is utterly unexpected, and that fucking doll is just utterly creepy. It's a pretty fun episode, and I think the first time in the series where our heroes really end up losing pretty badly against... against anyone, really. Even in previous gym battles with Brock and Lt. Surge, Ash just trains a bit and wins in a rematch in the same episode. While he's still obviously going to win against Sabrina eventually, I do appreciate that this is going to be a multi-part sequence that forces Ash to work for his badge this time around. And... and, yeah, it definitely makes Sabrina a lot more memorable than just being that one psychic lady.

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Meowth, Abra, Kadabra
• Humans: Sabrina, Ash, Misty, Brock

Assorted Notes:

• Technically, if you play the game and pointedly ignore Erika and Koga (nominally the fourth and fifth gym leaders), you could face off against Sabrina as the fourth gym leader... but that would require you going through a significant portion of the game and walk around both their cities and deal with a lot of the Team Rocket storyline. 
• Warp tiles show up! They're a staple of the game's dungeons, but are most prominently featured in the Saffron City gym and Silph Co, also located in Saffron City.
• I've always found that scene where the trio just calmly drink tea while waiting for Team Rocket to finish their motto to be hilarious. Even the show makes fun of how patently ridiculous the dang thing is!
• Our heroes actually got away from Sabrina... but how many other happy-go-lucky trainers actually ended up getting captured and subjected to potentially-lethal playtime? It's a good thing, in retrospect, that our heroes encounter a doll instead of like a corpse or something. 
• The Games Doesn't Work Like That!
• At least, not in the original Generation I games that this season is based off of. The whole point of this three-parter is to get a Ghost-type to fight Sabrina's psychic-types, but despite all other material informing us that Psychic-types are vulnerable to Ghosts, due to a programming error, Psychic-types are actually immune to Ghosts, and this isn't rectified until Generation II. Whoops!