Pokemon S01E24 Review: Laughter is the Best Medicine

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 24: Haunter vs. Kadabra

This episode's pretty simple, honestly, and I've always found it to be a pretty anti-climactic end to the pretty spooky and badass Sabrina buildup episode 22. Of course, it's completely fitting in with Haunter's personality. Team Ash arrives in Saffron City to re-challenge Sabrina, with Haunter proving himself to be as capricious and playful as possible, taking the time to just bob around and lick Misty to paralysis at one point.

The episode's first half honestly feels like it was mostly padding, with honestly pointless scenes of Brock, Misty and Pikachu being cheerleaders, or Ash calling out the starter trio and posing with them, and an extended sequence of Ash telling Haunter to go and face Sabrina only to find that the Pokemon he didn't capture has... disappeared. While Ash is fooling around, everyone else is rightfully scared shitless of Sabrina, who gets angry that Ash isn't even taking her seriously, causing her to trap them in the gym, and turn Misty and Brock into actual dolls. The mystery man shows up to teleport Ash and his Pokemon away, though.

And we get Sabrina's backstory as told by the mystery man (who is totally obviously Sabrina's father, and only Ash's thick head makes him think otherwise), explaining that after Sabrina developed her psychic powers, she ended up segregating herself into two personalities. The competitive one who doesn't want to lose, and the lonely inner child that wants friends, and the young doll that wants friends represents the latter, albeit twisted by Sabrina's own desires. Meanwhile, Brock and Misty meet Sabrina's mom in the dollhouse, also turned into a doll. And they can apparently speak despite being dolls. It's... it's honestly an interesting setup, and it does make sense of Sabrina's character as we've seen her in these two episodes, but the resolution is honestly pretty bland and uninteresting.

We get a brief intermission of Team Rocket being window cleaners and trying to set up a new plan, but Haunter basically scares them off so much that they fall from the window-cleaning platform after getting them to laugh with funny faces. It would probably be some fun slapstick if it didn't last as long as it did. This, again, feels more like something to pad out the screentime because the writers didn't know how to properly resolve the Sabrina plotline?

Ash and Sabrina fight in round three after Ash gets Haunter to stop fooling around, with Pikachu really being outclassed by Kadabra's teleports, psybeams, and even uses recover to instantly restore its health from the damage Pikachu has caused. Compared to all of the other Pokemon we've seen so far, Kadabra seemed downright invincible... until Haunter shows up, and ends up pulling faces and pulling out a bomb out of his mouth which blows up on Sabrina's face.

And... and apparently this is enough to restore Sabrain to normalcy as she laughs? "She gained a human heart", somehow, by seeing the comedy, and the creepy doll girl vanishes. Kadabra, linked to Sabrina with a psychic bond, is also laughing and is therefore out of commission, and Sabrina laughing also turns everyone back to normal. It's honestly a pretty disappointing ending. Like, I get that they want to show Sabrina as someone consumed by so much power that she forgot how to laugh or whatever, but her laughing being the resolution is pretty bland. I appreciate that maybe they didn't want to show every gym battle ending with Ash overwhelming the enemy, but this one is just very disappointing especially with all the buildup. Haunter apparently stays behind in Saffron City to help Sabrina out and keep her human or some shit? Whatever the case, Ash wins his fourth badge, the Marsh/Gold Badge, without actually defeating the gym leader in battle. This... this will sadly be kind of a running trend. 

The final scene shows that they are actually being buried alive as the hole on the street is being filled with cement, which is honestly a bit too dark for me. Like, it's Team Rocket and they'll be fine, but what the shit. Anyway... not my favourite episode, and a pretty bland ending, honestly. 

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Haunter, Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Kadabra, Meowth
• Humans: Ash, Brock, Misty, Sabrina, Sabrina's Father, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes: 

• Neither Ash nor Sabrina is really shown capturing Haunter, but Haunter just ends up following Ash for most of these two episodes, whereas it's just hanging out with Sabrina at the end. It's even a plot point when Sabrina's dad notes that Haunter isn't officially called into battle, so it can dick around as much as it wants? S'weird. 
• When Ash calls off his entire party, he just calls off the starter trio... man, Pidgeotto had to feel like SHIT, huh? 
• Dub Changes:
• Team Rocket's whole egg gag was originally a reference to the Egg of Columbus, but is changed to a 'chicken or the egg' argument in the dub. Neither really ended up being much of a joke, in my opinion. 
• The dub adds an extra line by Brock to ask Ash if Haunter's the one controlling him, where the original line is just Brock warning Ash that Haunter might choose to disappear.