Japanese Title: Merriep and the Pasture Girl
Original Airdate: March 16th, 2000
US Airdate: February 17th, 2001
Team Rocket comes in sheep's clothing to relieve a kind Poké-shepherd of her Mareep flock. Ash and friends are eager to help, but will first have to convince the Mareep Trainer to have a little faith in herself.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Ending: The episode concludes on Mary getting to compete in the festival, but in an odd case for one-off characters, we don't get to see how well she does or if she wins.
- An Aesop: Mary learns that she needs to watch her Pokémon's health, and not just concentrate on winning.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: Mary's strategy during her fight with Ash is to have Fluffy launch a barrage of powerful attacks against Pikachu, but this leads to her defeat as, while it did overwhelm Pikachu for a bit, Fluffy quickly drained it's stamina and fainted.
- Counting Sheep: James falls asleep when counting the Mareep.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Mother: Ellen thinks her daughter Mary is too young to battle Pokémon and reprimands her when she wants to enter a local competition. It's when Mary learns how to treat her Pokémon and seeing how she battles does Ellen allows her to compete, as she acknowledges her daughter's newfound maturity.
- Identical Twin Id Tag: Fluffy wears a bow and bell.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Mary feels a lot of guilt for pushing Fluffy too hard and sits with the Mareep to make up for her mistake.
- Shout-Out: A very obvious one to the popular nursery song, Mary Had A Little Lamb.
- Victory by Endurance: Pikachu wins against Fluffy due to the Mareep running out of energy from the constant attacks it unleashed.
