"Dustox, my dearest. Go fall in love, and do it with all of your heart! Do it for both of us!"
—Jessie
Japanese Title: Goodbye, Dokucale!
Original Airdate: April 3, 2008
US Airdate: August 23, 2008
Jessie's Dustox meets the love of her life.
Jessie trains with Dustox for their next performance, only to find another trainer with a shiny Dustox. As the two Dustox fall in love, Jessie remembers a mistake she made when she was younger, choosing a performance audition over love. She decides not to allow Dustox to make the same mistake she made, but a disaster at a lake threatens the Dustox migration.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- A Day in the Limelight: For Jessie and Dustox.
- Conflicting Loyalty: When the time comes, Dustox doesn't want to leave Jessie to migrate with her new mate.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Dustox wanders away from training. When Jessie follows, she finds Dustox flying with a Shiny Dustox.
- Diving Save: Dustox pushes Jessie out of the way to save her from the incident that damaged the lake.
- Enemy Mine: Ash and Dawn help Jessie save the Dustox Crossing by having Buizel, Chimchar, and Piplup help Dustox fix and re-fill a lake that was damaged and drained by a storm.
- Gender Reveal: Jessie's Dustox is revealed to be female in this episode.
- Growling Gut: The episode begins with Piplup and Pikachu singing together while walking down a path. Piplup eventually slows to a stop due to hunger, and the twerps decide to have lunch.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Jessie's Dustox is wearing the bows she wears during Contests. Subverted with her love interest vis-a-vis the other Dustox of the migration, since he is the only Shiny present.
- My Greatest Failure: The name of the shiny Dustox's trainer reminds Jessie of a boy she liked when she was younger, but lost because she chose auditioning for a Performance over leaving town with him. This is why she insists that Dustox not miss this opportunity at love.
- Put on a Bus: Jessie's Dustox falls in love, and leaves to take part in a migration with her new mate.
- Recycled Premise: There are a lot of parallels between the plot of this episode and that of "Bye Bye Butterfree". Both departing Pokémon fell for a different-colored version of their species. One key difference is that, in this case, the two Dustox fell head over heels from the start, whereas Ash's Butterfree had to win the Pink Butterfree's heart.
- Shoo the Dog: Jessie has to crush Dustox's Poké Ball, explicitly setting her free, to convince her to make the migration. Ash never had to do that for Butterfree.Jessie: Now there's no more Poké Ball for you to return to! So that's it! Now you go on and get out of here!
- Spoiler Title: In Japanese.
- Wham Episode: Jessie releases her Dustox in this episode which had been one of her aces since Hoenn and Dustox is never seen again in the series after this.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The Shiny Dustox that Jessie's Dustox fell for didn't look too happy with Jessie essentially kicking Dustox out of Team Rocket to convince her to go on the migration.
