Japanese Title: Rival Showdown! Okido Laboratory
Original Airdate: October 8th, 1998
US Airdate: September 30th, 1999
The one where... Ash and Gary don't face off, despite the build up.
On a visit to Professor Oak's house, Ash runs into Gary where they talk about the upcoming Pokémon League. Professor Oak explains that instead of being so competitive with each other they should try and learn from each other. When Team Rocket busts into the lab and tries to steal all the Pokémon everyone learns a lesson about teamwork.
Tropes
- Bait-and-Switch: Yeah, despite how much it's teased for the first part of the episode, like we're gonna get that long awaited showdown between Ash and Gary right before the Tournament Arc the whole show so far has built to. They're obviously gonna do it there instead.note
- Both Sides Have a Point: Ash and Gary make valid points about how to learn about Pokémon and how to raise them so they are for battling. Professor Oak even lampshades it.
- Brutal Honesty: Gary notes that Ash just uses the same Pokémon over and over, and isn't training up his full slate. Ash also doesn't know that he should be strategizing against specific gym leaders and their weaknesses.
- Deus ex Machina: Just as it looks as if we're going to see Ash and Gary team up to take down Team Rocket, Ash's Tauros come crashing through a fence and send the Terrible Trio blasting off. This was especially true for Western audiences, as for them the Tauros literally showed up out of nowhere.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Ash and Gary have a brief size-comparison contest with their Krabby. Ash's friends remarking on Gary's "gigantic" Krabby doesn't help.
- Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Ash's collection of Tauros that he caught in the banned episode “The Legend of Dratini" appears for the first time to viewers outside Japan. At least Oak did say Ash caught them in the Safari Zone, but that's all the context the uninformed viewer gets on them.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Mewtwo's escape and blowing up Giovanni's mansion will be featured again in Pokémon: The First Movie.
- Irony: If Giovanni had been more patient with Jessie, James, and Meowth after Mewtwo had escaped, he would have had them out of his hair for good. The Terrible Trio were just about to quit, as they feared facing his wrath and him firing them, but because he told them to do their job they never got on to it.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever happened to cause Mewtwo to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here on Giovanni and blow up his mansion — or at least in the context of the American premiere. Since Mewtwo Strikes Back was released in Japan several months before this episode's premiere, it's played here as more of a continuity nod and syncing up the show and film's chronology; Japanese viewers already knew what exactly Giovanni had done to piss off Mewtwo into a destructive rage. In the context of the American release, it instead completes the prelude to The First Movie and sets the stage for that narrative.
- Quality over Quantity: Ash makes this argument to counter Gary's proficiency at catching large numbers of Pokémon.
- Series Continuity Error: The Oaks have appropriately surprised reactions to a talking Meowth, except Gary has encountered Meowth before, and one action he took there hinged on him hearing what Meowth was saying.
- Tyop on the Cover: Two in a row. Namely the last word being spelled Corrall with 2 Ls.
- Waxing Lyrical: Team Rocket quotes from "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" (The Platters), "Show Me the Way to Go Home" (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) and "Volare" (Dean Martin).
