Set in an unspecified time in the past, "Training Daze" is a flashback episode about how Team Rocket became friends. Jessie, then a trainee who couldn't keep a partner for long, was paired up with James and later Meowth as well. The three didn't initially get along but they soon became close.
This episode provides examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Poor Butch. Not even the sergeant or his partner get his name right.
- Alpha Bitch: Cassidy shows traces of this, mocking and attempting to outdo Jessie.
- Bandage Mummy: In a rare dramatic case, James is this after his Heroic Sacrifice mentioned below. But he, later on, returns for the Red Snorlax mission, ripping off his bandages to reveal his uniform underneath.
- After he and Cassidy fall down a pit trap, Butch suffers this as well.
- Continuity Snarl: oh boy where to start...
- Season 1 depicted Jessie and James as having known each other for a long time, having flunked out of Pokémon Tech together before joining the same bicycle gang during their youth. However, this episode heavily implies that the two never met before joining Team Rocket.
- Similarly, in Cassidy and Butch's debut episode, it was made clear Jessie and James weren't aware of each other's rivals, but in this episode, but in this episode all four of them are seen competing and interacting with one another.
- In "Battle Aboard the St. Anne" Meowth is shocked to learn Giovanni has obtained a Persian during his absence and dismayed at the prospect of no longer being Giovanni's favorite Pokémon. Here Giovanni is shown owning Persian before Meowth ever joins. While the favoritism comment could be dismissed as Self-Serving Memory, Meowth at the very least should've known of Persian's existence given he sees the Pokémon on Giovanni's lap within this episode.
- The episode "Pikachu Re-Volts!" has Butch give a very shocked and confused reaction to James messing up his name, indicating this is the first time it's ever happened. This episode shows that people have been messing up his name since his time as a recruit.
- Cassidy and Butch were depicted within the Original Series as being far more cunning and competent than Jessie and James. This episode retroactively applies their Villain Decay present through the rest of Pokémon Chronicles within this episode, presenting them as only passing the exam through a technicality. The English dub exasperates the issue by rewriting the ending so only Jessie, James, and Meowth pass.
- Delinquent Hair: Sergeant Viper sports a dark blue Mohawk.
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the broken bridge, James lets himself fall upon realizing his holding onto Meowth's tail was causing the latter to be in pain.
- He attempts it again when he falls into a hole in pursuit of the Red Snorlax, and urges Meowth and Jessie to leave him to the police, but they refuse, and end up lifting him out of the hole.
- The Load: Up until the Red Snorlax test, Meowth does little to nothing in contribution in training.
- Multiple-Choice Past: The episode shows that Jessie, James, and Meowth met relatively recently. This contradicts their earliest flashback where they were in a bike gang together, though that flashback in itself is likely Early-Installment Weirdness as other flashbacks don't depict Jessie and James knowing one another growing up.
- McGuffin: Two in this episode; the Articuno statue, and the Red Snorlax.
- Origins Episode: This episode reveals how Jessie, James, and Meowth first meet how they because a team at the Team Rocket Academy.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When a training exercise results in the alarm going off (and the Articuno statue getting dropped and shattered), Jessie abandons
Jubei and Mankey to escape on her own. - Ship Tease: When Jessie helps James out of the hole, he accidentally lands of top of her. Jessie blushes before James gets off her (and it's unlikely to be from exhaustion).
- Took a Level in Cheerfulness: It's shown that both Jessie and James were more serious and stoic during their training days. Even by the first episode they had become more cheerful and campy.
- "Noodles! Roamin' Off" shows they took this level even before graduating from the academy.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: During the final test to steal the red Snorlax, Cassidy, for the first time in the episode, gets Butch's name right.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We don't know what became of Jubei and Mankey, after the failed exercise with the Articuno statue. After Jessie leaves, they're never seen again.
- Whole Episode Flashback: "Training Daze" reveals how the Terrible Trio became a trio.
