JN095

← JN094 : Suffering the Flings and Arrows!

Pokémon Journeys: The Series

JN096 : Lighting the Way Home! →

The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky!

JN095   EP1180 サラバ！さすらいのロケット団！ Farewell! The Wandering Rocket-dan!

First broadcast Japan January 28, 2022 United States October 21, 2022

English themes Opening With You Ending

Japanese themes Opening １・２・３ Ending バツグンタイプ

Credits Animation Team Kato Screenplay 米村正二 Shōji Yonemura Storyboard 浅田裕二 Yūji Asada Assistant director 浅田裕二 Yūji Asada Animation directors 岩根雅明 Masaaki Iwane 志村泉 Izumi Shimura Additional credits

Screenshots on Filb.de Preview thread on BMGf Closed Original review thread on BMGf Dub review thread on BMGf

The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky! (Japanese: サラバ！さすらいのロケット団！ Farewell! The Wandering Rocket-dan!) is the 95th episode of Pokémon Journeys: The Series, and the 1,180th episode of the Pokémon anime. It first aired in Japan on January 28, 2022, in Canada on June 25, 2022, in South Africa on August 30, 2022, in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2022, in Australia on September 21, 2022, and in the United States on October 21, 2022.

Spoiler warning: this article may contain major plot or ending details.

Blurb

After the Prize Master lends Team Rocket some unhelpful Pokémon, the group chases Pelipper to find out who’s responsible for the machine. The pursuit leads them to a café run by their former rival Cassidy, who’s no longer in Team Rocket. As James stays behind at the café, Jessie and Meowth press on, ending up at a bakery run by Butch. Meowth becomes smitten with a familiar-looking female Meowth, so Jessie and Wobbuffet leave him behind to continue chasing Pelipper. But a series of mishaps brings Jessie, James, Meowth, and Wobbuffet back together again, and they realize that their life in Team Rocket is all about luck—good and bad!

Plot

Jessie and Wobbuffet are wandering through a desert in a sandstorm, wondering if their current predicament is cruel fate, before collapsing in the sand and bidding farewell to James and Meowth.

A week earlier, Team Rocket is shown working at a part-time job in a factory in Vermilion City to get fundings for their operations. When their shift ends and they go outside, they spot Ash's Pikachu, along with Ash and Goh. They quickly seize Pikachu in a net and call down the Rocket Prize Master. However, the lazy Slakoth and Slaking they get do nothing when commanded to use Slack Off, before returning to their Poké Balls, allowing Ash and Goh to easily blast the trio off with Lucario and Cinderace and save Pikachu. After landing, the Rocket trio decides to blame the lousy Pokémon they got from the Prize Master for their failure and focus their attention on Pelipper. Translated by Meowth, Pelipper says the vending machine comes up to luck and flies off. The trio decides to pursue Pelipper so they can give the one responsible for the Rocket Prize Master a piece of their mind. While chasing it, they notice a Swablu sitting on their balloon. Since Swablu are said to bring happiness, they attempt to grab it, only for Swablu to dodge them and burst their balloon with Dragon Breath, sending them blasting off yet again.

While floating in the middle of the sea, Team Rocket sees Pelipper swimming nearby and chases it, only for a Wailord to appear and swallow both them and Pelipper. Inside Wailord, they find an old rusty ship and a Chatot, which, according to Meowth, has been trapped here ever since Wailord swallowed the ship. Not wanting to stay trapped as long as the ship has, the trio decides to use the Rocket Prize Master to escape. Pelipper, however, is stubborn and refuses to hand the vending machine over, using Hydro Pump on the trio when they try to force its bill open. Regardless, this attack does cause Wailord to squirt the trio, Pelipper, and Chatot out of its blowhole in the middle of a frozen sea. At first, the trio waves Pelipper goodbye and thank it for saving them, before remembering that they were chasing it, and resume the chase, only to run into an angry Mamoswine. By dangling Meowth before its face, Team Rocket continues their chase of Pelipper on Mamoswine's back.

The trio remembering Butch and Cassidy

Eventually, however, the trio loses Pelipper and slips off Mamoswine's back out of hunger near a snow-covered village. They try to make it for a house, but collapse one by one in the midst of a howling blizzard. When they wake up, they find themselves in front of a warm fireplace and next to a table filled with food, much to their pleasure. They eagerly dig in and thank a woman for bringing them more to eat, before suddenly recognizing said woman as none other than Cassidy, their fellow Team Rocket member. Cassidy, however, makes it clear that, despite her once-elite status in the organization, she is not its member anymore, having gotten tired of its daily routines and realized that there is more to life than Team Rocket. While Cassidy tells them to rest, Jessie insists on them working hard to repay her saving them, which she smugly accepts.

Team Rocket starts enjoying their life at Cassidy's café, helping to serve her customers and doing other helpful work. One day, when sitting outside to enjoy some food after a good day's work, however, they start thinking back to how they wound up here in the first place, until Pelipper flies by and makes them remember their chase. They prepare to resume it, but James seems reluctant, having gotten used to living with Cassidy. Jessie and Meowth, having seen how James has enjoyed his new life here, decide to let him stay while they resume their chase of Pelipper, tears pouring from Jessie's eyes as they run away.

Eventually, Jessie and Meowth wind up in a small town located next a seaside cliff, preventing them from going on any further. Hungry from all their running, they follow a delicious scent to a bakery, where they find not only a Meowth who's a spitting image of Meowzie, Meowth's first love, but also Butch, Cassidy's now-former teammate from Team Rocket. He gives them some bread and prepares to explain why he's here, only for Jessie to cut him off and correctly guess that he, like Cassidy, has realized that Team Rocket isn't all there is to life and left the organization. Butch is angry at them for spoiling his big reveal, but agrees to let them repay his kindess with some work at the bakery. Once again, Jessie and Meowth end up forgetting their chase of Pelipper, only to be reminded of it when the Water Bird Pokémon flies past the bakery. Having seen how happy Meowth is with Meowzie's lookalike, Jessie lets him stay behind. As Jessie runs away, Meowth gives her a parting gift in the form of a Wobbuffet balloon he had sowed himself. While pursuing Pelipper, Jessie finds the Swablu from before once again on the balloon, now having actually pecked a hole on it. She tries to grab it, only for it to once again use Dragon Breath to burst the balloon and send both her and Wobbuffet blasting off for the third time during their chase.

Back at the desert from the start of the episode, Jessie and Wobbuffet collapse from exhaustion and bid farewell to their teammates. Jessie dreams of James and Meowth waking her up by slapping her, only for her to actually wake up and find out it was actually a Sandshrew scratching her face. She wakes up Wobbuffet as well, but before they can continue looking for Pelipper, they end up falling into a sand pit, with a Trapinch opening its jaws for them at the bottom. Just as Jessie is about to accept her fate, James, Meowth, and Pelipper suddenly appear at the edge of the pit. They explain that James had been tossed out by Cassidy after his Morpeko ate all of the café's food, while Meowth had found out that Meowzie's lookalike was hanging out with a local Persian, and they had both ended up reuniting and chasing Pelipper together. Jessie tells them to save her, but both James and Meowth end up slipping into the sand pit as well. Meowth tells Pelipper to save them, but it refuses, having no room in its bill for both the Rocket Prize Master and them. However, when it sees the trio helplessly sliding down the pit, it finally lets go of its stubbornness and drops the vending machine onto Trapinch so it can scoop up the Team Rocket trio and save them.

As Pelipper flies away, Team Rocket waves it goodbye, having finally understood that the vending machine, like life, is up to chance: sometimes you get good pulls, other times you get bad ones, and sometimes what seem like good pulls might turn out to be bad ones. When they start to wonder how to get out of the desert, Ash and Goh suddenly appear near them. Seeing a way back home, Jessie tells Ash to ask them what they're up to, giving the Rocket trio a segue into their motto, fully embracing their life in Team Rocket once again and welcoming Pikachu's usual Thunderbolt with open arms, blasting off for one more time for the week. Ash and Goh are left confused by the villainous trio's smiles, while said trio happily crashes back into their part-time job factory in Vermilion City.

Major events

• Butch and Cassidy reappear and are revealed to have left Team Rocket.
• Butch is revealed to own a Meowth.
• The Team Rocket trio temporarily splits up, but later reunites.

For a list of all major events in the animated series, please see the history page.

Characters

Humans

Dare da?

• Ash
• Goh
• Jessie
• James
• Butch
• Cassidy
• Factory workers
• Customers

Pokémon

Who's That Pokémon?: Pelipper

• Pikachu (Ash's)
• Meowth (Team Rocket)
• Wobbuffet (Jessie's)
• Dragonite (Ash's)
• Lucario (Ash's)
• Cinderace (Goh's)
• Beedrill (Goh's)
• Grookey (Goh's)
• Morpeko (James's; Hangry Mode; flashback)
• Meowth (Butch's)
• Raticate (Cassidy's)
• Pelipper (Team Rocket)
• Slakoth (Team Rocket's)
• Slaking (Team Rocket's)
• Meowth (Meowzie; flashback)
• Swablu
• Wishiwashi (Solo Form; ×3)
• Wailord
• Chatot
• Mamoswine
• Trapinch
• Persian (flashback)

Trivia

• Get Inspired! Let's Solve a Poké Riddle!!: Wailord
• Team Rocket's Theme from Pokémon the Series: XY is reused as background music in this episode.
• Team Rocket reads out the title card for this episode.
• This episode's Japanese title card features Meowth instead of Pikachu.
• This episode premiered the same day Pokémon Legends: Arceus was released.
• This episode marks the first appearance of Butch and Cassidy in the anime since Sleight of Sand!, 649 episodes earlier.
• The wooden carvings in Cassidy's café are based on some of the Pokémon she used during the course of the anime.
• Team Rocket as a whole blasts off three times in this episode, while Jessie and Wobbuffet blast off four times.
• This is one of the rare times where Team Rocket has willingly wanted to be blasted off.
• Meowth's Ballad and Team Rocket's Team Song are used as insert songs in this episode.
  • This episode also marks the first time in Pokémon Journeys: The Series that a theme song from a past series is used as an insert song in an episode.
• Team Rocket getting swallowed by a Wailord and finding a ship inside could be a reference to the story of Pinocchio.
• This is one of the few episodes after Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl to feature an in media res-styled cold open.
• The English dub title is a reference to the 1966 Western movie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
• Butch and Cassidy's flashback motto in the English dub is the same used in The Breeding Center Secret, except for the line "Team Rocket circling all day and night!", which originally was "We're Team Rocket, circling Earth all day and night!".
• Sophocles, Ash, Goh, an Ampharos, and Pikachu narrate the preview for the next episode.

Errors

• When Cinderace and Lucario are about to attack Team Rocket, Slaking is in front of the trio, despite returning to its Poké Ball just moments earlier.
• When Swablu uses Dragon Breath to blast off Team Rocket the second time, the Wobbuffet balloon and Pelipper are above the clouds. However, they were below the clouds in the preceding shots.

Dub edits

• The Japanese texts depicting Slakoth and Slaking's categories and names are edited out.
• The title card featuring Meowth is replaced with the one with Pikachu in the English dub.

In other languages

Language		Title
Mandarin Chinese		再見了！流浪的火箭隊！
European French		Le Bon, la Brute et le Veinard !
German		Glück muss man haben!
Italian		Il buono, il brutto e il fortunato!

← JN094 : Suffering the Flings and Arrows!

Pokémon Journeys: The Series

JN096 : Lighting the Way Home! →

This episode article is part of Project Anime, a Bulbapedia project that covers all aspects of Pokémon animation.