AG050
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Pros and Con Artists
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First broadcast
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English themes
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Japanese themes
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Credits
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Pros and Con Artists (Japanese: ポケモンコンテスト・ハジツゲ大会！！ Pokémon Contest! Hajitsuge Convention!) is the 50th episode of the Advanced Generation series, and the 324th episode of the Pokémon anime. It first aired in Japan on November 6, 2003 and in the United States on October 30, 2004.
Blurb
May and friends finally arrive in Fallarbor Town, ready for the next Pokémon Contest. There are already a lot of coordinators there, including one named Grace with a Medicham. Grace already has 3 ribbons, and shows off her Medicham's special combo.
May tries practicing combos with her Beautifly, but gets confused. Drew shows up and taunts her.
Meanwhile, Team Rocket is running a scam to sell fake PokéBlocks.
When Ash tells Drew he's not competing, Drew challenges him to a battle that Drew wins. Drew implies that it takes teamwork between a Trainer and Pokémon to succeed, which May doesn't have. With her confidence shattered, May is easily duped by Team Rocket's scam.
Before May can purchase a fake PokéBlock, Grace steps in and exposes the ruse. Team Rocket leaves in their balloon, stealing all of the Pokémon they can on the way out. Medicham frees all of the Pokémon, and then May and Grace team up to fight off Team Rocket.
May gets her confidence back and enters the contest, standing on stage next to a confident Drew. Her second Pokémon Contest is about to begin.
Plot
Ash and his friends have made it to Fallarbor Town, where May will participate in her second Pokémon Contest. May is far more confident than last time that she and Beautifly will win.
As they enter the Contest building, Brock finds himself surrounded by beautiful Pokémon Coordinators and May becomes nervous about all the competition. They take particular interest in a Medicham which is practicing its Meditate. Suddenly various objects around the room begin to float, including Max's glasses and even Pikachu. Medicham's Trainer, Grace, tells it to stop and apologizes for its burst of psychic energy. Everything falls back to the ground and Brock immediately falls in love with Grace, though Max quickly pulls him away as usual.
May apologizes for Brock, saying that he does that with every beautiful girl, and Grace begins laughing hysterically in embarrassment, accidentally shoving May over.
The group and Grace have dinner, where it is revealed that Grace already has three Contest Ribbons. May gets nervous again, but Grace tries to cheer her up by saying that the coordinator with the most experience won't necessarily win, it can just as easily come down to who they're facing and luck, but a coordinator will never be able to win until they learn how to use their Pokémon's power completely. Unfortunately May still feels nervous, so Grace offers to show May some of Medicham's moves.
Outside, Grace summons her Medicham, and shows off its Ice Punch, then combines it with Psychic. May hadn't even considered combining moves before, so she later tries it with her Beautifly, having it use Silver Wind, then Tackle. Unfortunately May can't make up her mind and quickly tells it to use Gust instead, then changes again to String Shot. All of this just ends with Beautifly getting tangled in its own String Shot.
May's rival Drew shows up in time to witness this, and comments on May's indecisiveness. Drew then asks how many Ribbons May has won, knowing that the answer is zero. May fires back with the same question, but it backfires on her as Drew reveals that he has won three Contest Ribbons.
Elsewhere, Jessie, James, and Meowth are trying another con by convincing a passerby that they have a secret product which will make it so that he would be able to win tons of Ribbons. The man is convinced and can't wait to buy what they have. Meowth has him swear to secrecy, and Meowth reveals what he claims is secret information that the Contest Judges don't want people to know. Jessie and James arrive disguised as satisfied customers to help sell the con. Meowth then tries to sell the man silver and gold colored Pokéblocks, saying that the gold blocks raise a Pokémon's "coolness", while the silver blocks raise their "charismatic-tism". Using Wobbuffet, Team Rocket convince the man that they really work, when in reality they are just regular Pokéblocks that have been painted.
Back inside the Contest building, Ash, Brock, and Max find Drew, who thinks that the three are afraid because they're not entering the Contest. Ash says they're not, so Drew challenges them to a Pokémon battle to prove it. Ash uses Taillow and has it use Quick Attack against Drew's Roselia. Roselia counters with Magical Leaf, which Taillow dodges. Roselia tries again with Petal Dance, and Taillow dodges again. Taillow uses Peck, but Roselia defends with Stun Spore, finally managing to hit Taillow. Roselia ends the match with a well-aimed SolarBeam. May is in disbelief that Ash lost the match, and continues to get discouraged about the upcoming Contest.
Team Rocket's con continues to thrive, and May thinks that if she buys one of their Pokéblocks, she won't have to worry about Beautifly winning. However, Grace arrives and is immediately suspicious. The trio isn't able to answer Grace's question about what Berries are in the Pokéblocks, so Grace blows their con and tells everyone that real coordinators shouldn't really on miracle products and should be mixing their own Pokéblocks anyway. May realizes she's right, and falls to her knees in despair.
Grace has her Medicham use Psychic to further reveal Team Rocket's scam, and the try to take off in their balloon. As they leave, they steal May's Beautifly, Grace's Medicham, a Teddiursa, a Marill, and a Wigglytuff. Medicham uses Psychic to free the five Pokémon, then Beautifly uses String Shot to stop their balloon from leaving. James has his Cacnea use Pin Missile to break the string, and Jessie has Seviper use Poison Tail, but Medicham stops it with its Hi Jump Kick. Beautifly dodges Cacnea's Pin Missile and hits it with Tackle, while Medicham blasts Team Rocket off with an Ice Punch.
With May's morale boosted from the battle, she enters her second Pokémon Contest ready to win!
Major events
- Ash and his friends arrive in Fallarbor Town for May's next Contest and meet Grace.
- Ash has a battle against Drew and loses.
- Drew is revealed to already have won three Ribbons.
- For a list of all major events in the animated series, please see the history page.
Debuts
Pokémon debuts
Characters
Humans
Pokémon
Pokémon Trainer's Choice: Geodude
- Pikachu (Ash's)
- Meowth (Team Rocket)
- Wobbuffet (Jessie's)
- Taillow (Ash's)
- Beautifly (May's)
- Seviper (Jessie's)
- Cacnea (James's)
- Roselia (Drew's)
- Medicham (Grace's; debut)
Various Contest Pokémon seen
Trivia
- The English dub is a combination of the phrases "pros and cons" and "con artists"
- The gold and silver-colored Pokéblocks are references to the Pokémon Gold and Silver games.
Errors
- Drew stated "In a Pokémon Contest, you have to be on the same wavelength as your Pokémon..." In May's flashback of what Drew said, it was actually, "In battles, you have to be on the same wavelength as your Pokémon..."
Dub edits
- Wine glasses are replaced with glasses shaped like a cylinder.
- Wobuffet has a pipe along with its hat and jacket in the Japanese version.
Pokémon Trainer's Choice
- Question: Trainers, which of these is the best to battle Magneton?
- Choices: Crobat, Lanturn, Geodude
- Answer: OK, if you answered Geodude, you were right!
In other languages
| Language | Title | |
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| Mandarin Chinese | 神奇寶貝華麗大賽，秋葉大會！ | |
 Finnish
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Ammattilaisia ja huijareita | |
 European French
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Artistes en tout genre | |
 German
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Schwindel auf ganzer Linie! | |
 Hebrew
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על מקצוענים וגנביםal miktso'anim veganavim | |
 Italian
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Allenatori e truffatori | |
| Portuguese |  Brazil
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Na Cidade de Fallarbor! |
 Portugal
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Artistas, Prós e Contras | |
| Spanish |  Latin America
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¡Los secretos para ganar! |
 Spain
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Artistas y estafadores | |
 Swedish
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Grace, Grace | |
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This episode article is part of Project Anime, a Bulbapedia project that covers all aspects of Pokémon animation. |
