Recap: Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon

So, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom was fun. Not quite as good as the last movie, but I enjoyed it overall. With that in mind, I will keep my dinosaur high and my anticipation of Pokémon Let's Go going with my next Kanto recap to close out this month! Let's open up "Attack of the Preshistoric Pokémon!"

We open the historic "Grandpa Canyon," where a dig for Pokémon fossils is taking place; as Ash, Brock and Misty are accosted by Gary Oak in a full Indiana Jones getup!

This prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark is quite strange.

In hindsight, Ash's nonchalant reaction to Gary's cheerleaders and fossil search is honestly one of the things that amuses me most about this episode; and once again, here's the MST3K clip.

DULL SURPRISE!

As Ash then decides to compete with Gary in finding fossils, Jigglypuff is not far behind; miffed that it hasn't found anyone to hear its song!

As "The Great Fossil Rush" is underway, Gary digs up what he believes is a brain; but another man supervising the dig tells him instead that it's Pokémon manure. Fun fact from when I took biology in school: apparently a "coprolite" is indeed fossilized excrement, in other words, Gary basically found fossilized shit, just like the Jaguar CD!

As Ash tries to determine where to look for fossils, they stumble across Team Rocket's plan to blow the whole canyon up and collect the fossils despite all the people inside! Disregarding how dark that sounds if you think about it, I do find it somewhat amusing 4Kids cut Meowth actually lighting the TNT fuse, so kids wouldn't find out that mysterious last step.

Ash then tells Brock and Misty to warn everyone while he tries to stop the explosives! There's a lot going on in this episode, and this might be one of my favorites from Kanto. I only have a few more I want to cover before retirement, and I want to make every one count.

Jessie and James try to stop Ash, but they end up tripping over themselves and rolling up in a big ball!

Ultimately, they're unable to stop the explosives, and they end up trapped in an underground cavern with some of the prehistoric Pokémon from the title: Omanyte, Omastar, Kabuto, and Kabutops! I'm not doing any "Lord Helix" jokes, guys: I don't even like Twitch all that much. I was hoping it would go the way of Myspace and Geocities, but that won't happen anytime soon, unfortunately.

Mommy's very angry...

So, as Brock, Misty and everyone else on the surface try to uncover the blocked roof of the cave, everyone down below must elude the raging Pokémon; who are livid that their sleep has been disturbed!

I must say, this rampage beneath the surface of the canyon has held up quite well over time, and they also did a good job remastering it; given these screenshots I've taken from the Netflix copy of the episode.

As if that wasn't enough, another prehistoric Pokémon enters the space wanting to make everyone in sight into its prey: Aerodactyl!

Oh no! The Rancor!

Aerodactyl is not only able to brush off Charmeleon's attack, it grabs Ash and crashes through the blockage of the cave roof! Just mere episodes after evolving into Charmeleon, we get another evolution into Charizard!

In addition to this moment being re-versioned for "The Fires of a Red-Hot Reunion," I still submit that Charizard is still one of the monsters that represents the "cool" side of the franchise, if ones like Pikachu and Jigglypuff represent the "cute" side of it.

Speaking of which, Jigglypuff is convinced to take the stage and sing its song to stop Aerodactyl's rampage, with Charizard plugging its ears and rescuing the drowsy Ash on its back, somehow!

Ash then rolls over next to a Pokémon egg, and as everyone comes to, Officer Jenny tries to dismiss what they just witnessed as a dream from Jigglypuff's song, even with all the marker on their faces. I think I will let Hermes Conrad handle this one.

That just raises further questions!

So, as the sun sets on another day, we close on Ash showing Brock and Misty the egg he found; and Brock decides to help raise it! ... We will talk about that before the year is out.

You have chosen... wisely.

"Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon" was another great way to help close out this month after the mess that was Dragonball Evolution; and another episode I really enjoyed from when I was younger. Even though there was a lot going on in this half-hour, sometimes you wake up and just want to talk about dinosaur pocket monsters in a show about a video game, if you'll pardon me drifting into a shade of Ernest Cline there. As this month and the first half of my last year come to a close, however, there's something that came up that I need to address. If you've been following me for a while, you know exactly what it is. That's all for now. Bang.