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Adding some more math about SM, this time about the TRio. While watching, I kept track of which episodes did not feature Team Rocket at all. In SM, the TRio is absent for at least 55 episodes (I may have missed a few, but probably not a lot). For a 146 episode runtime, that is ~37.6%. One in every three episodes did not have Team Rocket in it. I'd guess that only a third of those featured them trying to steal Pikachu or the CotD's Pokemon, but I didn't count. The other two thirds were them interacting with Matori, selling donuts, getting Z-Crystals, fighting Team Skull, or other shenanigans.
Pre-SM, I hated Team Rocket. All in all, my complaints about the TRio in AG, DP and XY were that they did the same thing every episode and ate up valuable screen time, even in episodes where something interesting was happening and they weren't needed. According to Bulbapedia, they appear in every episode up to Lenora's Gym in BW, where they were going through a tone change. I don't think they were in every episode of XY off of memory, but they were in enough that I got tired of their schtick very quickly. I'd add in the TRio always using some mech that "totally won't get destroyed by Ash's Pokemon" (AG, DP) or a prolonged battle with Ash and co. (XY).
SM addressed these things by only using the TRio when it made sense to, and giving them fun stuff to do other than the same-old same-old. Them cheering on Litten, becoming an almost-family with Bewear and Snuffle, regularly entering sports contests to win and not just to steal shit, all of that, made them feel more human than the once-a-season episodes where they're nice and then go back to being sociopaths the following episode. I finally got to see what everyone liked about the TRio, but only because I wasn't bombarded by them doing the same old shit every episode. This was the best version of Team Rocket, and I wish we had gotten them 800 episodes sooner.
