>>49479858If you were paying attention the episode was an allegory for STD's/AIDS. In their rush to chase the white whale, they end up in the belly of the beast, the pit of chaos, where they encounter a bird that mocks them. The 3rd bird in the story they encounter, corresponding with their 3 grievances. The first bird (Pelliper) is their white whale, the misson of Team Rocket. The second bird is the catalyst that sends them to the belly of the beast, and the 3rd bird is failure and the mocking by others.
There'd usually be no need to dress up this in allegory, since this sort of thing happens every episode. So the reason the writers chose to reference biblical imagery is because they wanted to suggest that there was more to what was going on then what was shown. What drove them to the pits of despair. In the episode you can see them more than happy to attack Pikachu, but what the episode opens on, and what really seems to be the catalyst to the episode, is them working a job they don't want to to get by.
After being "expelled" from the beast, they continue to chase their white whale, but begin traversing strange terrain that goes from snowfall to a scorching desert. They fall down out of exhaustion outside of Cassidy's lodge. Note the order they fall down is the same order that they eventually leave the group in. The first one in both instances being James.
I'm going to skip ahead a little bit now. James eventually returns to the group, claiming that Cassidy threw him out after discovering his Morpeko. But, there's reasonable doubt to assume that this was a scenario that he feared would happen, rather than what actually happened.
I think what happened is that they whored out James for money and he ended up with AIDS. That is what this episode is about.
There's definitely a lot more to this episode though, I'm still trying to intrepret pic related.