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A Bug Pioneer joins us on the journey through HI-SU-IIIII, hailing from another strange, exotic, and faraway shore: Jersey. You can probably figure out where she wormholed in from. Fortunately, she's here just in time to take down the Frenzied Lord Electrode, and more importantly, support Josh in preventing Tanner from ramming through some pretty outlandish new "slugs" for Doug Farmer's team.

Notes: Thanks for joining us, Erica, whose handsome dog you can find on Instagram @erica_h!

Welcome to the Cobalt Coastlands, Bug Pioneers. There's plenty of East Sea Shellos to go around, so grab a Leaden Ball, hop on your Basculegion, and enter bullet time—we've got some slugs to hunt. Our problematic faves, the Miss Fortune Sisters, are back and up to more mischief this week, stealing beautiful little 'mon and turning them into frenzied, raging monsters that we'll have to put down, Survey Corps-style.

Doug Farmer and Soren may not know how they got to old Hisui, but they certainly know what they're doing now that they're there, and what they're doing isn't very nice. Members of the Survey Corps live by the 3 C's: Catalogue, Capture, and Kill (It's a dialect thing, it doesn't translate well.) – and these two do so with such ruthless efficiency that they're accidentally wiping out whole evolutionary lines. Next in their sites: A lovely, frenzied ballerina Lilligant that can't be allowed to see the light of modern Sinnoh.

It's a new year and it's a brand-new game (to them) neither of the boys has ever touched—a truly open world, unknown & unexplored new land called Hisui. Except wait it does seem to have some striking similarities to the world they explored in the last game. We'll have to get to the bottom of that. And who better to do it than through Josh & Tanner's definitely completely original and in no way related to previous characters in the EXP. Share universe? Meet your would-be champions (or whatever they do here in Hisui) for our jaunt through Pokémon Legends: Arceus, as we navigate new mechanics, new trainers, and their first challenge of getting a Kleavor to settle down.

Notes: Featuring "Celtic Fantasy Music with Nature Ambience" by Coya Music and "Almost Heaven" by Freesound Music

Welcome to the lawless Aeos Islands, where the rich come to get richer, younger, and more beautiful as the poor and destitute of the Pokéworld grind it out in the brawling pits, harvesting rare Aeos energy to power the ruling class’ abhorrent experiments with the laws of nature. Meet Bree van Durr, a lofty figure brought low, washed up on the fabricated shores with a Gothic Horror Mewtwo in tow. She’ll have a long path to travel if she ever hopes to take on undefeated Pokémon Unite champion Neon Greedent Evangelion and his thankless personal chef, Greenring.

The #GrimSeason comes to its end. Will Crystal Ball & Shadow Josh suffer any further losses at the Pokémon League? Will either one play through all the postgame, or simply give up? Join us as we finish BDSP and share all of our thoughts about it.

What a leg! Really, so much happened this week, there’s almost not enough time to cover it all, and there’s certainly no room to get into all the specifics here in the episode description. These things have a character limit, you know. We could probably get into the boss battle atop Team Galactic HQ or the lake spirits freeing Dialga/Palkia from Cyrus’s freaky Red Chain, but there wasn't really anything else notable or humbling or humiliating that happened to Tanner or anyone else this week worth mentioning here.

Crystal Ball foresees a long trek ahead, and her soothsaying powers once again do not disappoint. She and Shadow Josh spend some time at the Canalave Library hoping to beef up on the Legendary Gulpin Egg—or so they thought. Instead, they're railroaded into having to go investigate all those multi-tailed lake freaks and once again, bail everyone out of a bunch of trouble they got themselves into. AND climb a mountain.

We decided to get out ahead of some pretty labored metaphors while we’re paying our quarterly taxes and getting out ahead of our waterfalls this season, you know, like a Basculin swimming upstream. Okay, now that I’m seeing it written out I see Josh’s point. We went to Canalave City and took on Byron in Canalave Gym. We crushed him.

After a particularly dark chapter in the #GrimSeason last week, our heroes/antiheroes are blessed with a short and relatively painless jaunt. That's thanks to Cynthia, who comes out of nowhere with "Secret Medicine" that takes care of the Psyduck blockade up on Route 210. She also makes Crystal Ball & Shadow Josh meet her grandmother up in Celestic Town, who needs an Old Charm for some reason. After that, they finally get to take on the Hearthome City Gym Leader, Fantina, and maybe dust off the Super Contest Contest?

Featuring: "Memorial Day (Alex Productions)" by Breaking Copyright.