Two Degrees of Separation! – Pokémon Season 10, Episode 2

Plot episodeAsh catches StarlyBrock returns

Two Degrees of Separation! is the 2nd episode of Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl, the tenth season of the Pokémon anime, and the 466th episode of the English dub overall (Japanese episode 469, Bulbapedia code DP002). It first aired in Japan on 28 September 2006 and in the United States on 20 April 2007. It falls within the season’s A new region, a new companion stretch (EP1–EP3).

First shown as part of the TV movie of 20 April 2007, with its title screen and part of Starly’s search from the air cut; aired in full on Tuesday 5 June 2007.

Synopsis · Major Events · Trivia · Dub Changes · All episodes

Synopsis

On Route 202, Dawn lets Piplup out to relax in a meadow and decides it is time to catch her first wild Pokémon. A Buneary hops out of the grass, but when Piplup opens with Bubble Beam the rabbit dodges, flattens Piplup with a single Dizzy Punch and bounces off Dawn’s head to freedom. A Burmy hanging from a branch fares no better: Piplup’s Bubble Beam blows away its Plant Cloak, and the Bagworm Pokémon hurriedly rebuilds it and slips away before a Poké Ball is ready. Then an exhausted Pikachu staggers out of the bushes. Piplup attacks despite the type disadvantage and is hurled by Thunderbolt into Dawn’s bicycle, which goes up in smoke, the same fate Misty’s and May’s bikes once suffered. Dawn’s Poké Ball bounces off, and she realises the Pikachu must already have a Trainer.

Team Rocket close in on the Pikachu with Seviper, Dustox and Cacnea, and Dawn is astonished to hear Meowth talk. Unimpressed by a gang with no reputation in Sinnoh, she has Piplup break free of Seviper’s Wrap, and Piplup and Pikachu combine their attacks to blast the trio away. Dawn carries the collapsed Pikachu to the Pokémon Center, bickers with Piplup on the videophone in front of her mother, and tells Professor Rowan she will find its Trainer. Meanwhile a dejected Ash is picked up by Officer Jenny and driven to Rowan’s lab, where he receives Aipom’s Poké Ball from Professor Oak and learns that a girl named Dawn has Pikachu. Team Rocket hole up in a summer cottage belonging to James’s family, where James is reunited with his old Carnivine, which greets him by chomping his head, before news of an impending visit from his parents and fiancée Jessebelle sends him into a panic.

Rowan tells Dawn that Pikachu’s Trainer is heading her way, so she sets off back down Route 202 on foot, while a guilty Pikachu trails behind. On the road, Ash and Aipom are overtaken by a lorry from which Brock jumps down: he hitched a ride from Pewter City with a young woman named Claudina, only for a phone call from her boyfriend to end his hopes, and he decides to rejoin Ash instead. As Ash explains that Pikachu is lost, Aipom collides with a wild Starly, and a lively battle of Swift against Whirlwind, Quick Attack and Wing Attack follows until Aipom’s Focus Punch leaves the bird ready to catch. Ash is sad Pikachu missed his first Sinnoh capture, but Brock points out that Starly can search from the sky. Watching from the trees, a cold young Trainer named Paul sneers that the Starly was too easy to catch to be worth having.

Major Events

• Brock returns. Dawn fails to catch a Buneary and a Burmy and finds the lost Pikachu, which fries her bike
• Ash receives Aipom’s Poké Ball at Professor Rowan’s lab
• Brock jumps down from a lorry to rejoin Ash
• Ash catches Starly with Aipom while Pikachu is lost
• James retrieves Carnivine from his family’s summer cottage
• Paul’s first, brief appearance
• Kenta Miyake’s first episode as Giovanni
• The last Battle Frontier motto

Pokémon making their anime debut

• Burmy#0412 · DP002
• Carnivine#0455 · DP002

Captures and evolutions

• Starly#0396 · Ash · caught with Aipom while Pikachu is lost

Trivia

• The English title plays on "six degrees of separation", for Ash and Pikachu just missing each other.
• The screenplay is by Atsuhiro Tomioka.
• This is a plot episode: it advances the Sinnoh storyline.

Changes in the English Dub

• On the TV movie the title screen (9 seconds) and part of Starly’s search from the air were cut
• A BBC iPlayer and CBBC print removes half of James’s “bloody”
• Giovanni scolds the trio (in Japanese he simply tells them to do their best)
• Carnivine and Victreebel lines added
• No opening or ending on Japanese TV (both added on DVD)
• Lucario and the Mystery of Mew score
• By Your Side as background music

Part of our Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl guide. Browse every season of the Pokémon anime.