This episode right here, guess who didn't get development?
Everybody in episode? Nobody developed. I can't help but smiling at the idea that after seeing the preview and reading the summaries, all indicating that this would just be a crazy hilarious comedic episode, some people expected this episode to be deep and meaningful, a story of Dent overcoming his darkest deepest fears. It was always clear from the get go this would be mainly just about getting some laughs, which was a nice change of pace after the recent plot heavy episodes. I'm more and more convinced that the Choroneko thing is gonna be Dent's version of Takeshi's thing with Professor Uchikido.
That being said, I wouldn't say the episode was a complete waste on the Dent side. It still showed he's learning new things while traveling with Satoshi because he didn't look for outright compatibility, as he might have done in the past where he was all about the trainer's style matching their pokémon's like in his Gym Battle against Satoshi, but rather looked at what the little girl wanted and matched her with the mushroom, because he learned from Satoshi that if a trainer and a pokémon care for another, they can make it work as well. It's interesting to me how much his approach diverged from Pinot and Cabernet, because that wasn't the case at the beginning of the series. He's considering more factors and getting more accurate in his tastings.
What's the point in having rivals if they're gonna be reduced to Team Rocket fodder-ish levels?(If Pinot appears again) Dento was right, won the battle, and Cabernet was used as a comedy prop most of the time.
Since Dent's character and his goal revolves around helping trainers and mentoring them, it makes every bit of sense. What I am disappointed about this episode's treatment of Cabernet isn't so much that she didn't gain a rank or was blasted off as I would have liked more interactions between her and Dent, more of her learning from him or realizing something from him. Still, she was hilarious in this episode and I can't help but feel that her lack of progress as a sommelière is leading somewhere.