Nerding Day: Pokemon Trainer Video (Patreon)

Penn Badgley, the actor who played Gossip Girl in the CW show Gossip Girl, was once asked which acting job he was the least proud of, and he responded with no remorse. "I did a training video for a Pokémon card game where I had to do comedy skits that were played to adults between training lessons." So, of course, I hunted down the man who would be Gossip Girl's greatest shame.

I can see why this was the movie role that most traumatized Penn, even though he played the childhood version of a porn actor in the movie Fluffer. At least in that movie, they didn't dress him like a young Jerry Seinfeld. Pokèmon stuck him in a role where most of his lines were a long awkward pause and a distant stare, and he killed it because that long awkward pause, that distant gaze, was what he was feeling in his heart.

The Pokèmon Trainer Video VHS way over promises on the cover. "Pay close attention because this video can put you on the fast track from Pokèmon trainer to Pokèmon master," it says, but if there was anything about Pokèmon mastery in the original plan for this video, much like Alolan Diglett, it evolved in a surprising way.

A lot of the budget for the Pokemon trainer video went not to explaining Pokèmon but to black and white vignettes where children talked about why they liked Pokemon. These segments scream, "I went to FILM SCHOOL. I know what people WANT, and it's forlorn shots of a single child wandering an empty playground while they talk about how cool Pokèmon is!"

Slow-motion black and white images of a child playing on a playground are the universal indicator that this child has died, right? This is what they show on a crime drama right after someone says, "Oh My God, what happened?" It looks like footage from inside a playground murderer's brain.

It seems like this video was made to correct a problem that Pokèmon was having with their US trading card audience where people were buying and trading the cards without actually playing the game or even understanding that there was a game at all. Like Cabbage Patch Dolls and Beanie Babies before them, the cards were a good investment! Who needs a retirement fund when you've fifty-six Princess Diana commemorative beanies in a temperature-controlled storage shed doubling in value every day! Speaking of, let's check in on the Princess Diana Beanie market...

So, Pokèmon needed to get us to play Pokèmon, because eventually just buying and trading cards would get old, and if people were invested in the game, that would give the fad a much longer shelf life. Unfortunately, this frustration with how Americans used the cards comes across in their training video.

Penn Badgley's character is a professional Pokèmon teacher named Jimmy, who teaches adults how to play Pokèmon. This allows Jimmy to treat adults like morons for not knowing how to play Pokèmon. You see, it's funny when a child tells an adult they're a dipshit. It's one of the main tenets of American comedy. Full House built a dominion on a sassy child. It's just that when the child is also supposed to be teaching something, and his response to every question is like, "God Damn it, Marge, if you don't grasp the concept of Charizard, you should kill yourself," it's a little intimidating for new learners.

The video tries three different methods of Pokèmon training. One is showing Penn in the classroom, mainly being exasperated as the adults ask questions about trading cards instead of paying attention to the game. Two is children in an alarming white void, (who also hate you) going over the rules in detail.

"Damage counters help count damage. Each damage counter is worth ten damage points. So, if your Pokèmon has five damages counters on it, then it has fifty damage. If it has four damage counters, that's forty damage. Three is thirty, and two is ninety," The void child says. Then he pauses, makes prolonged eye contact with you, and says, "I'm kidding...about the ninety."

He looks at you with such frustration, such disgust. Did you believe his dumb ninety joke? If he could crawl out of this TV like the girl from the ring just to give you an atomic wedgie, he would. How dare you, a child trying to learn a game for children, believe what he, the teacher of that children's game, has said about the children's game! Did you actually write that down!? Oh my God. If the video hasn't made you cry by the ten-minute mark, they haven't done their job. It's like they're trying to neg you into loving Pokèmon.

The third teaching method is the most painful. It's a skit where another non-Penn Badgley teacher walks two parents (she hates) through a game of Pokèmon. Presumably, Penn had realized his mistake, thrown a chair through a window, yelled, "I'm going to play the hot serial killer in You someday," and jumped out the window at this point in filming.

Don't worry, the girl teaching the parents to play Pokèmon also hates learning. The theme of the video remains intact.

The parents say ridiculous things throughout the game, like, "Yay; I did it! Maybe I'm going to become a Pokèmon master!" They've made the fatal mistake of showing enthusiasm for Pokèmon. The new teacher ridicules them appropriately.

There's no fun music behind this, no cartoon Pokèmon joining in on the fun, just two adults who are painfully bad at Pokèmon being adequately punished for trying.

I don't like watching people fail at things, so I'm not exaggerating when I say this made my stomach hurt. I know it's all scripted, but I still felt so bad for the poor dumb adults. Learning is hard! Can't we just let them have some...Oh no, I've said too much. The void children are listening.

From there we move back into the black and white vignettes where a little girl talks about how she loves swimming and holds up a Pokèmon card underneath the water, ruining it. Fifty percent of the people who made this video hated it and had no idea what Pokèmon cards even were, and the other fifty percent were such hardcore Pokèmon fans they decided that the worst thing you could do to Pokèmon was be born without the knowledge of how they worked. It’s like if Big Bird were on Sesame Street yelling, “Oh my gawd do you seriously not know this is the letter I? Woooow. Like, wow. That’s hilarious. Eat shit. Or I guess as you'd say it, EAT SHT.”

I know I'm not an expert on producing children's television. Maybe there's some educational principle that says treating kids like dirt and telling them to ruin their toys by putting them in water makes them learn better? Who knows what the makers of this video would think of me?

Well. That was unnecessary. To finish up, the VHS cuts back to Penn, freshly recaptured and back in the classroom. He can’t believe he’s still in this goddamn video.

The dumb students in Penn’s classroom are finaly starting to understand the basics of Pokèmon. They know the best time to retreat a Pokèmon is when it’s got damage. They're ready to go out into the world and be dumbasses on someone else's turf. Penn Badgley is visibly relieved this trial is over. Now his biggest problem is just that his name sounds like it was made up in thirty seconds by looking around the room while filling out the Pokèmon audition application.

You can catch Lydia on Twitter.