The Pokemon anime needs:
To completely cut back on the funny! Seriously, these writers in Japan are trying way too hard to be American. Just because its a Saturday morning anime in America, does mean it should be given the 70's cornball Wacky Races/It's The Wolf/The Perils of Penelope Pitstop/Hanna-Barbera archive treatment. And just because we're the biggest market, doesn't mean you have to appeal to our outdated flaws as well.
To be honest, Pokemon was never meant to be ha-ha funny, and certainly not goofy. It's a series about cool pocket monsters. No, I'm not saying the series should be dark and serious like Bleach and FMA, it can be light-hearted, but just not infantile to the point where forced running gags and any attempts at being funny just come off as goofy, annoying, and downright stupid.
We all know the Team Rocket trio are not malevolent and have standards, but how entertaining is it for villains to be flanderized into complete goofy butt-monkeys and get humiliated at the end of every episode, and painted as complete monster by an unsympathetic protagonist. What dense and/or sociopathic person would take pure delight in seeing that every week for 10 years.
The good news was that Team Rocket actually became competent in their assignments (and it would made Best Wishes a perfect series, if it wasn't for Iris, Cilan, Ash's blunders in Unova, and the real-life earthquake the threw off the flow of the rest of the series). However, they took that away and made them losers again. The only difference now is a new region, new Pokemon, and now Serena, Clemont, and Bonnie are on the "TR is pure-evil" bandwagon. Black Uniform Team Rocket worked!
And even though the writers have no time to read forum posts, I just hope they're reading this one. It not like they do anything useful of value with their time.