The Pokemon Story

Has anyone here ever felt that in the first, second, and third season of pokemon there was a solid story line and direction that the anime was going in? I mean... Ash sees Ho-oh, Mewtwo, Lugia and the 3 birds, The whole GS ball thing, Even meeting Tracy made him end up as prof. Oaks assistant in the end. But now its just the same thing over and over -_- I feel like they had a plan but as the popularity of the show grew, it just skewed in a different direction to keep the 'children' audience and to keep rating up so the show never 'finished' and to keep Ash as the child protagonist forever. Even after he gained a charizard, his experience as a trainer just resets every Gen and he's back to being a newbie that forgets water is strong against fire.....

I guess you are right, the Anime is supposed to introduce the newer generations to Pokemon, i don't think they care about their older, "veteran" audiences. That's why Ash always stays a 10-year-old, that's why Pikachu beats a Latios in the season's final tournament and then loses to a basic Starter...because the formula works, and they want new Kids to learn the same stuff about Pokemon as we did, just with a different Generation of Pokemon and characters...

Yeah, Ash "resetting" is quite annoying and as Iris says, he's "such a kid," and always will be if the anime writers keep making him and sometimes the other characters forget things what happened just a few episodes earlier.

Also, resetting aside... Each season Ash is only as good as his Rival :/

When it was Gary, it forced Ash to become a Better Overall trainer
When it was Paul, it forced Ash to think outside the box with his attacks more
And when it was Trip... Well... Ash just kinda grew weaker for some reason....

I'm just going to guess and say that since Pokémon was only supposed to ever last for two generations, it's possible that the anime was originally going to follow in that direction and have Ash win the Johto league and come that much closer to becoming a Pokémon Master in the end. However, since Pokémon ended up becoming a huge success by that time, the anime writers had to change their direction and continue the show following Ash and Pikachu's journey as each new generation came along. It's definitely begun to follow a pattern I wish they would break out of and try to explore what it's like to tell a real story with actual plotlines. Sinnoh has been the only saga so far to come closest to doing this in my opinion.

Has anyone here ever felt that in the first, second, and third season of pokemon there was a solid story line and direction that the anime was going in?

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The anime has undergone a routine of 'resetting' Ash every time he goes to a new region since the beginning of Hoenn, which entails him leaving all his Pokémon except for Pikachu behind, getting a new outfit, and his traveling companions getting replaced. The Unova saga magnified this to a considerable extent.
I remember, when he revisited Viridian City to challenge the Gym for his final Kanto badge, at that point he said "it's been a whole year since I've been here", or something similar to that. Then it took until either late in Orange Islands or early in Johto before his Charizard would obey him (I seem to remember the main reason he lost to Ritchie in the Indigo League championships being that Charizard wouldn't obey.) Indeed, he even kept his original Kanto/Indigo outfit all the way through Johto!
But, with each new generation released comes a near-complete reset for Ash among the lines I stated above. Hence why there's "Original Series", "Advance Generation", "Diamond and Pearl", and "Best Wishes".
The main reason for this is so they can keep the show targeted towards young children and pre-teens-if they made it so Ash actually aged throughout the show's run, ratings would fall so low, that the show would probably have been canceled a long time ago. (Forget about what Kids' WB said about "soft ratings" being the reason they dropped Pokémon when the WB and UPN merged into CW-the real reason was because of federal restrictions on product placement in children's programming due to the war on obesity.) Pokémon is not a soap opera, despite what Pojo's magazine used to say about it.