alright i initially only had 1 thing to say on this but the more i thought about it the more things i thought of. hope this one doesn't get too long
the design philosophy of evil teams requiring "cannon fodder" pokemon is harmful to pokemon design as a whole.
it seems that every main series game is plagued with this issue. evil team grunts will consistently use the same couple of pokemon lines. the lines in question tend to be some of the weakest, most uninteresting pokemon in the game. it feels like these pokemon are intentionally gimped in the design phase to allow the player to fight large numbers of them at the same time.
a good example of this is patrat vs lillipup in gen 5. both pokemon are found in the same place, and the evolutions at around level 18 are comparable in power to each other. but the more appealing (aesthetically) of the two, lillipup, has yet another evolution that can hold its own with the strong lategame challenges, while patrat/watchog are stuck being used by plasma grunts and inevitably getting ohko'd by any remotely threatening pokemon that the player has.
as a result, several pokemon lines, each one showing promise to become something greater, are held back. rattata, poochyena, glameow, stunky, patrat, and purrloin, just for some examples, have practically no use for any player who knows what they're doing. the necessity of these weak and "evil" pokemon is somewhat at odds with one of the main ideas of pokemon, that every pokemon has potential to be good or evil, strong or weak, regardless of its species.
it's not even a hard problem to solve. if there's one thing evil teams like doing, it's stealing pokemon. you can still get across the message that these grunts are relatively weak and don't make an effort to understand pokemon in different ways. something like a stolen blissey that uses only offensive moves rather than making use of its ability to take hits would do a great job at nailing down the problems with the evil team's approach to the game. similarly, unevolved forms of pokemon that evolve through happiness, like swadloon or riolu, could show the inherent issues with not being friendly to pokemon.
pokemon has actually used both of these in the past, and it worked great. the koffing line are common among grunts and admins in the johto games. the line is relatively hard to ko physically, but it's held back by mediocre power and special defense. however, it has potential competitively thanks to its access to levitate + will-o-wisp + toxic spikes, giving it a solid niche as a physical wall in lower tiers.
but what they did with the zubat line is even more impressive. throughout the game, zubat and golbat are used by grunts and weak trainers with the occasional use by an evil team admin. the final fights against silver and cyrus feature a powerful pokemon that you likely haven't even seen before: crobat. the mere presence of this pokemon adds so much to an already good fight. you aren't facing just another grunt, you're facing an experienced trainer with strong convictions.
considering this, though, it just makes everything else look that much worse. pokemon like mightyena and liepard really have no excuse to be as bad as they are. that just really annoys me.