Every Saturday morning, my teenage son and I get pancakes and play Pokémon Go. As hard as it is to admit this, sometimes I feel like this is the only thing he enjoys doing with me. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the kid, but he’s 15 and everything having to do with dad makes him circumspect. He groans a lot and glares when I tell him “good morning” or say “I love you, bud.” And well... it seems like the only time we can casually talk anymore is on Saturday mornings, while playing Pokémon Go and searching for Bulbasaur and Charmander.

I know, I know, they say teenagers come back, and all of this groaning and glaring and acting like dad is the worst is temporary, and they’re actually pretty loving in that “wanna get pancakes” kinda way. But it’s one thing to hear all that from people and something completely different when you’re trying so hard to show your teen that you love them, and they can’t seem to see it.

So when I saw that Netflix had released the new Pokémon series, Pokémon Master Journeys, I suggested we watch it together that evening. We were driving around town on Saturday morning, just the two of us, both in sweatpants and T-shirts. He was huffing down McDonalds pancakes with one hand and searching the Pokémon Go map on his phone with the other hand. He glanced at me, then back at his phone, and finally said, “I guess,” in that nonchalant teenager way.

That evening, though, when I brought up watching Master Journeys again (are you sitting down?), he actually smiled and said, “Yeah, sounds cool.”

Now keep in mind that I consider myself a Pokémon novice. This isn’t to say that I didn’t dabble in the show as a kid. I had a few cards and even played some of the Nintendo games. Pokémon was hard to avoid. The franchise has been around since the mid-’90s, and it’s obviously still very popular. But my son really gets into Pokémon. Not only is he able to name every Pokémon, but he can also describe its evolution, its powers or its type. He’s nerdy about Pokémon in an incredibly intelligent way, almost like he’s a walking, talking, slightly sullen human Pokédex. It’s pretty amazing because, according to Google, there are close to 1,000 different Pokémon.

So we sat together on the sofa, turned on the show and I just asked questions. I asked him how long Ash had been 10 years old, and he told me “forever.” I asked him if Farfetch’d was supposed to be a duck or a penguin and why he carried a massive leek, and my son told me he’s neither and that he didn’t know, but he also considered it an odd accessory. Then he told me Farfetch’d was one of his favorite Pokémon. (Who knew?) I asked him about Eevee, and he told me all about how that Pokémon can evolve eight times, and that’s a big deal — but it’s also really cute. I agreed. Eventually, he pulled out his Rubik’s Cube (his other big passion), and as we chatted about the show, he solved the cube, then handed it to me. I shuffled it and handed it back, and we went on like that for some time, watching, talking and passing the cube.

As we did, all the tension of the teen years and all that worry that I was losing the relationship I valued so deeply seemed to melt away. It was just us, father and son, watching Pokémon and talking freely about different characters. By about the third episode, I put my arm around him on the sofa, and he slowly leaned a little closer to me, and honestly, it felt like old times. It felt like before the whole teenager thing had become a thing. Almost like this show was an extension of our mornings playing Pokémon Go. Watching Pokémon together felt like an olive branch or a warm summer day melting the ice of adolescence, and as we watched the show, we were buds again.

Once it was bedtime, and we’d watched four episodes together, I searched Netflix and said, “There’s tons of Pokémon stuff on here.” Naturally, he already knew this. I knew that he did, and I knew that he’d watched most of them. But I suggested that we watch them together. That we make this a regular thing.

“I’m really digging this,” I said.

He smiled and said, “Yeah, that could be fun.” Then he suggested we watch the new Pokémon movie, The Arceus Chronicles, the next evening. “Sounds awesome,” I said and handed him back his cube. He went to bed, and as he walked away, I couldn’t help but feel more optimistic about our relationship than I had in a long time — almost as if Pokémon was going to get the two of us through the teen years.