i was pretty unimpressed with this episode. Aside from introducing Sasori's grandparents, I felt the entire thing could have been one episode. It seemed to take forever for Konoha to find out, react, and actually send out Team Kakashi... They did detail the whole thing, with the bird and the decoder and all that, but I would have been fine without all that...

The fight. You just knew Kank had no chance of winning, but I was happy with the little twist of Sasori being a former Sand nin, and the creator of the puppets. Kank is an idiot; disobeying orders, being overconfident, failing to analyze his opponent at all (he was so busy pissing himself over his attacks being countered that he failed to notice the poison or the form of attack Sasori goes for).

Baki was the best thing in this episode. He looks to have all the right stuff for leading the Sand in the interim.

The frog waking up Jiraiya was the worst part, totally useless and not even funny.

Other heavy handed crap: Temari's cup breaking (why does everyone insist on including these omen moments in anime?), tons of recap, Naruto's 2000th speech about him and some monstrous person "being the same" and how the power of friendship is important.

Finally, on a positive note: So each Akatsuki member is aiming to possess a Jinchuuriki, meaning there are nine of them. Deidara getting the "one tail" and his addressing Sasori as "Master" gave me the impression that he's the weakest out of the group. Makes it seem like the best Akatsuki will go after Naruto.

Also, they openly admit that they don't know the location of all the Jinchuuriki (also unclear if Sasori is going after Naruto or someone else, since Itachi came after him one time as well...). And it made me wonder, where the heck are the other seven? There's more Jinchuuriki than Hidden Villages, so some have more? Konoha and the Sand appear to only have one...
Looks like all that important stuff won't be revealed for who knows how long...