Thanks for the bug reports and sorry you're encountering so many. Don't know why, but the public version is more broken. We're working on fixing all of these plus everything else we received and will put out an update along with a dev post when it's out.
Is the option 'Inspect this person' in the gym after his starting event? As stated in the changelog, we're taking the characters out of the rng and just letting you talk to them. This should be his start off to meeting him.