Episode 72: Back to the Barn

“Welcome to Earth.”

Peridot’s one-on-one episodes with Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet reflect Jasper’s initial take on the three heroes. Our newest recruit sees a lost, defective pearl, a puny overcooked runt, and a shameless display. We have a pretty good sense of what Jasper was talking about in terms of the latter two: we know Amethyst emerged late and is small, and what Homeworld thinks of Garnet as a permanent fusion. But Pearl’s description remains a tantalizing mystery until Back to the Barn.

For one thing, calling Pearl “a” pearl is our first indication that Gems aren’t unique, and calling her “defective” hints at a power dynamic where pearls are pretty low on the totem pole. Then in Friend Ship we hear Pearl talk about herself in the same belittling way, explaining how inferior she feels with a defeated “I’m just a pearl.”

It’s not hard to guess that pearls are a subservient underclass, but it’s awful to watch Peridot confirm it in such a matter-of-fact way, blithely objectifying Pearl (including a gross invasion of her personal space) and dismissing any notion that the main character most defined by intelligence has anything to offer. Peridot’s objection to Pearl’s drilling idea before repeating it verbatim as her own idea is a classic gag, amplified by the terrific silent conversation between Amethyst and Pearl that ensues, but it speaks volumes about Peridot’s specific feeling of superiority over Pearl.

It might not make much sense for Peridot and Pearl to waste a day fighting each other when the world could blow up at any moment, but this reinforces that Peridot isn’t as logical as she tries to be. It unfortunately does make sense that she feels so strongly about enforcing Pearl’s caste: we see all the time in real life how easily the anger of oppressed people can be directed towards oppressing people they see as lower than them. Sure, peridots have it bad, but at least they aren’t pearls, right?

I love the way Pearl handles this situation, as we sort of expect her to be the bigger Gem because she’s the good guy and she’s in Mom Mode, but we know how sensitive she can get. I’m glad that she gets angry instead of sad when Peridot belittles her, because why on Earth would she take Peridot seriously? Still, we see how embarrassing it is to be talked about so condescendingly, and to have somebody (particularly an outsider) try to put her in a place she hasn’t been for thousands of years.

In a weaker episode, Pearl would be so above it all that Peridot would get madder and madder in the face of an iron wall of maturity. It’s a tried and true comedy dynamic, encapsulating Pearl’s obvious superiority to contrast with Peridot’s insistence that she’s inferior. It would probably be funny. But Back to the Barn hasn’t forgotten that Pearl is no saint, and while she does try to take the high road, nobody’s perfect: despite taking the Cluster seriously, she’s more than willing to spend an episode trying to one-up her new rival.

This of course takes the form of the Robolympics, which also veers away from the story we expect (and not just because we’re suddenly pitting two robots against each other for a whole episode). At first it looks pretty predictable, with Pearl and Peridot trading victories to show how they’re not so different, all ending in a tie. The ultra-specific categories are hilarious enough to make up for this stale structure: the ballet and art sections are great, but my favorite has to be the quick cut to a rock-paper-scissors game. If we end it at the tie, it’s an amusing but by-the-numbers episode about two enemies learning to see past their differences.

But then it keeps going, and two big things happen. First, when the final fight begins, it’s Pearl who throws the first blow, which is a nice continuation of her less-than-magnanimous attitude. Second, and more importantly, she loses. Like, really badly. She made an elegant machine, and Peridot made an angry brick that can smash Pearl’s around like the Hulk with a puny god. There are so many competition episodes that end with ties that it’s a little shocking to see an actual clear-cut victor, and it’s even better that it’s Peridot, our antagonist, who prevails. And she does so right after Pearl gives her a triumphant punch in the face and a speech about why she’s wrong.

Subverting the standard plotline of this sort of episode is great on its own, but it crucially creates a situation where Peridot thinks her violent victory actually matters in a show about communication and love. Steven’s speech may be about Pearl, and the camera might cut to Pearl as he makes it, but it’s not for Pearl. Pearl already knows that Steven loves her, and while it’s sweet and affirming to be defended, she wasn’t seriously doubting her own abilities in this episode. Peridot’s the one who needs to learn the lesson.

And she gets it from Garnet, who’s been quiet all episode while Amethyst hoots and hollers.

And Garnet bestows the lesson using the exact words she heard from Rose Quartz when her own life changed forever, which we’ll see in just two episodes.

And this lesson was given by the person who gave Pearl all the neuroses she’s working through in the first place.

Man, Steven Universe is a pretty good show.

Amethyst has really been on a roll since Cry for Help as far as bonding with Pearl is concerned, and here we see another huge step away from their first season feuding. The last time Amethyst watched Pearl in a duel, she was rooting for Holo Pearl. But here she’s all in on Pearl whooping Peridot, and is amped up even after her friend loses, and it’s just really sweet to watch. This is the dynamic that makes Last One Out of Beach City so much fun, and it’s a welcome development now that the Crystal Gems have more external foes to focus their negative energy on. And it’s awesome that this new direction doesn’t mean Amethyst has stopped messing with Pearl (see again their nonverbal conversation), because that’s neither realistic nor entertaining. (More on Amethyst’s streak of positivity when it finally hits a road bump next episode.)

It’s so great that we go back to the barn, and not just because this episode’s called Back to the Barn. We first came here in the wake of Lapis Lazuli, where (and I’ve kept my word about not calling it this until now) we enter the show’s Space Age, adding a cosmic plot to the more grounded misadventures of the early series. Space Race is another Pearl episode, so we get some neat mirroring and an in-universe reason for Pearl to suggest the barn in the first place. Our first barn outing saw the crew help build a rocket to the stars, but now they’re headed in the opposite direction. Pearl fails at both of her missions, but instead grows closer with Steven.

By the way, this is how you make Steven childish without being a jerk. Suggesting a competition might not be the best way to resolve Pearl and Peridot’s argument: one could even compare the Robolympics to his actions in Sadie’s Song, where he’s just as sincere and enthusiastic but secretly selfish (here he arguably prioritizes his desire for a robot contest over the impending apocalyptic event). The difference is his level of emotional intelligence. In Back to the Barn, he senses he tension between his two friends and tries to deescalate it, even if that method happens to be something he enjoys. While his exclamation that giant robots shouldn’t fight unfortunately gilds the lily (really, we get the joke about the unusual robot contests by now), he’s genuinely trying to mediate the conflict nonviolently. His primary motivation isn’t selfish and he easily reads when things aren’t going well.

(I promise I’m not going to trash Sadie’s Song in every episode from now on, but guh it’s just so easy.)

Peridot’s prejudice is hardly cured by the end of the episode. Her reluctant overtures of friendship to Pearl are still dripping with condescension, even as Pearl explains basic Earth concepts like how to hold a drill properly and what wheels are—I actually disliked the “Peridot doesn’t know what wheels are” element in my first viewing, as it seemed a little too ridiculous for a tech specialist from an advanced alien race to not recognize one of the most basic tools in existence, but the show’s actually done a good job showcasing how Gems rely on Creepy Leg technology for mobility. Regardless, Peridot’s growing pains aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and while we do fall into a bit of a structural rut in her Crystal Gem episodes (Step 1: Peridot’s a jerk, Step 2: Peridot realizes she’s wrong, Step 3: Peridot apologizes), the overall quality of these episodes alleviates the sameness.

Discrimination against pearls, which is a magical blend of racism and classism, isn’t going anywhere. We’ll soon see it again in Message Received, where we learn that even Steven is capable of innocently ignorant statements about pearls. But as with Garnet’s issues ~~homophobia~~ fusionphobia and Amethyst’s upcoming arc about ableism, it’s refreshing to see these struggles depicted as important, but not character-defining. Being different from a perceived norm comes with difficulties, but we need the sort of nuance Steven Universe provides to associate these serious issues with characters that actually feel real, or else all we’re getting is suffering porn. Now if only we had bigots as willing to change as Peridot, Earth would be all set!

Future Vision!

Peribot will return soon in Message Received.
On top of “Welcome to Earth,” two more phrases here are echoed in future episodes. Peridot’s snide “Who do you belong to?” and Pearl’s insulted “Nobody!” get a merrier light when Bismuth subs in for Peridot, and Pearl gets to throw “That will be all” back at another demeaning Gem in, er, That Will Be All. Weird name for an episode that isn’t about Pearl, to be honest.
The fact that Pearl did belong to somebody, and not just anybody, makes any episode that talks about the role of a pearl fascinating to rewatch after A Single Pale Rose.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Back to the Barn does excellent work tempering a heavy message about prejudice with a silly episode about robots without losing any of the oomph. This is the arc that keeps on giving.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
When It Rains
Catch and Release
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Warp Tour
The Test
Future Vision
On the Run
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel
Back to the Barn

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend
Historical Friction
Friend Ship
Nightmare Hospital

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 71: When It Rains

“Thank you.”

I’ve said before that my favorite moment of Steven Universe is the end of Winter Forecast, when Steven and Connie silently watch the snow fall. Well, it turns out Lamar Abrams has a knack for pulling my heartstrings through precipitation, because Peridot walking into the rain might be my second favorite.

Where the snow scene is wonderfully silent, Aivi and Surasshu get a chance to work their magic in the rain scene. Their string-backed score begins with quiet chippy droplets as we zoom in on Peridot’s hand which intensify as she tentatively tests the water (the animation here is gorgeous), and builds to a cathartic climax as she finally takes her first steps into a new world, with a wonderfully ambiguous streak of water running down her cheek.

(Oh, also, uh, hey there Pearl.)

As Peridot mulls over what to do next, we get a new melody that eases into a mellow remix of her tense main theme, showing an even greater shift in her personality than her bubbly but similarly anxious cute theme. The transition to the remix comes right before she stops hemming and hawing (more fantastic animation) and thanks Steven.

Peridot’s expression of gratitude isn’t as memorable as “Wow, thanks” will be, but think back to Lapis Lazuli. The first thing she says when she’s released in Mirror Gem is “Thank you.” The first thing she says when Steven heals her in Ocean Gem is “Thank you.” Now Peridot, who has spent half the show’s runtime at this point as an antagonist, is saying “Thank you.” And in Earthlings, thirty episodes in the future, after sharing what she loves about Earth to Jasper in the same way Steven does for her now, the arc that begins right here concludes with a triumphant “You’re welcome!”

It’s one thing for Peridot to have joined Steven through necessity, but When It Rains is the moment she actually befriends him. Earth confuses her, and it’s natural for confusion to lead to fear, so it makes sense that hearing her first thunderstorm would lead to her freaking out about the end of the world, especially given the actual impending world-ender beneath them. Steven first explains through facts what rain is, but when that’s not working, he addresses what she actually wants: a sense of safety. He doesn’t just tell her everything’s going to be fine after appealing to her well-established affinity of information and data, he demonstrates it by playing outside. And I’d imagine that’s the first time anyone has helped her this way.

Peridot values logic, but we already know she’s an emotional being from how frazzled she gets. Soon we’ll see that her idol, Yellow Diamond, is similarly driven by emotion despite her cold facade. Steven Universe’s messages about the power of kindness are given a new light when we introduce a character who has clearly never experienced it. Steven has plenty of information about Earth, but presents it with emotion and enthusiasm and empathy that Peridot has never gotten from a screen.

(I do think there’s also a message in there about not letting solo screen time get in the way of your relationships, but it’s subtle and the message I think the crew is going for is far more broad than that. That said, maybe talk to someone in person after reading this blog on the internet?)

If there’s one area where this message falls short, and it’s really minor, it’s when Steven is explaining where he comes from. Peridot is fascinated by his origins, but when he refers to “The Ballad of Rose and Greg,” Peridot immediately cuts him off with an “I don’t care.” I know it’s a joke, but really? Peridot, who soaks up information like a sponge and literally just asked “How is that possible?” doesn’t care? This seems like something she’d care about!

Still, I love the ways Steven helps Peridot out while they explore Kindergarten. When I first watched When It Rains, her outsized reaction to him tugging away a panel that she couldn’t move made me think she was playing him, but nope, she’s just really impressed! These physical acts of assistance aren’t explicitly referenced when they get to talking about the episode’s moral of everyone needing help sometimes, which makes them work that much more smoothly.

Steven and Peridot’s encounter with the Cluster Gems continues the conversation they have about Steven and Greg not knowing everything by showcasing just how passive Steven’s powerset is. While he does eventually figure out how to weaponize his shield and bubble, it’s a great reminder of how different our hero is from other fantasy protagonists. He’s not useless at all, but he’s necessarily part of a team, and can’t do much but stall without help.

By the way, I am positive Garnet manipulated this situation into occurring. She adjusts her glasses in a familiar way when she tells Steven to keep an eye on Peridot, and saves the two of them just before things get really bad. Moreover, she knows Steven well enough at this point that she wouldn’t even need future vision to predict he’d turn Peridot, especially because the remaining Crystal Gems had exhausted all other avenues and Peridot’s clearly okay sharing her bunker with Steven when he asks nicely.

This interpretation doesn’t cast too bad a light on Garnet, though; I like how it continues show’s theme of leaders making choices that might not be the most ethical. It obviously works out in the end, but reading Garnet’s actions as manipulative gives a cool, subtle insight into how adults occasionally do what they think is best for kids through deception.

Regardless, this episode soars for being so sweet. Garnet’s vital message to Steven before the Gems warp out is that she loves him (even at my most cynical I’d never call this part manipulation), and his ensuing aw shucks dismissal is soon accompanied in the pantheon of Great Steven Reactions by the starry smile above after he convinces Peridot to hold hands for their trip. Peridot’s earnestness can be hilarious (look how badass she thinks she is about reading reports), but she just so sincerely believes that Steven has all the answers and she’s finally on the right track that it breaks your heart a little. I often use the Steven Universe wiki’s fan-maintained transcripts to help me get quotes exactly right, and was surprised to see Peridot’s smile when she says “It’s you, Steven” transcribed as malevolent. I suppose it might look that way on its own, but between the context of the scene and Shelby Rabara’s read, I’ve always seen it as a pure expression of determination. Steven has given Peridot something she hasn’t had since she crashed on Earth: hope.

Oh yeah, by the way, underneath all that lame character-building stuff we finally learn what the Cluster, which has been teased since all the way back in Jailbreak, actually is: the gigantic, cataclysmic result of the experiments that created the mutant Cluster Gems (which, I should note, are called Gem Mutants primarily in-universe so as not to ruin the surprise). It’s brilliant to tie in these mutants, easily the most consistently unnerving monsters on this show, with the cosmic horror of a beast incubating in the Earth that will grow into a planet-busting atrocity. Just saying “it’s a big big space monster” is scary as a concept, but associating it with things we’re already disturbed by gives the Cluster some immediate emotional oomph. Kind of like how knowing that rain isn’t dangerous doesn’t get as strong a reaction as seeing someone playing in it.

We’ve seen time and again from Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl how stubborn Gems can be, and Peridot is no different. One might argue that she only changes her mind on letting Steven and his friends help out of pure rationality: they’re the only resources she has left, and if the choice is siding with them or getting blown up, the only logical choice is the former. But that’s not what When It Rains is about. It’s about how a little kindness goes a long way, especially if it’s done without the pursuit of a reward.

This, more than Catch and Release, is Steven’s Peridot Episode, soon to be joined by Pearl’s in Back to the Barn, Amethyst’s in Too Far, and Garnet’s in Log Date 7 15 2. The thing about these episodes is that they touch on the big Season 2/3 character arcs for Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl (coping with toxic views on fusion, self-image problems, and self-worth issues, respectively—and yes, poor self-image and low self-worth are slightly different in this context), but they aren’t really about Garnet, Amethyst, or Pearl. They’re about how Peridot relates to these struggles and grows as a person. She certainly does in all three, but she never grows more than in When It Rains. Peridot might be mean-spirited and aggressive, and she’s certainly not done making mistakes, but she never takes advantage of genuine kindness. She immediately accepts it and responds with gratitude, even if it’s from people she hates, and that’s what makes her a hero.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I didn’t plan to have Winter Forecast and Catch and Release right next to each other but it’s sort of perfect that I can slip When It Rains right between them. Important precipitation meets Peridot!

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
When It Rains
Catch and Release
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Warp Tour
The Test
Future Vision
On the Run
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend
Historical Friction
Friend Ship
Nightmare Hospital

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 70: Catch and Release

There have been plenty of twists and turns in Steven Universe, and a handful of Big Episodes that leave lasting impacts on the rest of the series. Lion 3 and Warp Tour and Alone Together and Rose’s Scabbard and Jailbreak and Bismuth and Lars’s Head and A Single Pale Rose give us new perspectives on characters and build relationships in neat ways, but all of them do just that: they build on what exists. They’re crucial for the growth of the plot and the characters alike, but none of them make the show fundamentally different. Garnet is still Garnet after we learn that she’s a fusion. Steven and Connie are still friends after they become Stevonnie for the first time. Even the huge reveal that Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond is based heavily in the familiar: we already knew that her problems with secrecy and control have shaped the universe she left behind. We learn more, and the characters grow more, but the core premise of the show is left intact.

The initial core premise of the show is this: Steven, the growing son of a human and a Gem, is raised by the three remaining Crystal Gems to fulfill the legacy of a mother he never knew. I would argue that there are only three episodes that are true paradigm shifts, reconfiguring not just the plot or the characters but this foundation of the series forever, even if their effects aren’t immediately felt.

The first is Bubble Buddies. Before it, Steven is a kid defined by his relationships with the adults in his life, and after it, he has a best friend his age that he’s going to spend the rest of the series with. It may be an early episode, but we still have a decent impression of Steven by then, and Connie changes his status being limited to son or younger brother. Through a human peer, he has an avenue for growing as a person beyond just becoming a full-fledged Crystal Gem. This would be an entirely different show if Steven was still the only main kid.

The second is Mirror Gem. Before it, Steven is a kid learning how to be a Crystal Gem for general do-goodery, and after it, he’s wrapped up in an actual conflict with actual stakes. There are more Gems beyond his friends and mother, and not all Gems are on the same side, and their “home” is not Beach City. While there are hints of the Gems’ past before this episode, Lapis Lazuli reveals that the larger plot of the series is far from ancient history. This would be an entirely different show if Steven’s adventures were still episodic without any major opposing external forces.

The third is Catch and Release.

“That’s new.”

Before it, Steven and the Crystal Gems are a well-defined quartet of characters (quintet if you count Ruby and Sapphire separately, but the whole point of Garnet is that you shouldn’t), and after it, they’re a fluid family capable of adopting newcomers into their roster. Steven’s power of empathy can turn foes to permanent friends, and his close-knit team isn’t alone in their new rebellion against Homeworld. Steven’s role within the group is changed forever. This would be an entirely different show if Steven was still the newest member of the Crystal Gems.

This is our Toph moment more than our Zuko moment, although Peridot shares his reformed antagonism and one-on-one “field trip episodes” (if not his character development up to that point). Our cast is well-established and in a great groove, so it’s a huge risk to tinker with that formula at this point in the show. For every Chris Traeger and Ben Wyatt there are a dozen Scrappy Doos. The lineup of the Crystal Gems could have easily remained fixed for the duration of the series, considering the well-defined roles each member plays and the emphasis on Steven’s position in relation to his elders.

And it’s not like the other Gems we’ve met at this point were dying to join up. Lapis is friendly with Steven, but just about the first thing she does when released is attack the Crystal Gems. Plus she’s out of commission, trapped in a fusion with a Gem that’s even less likely to enlist. And Peridot has never been portrayed as anything less than an antagonist, even when she shifts from menacing to irritating.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, and while we’ve gotten some hints that there’s something behind Peridot’s distress about being stuck on Earth, it’s clear when she invades Steven’s room to kidnap him that she’s not freaking out for no reason. Breaking into our hero’s home is a step above anything any foe has done at this point, and even though we’re not given much time to think about it, it’s honestly pretty scary. I’m glad Steven seems cool with being kidnapped, and they do give the situation some of the gravity it deserves by having Amethyst check up on him about it in her own teasing way, but I sort of wish we had a little more time to unpack the way his home has been breached.

In their final appearance, Peridot’s floaty fingers do amazing work conveying her frazzled state, stretching so far out that her hands stop looking like hands. And her hair, which has been so pristine that I initially took it for a solid construct, is finally shown disheveled as she claws at her face and is zapped by her own electricity; expect more spikiness as she grows more attached to Earth. Obviously she’s missing her foot as well, although this actually allows her to hang onto it when the rest of her enhancers are discarded, and the image of her clinging to the last piece of her former life shows that this isn’t going to be an easy transition.

The growing humanity of Peridot correlating with the loss of her more robotic elements might not be subtle, but boy does it work. We’ll quickly see just how much influence size has in Homeworld’s Invader Zimmish height-related hierarchy, first with Amethyst’s runtiness and then with Yellow Diamond’s hugeness, but for now Peridot’s shrinking act is most important for evening her out with Steven. And without her mechanical prostheses, her character-defining robohands are just regular hands, and it looks like she’s wearing socks. There’s no going back to intimidating from socks.

In retrospect, it makes sense that it’s Peridot, not Lapis, who first joins up. She’s a much starker contrast to our heroes, which not only allows us to gain more insight into modern-day Homeworld, not only gives us a new foil to develop our heroes, but presents the opportunity for some spectacular character development of her own. Lapis’s Daria phase is excellent, but our first recruit has to be far more dynamic and mean, pushing the show into expanding its messages about love and communication. Just how far do we go in accepting others? Can we do it when they’re sputtering messes that hate us and are clearly loyal to our enemies?

Steven Universe says yes, because Steven Universe says yes. He tried befriending the Mother Centipeetle, but this was doomed by her corruption and the Gems’ prejudice. He successfully talked Lapis down from stealing the ocean, but they already began as friends, and she did the opposite of join him afterwards. We know he wants to see good in Peridot—back in The Return, even when Beach City is being invaded, he holds out hope that she’ll change her tune upon seeing how nice everyone is—and now he finally gets to see that dream come true.

Obviously this doesn’t happen all at once. Peridot’s allegiance is far from set by the end of Catch and Release, and won’t be until we meet Yellow Diamond. But this is still a watershed episode for showing us that her conversion is even possible, and giving us several minutes of her and Steven more or less getting along. As with the introductions of Connie and Lapis, we won’t see just how important this episode is until later, but it does have an immediate sense of divergence from the norm. This is the first episode I rewatched immediately after it was finished. I just couldn’t believe we were actually going in this direction.

It’s so great to see the OG Crystal Gems working together so smoothly after Friend Ship, but it’s even greater that they don’t feel the need to remark upon it. The story of their growth is shown in their awesome coordination, and how they’ve adapted to Peridot’s tricks; it was honestly inevitable that they’d defeat her after she ran out of gimmicks, as her only advantages over their numbers and experience is superior technology and surprise.

There’s a nice mirroring of Warp Tour to ring in this new era of Peridot, even if that means the Gems don’t listen to Steven again. At least in this case it’s not so much about not believing him as it is knowing him: he’s a trusting kid, and they’re not wrong to doubt Peridot’s intentions after she just, y’know, kidnapped him. This element might’ve gotten frustrating if we spent more time butting heads, but Steven moves the plot along quickly with knowledge he has from all the way back in Together Breakfast: a pole through Rose’s room can bring him right to the basement.

It also helps that the Gems pretty much immediately realize that Steven’s right, even if Peridot’s still an opponent. From the other side of the bathroom door, all three get a great line read that summarizes their initial reactions to their new intruder: Amethyst’s “Homegirl knows we’re gonna beat her into a green pancake” is casual but threatening, Garnet’s attempts at diplomacy shift to a shrugging “Okay, let’s kick her butt” as soon as fusion is insulted, and Pearl’s joking solution to put her on a leash fades into a wonderful hum of contemplation. It’s nice that Steven’s on board with Peridot, but it wouldn’t make sense for our favorite stubborn rocks to share his optimism, and this conflict will make for some great episodes in the near future.

(Glad to see Regular Steven again, by the way. Don’t worry, I’m still mad at what Sadie’s Song did to him.)

The Cluster Arc is one of the high marks of Steven Universe, concluding our second season with a bang and changing the status quo forever. Peridot very quickly became one of my favorite characters on the show, and a big part of that is thanks to Jesse Zuke (credited as Lauren) and Hilary Florido, the boarders behind this episode as well as Too Far and Log Date 7 15 2 and Barn Mates and Too Short to Ride and Beta. They’re not the only major Peridot pair (check out Raven M. Molisee and Paul Villeco showing off with Message Received, Gem Drill, Earthlings, and Kindergarten Kid), but so many of her huge character developments are Zuke and Florido’s. Her move into the bathroom. Her bonding with Amethyst and Garnet and Lapis. Her metal powers. Her meepmorps.

Zuke and Florido understand better than anyone that Peridot is a straight-up raccoon, brimming with mischievous curiosity but scampering and hissing and hoarding and clawing at her surroundings whenever she’s more than 0% uncomfortable. What’s more, unless her summary is a red herring, Zuke’s also in charge of her amazing if infrequently updated Twitter account. (Unless the fandom drove them off that platform too, because fandoms are the worst.) Peridot has never been one-dimensional—from the beginning we’ve seen her as a worker bee with no patience for flaws who scatters at any sign of trouble—but she’s imbued with such natural depth as we get to know her better.

I obviously have to talk about Shelby Rabara now, who I really can’t praise enough. Peridot’s vocal evolution from villain to reluctant ally to close friend is terrific, and even this early in her development Rabara gives her great little moments of vulnerability. Her muffled “Why would you make such a miscalculation?” is adorably earnest, and her fearful but curious questions about the danger levels of common bathroom items brings real pathos to what could’ve been a ridiculous scene. She can make a word as innocent as “pebble” sound like a swear. I’m so happy we finally get more of this.

This is only the beginning of the Cluster Arc (oh yeah, we also get a hint about the actual plot in this episode), and Peridot’s only going to get better as she, uh, gets better. But Catch and Release is a terrific starting point, and I’m so happy that the inherent promise of the Peridemption pays off so well. There’s a world where Steven Universe doesn’t have a growing number of allies, and it’s a worse world.

Future Vision

Peridot actually does end up on a leash pretty soon.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

Don’t worry High School Peri, S(tev)enpai will notice you soon enough.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

This arc is full of ringers, and Catch and Release is no exception. Even beyond what it eventually represents, the episode stands tall on its own for the banter, the slapstick, and the wonder that is Cute Peridot’s Theme.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Catch and Release
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Warp Tour
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend
Historical Friction
Friend Ship
Nightmare Hospital

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 69: Sadie’s Song

“You ruined my lipstick!”

Sandwiched between the Week of Sardonyx and the Cluster Arc is the Mombo Combo, two episodes storyboarded by Raven Molisee and Paul Villeco about Steven and a friend dealing with that friend’s mother issues. This is the bad one.

I really wish it wasn’t. I like Sadie, and this is her first episode that isn’t also about Lars. Kate Micucci, aka half of Garfunkel and Oates, finally gets to show off her singing voice. Speaking of, we get a song from Olivia Olson, whose soulful pipes helped put Rebecca Sugar’s early cartoon songs on the map back in her Adventure Time days. The plot of the episode revolves around Beach-a-Palooza, and my favorite episode is Steven and the Stevens. And one of the acts is Nanefua as a dummy that tells pizza puns. How did this possibly fail?

Well. Remember Annoying Steven? That kid from the very beginning of the first season of the show? Y’know, the one who had no idea how to read a room and massive gaps in empathy? Well.

Uh.

It turns out.

It turns out he wasn’t fully dead, folks.

Character development be damned, Annoying Steven is back, and

no episode could have recovered from this.

He takes what might have been a great episode and bludgeons it like a piñata, but he’s too stupid to realize there’s no candy inside. I. Hate. This. Kid.

And the worst part is, even beyond the general “it’s been over fifty episodes since Serious Steven” of it all, it doesn’t make any sense within the logic of the episode that he acts this way

Not only do we know he loves the stage, the episode reminds us that he does by mentioning that he’s performed at Beach-a-Palooza before, then reinforces it through Nanefua’s confirmation that a surprise appearance screams Steven. So why does he put all his effort into pushing Sadie into performing a solo when he clearly wants to perform? If his motive is that he thinks she’d like it, why wouldn’t he suggest a duet? The guy clearly enjoys singing at Beach-a-Palooza and is used to teamwork. He just put on a show with Jamie. Yet he never even broaches the possibility.

He also just spent an episode with Connie’s overbearing mother, so he really oughtta be able to recognize Sadie’s discomfort. This isn’t at all a knock on Barb Miller’s character, even if she’s the antagonist here. We’ve only met her once before in Love Letters, where Kate Flannery gives her a gruff but wholesomely funny debut. We also know her indirectly as a cornerstone of Lion 3: her sandwiches prompt Steven to think about his own mom, and the heartwarming ending involves Sadie calling her. It’s terrific that Barb’s outgoing nature and devotion to her daughter, which are really all we know about her once we put together that she’s Sadie’s mom, are both felt in the reveal that she’s a Type A cheerleader mom.

It makes so much sense that Sadie grew up in a house with this person. She’s quiet because her mom is loud enough for the both of them. She’s easily pushed into doing things because she knows it’s easier to just go with it. I am all about this character development. But why isn’t Steven on Sadie’s side? Wouldn’t he encourage her to stand up to her mom? Wouldn’t he prompt a change through friendship rather than by doubling down on Barb’s behavior?

Steven is not the main character of this story, but unlike in Nightmare Hospital or the Week of Sardonyx, he sure does think he is. And what’s worse, so does the episode. Nowhere is this more obvious than the conclusion, and to emphasize how profoundly awful it is I’m gonna go ahead and spoil post-Disney Renaissance film Brother Bear, which is somehow not the only mediocre Disney movie involving a human turning into a bear if we’re counting Pixar post-acquisition. Trust me, you’re not missing much.

Anyway, Brother Bear involves a Big Dark Secret where our hero is hiding from his cub friend that, as a man, he killed said cub’s mother. We know that eventually the truth will be revealed, and it’s gonna be this big emotional scene, but son of a gun, Phil Collins is doing the soundtrack, and why would you have a well-written difficult conversation between our two main characters when you could have this?

Sadie’s Song doesn’t quite go ~~full Phil Collins~~ Phull Collins, but there’s nothing like having your episode’s resolution drowned out by a song. Sadie and Barb deserve more than literally three seconds (yes, I counted, it was easy because it was literally three seconds) of silent talking while Steven has his moment in the sun. But that’s all we get.

Part of what makes this episode feel so underdeveloped is that song. Like, not the song itself, which mind you is only okay, but the fact that we hear it three times (which for the record is over a quarter of the episode’s runtime) and two of those times, nothing of substance is happening. In the first, yeah, Sadie’s singing, but it’s a pretty slow burn for the single beat of “Steven realizes Sadie likes to sing alone.” The second is actually the only important instance, because it’s played over a quick montage that’s necessary to include because there’s so little time to actually develop the conflict without a montage. Which, sure, but is this really how we’re using Olivia Olson on this series?

Anyway. The second unsubstantial version of the song is Steven’s. I’ll admit that there’s an attempt at depth here. The fact that it’s a boy dressed in feminine clothes is great and all, but this is the only time Steven Universe’s progressive take on gender roles feel super forced, and more importantly, I don’t want him be triumphant here. He’s a jerk who doesn’t care about his friend until she shouts at him that she’s hurt. Is that really the version of Steven we want to have this moment?

This iteration of the song ends with Sadie singing alone with Steven, which would be great if she didn’t just get shafted by the very same song. Like, I get that it’s juxtaposition between Steven’s flashiness and her down-to-earth singing, but what does that tell us? That’s she’s happy singing alone? We already knew that. That Steven now accepts this? He should have done so from the start.

We obviously need to hear this song a few times in an episode about singing this song, but without a stronger story beneath it, the repetition just feels like padding. The message is muddied, the main character is treated like a side character, and Steven is the worst. This one’s just painful to sit through.

The best part about this episode is that the Cluster Arc is immediately after it so you don’t have to feel bad just skipping right over it. I know I do. Rest in torment, Annoying Steven.

Future Vision!

The more we get into the Sadie Killer arc, the more upset I get about how bad this episode is: Sadie Killer and the Suspects might be the best thing the show has ever done with its human brigade, and it’s so lame that this is where it starts. Not only does this episode introduce Sadie as a singer, but it shows her nervousness specifically around the Cool Kids, which turns around in a really sweet way when they become the Suspects soon after a jam session in The Good Lars. Most importantly, Sadie’s Song’s companion episode The Big Show plays the Sadie/Barb dynamic so beautifully, showing how much both have grown since their big talk here. It’s a terrific episode, but it probably would’ve been more terrific if we maybe, y’know, got to see more than a glimpse of the big talk?

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

So apparently we’re meant to believe this episode takes place a year after Steven and the Stevens as opposed to immediately after Frybo, when Steven was still an oblivious kid. What a weird mistake to make.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

One of the many disappointing elements of Island Adventure’s casual depiction of domestic abuse is that it prevents Sadie’s Song from being my least favorite episode of Steven Universe.

Poor Sadie. I promise I like this character. At least we have Sadie Killer to look forward to.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend
Historical Friction
Friend Ship
Nightmare Hospital

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 68: Nightmare Hospital

“It scares me that you can’t talk to me.“

The great thing about Nightmare Hospital is that if you’re like me and you hated Fusion Cuisine then it works as a strong second draft. We have the same beat of Connie lying to her parents about magic stuff, but she doesn’t force Steven to play along in a harmful way. Steven is still hurt by Maheswaran strictness, this time by getting Rose’s sword confiscated, but it was his idea to give Connie the sword and her gracious attempts to talk him out of it highlight how well she knows her parents. Even though the stakes are high and we get a sense of how stressed out Connie is, her friendship with Steven is never in doubt. See? They can make a good episode about how Connie reacts to parental pressure!

Now, this doesn’t mean the episode’s even close to perfect. While I give it as much of a pass as I can for stretching the bounds of the show’s rules, the hospital itself is just unrealistic enough to distract me. I get that this is a horror episode and we want heightened tension, but how does this hospital even work?

We’re told in Chateau Maheswaran that it’s 7:05 in the evening, and there’s no way the kids spend more than thirty minutes warping to the hospital. Even if it’s dark out and the lights go dim after dinner, there’s no way it’s so late that a functioning hospital would be this dead. And even if it was in full night shift mode, why aren’t there any nurses in a room with a convulsing patient? How does nobody notice that two children and a doctor are being attacked by screaming monsters? How did those monsters, who have too many limbs and not enough faces, get confused for humans by anybody, let alone medical professionals?

In a bubble, I can take Dr. Maheswaran being so stubbornly normal that she can’t see that the Cluster Gems are inhuman. She accepted Alexandrite without question, and her inability to acknowledge magic here makes for a nice contrast to Connie’s curiosity about the subject. But when you add that to every other element of the hospital, Dr, Maheswaran’s attitude comes across as just one more ridiculous thing that makes no sense.

Steven Universe is obviously in a different world than ours, but Nightmare Hospital feels like a different world than Steven Universe. And considering we’ve seen so many great horror episodes without breaking the feel of the show’s setting, it really sticks out.

I can set this core problem aside when I watch the episode as a character piece, even though, yeah, Dr. Maheswaran straight-up saying “Mother knows best!” is pushing it. But as a horror episode, despite the Cluster Gems’ creepy movement and horrifying sound design, I’m too busy wondering why nothing makes sense to be scared.

Okay, maybe one exception. It’s not actually the scene where the monster finally jumps out at Connie, despite that being the image you’re looking at. It’s the buildup. The way we know something’s wrong about Dr. Maheswaran’s patient immediately, how it doesn’t have a heartbeat, how the covers move in a way that’s impossible for a human body to push, how it growls when Steven and Connie sneak in to get the sword. The foreboding works because we know that the other shoe is going to drop and have a good idea about what the shoe looks like, we just don’t know when it’s gonna happen. But when it does, all the magic disappears, and we’re left with two kids and a mom fighting two monsters in a hospital without any staffers or cameras or logic.

So, as much as I hate moving away from the horror elements of a horror episode that has the word “Nightmare” in the title, I think time’s better spent talking about what actually works.

Dr. Maheswaran is inherently fascinating for being the first mother we see on the show (the first non-Gunga mother anyway), and she’s such a stark contrast to Greg and the Gems and really every other parent we see that it’s always worth spending time with her. Stick-in-the-mud mothers are done to death in every medium, but Steven Universe features such a diverse array of moms that playing the old trope straight actually makes her stand out. This is a show where moms are people too, and like it or not, some moms are act like this.

It helps that she’s actually low-key hilarious. Her strictness feels so ludicrous and yet so genuine for anyone who’s known anyone with that kind of parent, and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn has a knack for breathing realism into particularly mom-ish lines. I love that the term she uses for a member of a gang is just “gang member.” I love that she can say “internets” without sounding like she’s spouting a meme. And I love how similar she actually is to her daughter: compare her aside about doctor-patient confidentiality with Connie explaining pretty much anything to Steven. Connie, bless her, has always been sort of a square when it comes to specifics, and it’s clear where she gets that from.

The cool thing about this episode, which would be cooler if the horror elements worked better for me, is that Dr. Maheswaran is facing an entirely different fear than the kids. We know that Connie can handle herself, but her mother pointedly does not, and it’s scary when your kid’s lugging around a sword the size of a cello and you have no idea why. Especially when your first interaction with the friend she’s hanging out with was a phone call where ~~Garnet~~ Mom Universe said they were playing swords. (Sorry, playing with swords. Garnet really does her best to try and save Fusion Cuisine.)

It’s not ridiculous for Dr. Maheswaran to keep Connie away from the sword even when monsters are attacking, because what reason does she have to think her daughter won’t get herself killed with it? Connie’s been lying about her training for quite some time, and when we see just how scheduled her life is it becomes clear that this lie is more involved than we might’ve thought. The mutual lack of communication comes to a head when Connie finally points out that her glasses don’t have lenses: not only should Dr. Maheswaran have noticed by now, but Connie should have felt able to tell her about her eyes.

All of this might make Dr. Maheswaran look like a terrible mother, but despite her draconian edge it’s clear that she loves her daughter. She shows little fear as far as the monsters are concerned, as for most of the episode she just thinks they’re patients, but she’s worried as all hell about her kid’s safety at every turn. And we learn that this desire for safety is also the root of her controlling nature: in their final conversation, she makes the valid point that she needs to know when Connie’s in over her head so she can jump in. Yes, Connie is a very capable kid, but she’s still twelve.

Hindsight also redeems Dr. Maheswaran quite a bit, as we see Connie go on further adventures with her parents’ blessing. Would I like to see the conversation between the Maheswarans and Pearl about Connie’s training regimen? Of course, give me a full episode of just that, please. But it’s awesome to see Connie start to really thrive on this show after her parents lighten up a little, even if it’s all in subtext.

Speaking of the glasses scene, a minor but wonderful element of Nightmare Hospital is getting a solid update of how long the show has been going on in-universe. In a medium where it’s totally fine for Bart Simpson to be in fourth grade for thirty Halloweens, it’s such a relief to hear Connie confirm that An Indirect Kiss happened nearly a year ago. And we’ll get another taste of it in the next episode, which features another Beach-a-Palooza ostensibly about a year after Steven and the Stevens.

I love the way Steven Universe is specific about certain things that shows are often vague about. Like how in Ocean Gem, Greg doesn’t just get hurt, he breaks his leg. And he didn’t just meet the Gems when he was a young adult, but when he was 22. Or how Steven’s game systems aren’t generic consoles but perfect replicas of a Nintendo 64 and GameCube. These extra details make the world feel real, which, again, makes the weirdness of the hospital more of a bummer.

Connie and Steven are still a blast to watch together, and it’s terrific to see their training pay off in the final monster fight. The choreography is simple in a way that feels true to what they actually might have practiced, rather than a fancy action show maneuver. Jumping on Steven’s shield for a height boost? I buy that they’ve practiced this. Their fights get better and better as the show goes on, and as great as it is to see Stevonnie in combat, I actually generally prefer the two of them separated for the more visualized cooperation.

Outside of battle, the “-eth” scene is a wonderful encapsulation of their friendship: Steven’s goofy, and even though Connie points out that his grammar is incorrect, she’s down to be goofy too. And it’s great to see Steven get upset about his mom’s sword being taken without blaming Connie for it at all. We already have a solid conflict going on between Connie and her mother, so pragmatically it makes sense for the crew to not overcomplicate things by just making Connie and Steven one unit, but it’s still a testament to their solid bond.

Steven’s relationship with his own mother takes a bit of a back seat this season, thanks to the Week of Sardonyx and the Cluster Arc, but episodes like this are a nice way to show how he’s feeling about her without bashing us over the head with it. We could’ve had an episode where Connie complains about her mother and Steven gets self-conscious about it, but instead, all we get from him is his worry about the sword and a small hug. It’s not manipulative or tearjerking or much of a surprise, but it’s just plain sweet, and with Sadie’s Song coming up with plans to demolish Steven’s usual characterization, it’s nice to have one last reminder that he’s capable of being sweet.

Future Vision!

I am all in on Dr. Maheswaran, a control freak whose icy exterior hides the emotional motives for her actions, getting conflated with Yellow Diamond in Jungle Moon. Her phone call after confiscating the sword gets a nice extra bit of oomph after hearing Stevonnie’s bitterness about being ignored.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

This is a breath of fresh air compared to Fusion Cuisine, and works especially great alongside Jungle Moon, but I can’t really get over how disappointed I am with the horror, considering how great the Cluster Gems are and how little we see of them. This could’ve been in my top fifteen with a little tweaking.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend
Historical Friction
Friend Ship
Nightmare Hospital

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 67: Friend Ship

“Please understand.”

And here’s the part where we see how Pearl’s doing. She’s doing bad. It’s great.

This isn’t to say that I enjoy watching Pearl suffer, especially when she’s this annoying. Seriously, she’s a nightmare; seeing her figuratively and literally step over people in a scramble to redeem herself would be vintage cringe comedy if Friend Ship was trying to be funny about it. Instead it’s a painful cocktail of awkward and pathetic that’s everything Pearl should’ve been in Historical Friction.

But it’s great that she’s this much of a mess because she should be this much of a mess. Not just morally—although yes, when you act as Pearl does in Cry for Help you ought to feel at least this bad about it—but in terms of what’s true to her character. This behavior is the natural evolution of Pearl’s manic devotion to problem-solving, amplified by being stuck in an unfixable situation. And because she’s gotten off the hook for terrible behavior before, she has no idea what to do when she’s finally called out for her actions.

The solution, her mind, is to shift to a problem she can fix: finding Peridot. I appreciate that her exact methodology, which has something to do with the escape pod Steven found in Joy Ride, is left unsaid, because it doesn’t really matter how she does it. What matters is that she’s clearly spent a lot of time and energy on something that has nothing to do with her betrayal of Garnet. She wants to blame all her problems on some single enemy she can fight, and if that sounds familiar, then, well:

It’s not news by now that Gems aren’t so different from us normals, despite their immense age and alien magic. But even after a full season of watching them yell and grieve and hug and make mistake after mistake, the Week of Sardonyx sees them at their most human, because our three stubborn rocks are forced to change. Pearl, whose resilience has survived several cracks, looks ready to burst. Garnet, who’s been the solid foundation the team has always relied on, sees no path forward. And this episode sees both come out on the other side.

But a crisis doesn’t always break people down before they can get back up, which we see in the character that I’d argue changes the most over the course of the week. Amethyst, who craves approval from her elder Gems and is wracked with doubt, who’s been the lowest ranking Gem for the vast majority of her life and has proven to be a loving but insecure role model for Steven, is suddenly thrust into the role of emotional leader and rises to the occasion.

Amethyst is the first to realize what’s wrong. She puts aside her rivalry with Pearl to talk things out with her. She lets herself be vulnerable when she needs support from Vidalia. She prompts Garnet and Pearl to communicate instead of just waiting for the storm to pass.

She takes the time to encourage Steven for summoning three shields in one day . And more than anything else, she shows a remarkable new capacity for patience, even with Peridot: her casual response to Peridot’s raving victory speech (”Hey, uh, this is Amethyst” is one of Michaela Dietz’s best reads). This might not be her story, but she more than earns the arc’s exhausted final line. Steven and Amethyst might not realize it until What’s Your Problem, but this is when she becomes the most mature Crystal Gem.

Speaking of insecurity and change and Peridot, yeah, is the last we’ll see of the clod as an unambiguous antagonist. Even if our next arc transforms her into one of my favorite characters on the show, I do miss how much fun the animators have with her bag of tricks. Her helicopter rotor/spider leg/laser gun fingers are magnificent comedy relief, and between the fingers and her telescreens and her detachable foot, we get the perfect antagonist for an arc about the Gems’ humanity: an almost literal robot.

That said, Shelby Rabara’s performance destroys the notion that Peridot is all machine. Where Charlyne Yi gives Ruby overblown but realistic bursts of rage, Rabara dilutes Peridot’s own sputtering frustration with portions of venomous ham, and it’s perfect. Even after she switches sides, she just sounds like a scheming villain when she’s mad (or excited or confused or really any big emotion but sad). I’ll get into it more come Catch and Release, but Peridot’s mechanical motifs pull double duty here, contrasting both the Gems’ emotional turmoil and her own imminent foray into humanity when she loses her limbs.

Now, all this stuff is fine and good, but the elephant in the flying saucer is that Friend Ship can be read in two wildly different ways, depending on how you interpreted Pearl’s actions in Cry for Help, and one of them makes this a terrible episode. While I don’t read Pearl’s betrayal as rape, if you read it that way then the resolution of the Week of Sardonyx is horrific: the lesson of Garnet’s talk with Pearl is that if your rapist feels bad then the onus is on you to make them feel better. Which, yeah, is the kind of lesson that would shove this right beneath Island “Abuse is okay sometimes” Adventure as my least favorite episode of the series.

It would be absurd for me to say the solution to this problem is to just not interpret Pearl’s act that way, because I’m not the boss of how other people watch stuff. But because I didn’t interpret it that way, I can only see whatever backlash this episode has through the lens of “okay, sure, I’d be mad too if that was my take, but that’s not what I think the message is.” Because to me, the great thing about Pearl’s betrayal being fusion-specific is that it makes the action show-specific, or more accurately character-specific. There are universal messages here about consent and forgiveness and talking things out, but really this is a story about Garnet and Pearl reaching a new understanding with each other, and when all’s said and done I always go with the interpretation that tells the better story.

The framing of their climactic conversation is fantastic. Joe Johnston and Jeff Liu lean into the cramped environment by focusing on meaningful parts of Garnet and Pearl as they speak: Pearl’s small arms hugging herself and darting eyes unable to look at the person right in front of her, Garnet’s angry fists opening to reveal her gems. And when we finally zoom out to see their full bodies in a tiny box in the middle of a black screen, Garnet says something we’ve heard her tell Steven when she revealed a massive truth about herself, that we’ve heard Rose tell Pearl in a flashback to their decision to stay and fight on Earth. “Please understand.”

On their own, these two words are a decent turning point in the conversation, but with context they just kill me. I said it in Future Vision and I’ll say it again here: when Garnet really needs to reach someone, she emulates Rose. It simultaneously highlights that she’s a strong leader and that she’s still learning, and learning from someone that was hardly perfect.

If Steven’s story is about what it’s like to be a kid growing up, the Gems’ story is about what it’s like to be an adult growing up. And as an adult growing up, yeah, it’s a hell of a thing to watch on a cartoon.

(For those of you thinking Pink Diamond was pure manipulative monster material, bear in mind that in Can’t Go Back, we get to see Blue Diamond’s version of the phrase: “You must understand.” The shift from a demand to a plea changes everything.)

Nobody can change what Pearl did, but Garnet’s solution is to reach an understanding. To allow Pearl room to explicitly say how she feels, to illuminate her own point of view, and to clarify that there’s no way out, but there’s a way through. We see immediately that Pearl learns her lesson, asking for consent even when Garnet already suggested fusion and they’re literally about to be crushed to death, and we’re rewarded with a lovely understated reappearance by the week’s title character. The experience that was once showy and false is now serene and balanced.

And then they all yank Peridot’s foot off as a family because this is still Steven Universe and Steven Universe has a deep respect for silliness. Talking is important, but so is doing, and it’s neat to see the Crystal Gems finally get a concrete win against a villain who’s slipped through the cracks time and again.

Peridot’s missing foot will lead to her desperate final plan, which will lead to her turn (brought about by Steven’s immense sense of empathy and probably helped by him watching his friends overcome Pearl acting like a villain), which will lead to the world being saved. Small ripples can make big waves, and that’s important for the plot of the show, but it’s also important for the characters. Amethyst’s hidden depths have been revealed and will continue to inform her actions. Garnet will treat Peridot’s fusionphobia with grace and a desire to educate, when possible, instead of shutting down any possibility for a bigot to change. And Pearl has never again reverted to the toxic selfish sadness of Space Race and Rose’s Scabbard and Sworn to the Sword and Cry for Help, even though her suffering isn’t quite finished.

It’s not a perfect ending. I do think that Pearl could’ve contributed more to the resolution, and that we would’ve had more time to flesh things out if her specific brand of frenzied anguish was established in its own episode. And Steven’s “Have a nice weekend!” is a weird misfire of a joke that’s too unusually unfunny to defuse the tension of the first act properly, which normally wouldn’t matter but really sticks out in such a dramatic episode. But we got a full week telling one story that has lasting consequences, and that sort of tight serialization is only going to get stronger as the show continues.

Future Vision!

According to Peridot, Earth has an expiration date. It turns out she’s not kidding!

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Like I said, not perfect. There are some final episodes of storylines or miniseries that I relish in rewatching on their own merits (Over the Garden Wall and Book 3 of Korra come to mind, as does Steven Universe’s own Jailbreak), and this isn’t one of them. Still, I hardly hate it, and while this sounds like a backhanded compliment, it genuinely could have been much worse.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend
Historical Friction
Friend Ship

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 66: Historical Friction

“And then you have to keep going.”

This is a good episode of Steven Universe. It’s also a bad one.

The Week of Sardonyx does so well at maintaining its momentum until Historical Friction grinds it to a halt to give us a great Steven and Jamie episode, but a lousy Pearl episode. We’ve spent Keystone Motel and Onion Friend with Garnet and Amethyst, so now its Pearl’s, right? Well, um, sort of? She’s there? And she’s the only Crystal Gem we see, so I guess she’s the episode’s Gem by default? But the focus here is so indirect that it leaves Friend Ship spending way too much time catching us up on Pearl’s exact mindset instead of sailing to the conclusion of the story.

Still, that’s a tricky thing to hold against the episode itself, because it’s actually pretty wonderful outside the context of the week-long arc. So let’s talk about what works before getting into why it fails in the big picture.

It’s only been ten episodes since Jamie’s first starring role, and by design he’s one of the more bombastic citizens we hang out with, so it’s pretty impressive that his screen time in Historical Friction never feels like overkill. A big part of that is the direct continuity with Love Letters: he’s pursuing local theater, just like Garnet said! And we’re not spending an episode dwelling on her, which would be miserable!

Otherwise, we can thank Eugene Cordero’s continued ability to project real pathos onto such a goofy dramatist (and his impersonations of Estelle, Deedee Magno-Hall, and Mopchaela Dietz don’t hurt). He captures the childlike passion that goes into everything Jamie does, and we can really enjoy it this time because, unlike his interest in Garnet, he actually has a chance at success here.

This episode easily could’ve been Jamie going full diva for his big break and having an attitude with Steven, and I’m thrilled that we don’t go anywhere near that direction. Yes, Jamie’s dedicated to putting on the best performance, but it’s realized in his valid criticisms of Dewey’s script instead of any annoyance with Steven’s hammy acting. Far from it, he welcomes Steven to share his passion with open arms, and puts his ~~career~~ hobby at risk by rebelling against his financial backer for the sake of the stage. For such a loud guy, there’s something quietly heroic about his commitment to what he loves.

It helps that the play is hilarious. Not in a way the characters intend (sorry, I know Steven wrote the jokes) but also not in a way where it feels too mean to laugh at the low production values. Look at these costumes. I somehow forgot before rewatch that Amethyst is a mop with an amethyst taped on and I’m mad at myself for it.

I’m also a sucker for characters telling in-universe stories and seeing how they’ve interpreted events in their own history; while used to different narrative ends, there’s smatterings of The Ember Island Players in Jamie’s production as we see the origin of Beach City’s settlers. And a play is one of Steven Universe’s many clever devices to tell pre-Steven lore, from video tapes to drawings from inarticulate corrupted Gems to weird moon dreams: here, we get that Beach City origin story, and a vague glimpse of the Rose Quartz/Ruby/Sapphire/Amethyst/Pearl megafusion whose likeness towers over the Temple.

Seeing Mayor Dewey bouncing off Jamie is the sort of “combine two characters we’ve never seen interact” thing I loved about Connie and Pearl in Sworn to the Sword, and in this instance the shared trait between our leads is their stubbornness. And weirdness. But everyone in Beach City is some degree of weird, so let’s go with stubbornness. Dewey and Jamie stridently define themselves by what they do, refusing to let anything like “lack of talent” get in the way. This isn’t to say they’re terrible at mayoring and acting, but they certainly aren’t as great as they project themselves to be. So it makes sense that they’d butt heads over how this production should go: the politician thinks it should be a campaign ad, and the actor thinks it should be true art. Art wins, because spoiler alert this is a show made by artists, but Dewey is wisely portrayed as more foolish than mean as tensions rise, and (as we’ll see in Dewey Wins) is willing to admit when he’s wrong.

This is the first collaboration between Hilary Florido and Jesse Zuke (credited as Lauren), twin masters of the Meaningful Hangout Episode (see: Log Date 7 15 2, Too Short to Ride, Last One Out of Beach City, Gem Harvest, and Beta’s magnificent ~~art exhibit~~ Morp Show), so it’s no wonder the goofy story of two friends putting on a show works. More than anything else, this episode is just sweet. I love how much Jamie and Steven encourage each other. I love that Barb gets Jamie’s autograph backstage. Heck, I love how many people just show up for his play; it’s not a packed beach, but local theater is a tough sell. People are nice to each other and everyone wins, which is perfectly fine every now and then on a show like this.

Buuuuuuuuuuut maybe not during the Week of Sardonyx, where the entire point is that not every issue resolves this easily?

Like, I guess I get the desire to lighten things up a bit, but Keystone Motel and Onion Friend have plenty of laughs to balance out the Week of Sardonyx’s inherent tension. This is the most we’ve seen of Pearl since Cry for Help, and we barely see anything. This episode could fit pretty much anywhere else in the series for how generically her sad mood is portrayed. The message of the play, and of the episode, is that everyone messes up and it takes bravery to keep trying anyway. It’s a good lesson, and it certainly applies to Pearl here, but it applies to Pearl everywhere. It’s honestly what I admire most about Pearl in general; even when she lets her sadness consume her, she manages to pull out of it time and again. We’ve known about this since Coach Steven.

What we needed here was specificity. We don’t get to know how she’s really doing these days, how the isolation from Garnet is affecting her, how she feels about her changing relationship with Amethyst, how embarrassed she might be in front of Steven, how Steven actually feels about this awkward situation…seriously, I’d take any of those, or anything in a similar vein. This episode shouldn’t make any sense without seeing Cry for Help.

The structure itself isn’t even a problem; Onion Friend proves that you can have a meaningful Gem Episode without actually spending much time with one. Even the past acquaintance element shows the different levels of focus between the past two episodes: Vidalia is Amethyst’s old friend, but William Dewey is someone all three Gems knew. Pearl just happened to be the one that was home when Steven came in with the script. Any way you slice it, this is a serious weak link in the Week of Sardonyx’s five-part plot.

I’m aware that I’m writing all of this about an episode where Steven literally says “art doesn’t always need a reason,” and as someone whose favorite episode of the series is Steven and the Stevens. But sometimes art needs a reason, and this would’ve been a nice time for it.

I never enjoy criticizing episodes for what they aren’t, because I’m not here to write fanfiction or pretend for a moment that I could do a better job writing this show than any of the storyboarders on their worst days. But Historical Friction could’ve been an all-time great if it finally gave us some deeper insight into how Pearl sees her own toxic neuroses in the aftermath of a horrible action, and instead it’s just…good. Which is good! But it’s sort of a bummer for such a strong week.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

I’m honestly not sure how an episode with Peridot in a stageplay wouldn’t be my new favorite, Steven and the Stevens be damned. Her foray into improv in Letters to Lars shows serious promise.

Future Vision!

Turns out Buddy isn’t just Dewey’s nickname for his shipmate, but an actual historic explorer who Steven will always envision as Jamie.
Dewey and Jamie don’t only share stubbornness in this episode, they share a dance of sorrow in Reunited!

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

So do I judge this on its own merits (good) or in the context of its surroundings (not so great)? The deciding factor is rewatchability, and on that front I still enjoy Historical Friction more than I don’t. I definitely like it more than Love Letters, regardless: this is premium Jamie, unhindered by a plot where we’re rooting against him. But I’d be lying if I said its weird flow-breaking placement didn’t keep it from ranking higher.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend
Historical Friction

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 65: Onion Friend

“Good things the kids are keeping themselves busy.”

It’s been exactly fifty episodes since Onion Trade, and it’ll be another forty-five until Onion Gang. Awfulness of the latter episode aside, this seems like pretty good pacing for a character as beautifully bizarre as Onion to get the spotlight.

Steven is largely kept out of the Gems’ story throughout the Week of Sardonyx, and that’s never made more explicit than in his romp with Onion. Amethyst’s voice during dinner is drowned out by Steven’s fascination and revulsion with Beach City’s weirdest weirdo, and the episode revolves around Steven putting up with him for Amethyst’s sake. We don’t even see Pearl or Garnet, but we don’t have to: Onion Trade is all about Steven’s separation from the grown-up’s table.

Let’s start with his story before we get into the meat of the Week of Sardonyx implications. His main function, as per usual when he’s paired with Onion, is to serve as the straight man. In true sequel fashion, Onion’s absurd creepiness from Onion Trade gets ramped up: right off the bat he’s hiding in Steven’s cupboard to steal his food (as the latter narrates his own actions to nobody, because this is a silly episode from the start). Even if we learn he didn’t paint them, it’s honestly not even surprising to find portraits of Amethyst in his garage, because it’s hard to be surprised by anything he does.

After a relatively tame dinner scene—Onion’s probably too old to be messing with his food, even if his age is hard to pin down, but this is still normal kid behavior to an extent—we reach the nightmare that is his room. We still get a nice blend of regular weird and creepy weird, aided by Zach Callison’s fantastic capacity for bewilderment. He’s just so confused about Onion bounding on his bed instead of a trampoline, and even if this is hardly the strangest thing about this environment, I love that Steven’s still upset by it.

But like Charlie Brown with the football, Steven keeps up hope. For whatever reason he sees no reason to be suspicious about Onion’s mouse or video tape, which makes their inevitable twists hilarious and super gross. So of course, when he finally decides enough is enough (featuring Callison’s best-ever use of the word “okay”), Onion decides to perform his first unambiguously kind action. Does he do it just to subvert Steven’s expectations? Or does he also consider sharing his snake and birth video “kind”? Even if he could talk beyond Callison mumbling, I doubt we’d ever know. But throwing a wrench into his actions by giving him a moment of true friendship is a great way to keep Onion unpredictable.

While it lacks the narrative oomph of Garnet being revealed as a fusion in Jailbreak, this episode gives the same sense of satisfaction as all the implications about Clan Onion are confirmed. At first, the only hint that he and Sour Cream are related is the pun we get when combining their names, but more clues start piling up as we start to get a sense of their family. We know the unnamed fisherman who speaks gibberish is Onion’s dad from Onion Trade.

We learn in Joy Ride that Sour Cream’s stepdad is a fisherman who speaks gibberish.

We meet Vidalia (a type of onion) with Marty (who looks an awful lot like Sour Cream) suspiciously leaving Greg’s van in Story for Steven’s flashback. With this knowledge, we can easily shape an image of a family featuring Vidalia and the fisherman as parents and Sour Cream and Onion as half-siblings, but it’s never stated outright until Onion Friend. It’s not really a twist, as all the information (save the fisherman’s name, which we learn here is Yellowtail) was already there, but it still allows for that gleeful “I knew it!” moment.

Vidalia is the fifth mother we’ve met on Steven Universe, but only the second we’ve seen interacting with her child-aged child (Nanefua’s kid is a grown man, Rose is only accessible by videotape, and Barb was on the job). Vidalia’s the polar opposite of Dr. Maheswaran: a chill artist with free range kids and a shotgun in the house. We don’t even know her last name, just as we don’t even know Dr. Maheswaran’s first name (although Ian Jones-Quartey says it’s Priyanka). They both clearly love their kids, but where one expresses it through strict control, the other does so with wild freedom.

While isn’t necessarily a good thing—compare and contrast Onion and Connie on your own time—I’m thrilled that the show’s desire to portray different types of mothers extends beyond the Crystal Gems. “Moms are people too” is a refreshing stance to take in a medium where mothers are often the portrayed as the most grounded (read: boring) member of the family.

One thing I find fascinating is that both of these mothers are voiced by women who have worked extensively behind the scenes in animation beyond voice acting. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (who also played Major Motoko in Ghost in the Shell) is a veteran anime voice director, starting with a bang with the legendary English dub of Cowboy Bebop. And Jackie Buscarino (who also played Pacifica Northwest in Gravity Falls) worked her way from production assistant on shows like Spongebob Squarepants and Dexter’s Laboratory to full producer on shows like…well, like Steven Universe.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with actors who are just actors, but even if it’s just a coincidence, I love that some part of the casting crew went for known industry multitaskers to play family matriarchs. Because yeah, no disrespect to Yellowtail and Doug, but Vidalia and Dr. Maheswaran are obviously running their respective houses.

(If Buscarino wasn’t so great at portraying Vidalia, I would’ve killed to have Wendy Hoopes in the role, because I’m pretty sure Vidalia is who Jane Lane grows up to be.)

As important as it is to see Vidalia as a mom, this episode is also about seeing parents as people outside of that context, which is why Onion and Steven are shooed out for Amethyst and Vidalia to talk. There’s a risk in making an episode about Amethyst that features only a moment of eavesdropping, but this is another benefit of the Week of Sardonyx’s structure. We know why Amethyst is upset. We hear just enough to know how she’s dealing with it, and how valuable Vidalia’s friendship is. And we know how freaked out Steven is by Onion, making his quiet decision to return to his room surprisingly touching. Not surprising because he’s not a sweet kid on a sweet show, but because this is otherwise a really goofy episode.

Subtlety is also used to shed a new light on Amethyst’s backstory. She’s always been the Gem most interested in humans (outside of Rose), attracted to human things like food and stuff and pop culture. She uses human slang and wrestles with humans and has that sisterly bond with Steven that makes the two feel like close peers instead of a parent and child. While we know she was fascinated with Greg and hung out with him alone, it’s awesome to see more of how he indirectly affected her forays into the human world.

There’s no indication from the two seconds we get of Vidalia in Story for Steven that she and Amethyst would be best buds, but they’re both punky and rebellious and we see so much of how they would’ve gotten along in their photo montage. Vidalia styles Amethyst’s hair to look like Rose’s. Amethyst morphs into Marty so they can make fun of him. It’s kind of amazing how quickly we’re able to accept that these two utterly nonintersecting characters have a history that informs Amethyst’s behavior to this day.

We sadly don’t see much of these two hanging out after this, but we don’t see Purple Puma and Tiger Millionaire wrestling between Tiger Millionaire and Tiger Philanthropist either, and are led to believe they’ve been regularly fighting the entire time. In that sense, I’ll just assume these two are getting into all sorts of trouble when Steven’s not around. Slippers included.

Future Vision!

This is our first look at Sour Cream’s weird backstory with the Crystal Gems, as Amethyst remembers hanging out with him as a baby. We’ll obviously see more in Greg the Babysitter, but Sour Cream has a surprisingly major role in Steven’s existence and it’s cool to see that referenced so early.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Despite the angst behind the scenes, Onion Friend is at its core a comedy showcase. It’s a little too forgettable compared to more well-rounded outings, and not quite funny enough to sit with the bigger comedies, but I’m still a big fan.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies
Onion Friend

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

Episode 64: Keystone Motel

**“IT’S FUSION, SAPPHIRE!”**

Keeping It Together suggests that the return of Ruby and Sapphire, while anticipated by Steven and the fans, would only come about in a calamity. So, erm, thank you Pearl?

It would be so unfaithful to Garnet’s character for Ruby and Sapphire to pop up all the time after the big reveal, because the whole point is that they’re in a stable fusion. But despite the circumstances, it’s great to see these two again. ~~Charlyne Yi~~ Ruby left a bombastic first impression in Jailbreak, so she’s always welcome, while Sapphire was barely in her debut, so we want to know more. And while later episodes like Hit the Diamond where the world isn’t falling apart are fun, characters in crisis are inherently interesting to watch.

The structure of Keystone Motel takes the familiar introductory approach of meeting new(ish) characters together, then separating them to explore them as individuals, then joining them again to see them as a unit in a new light. Gem Glow did it the same way, but now we have the benefit of sixty-three episodes of show to let us focus harder on the characters instead of meeting an entire world (even if we do touch on that with the new environment). And just as importantly, we also have sixty-three episodes establishing Steven’s particular lens.

I didn’t mention much of Steven in my Cry For Help review, as he exists solely as an observer with Amethyst, and of the two, Amethyst is far more important to the episode. He’s still great, particularly in the small meditative scene where he teaches Amethyst how to make her fingers float by crossing her eyes, but plotwise he’s an ancillary character in the Week of Sardonyx.

Except for here. In Keystone Motel, he spends most of the episode doing what he does for most of the week: distracting himself from the mess at home, and observing the Gems as they deal with Pearl’s actions without much interference. He’s not Amethyst, trying to make the peace or consoling his friends. Maybe one day he will be, but for now he’s a child, and it’s incredibly unfair to expect a child to act as a mediator between arguing parents.

Instead, all he can do is get upset, and at his breaking point he wonders aloud if mom and mom are fighting because of him. Logically, this is an absurd assumption: he saw what Pearl did and knew it was wrong, and Pearl is clearly who Ruby and Sapphire are arguing about. At no point does Ruby or Sapphire bring him into the conflict by accusing him of taking a side or getting mad at him for not backing them up. But when you’re stressed and confused by clashing parents, logic takes a backseat to emotion. Self-blame is a tried-and-true method of tricking yourself into thinking you have control over a situation that’s out of your hands: it sucks when something’s your fault, but it sucks even more to be powerless.

Fortunately Steven doesn’t have time to fully absorb this unhealthy lesson, because it cracks Sapphire’s icy front to see him blame himself. This turning point is definitely Steven’s biggest contribution to the week, because nobody else was in a position to move things forward. Ruby and Sapphire’s impasse was based on them each being so used to, and annoyed by, their reactions to upsetting situations.

Sapphire internalizes her emotions with the knowledge that things will resolve, and Ruby lashes out at everything like an eternal flame, baby. Neither is willing to show the vulnerability necessary to let down their defenses and talk things out, and both are stubborn enough for a feud to last for who knows how long: this is unstoppable force immovable object territory. So just by expressing the emotional turmoil of a kid in a breaking home, Steven saves the day. And the show doesn’t even feel the need to verbalize that subtext, even though Greg is around and he loves doing that. Way to go, Keystone Motel.

Speaking of Greg, this may be his greatest episode as a side character. The distinction between being a main character or a side character is admittedly nebulous at times—for instance, which is he in Winter Forecast or Steven’s Birthday?—but here he’s a driving force (literally) who graciously cedes the spotlight to our leads, even though he’s killing it on the comedy front. From casually instructing Steven to call the police if his internet deal goes south to waxing poetic about pizza, his humor is grounded in his core dadness in a way that’s as funny as it is endearing. How great is his hyping up of motels and wanting to spend time with his son on a boring business trip? He’s just the sweetest.

And on top of his dadliness, this episode gives us two great insights into Greg’s life outside of Steven. The first is the catalyst for the road trip in the first place, his need for cheap equipment for the car wash. We don’t really focus on money in Steven Universe until Greg hits it rich, but there’s a clear sense of financial hardship to a guy who lives in a van working at a car wash where business always seems slow. And while it’s never directly implied that he’s Steven’s sole financial provider, who else is getting this kid food and clothes? I love seeing the scrappy side of him that he largely hides from Steven (and thus us), and his chill attitude in poverty pays off in a big way when he’s just as chill with his sudden wealth.

The second is his brilliant reaction to seeing Sapphire: a weary “Oh boy, where’s the other one?” It helps that Tom Scharpling is so good at encapsulating Greg’s quintessential “oh boy” approach to conflict, but after We Need to Talk it’s another small reminder that Greg has a history with the Crystal Gems independent of Steven. Of course he already knows about Ruby and Sapphire.

I mentioned Charlyne Yi earlier, but oh my goodness is she amazing. I know I already compared Ruby to Daffy Duck in my Jailbreak review, but it’s honestly the highest compliment I can give: she’s frustration personified, and almost every frame where she’s not exploding is spent winding herself up to explode. Yi is everything to this character, starting at a fever pitch and maintaining a sputtering episode-long tirade without missing a beat. But just as importantly, look at those Rebecca Sugar sketches of Ruby: they’re based directly off of Yi’s physical performance while voice acting, which in turn directly influenced the animation:

Holy crow does this woman commit. Deedee Magno Hall might be my overall voice actor MVP for the show, but maybe the only thing stopping Charlyne Yi from taking the throne is Ruby and the Rubies’ infrequent appearances.

Which is hardly to take away from Erica Luttrell, whose deep, slow serenity makes for Yi’s ideal counterpart. Like I said, it’s wonderful to see more of Sapphire than the blip we got in Jailbreak, and Luttrell terrifically conveys the emotions

seething

behind Sapphire’s icy exterior. Here, it’s all in the pauses, the perfectly uncomfortable extra moments between words as she works to keep her cool: it’s most notable in her frozen “I’m…fine” as ice literally cracks behind her.

(Fun fact: when Luttrell was a kid, she was the voice of Keesha on Magic School Bus, and that’s wonderful.)

Although Garnet is obviously a blend of both Gems, we see far more patience than fury from her. So while Ruby’s a bunch of fun to watch (particularly as she rambles her way into the pool), the challenge is differentiating Sapphire from that other calm, collected, authoritative, and distant Gem with future vision and a deep voice and hidden eyes. The solution is to make her a bit too in touch with that future vision, and I love how it’s used for both humor and drama to showcase just how vital it is for Sapphire, and thus how important Ruby is at grounding her in the present.

The resolution of their argument is essentially Sapphire remembering this, and in doing so Ruby finally cools down. Unfortunately, her idea of cooling down involves putting herself down; just like in Jailbreak, she sees herself as worthless compared to Sapphire, which the latter thankfully disagrees with. The root of Ruby’s deep-set insecurities might not get explained until The Answer, but there’s a clear lived-in dynamic between these two that there really needs to be for the whole “fused together for thousands of years” relationship to make sense.

Finally, even if they’re short on screentime and Michaela Dietzes, Pearl and Amethyst leave a huge impression in this episode. Pearl’s in full manic mode, which is exactly where she should be, and I love the quiet scene of Amethyst consoling her as Steven comes back in. Garnet deserves to be the main focus of Cry for Help’s immediate fallout, but these two are still a major factor that shouldn’t be forgotten.

This isn’t a perfect episode. It might sound like a nitpick, but it bugs the hell out of me that the motel and diner are totally empty minus one waitress, especially when so much care was put into these new sets (although I do realize that the time spent on these new sets is likely why we don’t get new character models). It takes me right out of the critical diner scene every time I watch it to be reminded of the constraints of animation, which is a bummer on a show that’s so good at not doing that.

Still, our journey to the Keystone State (by which I of course mean the state named Keystone) is an important success. Time limitations often make arguments in episodic media pretty simple, but here we slow down to tackle the fallout of Cry for Help on multiple fronts: to even begin considering forgiveness, Ruby and Sapphire have to process their emotions after being betrayed. It’s a risky move, especially given how new these characters are, but it pays off in a way that deepens Garnet and the show as a whole.

Future Vision!

Mr. Greg, of all episodes, is a great follow-up to this adventure of Steven, Greg, and another Gem traveling to another state, staying in a rented room, and resolving tension between the two parent figures. Going to a hotel and rolling in money is nice, but it’s even better when juxtaposed against going to a motel and working to make ends meet.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Even if it sucks that Ruby and Sapphire go on a break, I can’t say I’m unhappy to see them. While it’s not all that rewatchable for me given it’s in the middle of a pretty unpleasant Bomb, execution and tone go a long way.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help
Keystone Motel

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!

(Like Keeping It Together, no official promo for this one. This time I’m going with the brilliant imamong, whose title cards for Steven Universe astound and amaze. She does other shows too. I’d imagine she’s pretty well-known for them. Still warrants a credit.)

Episode 63: Cry for Help

“I don’t understand.”

Pearl has done some awful things in Steven Universe. She nearly kills Steven in Space Race, and even ignoring the rocket malfunction, her plan was to steal him from Earth for fifty years under false pretenses. She nearly kills Steven again in Rose’s Scabbard through inaction during a fit of furious sorrow. She indoctrinates Connie to see herself as fodder to be sacrificed at a moment’s notice. And she only apologizes in one of these cases.

Before Cry for Help, the show seemed pretty lax with Pearl’s tendency to lash out at others when in pain. While her grief explains her harmful decisions, it also appears to excuse them: most of our focus is on the suffering leading to her actions, not the victims of these actions. Steven comforts her every time she endangers him or his friends, which is nice of him, but suggests that his own feelings are secondary to hers.

It’s honestly reminiscent of Island Adventure, where the show refused to acknowledge the severity of Sadie’s physical and mental abuse. The difference is that Pearl is shown to be in the wrong, while Sadie is portrayed as a hero despite her severe mistreatment of Lars, but it’s still troubling to see Pearl more or less get away with hurting people on a recurring basis.

But it was all a glorious ruse. The Week of Sardonyx is here, groundbreaking for its depiction of an interpersonal rift that has almost nothing to do with the show’s title character, taking full advantage of the Steven Bomb format for the first time to tell a long-term self-contained story about what happens when Pearl finally gets called out for her toxic behavior.

If this story arc was condensed to a single episode, we would certainly spend it watching Pearl and Garnet. But with extra time to set the tone and understand the stakes, we instead see Pearl’s instigating betrayal from Amethyst’s point of view as the latter faces similar fusion woes. The focus on Amethyst is absolute (she even gets a song!), and it makes Pearl’s actions sting so much harder when her perennial rival’s reaction isn’t anger, or glee at the opportunity to tattle, but a deep and heretofore unseen discomfort.

Amethyst, who uses motor oil as a condiment and hoards literal garbage, is ashamed of Pearl. But even so, she comes to Pearl’s defense after outing her deception, because unlike Garnet she can understand the rationale behind Pearl’s actions: Amethyst and Pearl both see Garnet as strong, and themselves as weak. Amethyst explicitly misses being Sugilite, conflating fusing with Garnet as a means to share her strength, so she gets why Pearl misses being Sardonyx.

In a conflict between Pearl and Garnet, the most obvious approach is to have our third Gem act as a mediator, but I’m so glad the show has made characters that are deep enough for Amethyst to fit organically into that role. Not just because she’s secretly the most sensitive Gem, or because she understands Pearl without condoning her behavior, but because she’s spent Steven’s whole life as a bridge between him and the other Gems. When you’ve got two close friends coming to a head, there’s nobody better to have in your corner than a middle child.

Amethyst’s other big role is as a counterpoint to the notion that being sad excuses selfishness or cruelty. Cry for Help
encapsulates the series-wide reactions that Pearl and Amethyst have had to sorrow, and seeing both at the same time removes any doubt that Pearl’s approach is unhealthy, even if Amethyst’s is far from perfect.

When Pearl gets especially sad, her self-loathing fuels her self-centeredness until
she stops caring about how anybody else feels. This is obviously bad news for the people around her, but eventual
remorse over her actions fuels her self-loathing even further, and the fire just keeps burning.
Everybody loses when Pearl is sad.

But look at what happens when Amethyst is sad in Tiger Millionaire, On the Run, Maximum Capacity,
and Reformed: her first response is
to show off, usually to Steven. She longs to be included, to be looked up to,
so she becomes hyper-aware of how she’s perceived. She plays up the attributes
she desires in herself (such as strength, belonging, the ability to chill out
without thinking about sad stuff, and a better sense of self) in hopes of
hiding her vulnerabilities. Or perhaps just to cope? I wouldn’t want to get all psy-cho-logical on her.

Amethyst and Pearl both struggle with self-esteem. And their actions have some overlap: Pearl taking Steven
with her in Space Race sounds like
something Amethyst might do, and Amethyst ignoring Steven to hang out with Greg
in Maximum Capacity sounds like
something Pearl might do (minus Greg). But the intents that prompt these actions
are night and day. Pearl wants to punish herself and Amethyst wants to feel
comfortable with herself. Pearl is depression and Amethyst is anxiety.

And then we have Garnet, whose healthiness has always been portrayed as a universal positive. She’s strong in every sense of the word, which is great, right? It makes her the bedrock of the team, and it gives her an ironclad sense of right and wrong with the conviction to back it up.

But it can also make her oblivious to suffering.

Nothing excuses what Pearl does to Garnet (which we’ll get to, don’t you worry), but Cry for Help is part of a long line of episodes displaying the downside of Garnet’s strength: an inability to understand what it’s like to be weak, leading to many moments of callousness that honestly remind me of Pearl at times.

Remember how in Serious Steven she thinks plowing through the dungeon is the best option, even though Steven’s clearly rattled? Remember how in Beach Party she’s incapable of caring about wrecking the Pizzas’ sign? Remember how in Monster Buddies she can’t see that her gauntlet is what’s bothering Centy? Remember how in Warp Tour she’s more interested in humoring Steven than taking his worries seriously? Remember how in Love Letters she prefers absolute bluntness to a polite but firm rejection? Remember how in Reformed she gets aggravated with Amethyst instead of exploring the root of the problem, leaving it up to Steven to figure it out? Remember how literally one episode ago in Chille Tid she ignores Pearl’s pleas to help out? Is it really any wonder she can’t see that Pearl and Amethyst are upset in Cry for Help?

This is a huge gap for a character that’s all about understanding, and it’s the reason the Week of Sardonyx is important for Garnet beyond making her a victim. Spoiler alert for Inside Out, but sadness is critical for nurturing empathy, and Garnet’s general lack of sadness can make her miss when her friends are upset without…well, without a cry for help. There’s a reason it takes defusing into Ruby and Sapphire for her to start processing what happened to her, because Ruby and Sapphire are a lovable bundle of neuroses next to Garnet’s cool calm.

But there’s also a reason defusing into Ruby and Sapphire doesn’t directly lead to Garnet forgiving Pearl, because holy shit Pearl. Once again, fusion’s value as a multi-faceted metaphor is crucial to the tone of the show: there’s plenty of sexual innuendo to it, particularly in Cry for Help’s dances, but the fact that it stands in for relationships in general instead of just sex is all that prevents Pearl from being a literal rapist. Not only is consent important, but we were explicitly reminded of this only three episodes ago in Keeping It Together. It would’ve been bad enough if Pearl did this with Amethyst or Steven, but Garnet is particularly concerned with consent in regards to fusion.

Cry for Help tones down the drastic implications of Pearl’s betrayal by giving Garnet a somewhat childish initial response (“You tricked me!”), but from there it pulls no punches portraying Garnet’s justified fury. Amethyst’s defense only makes her angrier, because it doesn’t matter if Pearl had a motive for fusing with her under false pretenses, and it doesn’t matter that Pearl feels bad about it. Even if it isn’t read as sexual assault (and I genuinely don’t think it’s meant to be, given how the situation resolves), Pearl’s actions are a violation of Garnet, their relationship, and fusion itself. It’s the dark side of the insecurity that fueled the longing hopefulness of sister episode Coach Steven, and it hits like a truck.

There’s a feeling of hopelessness to the end of Cry for Help that I deeply appreciate, because really, where do we go from here? It’s unlikely that the show would break up the Crystal Gems permanently at this point, but there’s also no real reason for Garnet to ever trust Pearl again. Garnet’s still mad (and she should be), Pearl’s a wreck (and she should be), and Amethyst and Steven have no idea what to do. Cliffhangers like this are rare on Steven Universe, but it does so well at capturing the awkward, awful aftermath of a friend wronging a friend.

Because despite all of this, Pearl is still Garnet’s friend. And I’d argue that despite all of this, Pearl is still a good person. In fact, I’d argue that Pearl being a good person is the most important thing about the Week of Sardonyx. It’s easy to tell a story about a bad person doing a bad thing, but most people see themselves as good, and most people have done at least one bad thing. If we write Pearl off as a monster and leave it at that, what room is there for us to learn? If doing one horrible action is enough to make you a villain, what hope is there for anyone?

I say this while knowing that I’m actually pretty quick to condemn people forever for certain actions: namely, try as I might, I struggle to see any reason for any rapist to be allowed to live. Like, to the point where my first wish if I ever nabbed a genie would be for every rapist on the planet to vanish and get replaced with a note that says “Don’t mourn for me, I was human garbage.” (Obviously there would be many footnotes for this wish; for instance, if a rapist is a pilot I don’t want to endanger folks on a flight, so the reckoning would have to wait a bit for that one. I have really thought this out. I am ready to find a genie.)

If that’s how I feel, how is it that I have such empathy for Pearl, even though I’m completely on Garnet’s side? It’s not that she’s fictional, because I’m not forgiving of fictitious rapists either. And it’s not that her action isn’t actually rape, because it’s still a gigantic violation. So I honestly don’t know. But Steven Universe is clearly capable of making me examine how I view the world in a way few shows can, and even if I don’t think the Week of Sardonyx quite sticks the landing, the opening is appropriately wrenching stuff.

(With funny weeping foodstuffs to keep the younger audience from getting too upset. Not the subtlest subtext in the world, but I’ve got no beef with kid’s shows keeping things grounded for kids.)

Future Vision!

Nothing too direct, but the Week of Sardonyx’s angst returns with a vengeance in the Break-Up Arc immediately following Wanted. Multiple episodes of working through an argument? Check. A sense of betrayal involving fusion? Check (sorta). A resolution brought about by a common enemy? Check. The biggest difference (beyond the shifted focus to Steven) is that the Break-Up Arc is more invested on making you miserable on an episode-by-episode basis, making it even harder to watch. Want a break from Steven and Connie not talking? Have a secondary break-up between Peridot and Lapis!

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

This is the episode in my “Love ‘em” category that I’ve watched the least, because it’s a tough one. I more appreciate Cry for Help than enjoy it, because it’s not meant to be enjoyable, but it’s still worth putting up there because man does it nail the tone.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Sworn to the Sword
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
Chille Tid
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Ocean Gem
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
The Test
Future Vision
Maximum Capacity
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk
Cry for Help

Like ‘em

Gem Glow
Frybo
Arcade Mania
So Many Birthdays
Lars and the Cool Kids
Onion Trade
Steven the Sword Fighter
Beach Party
Monster Buddies
Keep Beach City Weird
Watermelon Steven
Open Book
Story for Steven
Shirt Club
Love Letters
Reformed
Rising Tides, Crashing Skies

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack
Together Breakfast
Cat Fingers
Serious Steven
Steven’s Lion
Joking Victim
Secret Team
Say Uncle

No Thanks!