Episode 62: Chille Tid

**“You.”**

The night before I started writing this review, I had a dream that I was in the mood for pasta with pesto. I couldn’t remember if pesto could be bought in cans or had to be made, so I took to Google to search for the answer, but a hot new band named Pesto Sauce kept getting in the way of my search results. No matter what combination of keywords I used, I couldn’t find the answer I needed, and the stress grew and grew and grew as each of my tried-and-true research skills failed me. It was literally a librarian’s nightmare.

Dreams are weird—if you don’t believe me, ask Rebecca Sugar—and Chille Tid continues to display Steven Universe’s ability to capture their casual absurdity. Even the name of the episode is weird, stemming from a Norwegian phrase meaning “Chilling Time” that the crew saw in a Scandinavian commercial for Regular Show. Within the episode, the title is only stated once, and off-handedly at that; it could’ve just as easily been called Bunga-Cowa or Mashed Potato. It’s not just wacky, it’s quietly wacky, and that mixture of normalcy with something that’s obviously bizarre in retrospect is so much better at reflecting dream logic than the bombastic acid trips that cartoon dream sequences often become.

I was tempted to use a similarly odd phrase for my header quote, but this isn’t any old dream episode. This is a bad dream episode, and Kimberly Brooks can make a single word the stuff of nightmares.

Jasper will get some actual development post-breakup, but all that Steven’s seen of her so far is a physically and emotionally violent monster (as opposed to a physically and emotionally violent monster struggling with abandonment issues). She, not the newly-christened Malachite, is who Steven is actually afraid of, and the episode spectacularly displays why she’s someone to be feared, even in chains.

Lapis, on the other hand, is initially presented as someone to be saved. Her first appearance is the most frightening moment of the episode, jolting us out of the jovial tone of Steven’s sitcom dream with a silent weeping scream.

This only solidifies Steven’s mission to help, going back twice to rescue her, but between his empathy and the more obvious threat of Jasper, he forgets that Lapis has always shown a capacity for terrible fury. Her rage is usually justified—see how well you’d take being trapped in a mirror for thousands of years, only to find yourself imprisoned again upon returning to a home that you no longer recognize—but it feeds the darkest aspects of her personality.

To me, the most fascinating thing about Lapis is that she genuinely likes Steven. It makes some sense that she would: after all, he released her from prison and healed her gem, and formed an actual bond with her by talking to her in the Mirror. But Lapis is the product of millennia of isolation and abuse. She has every right to lash out at everyone around her, and she mostly does; as we’ll learn in greater depth Alone at Sea, that’s certainly what she’s doing to Jasper. And she does snap at Steven for interrupting, rejecting not only his help but the notion that she needs help. But despite all this, in a neat mirroring of Sworn to the Sword, she explicitly says that she’s doing it for him. Because at the end of the day, even though she has no reason to trust anyone anymore, and even when she’s using the language of anger, Lapis Lazuli is still capable of love, and that’s what makes her a hero.

(Also, how great is it that when Lapis rejects her identity we can only see her face in her reflection?)

Alright, I kinda jumped the gun on the ending there, there’s a whole episode preceding the final nightmare. But honestly, despite being loads of fun, there’s not too much to say about the dreams themselves. I mean, I guess there’s plenty to analyze if we really want to go full Freud on this. Does Steven see the Gems as humans in his first dream because he still feels left out of Team Human in We Need to Talk? Is his hopeless pursuit of Dogcopter a metaphor for his seemingly unattainable desire to be a bigshot Crystal Gem? Does Pearl’s dream reveal her continued suffering in the aftermath of Rose picking Greg? (Respectively: maybe, probably not, and duh.)

But Chille Tid isn’t interested in clear-cut interpretations of Steven’s dreams, which is one of the reasons it’s so great. Not every dream has to be meaningful, especially because the vast majority of dreams in real life are nonsense. This is our first glimpse into Steven’s strange dream powers, and alongside non-magical dream episode Lion 3, it sets the perfect storytelling tone as these powers grow. If all of Steven’s dreams are loaded with plot stuff, there’s nothing special about interrupting them with even more plot stuff. The field in Lion’s mane and the pool in Malachite’s mind stand out because they contrast with your bog-standard mixed up movie dream, and I’m so glad the crew avoided the temptation to double dip.

So away we go to the waking world! Chille Tid brings back two major elements that have been missing since Full Disclosure. The first is Malachite, whom the Crystal Gems seemed to have forgotten about beyond some lip service in Love Letters. This is probably Season 2′s biggest flaw: there’s a massive monster with absolute control over water trapped in the same water that borders Beach City, she really oughtta be Priority #1.

This is admittedly a slightly smaller problem if you watch the episodes in intended order (albeit at the cost of even worse pacing problems at the end of Season 1, in my repeatedly stated opinion). Still, watching in the Official Order gives us seven Malachite-free episodes between Full Disclosure and Chille Tid. That’s seven too many episodes! Even if the reference is small, as it is in Love Letters, Malachite at least deserves a mention or two, especially because we delve into Steven’s worries in Joy Ride and Sworn to the Sword and discuss the events leading up to Malachite in Rising Tides, Crashing Skies. I know she isn’t named until Chille Tid, and I know we can infer that she’s included in Steven’s concerns, but this is a huge threat that warrants a huge response.

While this puzzling lack of focus makes Chille Tid a breath of fresh air, it also makes the Gems’ seemingly sudden interest feel a bit off. An inciting incident within the episode would’ve gone a long way towards fixing this, but considering how well the tone of exhaustion is captured from the onset, this is a problem that would’ve been solved better with preceding episodes building up to it.

To be fair, the episodes we got are good to great; the show chose character over plot, which is a decision I generally agree with, but Steven Universe typically has its cake and eats it too. Oh well, at least Malachite won’t be completely forgotten again after Chille Tid is done, only to come back out of nowhere in the Season 3 premiere to clumsily interrupt another storyline!

The second element that returns in this episode is Steven acting as the single main character. Even including the reordered episodes meant for Season 1, Steven’s either shared the spotlight or shunned it completely since Full Disclosure, and will pretty much continue to do so for the rest of the season: from here we get the Week of Sardonyx (which is the Gems’ story), then Nightmare Hospital (which is Connie’s story), Sadie’s Song (which is Sadie’s story), and the rest of the season dominated by the Great and Lovable Peridot.

Besides Full Disclosure and Steven’s Birthday, Chille Tid is all Steven gets as the solo headliner this season! Which is much less of an issue than Malachite’s absence, as Steven’s hardly ignored in other episodes and you’ll rarely see me complaining about developing other characters, but the occasional special focus on a title character that’s actually interesting is nice.

From his dead serious approach to life vests to his self-attributed maxims on sleep, our hero remains a reliable source of Steven-specific humor, but he also has room to explore his relationships with multiple characters instead of just one or two main friends. Where the Gems see Malachite as a threat that needs to be handled, he sees her as Lapis’s newest prison. He gets to be an expert on something that Pearl is bad at, flipping their standard student/teacher dynamic, but still hugs her first after waking up from his nightmare. He’s the impetus for Amethyst at her goofiest when she’s holding him in the water, but also her sincerest when he reveals he’s seeing Lapis in his dreams. And Garnet’s concern for his physical and mental health is reinforced by her insistence that he take a break.

(So yeah, a solo Steven episode is actually more like a general ensemble featuring Steven, as compared to an examination of a specific non-Steven character or group. What can I say, this is a show about relationships.)

While Garnet and Amethyst get some great laughs in and out of Steven’s dreams (the winner is Garnet casually tossing away her life jacket, but Amethyst channeling the Pewter City Gym Trainer in re: light years is a close second), Pearl gets a little extra focus. She has her own nightmare, which may be presented as ridiculous by its pizza imagery and goofy music and Amethyst’s teasing, but highlights just how close to her thoughts Rose always is, and finally explicitly shows that she still resents Greg in modern day. And this is on the heels of Garnet leaving Pearl behind despite repeated requests to join in, culminating in a telling and desperate “Let me…let us help you! We’re a team!”

Pearl’s actions in the Week of Sardonyx are in no way justified, but Chille Tid subtly lays the groundwork for her feelings of exclusion and desire to latch onto Garnet. I appreciate this especially because the show could’ve gotten away with not doing it, thanks to Pearl’s flaws being well established at this point; with this small bit of foreshadowing, we’re primed for Pearl going a step too far in dealing with her issues. But hoo boy we will get to that in the next few episodes.

For now, let’s just take it easy.

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

How oh how did nobody in the crew remember the Gem Sloop? Shame on every single person who has ever worked on Steven Universe. What kind of people present Chekov’s Sloop and never set it out to sea again?
Bad people. The answer is bad people. Yes, this gets two slots. Lion may be able to run on water, and Greg may be able to afford yachts in the future, but there’s just no reason to use a generic raft when we’ve established that the Gems have a boat that they’ve bothered to give an official name. It’s not just a sloop, and it’s not even just a Gem Sloop, it’s the Gem Sloop. Pearl’s had it in her Gem this whole time and hasn’t touched it since Cat Fingers.
(Haters will say I’m only obsessing over the Gem Sloop because I like the word “sloop” so much, to which I say…yeah, obviously, so what?)

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

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a sucker for well-done tone. Although underrated Avatar episode The Chase is the standard-bearer for animated depictions of weariness, Chille Tid does a pretty good job too! It also does right by dreams and nightmares, even if it tries a little too hard to milk comedy from Pearl’s anguish and Garnet’s flippant episode-ending advice; I’d take her call to take a break a bit better if it actually led to any sort of attempt to find Malachite.

Still, this is a great one, folks.

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

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!

Episode 61: We Need to Talk

**“I’m…not…a real person.”**

Funny how this episode goes out of its way to prove Rose wrong on that point.

In Reformed, we see Amethyst’s discomfort with her physical state lead to self-destructive self-loathing, and that’s her arc until Earthlings. In Sworn to the Sword, we see Pearl’s lingering feelings for Rose enhance a sense of worthlessness that damages her friends and herself (usually in that order), and that’s her arc until Mr. Greg. In Keeping It Together, we see Garnet face the consequences of an outsider who misunderstands and perverts fusion, and that’s her arc until Log Date 7 15 2. And in We Need to Talk, we finally explicitly see that Rose Quartz wasn’t as flawless as Steven believed, and that’s her arc for the rest of the series.

This is a watershed episode in a series that lives in Rose’s towering shadow. Hints of her more problematic traits go all the way back to the second episode, where the conflict hinges on her secrecy, and we get glimpses into the more negative effects she’s had on Pearl (and Garnet) in Rose’s Scabbard and Sworn to the Sword (and Keeping It Together, a little). But these clues are much easier to see in retrospect, when we know that despite her kindness and love of humans, there’s a certain cold distance that Pink Diamond maintained with even her closest allies that’s just as responsible for Steven’s existence. It may be a given these days that the hero (and villain) of the rebellion was far from perfect, but her humiliating condescension towards Greg is a lurching change of course for her character that hits like a slap in the face.

Crucially, the reveal that Rose has issues doesn’t take away from what makes her great. She likes and loves her friends. She’s funny, as seen in her banter with Greg (my favorite: countering ”I’m getting a little worried about the future” with “Oh, just ask Garnet!”). And despite her blithe spirit, which is the source of all the positives and negatives we see in this episode, she’s willing to take Greg seriously when he affirms his sincerity. Which makes sense, considering what makes her such a huge deal among Gems is her appreciation for change.

Rose Quartz is the savior of Earth, but Pink Diamond was the person who tried conquering it in the first place, and they were the same person. Rose and Pink were both liars, but Rose and Pink both loved humans. They both knew that they needed to change, and that’s how Pink became Rose and Rose became Steven. And it’s crucial that this change comes when Greg demands to be treated as an equal, because as a Diamond, this has likely never happened to her before; it’s easy to see relationships as ultimately disposable if you’ve concretely had more power in relationship you’ve ever had.

In any case, if Steven’s mother was perfect, Steven wouldn’t exist, so it’s about time we start seeing her imperfections.

It goes hand in hand with a more mature depiction of Rose that this is also the first time we focus on her as a sexual figure. It’s kid’s show level to be sure, but the camera’s attention to her eyes and lips during What Can I Do (and, y’know, the song itself) gives us a glimpse of how Greg, an adult who’s at the very least in lust at this point, sees her. And it doesn’t hurt that Susan Egan can go full Megara to inject a certain sultriness in lines as simple as “Oh, yes.” If we’re going to have an episode about seeing Rose for who she really is, well, this is part of who she really is.

What Can I Do is another flashback showstopper on the heels of Comet, and not just because we finally hear Rose Quartz sing (which, again, Megara). Scroll down to any of my episode rankings for the past thirty-nine reviews and you’ll see that my favorite is Steven and the Stevens; forget Greg and Rose, the most critical part of this episode is seeing the origins of the Crystal Gems, Backup Band! And, if you haven’t already, close your eyes and just listen to ~~Greg’s~~ Stemage’s guitar solo on its own. Heck, listen to that guitar the whole song. Kudos to Greg for keeping up while his girlfriend turns into an even huger woman.

We may learn more about Rose’s personality here than any other episode so far, but Greg’s still the focus character, and he’s grown since Story for Steven. I love the new lived-in relationships he has with the other three Crystal Gems, from open rivalry with Pearl to big brother friendship to Amethyst to chummy admiration with Garnet. It would make no sense for him to get to know Rose without getting to know her roommates, and seeing most of them hanging out happily and even starting a band of sorts is a testament to Greg as a likable novelty. It’s one thing for Rose to see him differently by the end of the episode, but the rest of Gems take him more seriously as well. He’s a keeper.

Still, it’s Greg’s relationship with Rose that’s at the forefront here, and although we know they end up together, it’s still great to see the dramatic first steps. Greg wears his heart on his sleeve, and I love that we’re seeing a more mature side of that after a flashback that saw him abandon his dreams of stardom for a mystery woman. He’s given a lot for this relationship, and it’s nice to see the show respect him enough to have him take that seriously. Rose wasn’t an escape route and Greg’s not a flaky quitter, and We Need to Talk puts a hard stop in that potential interpretation of his impulsive actions in Story for Steven.

At the same time, Flashback Greg is still a huge romantic prone to big gestures for giant women, which allows him to believably set up a shining dance floor on the beach just for the two of them. He and Rose are both shown to be infatuated (Rose even goes starry-eyed), but sustainable relationships also need the sort of dependability and resolve that Greg shows in his words and actions. He proves himself someone that deserves to be taken seriously, which is critical for their conversation to work.

The talk itself is nicely understated, touching on the fact that both characters have been in relationships before without dwelling on details, and selling Rose’s confusion and distress in regards to love without falling on hackneyed “human emotion does not compute” tropes. It’s just the start of the next step in their relationship, and we get just enough to understand that progress is being made.

Structurally, I appreciate that We Need to Talk spends less time outside of Greg’s perspective than Story for Steven; it’s not perfect (the final scene is of the other Crystal Gems saying things Greg couldn’t have possibly heard) but it’s better! It’s also a much more immersive setting than the other flashback, using an 80′s vibe (Rainbow Quartz’s appearance, Garnet’s keytar) as shorthand for the past even though this definitely happened in the 90′s at the earliest given Sour Cream’s age. And on a fantasy show with locations like Delmarva, Keystone, and Empire City, I’m so tickled by Greg’s offhand reference to the real-world Marx Brothers: for the record, I’m pretty sure taciturn Garnet is Harpo, talkative Pearl is Groucho, and clownish Amethyst is Chico.

If it’s interesting to see Rose diverge from what we’re used to, it’s downright fascinating to see Pearl so confident and sassy around Greg. Story for Steven only references the Pearl factor with a one-off joke, but she practically needs to be a major plot point in We Need to Talk if we’re going to take seriously the notion that Pearl loved Rose. This is Pearl pre-grief, still fighting for Rose, and I love that she’s a huge brat about it, especially after Mr. Greg clarifies how accustomed she was to Rose’s other flings. We only see Pearl act like her modern iteration at the very end as she’s crushed by the realization that she has actual competition (after all those years, she never thought she’d lose). And the tragedy, for her, is that her nettling of Greg about fusion is what caused him and Rose to get closer.

(Amethyst and Garnet are more similar to their modern counterparts; Amethyst’s a bit more feral, but she still drinks motor oil so there you go.)

Present day once again bookends a Greg flashback, but this time we get thematic mirroring between the two time periods. Connie’s on a roll this week in terms of bonding with non-Stevens, first with Pearl and now with Greg. We’ve seen the pair hang out a few times now, in situations as intense as Ocean Gem and mundane as Winter Forecast, but they’ve never really spoken meaningfully to each other until now. Which is a shame, because Connie and Greg’s wildly different personalities help hide what this episode finally makes obvious: they’re both regular humans who love magic and are lucky enough to also love magical people. And in that sense, they’re alone together.

Stevonnie’s grand reappearance lasts exactly ten seconds, but it’s obviously enough to leave a major impression. Greg once again proves to be a fantastic parent, quickly shifting from his initial shock to warm reassurance after seeing Connie’s frantic worrying. And even though his straight recitation of the episode’s moral is a little After School Special cliche, we get a surprisingly bittersweet ending out of his desire to help Connie. It’s just lovely to see the two of them make this new connection, and Steven’s exclusion serves to connect him with Rose, but as we’ll see in Steven’s Birthday, it’s quietly sad to see him left out of the Human Beings club.

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

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Hilary Florido’s AU, and here’s another instance of it being the official promo art; like the lack of traditional promo art for Keeping It Together, this may be due to the Steven Bomb rushing things, but if that’s the case then I’m doubly grateful for the time she took to give us such a wonderful gaze into the Steven Universe Academy.

Future Vision!

Connie’s secrecy regarding magic finally reaches a turning point in Nightmare Hospital, which alongside Sworn to the Sword and We Need to Talk solidifies her new role as Deputy Crystal Gem. (And occasional Crystal Temp.)
Pearl’s confidence in fusion as the thing that puts her and Rose’s relationship at a higher level than Greg could ever achieve is given new layers after seeing the birth of Rainbow Quartz in Now We’re Only Falling Apart.

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

Definitely an upgrade compared to Story for Steven. There’s something to be said for love at first sight, but this is a great moment in developing both Greg and Rose as people in a real relationship.

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
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity

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
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride
We Need to Talk

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!

Episode 60: Keeping It Together

“It’s not our fault!”

Does Steven Universe have a more ominous setting than the Prime Kindergarten? Rose’s room comes close (and I maintain that Rose’s Room is the scariest episode of the series), but episodes featuring the room always pay off the unsettling setting with an actual scare. Whereas the muted colors and cacophonous clangs of Kindergarten maintain a constant thrumming dread, promising something horrible and imminent, and lets that tone linger uninterrupted. Amethyst’s fight with Pearl in On the Run is intense, and the Crystal Gems confronting Peridot in Marble Madness ramps up the suspense, but we haven’t seen any true horror from Kindergarten until now.

And yeah, holy shit.

As I mentioned in Reformed and Sworn to the Sword, Keeping It Together establishes Garnet’s season-long arc. But hers is much different from her fellow Gems’, both in structure (it’s the shortest by far and resolves with its Peridot Episode instead of its Steven Episode) and in tone. Garnet’s the emotionally healthiest Gem on the planet, so she needs a bigger push than Amethyst or Pearl if she’s going to lose her cool. This isn’t to belittle the other two Gems, but there’s a reason the prompts for their episodes are day-to-day issues (for them) like renewing their physical forms or training a student, while Garnet needs dramatic scenarios like the Cluster Gems or a friend’s betrayal to reach the same level of crisis.

In short, external motivation is everything to Garnet’s arc because she lacks the internal baggage of her peers. There’s nothing wrong with being ~~queer~~ a fusion, so her problems stem from societal oppression that target her for just being who she is. We’ve seen her face fusionphobia with grace against Jasper, and we’ll see that bookended with Peridot when the season ends, but an attack on her identity as abhorrent as the Cluster Gems is certainly grounds for an extreme reaction.

We’ll get there, but first, I have to point out how well-structured this whole episode is. The opening revels in switcheroos, first with Garnet’s serious conversation turning out to be part of a chore session, then with two red herrings in quick succession: the hint that we might see Ruby and Sapphire, and an extended callback to On the Run suggesting a focus on Amethyst.

From there, the episode looks like it’s going to be about Steven settling into his own new status quo as a more respected member of the Crystal Gems. And in a way, it is! We certainly spend a lot of time with him, and he summons his shield without any fanfare when the going gets tough. But it makes sense to focus on him more here than in Reformed and Sworn to the Sword, because Garnet’s status as a fusion is still novel to him and has changed their relationship in a way that warrants examination. And in an episode about Garnet encountering forces that don’t understand fusion to a horrific degree, it’s a soothing contrast to see Steven’s own misunderstanding come in the form of genuine curiosity.

Steven’s also where we get a lot the goofiness that often accompanies the show’s horror episodes, but don’t let the clip of his incredible shrug fool you, the comedy crown’s going to Peridot. This is the episode that really tips the scales on Peridot as a villain: she began as a coldhearted alien, and her bureaucratic fussiness emerged in Warp Tour and Jailbreak, but now she’s fully transitioned from a menacing opponent to a panicky thorn in the Crystal Gems’ side. All it takes is one look at Steven to make her lose her worker bee cool, and the action scene that follows plays her increasingly absurd bag of tricks for laughs as she outmaneuvers our heroes.

Peridot’s newfound jitters make sense on a character level, as she’s suddenly lost her power and is stuck on a world she knows is doomed. But the silliness that ensues also works wonders for Keeping It Together’s structure: by making her such a loud source of comedy, her exit marks a concrete tonal shift from goofy to serious. And by making her someone to be pursued, we get rid of Amethyst and Pearl in the process. And by revving up to a breakneck pace to follow her zany action, we reach the third act around the episode’s halfway mark to let it sink in that much deeper. Thanks, Peridot!

After focusing on Garnet in the episode’s onset, we’re right back to hanging out with her again. She’s even more confident than usual here, accepting Steven’s praise with a simple “thank you” and acknowledging out loud that she’s great, to show us just how big of a deal her panic attack is. We’ve seen her handle monster after monster without breaking a sweat, and she even defeats Jasper with a smile hours after getting destabilized. But the Cluster Gems hit her where it hurts, and seeing Garnet get rattled like this is even scarier than the monsters themselves.

Not to take away from Aivi and Surasshu’s awful Cluster Gem theme (great, but awful), but the true sound heroes of this scene are whoever designed the ungodly noises these things make. Considering nobody is credited as “Monster Scream Maker” I’ll go ahead and shout out the whole incredible sound design team for this one: Timothy J. Borquez, Susy Campos, Tony Orozco, Daisuke Sawa, Robert Serda, and Tom Syslo. I have no idea how their jobs work, but I’m so glad they’re so great at what they do.

And then of course there the visuals, and dear lord are they upsetting. The drizzle of mismatched body parts starts small, with a hand and foot that happen to match Ruby and Sapphire’s colors taking the Gem Shard concept we’ve seen in Frybo and Secret Team to a whole new level of creepy. But the limbs get bigger and bigger until the excruciating reveal of five screaming Gem ghosts transforming into a monstrous “arm” reinforces Garnet’s pained explanation of what these Cluster Gems actually are: the remains of her long-dead friends forced together.

But even then, even as Garnet’s literally falling apart, she manages to push through the horror and save the day with Steven’s help, leading to Estelle’s incredible argument with herself. Where A.J. Michalka’s frequent use of separate voices for Steven and Connie shows Stevonnie’s youthful uncertainty, Estelle’s normally steady performance makes her frantic and distinct portrayals of Ruby and Sapphire a shocking swerve. It both subverts and fulfills our expectation of seeing Garnet’s two halves after Stephen brought them up during laundry, and brings home the idea that splitting up isn’t a fun party trick no matter how much Stephen (and fans) want to see more of them.

The little details here are amazing. I love that it’s Ruby’s eye that tears up during the fight, but by the aftermath she’s moved to rage while Sapphire’s still reeling; one lives moment to moment, and the other thinks in the long term. I love that gaps in the conversation are filled by them clearly sharing the same thoughts, namely that Rose might have known about these experiments and kept them secret; the notion that this is even possible foreshadows how dark Rose’s secrecy is going to get in the coming episodes. And even though it’s tragic, I love that the header quote can first be read as Garnet’s guilt over being part of the rebellion that caused her friends to suffer, but can be reread after The Answer as guilt over prompting the Diamonds’ interest in fusion. It’s not her fault, but it certainly would feel like it was.

But therein lies the difference between Garnet and Amethyst/Pearl: guilt this intense would shut the latter two down, but by the end of the episode Garnet has kept it together. She’s still upset, and she should be, but she’s not letting herself drown in her sadness and anger.

The Week of Sardonyx is about to test Garnet again, and Pearl’s betrayal can hit even harder now that we’ve explicitly been told about the importance of consent in fusion. And as I hinted at earlier, fusion’s multipurpose metaphor extends to a specifically queer reading that’s vital to Garnet’s arc. I honestly wouldn’t mind being hammered over the head with the message that homophobia is bad, because yeah, homophobia is bad and kids should know that and children’s media doesn’t bring it up very often. But like everything to do with fusion, the Steven Universe team handles the allegory factor with incredible finesse. There’s no one-to-one analogy between fusion and queerness beyond Ruby and Sapphire both presenting as female; indeed, the mistreatment of queer people in the real world rarely includes forcing them into long-term relationships with each other a la the Cluster Gems, and Homeworld society only finds fusion acceptable in same-Gem relationships, so it’s actually heterophobic if we want to get pedantic.

This show doesn’t need an episode about conversion therapy or corrective rape to display the horror of an outside force perverting what you are and oppressing who you are, and Garnet’s journey through Season 2 shows that Steven Universe isn’t content with presenting two women in a relationship and patting themselves on the back for being progressive. The fact that they’re addressing homophobia with sensitivity but without pulling punches is something entirely new, but the fact that they’re doing so while enhancing a character and advancing the main plot is even more spectacular.

Future Vision!

The headline here may be kicking off Garnet’s arc, but it also revs up the Cluster Arc: these shard fusions are bad, but who could’ve guessed they were apocalyptically bad?
Peridot’s surprising resilience to large objects and gravity is as true in the Beta Kindergarten as it is in the Prime, if Kindergarten Kid is anything to go by.
I’m leaving this space open for when we find out that Pink Diamond totally knew where the shards were the whole time.

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

As great as Steven is here, would he really be that surprised that he’s coming along? I get that they’re showing that the status quo of getting some respect is still new to him, but yeah, after saving everyone in Jailbreak I think he’s pretty official. Enh, just a gripe, it’s implemented well.

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

I think just above On the Run sounds right for Keeping It Together. It’s a terrific Garnet episode with a welcome side of Peridot, and manages to set the stage for a new arc while culminating Kindergarten’s foreboding tone with a bang.

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
Keeping It Together
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity

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
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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!

(No official title card for this one, likely due to Keeping It Together being part of a Steven Bomb, but luckily this piece from Vondell Swain will do.)

Episode 59: Rising Tides, Crashing Skies

“I guess it’s pretty bad, but what’s a regular old guy like me supposed to do about it?”

Heyyyyy Ronaldo.

Y’know, this episode isn’t as bad as I remember. Watching it the
first time, it stuck out mostly for its terrible timing after an episode as
powerful as Sworn to the Sword, and looked even
worse when its Steven Bomb was done: Keeping It Together, We Need to Talk, and Chille Tid are not great
company when you’re only a middling episode. Even now, I think it would’ve been
smart to put this just before Reformed as a coda to the
human-centric chunk of early Season 2 episodes, or right after Chille Tid as a buffer between Malachite and the Week of Sardonyx.
But watching it again, I can admit that Rising Tides, Crashing Tides isn’t a terrible episode.

Now, it’s not great, but what it lacks in
substance it (sort of) makes up for in comedy. Where Crying Breakfast Friends is self-parody in show form, Ronaldo is
self-parody in human form—which by the way further solidifies placing this
episode nearer to Reformed or Cry for Help, which both feature CBF—so he’s a great lens
to show a human reaction to the Homeworld Gems’ return. And if you’re going to
use a gimmicky character, you might as well use a gimmicky format that includes
how more typical civilians are coping

The saving grace of this episode is its lovingly accurate
portrayal of a teenager’s crappy documentary. With the exception of the
trying-too-hard reenactment jokes (the flopping fish for Nanefua and Ronaldo’s
hand for the handship), I laughed way harder than I thought I would at its
format-specific humor. Ronaldo’s terrible cutting is perfect, as is that weird
but universal obsession with “official-looking” title cards (undercut by
Comic Sans and plodding text effects).

But if you’re mining for
comedy gold, look no further than the description assigned to each character.
Some are general jokes (Kiki’s is “Pizza Heiress” and Mayor Dewey’s
is “Mayor Dewey”) while others reveal Ronaldo’s perspective on his
interviewees (Sadie’s is “Horror Movie Enthusiast” and Jenny’s
is “Intimidating Teenage Girl”). Still, the obvious winner is Steven.

The jokes directly from Ronaldo, as always, are more hit and
miss. Considering there’s not too much to talk about in Rising Tides, Crashing Skies besides the humor, I’d like to take a
moment to examine what makes him so inconsistent.

Subtlety is where Ronaldo flies highest and fall hardest. I’m
sure it’s difficult to use a light touch on such a broad character, but Zachary
Steel’s great enough at going full ham that he doesn’t need that much help from
the writers. Ronaldo’s obliviousness is bound to make him say dumb things, but
this sometimes makes incongruity itself the punchline when it should be the
bare minimum for a gag. There’s a reason why ~~everybody~~ almost everybody grows out of “so random!” comedy, and it’s because there’s no depth to it beyond the standard
surprise that every joke has.

Still, this shallowness
isn’t limited to lolrandom humor. Take, for instance, Ronaldo’s narration over
his nighttime exposé. He looks right at the camera and talks about how brave he
is to be sneaking around with a camera. You see, normally a hero doesn’t have
to say they’re being brave, so we wouldn’t expect someone to say that they’re
brave. But he does. That’s it. That’s the whole joke.

There are tons of ways to show that a character is
self-important that don’t involve them essentially telling us “I am
self-important.” And Steven Universe usually does just
that: Ronaldo’s brooding in Full Disclosure, his smug yet
incorrect explanations of how the world works in Keep Beach City Weird, and smatterings of this very episode (like
calling his home movie “an investigative report shot camera vérité”) all
reveal how pompous he is. Which is great, but it only makes his “I’m
so brave to be doing this” line more frustrating, because it’s not even
teaching us anything new about him.

But on the flipside, the understated interviewee descriptions I
mentioned above and small moments of Ronaldo acting like a real person as he
futzes with the camera work so well because he’s usually so
broad, and seeing him act like a real person is an incongruity that adds fuel to the joke (rather than being the joke itself). So you have to make him annoying
and loud to make the quiet moments land, but not too annoying and loud because then we just hate the guy and
the jokes get lazy.

Again, this can’t be an easy balance for the writers—and I
haven’t even mentioned the additional pressure to provide constant humor with a
flat character whose only role is to be funny—but that doesn’t mean I have to
enjoy when the scales tip too hard on the obnoxious end. The reason Ronaldo
works best in small doses is because the longer he’s on screen, the more likely
it is that the writers will slip up and make him go full Ronaldo. Rising Tides, Crashing Skies does surprisingly well, but there are still plenty
of moments where its hero is a pain to watch.

One thing that helps any wacky character is a straight man, and
Peedee ably fills the role despite his own quirks. Atticus Shaffer hasn’t had
much to do since Frybo beyond the occasional
line, so it’s great to hear him spend a whole episode grounding Ronaldo with
his signature blend of solemnity and anxiety. We already know from Keep Beach City Weird that Peedee understands his brother better than
anyone, so putting him on the documentary team provides some much-needed
commentary on an episode about commentary. I appreciate his introduction as an
interview subject to reestablish his character, considering his lack of focus
throughout the series, before making him Ronaldo’s semi-willing sidekick.

In terms of that whole subtlety thing I was going on about, I
love that Peedee’s maturity and capability isn’t overplayed: he fumbles through
filmmaking just as much as Ronaldo and spends as much time freaking out as he
does calmly explaining things. This is a responsible guy, and Ronaldo’s
behavior makes Peedee look particularly competent, but he’s still a normal kid
and not a flanderized child prodigy. We already have one extreme character
here, and I’m glad the crew doesn’t make the mistake of thinking we need
another one to balance him out.

But it’s the third Fryman that gets the line of the episode,
summing up what an adjusted adult almost has to be in Beach City. He’s aware of
how powerless he is in a world of magic and monsters, but he sighs and accepts
it instead of letting this knowledge cripple him. He’s got a family and a
business to take care of, and he seems to be succeeding at both, so there’s
nothing to be gained by worrying about things that are out of his hands. Most
of the documentary’s interviewees have the same mindset, highlighting that Ronaldo is distinguished by his unwillingness to normalize weirdness rather than being the only one who notices it.

I’m surprised we don’t see Papa Fryman’s counterpoint, Kofi Pizza: Beach Party is an entire episode about
Kofi facing a similar sense of powerlessness as Mr. Fryman with the same
righteous rage as Ronaldo, so he’d fit right in (plus we see everyone else in
his family, so why stop at Nanefua?). Perhaps having someone who actually agreed with Ronaldo would dull
the episode’s message, but it would’ve been nice to see someone acknowledge
that our documentarian is actually correct.

The Crystal Gems are
responsible for Beach City being a magnet for disaster, and seeing them from
the point of view of an endangered civilian could make for a fascinating
episode. Beach Party and Rising Tides, Crashing Skies come
closest, and Lars’s own acknowledgment of how horrible such daily dangers can be in The New Lars is a turning point in his
characterization, but so far it seems that the crew isn’t interested in showing
the consequences of being the Crystal Gems’ neighbors in a serious light.
Considering how willing they are to show the consequences of being raised by the Crystal Gems (and, y’know,
the fact that it’s their show and not mine), I accept it, but would
still love to see more; I feel like the subject deserves a better episode than this.

Okay, what else. The Crystal Gems are obviously gonna be funny
in a Ronaldo episode, as I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing him
treated with open disdain (so long as the characters aren’t actually cruel like Lars). We don’t get any introspection from empathy
machine Steven about how dangerous the Gems are, partially because he already
did that in Beach Party but mostly
because this is a breezy episode despite its pointed criticism of our heroes.
It’s great that Ronaldo only wants them back because he selfishly wants a weird
city regardless of the risks; that is, it’s great in a character sense, because
Ronaldo is despicable and this lack of concern for others is true to who he is.

I don’t know for certain if
the final shot is a reference to Ronaldo’s polarizing nature, but I’d like to
think it is. Especially because, despite myself, I’d be clicking the same
button as Steven. If you hated this episode as much as I did when I first saw it, I’d suggest going back and watching it on its own: it’s much better by itself than it is as a dead stop to a marathon’s momentum.

Future Vision!

“Wait, so the hand wasn’t here to snatch up humans for a human zoo?”
Still no word on if the Great Diamond Authority plans on interfering with the subsidized Beach City Wind Farm or thawing out the cryogenically frozen pets of the one percent, but considering Ronaldo’s track record I wouldn’t be surprised.
(But seriously I think Ronaldo might actually have a future in intergalactic diplomacy.)

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

Wait, what wind farm? When have we ever seen windmills around Beach City? We’ve even been to the outskirts at the barn, and not a fan to be seen. I’d appreciate any screenshots that prove me wrong on this.

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

I stand by my assessment that Keep Beach City Weird is the best Ronaldo episode, but that doesn’t mean Rising Tides, Crashing Skies is bad. In any case, it’s sort of an entity unto itself: it’s strange to categorize it as something other than a Ronaldo episode considering he’s the main character, but the unusual format puts it in a whole other category for me: this is the Documentary Episode, featuring Ronaldo.

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
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity
The Test

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
Future Vision
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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!

Episode 58: Sworn to the Sword

**“Yes, excellent.”**

Sworn
to the Sword owes a lot to Steven the Sword Fighter for
obvious reasons, and acts as a direct continuation of Rose’s Scabbard, but it secretly has another big sister, albeit one that makes a point of Pearl’s absence and develops an entirely different character. It’s this third episode that, structurally speaking, is actually Sworn’s closest relative and the most fun to watch side-by-side. I’ll give you a paragraph to guess what it is.

In episodic media like television, a fun plot can often be found by taking two established characters that
don’t normally interact and shoving them together to see what happens. But so far in Steven Universe, the most common pairings we see involve Steven and someone else; non-Steven relationships tend to be pre-packaged duos like Lars/Sadie and
Amethyst/Pearl, or an introduction to new characters en masse like the Cool
Kids (with Lars) in Lars and the Cool Kids and
the Pizza family (with the Gems) in Beach Party.

While Horror Club bucked this trend first by bouncing Lars off Ronaldo, Maximum Capacity goes above
and beyond by pairing Greg with Amethyst. Lars/Ronaldo and Greg/Amethyst both
bring out the worst in each other in these episodes, but the latter
relationship benefits from its use of two main characters with complex flaws
and known histories instead of two side characters defined by their grating
natures.

Greg and Amethyst
are both fun and messy, are both accused of being far more irresponsible than
they actually are, and both harbor deep insecurities about their shortcomings. This
human/Gem pair seems like a perfect match, but in practice, their similarities
only intensify their flaws until they get caught in a downward spiral that
can only be stopped by Steven.

If we sub in Connie and Pearl for the human/Gem pair, that last sentence
is literally the plot of Sworn to the Sword.
In this case, our subjects are both huge nerds, which we see
in their intelligence and intense passion. But while their
nerdiness is usually portrayed positively, their single-mindedness and bouts with obsession can blind them
to the needs of others, as we’ve seen in the likes of Open Book and Rose’s Scabbard.

As a Connie/Pearl episode (but secretly a Pearl/Connie episode), Sworn to the Sword was bound to point out their
similarity. But it wasn’t bound to do it quite like this:

Do It For Her is frightening because it works: Connie can hardly be blamed for getting sucked into Pearl’s regimen when we’re just as invested. After all, she’s so happy to be training, right? And when Pearl first lets slip a “her” instead of a “him,” she recognizes it with a smile and a shrug, so it must be a harmless mistake. Grace Rolek’s singing voice, only introduced minutes earlier in The Jam Song, is heartbreakingly earnest as Connie morphs from hesitant to confident (also signified by the old standby of taking off her glasses). And Deedee Magno Hall’s theater-honed musical storytelling chops hold everything together. Really, it’s about the loveliest song about indoctrinating a child soldier that you could hope for.

(But seriously, watch that clip again and only listen to the instruments. Pearl gets her signature piano, but fellow violinist Connie is represented by quiet strings that grow more pronounced as she progresses; the turning point is a droning high-pitched note as Connie gives in to the concept that she’s expendable. Brilliant stuff.)

Anyway, for what it’s worth, Pearl isn’t
intentionally cruel. Her attitude says much more about how she sees herself
than how she sees Connie: like Amethyst’s final fight with the Slinker in Reformed, Pearl’s self-esteem is so low that she fights without any sense of self-preservation.
The difference is that Amethyst actively dislikes herself, while Pearl only (“only”) thinks that she’s worthless, especially compared to the love of her life. While
we haven’t seen many hints of Pearl’s martyr complex before now, that makes sense,
because it only gets revved up when she’s in the mindset of protecting a
superior.

This is why I say this is a Pearl episode a bit more than it is a Connie one. Connie may learn a whole bunch, but we learn a whole bunch about Pearl. Her feelings for Rose (which are pretty solidly shown to be romantic here if Rose’s Scabbard was too ambiguous for you) don’t just make Pearl sad in the present due to Rose’s death, but led to all sorts of deeper issues due to their inherently toxic dynamic.

Whether Rose had feelings for Pearl or not, it didn’t stop her from exerting her power as a Diamond to give her orders. Pearl’s idea of love is self-sacrificial to a ludicrous degree, and while it may seem senseless, considering Rose very famously owned a shield, bear in mind that if Rose had been poofed, Pink Diamond’s secret would have been revealed. Love and obligation to a superior do not blend well into a healthy relationship, and whether she genuinely wanted to or not, Pearl had no choice but to do everything in her power to protect Rose.

As I said in discussing Reformed, this is the beginning of Pearl’s next big arc, and the more we learn about pearls, the more obviously their subservient role shapes Pearl’s attitude even now. Rose’s Scabbard presented a problem without insulting us by providing an easy solution, but Sworn to the Sword reinforces that Pearl’s gonna need some more time to recover from her abusive relationship.

However, just like
in Rose’s Scabbard, our ability to understand Pearl’s behavior doesn’t make it okay that she’s taking it out on an innocent child. Remember how our introduction to Holo Pearl involved Pearl Classic essentially role-playing a duel, dialogue and all? If any of the Gems are going to recognize a fantasy-prone mindset in a student, it would be Pearl, but she’s either so insensitive to human needs that she doesn’t see how her training might be taking advantage of Connie’s imagination, or she just doesn’t care. And the scary thing is that when it comes to Pearl, either scenario is genuinely possible!

Connie’s gotta be all in for this episode to work, but fortunately everything we know about her says that this would be her reaction. We know she’s used to strict and regular tennis lessons (and apparently violin lessons), we’ve seen her interest in swordplay in Lion 2 and Open Book, and speaking of the latter, we know how willing she is to lose herself in another world. Her normality has always juxtaposed with Steven’s fantasy life, and now someone’s giving her a chance to actively participate in the magic she’s geeked out over for the whole series? Chugging the Kool-Aid is a given, and even if it’s troubling, it’s the perfect conclusion for the end of Connie as we knew her. From here on, her role shifts from that girl in the opening credits reading A Wrinkle in Time to that girl in the opening credits with Rose’s massive sword, and the series is all the better for it.

Still, her unstoppable sword doesn’t put up much of a fight against Steven’s immovable shield, because even more important than all of the qualities listed above is their friendship, and the show knows it. The first song in Sworn to the Sword is nothing to scoff at, and the kids’ adorable interactions once they warp to the sky (particularly Connie’s giggle fit after warping, echoing Steven’s own initial reaction all the way back in Cheeseburger Backpack) makes her attitude shift ever more upsetting.

It’s a smart choice to make Connie initially stick by her guns when Steven interrupts her final challenge, but quickly shift to Steven’s side after he pulls out the shield. Pearl may have done her best to pass along her self-destructive mindset, but it would take more than a few weeks of training to crack the solid bedrock of Connie and Steven’s friendship. Their coordination on the field is a blast; not to take away from Connie, but it’s just awesome to watch Steven getting the hang of combat with his shield and bubble instead of relying on singular, dazzling feats of summoning.

(I also love that Pearl effortlessly dispatches them; they already got the emotional victory, and it’s absurd to think that they stand a chance against a warrior who’s been fighting for thousands of years without, I dunno, fusing or something.)

Just like Steven the Sword Fighter and Rose’s Scabbard, this is secretly an
episode about Garnet and Amethyst hanging out. True, we don’t actually hear
what the funniest thing Amethyst ever heard is, but I love these two in the
background, especially right after Reformed
saw them in a tiff. While they provide critical exposition to bring about the
third act, their biggest contribution is filling in between two of my favorite gags
in the series: an absolutely perfect three-beat joke,
and Steven’s worried but grateful parting words.

I love
both of these jokes—particularly the book joke, which is up there with “I’m seein’ double here!” as one of my favorite television jokes period—but they’re probably enhanced by the lack of comedy anywhere
else in the episode. There’s plenty of pleasantness
to contrast with the drama, but not many laughs outside of these two jokes; it isn’t news at this point, but I still love how confident the crew is with allowing long moments of simple friendship without using humor as a crutch to fill time. These writers can be funny, but they don’t need to be to keep our attention.

It’s a shame that we now have two Pearl-acts-terrible episodes but zero apologies. It does make the Week of Sardonyx all the sweeter when Garnet finally demands for Pearl to get her shit together, but within Sworn to the Sword the lack of explicit remorse feels a little off, especially given how recently she let Steven dangle off that cliff. Pearl clearly sees that she was in the wrong, a “sorry” wouldn’t kill her.

Still, the crew’s willingness to make beloved characters do awful yet realistic things is so refreshing now that the out-of-character misfires are out of the way, and no Gem does awful quite like Pearl. A big part of that can be chalked up to Deedee Magno Hall’s decidedly non-awful performance, and Sworn to the Sword sees her weaving through a thicket of emotions without a scratch. Even her crying is distinct: she portrays happy-crying after hearing how Connie wants to fight, sad-crying as she shouts at Steven, and that in-between mixture of a sigh and a gasp of laughter after Connie asks how Rose made her feel. And again, most of the actors on this show can sing, but Magno Hall’s ability to tell a story in song is second to none.

Add a low-key depiction of amethysts as an enemy warrior class and multiple shots containing the crest of the Great Diamond Authority (complete with a damaged Pink) to build some low-key lore, and you’ve got a solid episode that pulls few punches and prepares us for a whole new world of storytelling. Pearl’s got work to do, Connie’s role starts to shift from outsider friend to close ally, and Steven continues to build those conflict resolution skills. Man, an Amethyst episode and a Pearl episode back to back? You know what that means for our next episode!

(~~Garnet~~Ronaldo!)

Future Vision!

Sworn to the Sword kicks off the second Steven Bomb, but you have to stretch to find much thematic resonance between it and the next four episodes in the same way we get in other Bombs. Still, I enjoy how Lapis mirrors (heh, mirrors) Pearl’s wording as she commits her own act of self-sacrifice in Chille Tid.
Speaking of self-sacrifice for Steven, how about that other human who shows him loyalty by kneeling?

The Break-Up Arc following Wanted hinges on the new partnership between Steven and Connie that this episode establishes, and emphasizes this via the term “Jam Buds.”
Break-Up Arc opener Dewey Wins also manages to pull off another How to Talk to People joke. There’s nothing like a sight gag that wedges its way into the show’s continuity.

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

I mean,
Pearl’s loyalty to Rose predates the concept of being a knight by thousands and thousands of
years; technically Pearl could have
found out about knights well after the rebellion and liked the idea in
retrospect, but that’s not what the scene implies.

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

I moved Rose’s Scabbard up a few spots after A Single Pale Rose changed it from great to devastatingly great. I still like Sworn to the Sword is a little more, as Pearl’s toxic response to her grief is even worse here (she’s not great in Rose’s Scabbard, but she’s not poisoning the mindsets of others to match her own) and it has terrific storytelling through song. They’re essentially a tie, but this barely gets the edge if I have to pick.

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
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity
The Test

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
Future Vision
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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

Enh

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

No Thanks!

Episode 57: Reformed

**“So what, I’m not strong enough?”**

After Rose’s Scabbard, episodes zeroing in on the Gems as individuals took a
backseat to the buildup and aftermath of Peridot’n’Pals crashing the party. But
now that the dust has settled, it’s the perfect time to check in with how our leads are doing in the brief status quo between Jailbreak and the meat of Season 2: the
Week of Sardonyx and the Cluster Arc (a.k.a. Peridot’n’New Pals).

Reformed, Sworn to the Sword,
and Keeping It Together provide an emotional baseline for
Amethyst, Pearl, and Garnet that informs their character arcs through the end
of Season 3: Amethyst struggles with her self-image in Reformed, Pearl struggles with her low self-worth and lingering grief over
Rose in Sworn to the Sword, and
Garnet struggles with a misunderstanding and under-appreciation of fusion in Keeping It Together, and yeah, that’s
pretty much what they’re up to for the next forty episodes or so.

What’s cool is that all three
arcs use the same general structure to tell different stories. Each Gem establishes
what their arc is going to be about in the episodes listed above, then examines
this subject in greater detail during the Week of Sardonyx, gets a Peridot
episode that examines the subject even further while characterizing our newest
Crystal Gem (Back to the Barn for
Pearl, Too Far for Amethyst, Log Date 7 15 2 for Garnet), and
resolves the arc with Steven (The Answer
for Garnet, Mr. Greg for Pearl, Crack the Whip through Earthlings for Amethyst). Garnet does it
in a different order than the others, but she still hits all the beats.

(Technically, Love
Letters also features Garnet facing someone who doesn’t understanding
fusion, and can easily be read as the kickoff to her arc. However, I consider it a Jamie episode featuring Garnet more than
a true Garnet episode, especially next to Keeping It Together.)

Amethyst got a great one-two punch in On the Run and Maximum Capacity
late in Season 1, but invokes more of the former far more than the latter this
season as she works through her self-identity issues; it’s no coincidence that we see a No Home Boys book among her clutter.

With that in mind, Reformed is a brilliant look into Amethyst’s psyche; it honestly tells us everything we need to know about her, which is remarkable given the absence of her series-wide foil Pearl. She’s messy, impulsive, and veers between taking things too lightly and taking things too personally. Our resident shapeshifter’s rapid-fire reformations display three different personal issues—two of which are tellingly related to Pearl and Garnet—that ultimately highlight her discomfort with being in her own skin.

Amethyst’s first new form looks normal at first, and her
initial dismay at having feet for hands is dismissed with a joke. She makes a
show of doing it on purpose to save face in front of Steven, but as she grows
more annoyed with his probing questions (the personality quiz is a great running gag that gives Steven
something to do while keeping the focus on Amethyst, by the way), she uses
those feet to speed up: even before Garnet spells out that she was too impulsive,
her form reflects her self-destructive distaste for slowing down and thinking
things through. And just before she’s poofed again, she reveals a gigantic
ear concealed by her hair, which acts as nifty visual shorthand for how she can’t hide that she’s always listening to criticism.

The flaws exhibited here—impulsiveness and sensitivity
to judgment—are two of Amethyst’s most basic attributes. They’re just part of her personality, tied with
her positive traits (like her ability to improvise) and negative traits (her
penchant for self-loathing), and, as we’ll see in her next two forms, they
define how she interacts with her team. It makes all the sense of the world for
such an Amethyst-centric form to be her first, because when anxiety makes you
hate thinking about yourself, thinking about yourself is pretty much all you
do.

Amethyst’s second form is parody of Pearl that also begins as a joke, and plays out that way for most of the sequence. However, the silliness from her gigantic hair and bow is marred by her sickly, floppy feet: like before, something’s clearly wrong.

Michaela Dietz does a mean Deedee Magno Hall, and I mean that in a “it’s great” sense as well as an “Amethyst’s being snotty” sense; the jangling piano theme is a perfect accompaniment to the imitation. But while Amethyst nails Pearl’s need for tidiness and order, she starts slipping into her own problems when diagnosing their shared desperation for approval. Sure enough, the moment Garnet says that her form is ridiculous, Amethyst—who just admitted it was a joke, mind you—loses her cool.

It’s been a long time coming, but Amethyst finally gets her chance to say “Strong” in a meaningful way: in this case, she misconstrues Garnet’s need for team cohesion as a slight on her power, and I love that this happens while she still looks like Pearl, whose own issues with physical might kicks off the show’s thesis on true strength. More than any other Gem (Pearl included) Amethyst is defined by her relationship with physical strength, and we’ll see plenty of this as her arc progresses.

But for now, it leads to her third form, a twisted mess of mass that’s as absurd as her other two tries but without the humor. Steven’s immediate reaction is how painful it looks, and his observation is backed up by awesome sound design as she stretches into shape.

After giving Pearl a try, this new body is a sick reflection of Garnet in the most basic sense: tough and huge. But Amethyst misses what makes her leader so special, and we Garnet’s disappointment destroy her bravado before she takes out her frustration on the Slinker. There’s a brief pause in the action as Garnet saves Steven from rubble and continues to protect him, because spoiler alert teamwork is more important than walloping monsters.

Amethyst’s battle is scored with a variation of Garnet’s bass, but the fight itself is signature Amethyst: she’s a berserker who doesn’t think about her own well-being, which combines with her failure to reform properly to underscore Steven’s realization that she doesn’t want to think about herself. Despite her rapidly depleting muscle mass, it’s only after hearing Steven’s discovery that Amethyst is poofed for the last time and can come back as a same-and-improved variant of herself. And even then, she feels the need to hide her true feelings about being hugged.

The inherent sadness of the episode is eased along by some of the best slapstick this side of Kindergarten Kid. When Pearl and Garnet get poofed in Steven the Sword Fighter and The Return, they’re traumatic experiences for Steven and the audience. But Amethyst goes out like a dark punchline, and even gets a literal punchline in Steven’s hilarious “Is it weird I’m getting numb to this?” to sate the rule of three. Like Tiger Millionaire, the physicality of Amethyst allows for a greater degree of physical humor than the her fellow Crystal Gems, at least until Peridot comes along.

The plot is immeasurably improved by having Garnet, not Pearl, act as the secondary Gem on an Amethyst episode (Pearl is spending the episode with Greg, and is oddly getting along with him pretty well). It’s been well established since the dawn of the series that Amethyst and Pearl butt heads, but Amethyst’s reverence for Garnet is rivaled only by Steven’s. In Garnet she sees a bigger, better version of herself, and one that’s made of two Gems from the Shorty Squad. So when Garnet’s the one disciplining her, she can’t just brush it aside. (Again, see Tiger Millionaire, where it’s Garnet’s words that set Amethyst off.)

Garnet isn’t a total wet blanket here, and provides some of the episode’s best laughs (her bit on the Slinker’s name is topnotch use of Estelle’s deadpan), but her role here is the mom to both Steven and Amethyst. It’s fascinating to watch her get frustrated in a way she rarely does with Steven, and “frustration” is the key here: Reformed smartly doesn’t let her impatience boil over into true anger and force a fight between Garnet and Amethyst, because Garnet isn’t the problem. Moreover, the fight with Pearl in On the Run culminated many episodes of conflict, and a week-long feud between Garnet and Pearl is coming soon, so another big brawl here would definitely dilute the oomph of Crystal Gem infighting.

Steven’s in full-on observation mode, aided by the quiz gimmick, but his role as an audience is crucial: Amethyst loves having someone to show off to, and if it’s just her and Garnet the conflict would have resolved with minimal introspection. It’s a clever trick for making him matter without making him the main character, something the show hasn’t always balanced well in the past.

It’ll be a while before Amethyst’s arc really revs up, but that makes an episode like Reformed extra important. A deep look like this leaves a long impression, and by the time Season 3′s endgame rolls around and all sorts of new adventures have come and gone, the issues reinforced here will still be easy to remember.

(Oh, and I hope you enjoyed the original theme song, because it’s the last time we’re hearing that version now that all three Gems have new forms.)

Future Vision!

Considering this is the start of Amethyst’s arc through the next season, expect plenty of episodes to continue the conflict of Reformed.

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

Okay, so this is a pretty rave review, I don’t rewatch this one too often; it’s a great overview of Amethyst with some good jokes, but our look into her deep-seated issues is uncomfortable by design, and we don’t get any major relief from it in the way Connie provides in Sworn to the Sword and Peridot brings in Keeping It Together. It’s a wonderful and important episode, but purely in terms of what I like to watch, it doesn’t quite cross the “Love ‘em” threshold.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity
The Test
Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Future Vision
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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

Enh

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

No Thanks!

Episode 56: Love Letters

“Three’s a crowd.”

So, it turns out that time passes in Beach City! Its residents aren’t in a Springfield Limbo where seasons change but ages stay the same, and this opens a whole new realm of possibilities to expand the ongoing narrative of Steven growing up by having him actually grow up. We really shouldn’t take this for granted, considering how easy it is for a cartoon to freeze characters (especially child characters) in time, and honestly my biggest initial takeaway from Love Letters is that it’s the first episode that explicitly deals with how the passage of time by itself, rather than a series of events like Steven’s adventures, affects the show and its characters. This is a show where Steven, Lars, and Sadie disappeared for a week and nobody seemed to notice, so yeah, it matters.

The reason time alone is a factor is because we focus on the all-but-forgotten Jamie the Mailman. After a cameo in Mirror Gem/Ocean Gem, Jamie disappears without a trace for thirty episodes. This isn’t remarkable for a side character, especially one whose only other appearance is the first scene of the third episode. Jamie may be sweet and funny in Cheeseburger Backpack, but on a show full of sweet and funny characters he was easily lost in the background.

Well, it turns out his absence for the latter half of Season 1 has an in-universe explanation, one that allows the show to hang a quick lampshade on the common trope of vanishing characters while reintroducing him to those of us that forgot he existed: Jamie was literally gone, looking for his big break in the bright lights and busy streets of the Sunflower State, the big KS itself, home of Dorothy Gale and the Rockin’ Chalkin’ Jayhawks, that’s right, Kansas.

I’m really glad he’s back! Jamie’s actually pretty similar to Ronaldo in his role as a background character and occasional lead whose cluelessness is played for laughs and occasional drama. Both are passionate about self-expression (Jamie through acting, Ronaldo through blogging and the occasional documentary) and show some skill at it, but think themselves masters. However, where Ronaldo fluctuates between funny and grating at the drop of a fedora, Jamie’s a consistent force for entertainment; he never reaches the comedic highs of Ronaldo’s A-game, but we never suffer any lows.

The secret, I think, is that Jamie’s core kindness evokes empathy instead of annoyance when he goes off the rails. His silliness doesn’t hurt anyone, and in an episode where he could’ve turned bitter and nasty over romantic rejection, he handles it surprisingly well. This reaction may be a thematic necessity to teach Steven and Connie and the audience a generic “honesty is good” lesson, but it sets the tone for Jamie’s fascinating ability to be self-important without being a jerk.

Jamie’s overacting always benefits from Eugene Cordero’s veteran comedy chops, but is amped up even further by Lamar Abrams and Hellen Jo’s brand of hypersilliness (see: Steven and Garnet’s workout in Future Vision, Amethyst’s burial service in Watermelon Steven, all of Rising Tides, Crashing Skies). Jamie’s love letter is zany enough, but actually seeing him write it does wonders to enhance what could have been a simple letter-reading sequence. Even if Jamie didn’t literally write the letter this way, it’s a nice peek into his ridiculous self-image, complete with anime twinkles.

Steven and Connie are classic theatrical meddlers in a classic farce, where love letters gone awry and easily avoidable misunderstandings create melodramatic tension. It’s a nifty twist that they aren’t playing matchmakers despite their resemblance to middlemen like Don Pedro or Dolly Levi, but just want to spare Jamie’s feelings. And I love that Steven, a hero with a weakness for schmaltz, rejects the idea of Jamie and Garnet as a couple even before Garnet does, solidifying that neither the show nor our well-meaning but misguided kids are going in that direction.

(Love Letters also don’t drag out secret of who wrote “Garnet’s” response letter, which further subverts typical farce tropes but probably has more to do with the eleven minute runtime.)

As Jamie says, Steven and Connie are super cute. It’s nice to have them as supporting characters (albeit the characters with the most screen time); we get snippets of them just hanging out in most of their episodes, but this time it doesn’t contrast with more serious drama like Connie’s replacement by a doppelganger or the possible end of their friendship. This is the first full episode of the two kids just being kids since Winter Forecast (oh look, another Jo/Abrams episode), and it’s soon to be followed by Connie’s temporary indoctrination; heavy episodes like Full Disclosure and Sworn to the Sword may be great, but a respite is appreciated.

Fortunately, a calmer (yet wackier) tone doesn’t mean Love Letters lacks good character moments. Connie gets a quiet display of her growing emotional intelligence in the back-to-back scenes of Jamie’s admission of multiple rejections and the rewrite of Garnet’s letter. In the first scene, after hearing all about Jamie’s emotionally vulnerable state, she sees no issue with handing him another rejection and has to be stopped by Steven; whether or not ripping off the bandage is the right course of action, Connie’s reaction shows a distinct lack of tact. But in the second scene, she’s the head writer of the revamped letter (using the power of torrid soap opera know-how); even if she and Steven are way off-track in terms of how romance works here, she understands the problem and wants to help.

Little slip-ups and corrections like these do a great job of showing how far Connie has come from Bubble Buddies without losing the realistic awkwardness that makes her so endearing. Her disadvantage to Steven on the emotional intelligence front also continues to even out their relationship, as she schools him in book smarts throughout the series and will soon become a far more capable tactical fighter to his natural talent, a la Katara and Aang. Just because Steven’s not an idiot and Connie’s not emotionless doesn’t mean their differences have to go away, and Love Letters is a great example of her lower-key foil duty in action.

Garnet’s mostly great as the oblivious, then apathetic subject of Jamie’s affection. Her sexualized emergence from the sea is almost immediately played for laughs thanks to over-the-top visual effects and Estelle’s sultry deadpan. Visually, while her introduction may evoke classic Birth of Venus imagery, the more amusing sight gag can be found in the, erm, interesting positioning of Jamie’s ~~mailsack~~ ~~malebag~~ mailbag as he’s filled with sudden lust:

But back to Garnet. Her instant and insistent dismissal of Jamie may be cold, but it’s fair and faithful to her character: Garnet’s all good on the relationship front, and we’ve seen how little she cares about the feelings of human strangers from her interactions with Kofi (and her general demeanor). She benefits from having little to do with Steven and Connie’s scheming, which makes her another victim of poor communication who gets fed up with what she perceives to be a pushy admirer instead of doubling down on her bluntness to a point that might make her seem mean; it also reinforces how important is to take the feelings of both people involved in a crush into account.

Even so, my biggest/only issue with Love Letters is her final conversation with Jamie, where she dismisses his infatuation as a performance. I guess I get that she’s trying to let him down easier than before and is putting things in a way he understands, but there’s a much better way to differentiate between love and a crush than essentially saying his crush is delusional. As someone who’s had crushes and has been in love, sure, the latter is strong enough to make the former look tame in retrospect. But that doesn’t make infatuation an act, and for a show that’s all about feelings, Steven Universe could do way better at explaining Garnet’s point of view without being condescending about someone’s emotions (especially the emotions of a young audience).

That said, Jamie’s response is somewhat true: local theater, at least, is really solid advice.

Future Vision!

Beyond local theater being in the future, Love Letters gets a nice resolution in Jamie insisting that he’s moved on in I Am My Mom. And then we get to see that, uh, nope, he’s still holding the torch as of Reunited.
Our introduction to Barb is a long time coming, and the fact that she knows Greg telegraphs their low-key and largely off-screen friendship.

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

Despite Garnet proclaiming that love at first sight doesn’t exist, The Answer more or less shows Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship to be just that. Maybe they spent more time on the surface getting to know each other than it seems, but as per its fairy tale nature, love springs up pretty much immediately. (And it’s great!)

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

I enjoy the goofiness here and the dedication to a farcical format for a theatrical character, and as I said, the acknowledgment that time is an actual factor for this show earns some points. But beyond not sticking the landing, and it’s honestly just a little too broad to be a favorite.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity
The Test
Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Future Vision
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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

Enh

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

No Thanks!

Episode 55*: Shirt Club

“This sounds like a very abstract problem.”

For fear of echoing Buck Dewey’s condescending assessment of Steven’s drawing, there’s just something endearing about a
cartoon about making art. Animation as a medium is remarkable for how many types of artists are involved: for instance, Steven Universe exists as a collaboration between visual artists, writers, songwriters, actors, singers, composers, and instrumental musicians. It’s a crew that by necessity has a passion for art in many forms, and
episodes like Shirt Club let this
passion shine. (See also: James Baxter the Horse from Steven Universe’s big brother Adventure Time.)

Many of the artists behind Steven Universe have multiple
roles: most famously, its storyboarders are also its scriptwriters. Some boarders even pull triple duty, like resident guitarist Jeff Liu and voice
actor Lamar Abrams, who brings Buck to life. It’s fitting, then, that Shirt Club revolves around guitars and
Buck as Steven navigates his way through the perils of publishing his art.

As sincere as this episode is,
it’s also ridiculous. The final sequence of Steven as a faux assassin straight
up shooting Mayor Dewey in the chest is absurd both as a situation within the
show and as something that was allowed to be on the show itself, but sure
enough, Steven Universe manages to
give a lone gunman sniping spree an emotionally fulfilling resolution.

This scene proves a core lesson of the episode: just because something’s silly doesn’t mean it’s not art. Buck
hits the nail on the head when praising Steven’s drawing for its sincerity and
naïveté, even if he’s being a wad about it: the Guitar Dad shirt is awesome
because it’s a pure expression of a kid looking up to a parent, even if that
expression won’t win any medals for aesthetics (and because it won’t). Steven Universe doesn’t need to prove its artistic merits, and the episode is wise to avoid this path and devolving into meta defensiveness, but I appreciate how its structure demonstrates its message.

That Buck recognizes Guitar Dad’s merits but sees its meaning in a negative
light speaks volumes about his own relationship with his father, as well as the
general adolescent obsession with irony. And let’s face it, Buck is mean in this episode. The other
teenagers laugh at the shirt, but don’t necessarily laugh at the subject: Sour
Cream’s a bit of a jerk to Greg, but Jenny seems to honestly appreciate him
even if she thinks he’s funny. Lars is easily swayed, having no opinion on the
shirt but seeing the value in at least pretending to appreciate it (which certainly lumps him in with real-life folks who feign an appreciation for art for impress people, if you’ll allow me an overanalysis). But Buck is cruel in a way that’s uncomfortable, but not totally out of character.

In Lars and the Cool Kids, Buck’s the most enigmatic of the Cool Kids,
as per his mirroring of Garnet. As he repeatedly pulls the rug out
from under Lars with a straight face, it’s hard to tell how much he’s intentionally
messing with the guy. The same goes for his ordering salad at the Big Donut
after examining its salad-free displays. He plays it so cool in both
situations (and in general) that some of it has
to be an act, and he’s perceptive enough that he has to notice Lars’s barefaced need to please, but he’s such a closed book that we can’t get a read on what’s in his head.

We see more of him in Shirt Club than ever before, and while he’s always been friendly to Steven, we really don’t know him all that well. His father’s an obvious sore spot, and seems to be the only thing that can make him completely crack, whether from embarrassment or being genuinely touched (or feeling remorse or feeling more embarrassed, a tear from this guy could mean anything). It makes for a fascinating “villain” when compared to our emotionally open hero, and he’s really the only kind of antagonist an episode like Shirt Club can have.

Regardless, the fact that Buck is still somewhat out of character (he’s utterly kind to Steven everywhere else in the series) is worth noting, because this is one of the last collaborations between storyboarders Lamar Abrams and Hellen Jo before the latter left Steven Universe. While this team is responsible for some terrific episodes and my all-time favorite scene of the series (the ending of Winter Forecast), they’re also behind House Guest and Fusion Cuisine, which are essentially about evil twins pretending to be Greg and Connie.

For whatever reason, Abrams and Jo seem to enjoy bringing out the worst in beloved characters (or inventing negative traits out of nowhere) in ways that wildly diverge from their typical depictions. It allows for drama within a contained story, but in a way that clashes with the consistency of the series; with the exception of Island Adventure and its lesson that emotional and physical abuse is okay sometimes, these kinds of character-nuke episodes are my least favorite. Shirt Club is the best of these divergences by far, in that I can actually deduce Buck’s rationale and because he’s a mysterious character by design, but it’s still an unfortunate trend that happily gets ironed out as the show continues.

(Bear in mind that beyond letting us watch the snow fall, Abrams co-boarded The Answer and Chille Tid and When It Rains, and while it may be a coincidence that each contains a breathtaking scene of a character coming to grips with a scary new environment, I tend to think that he’s really good at framing them. He’s also the only boarder to work on every Onion episode; even if Onion Gang is a dud, Onion as a character certainly isn’t, and I get the feeling we mostly have Abrams to thank for that. A few sub-par episodes early on can easily be forgiven.)

Mayor Dewey and the Crystal Gems are here for comic relief, and oh boy do they deliver. Jo and Abrams are brilliant at giving the Gems incongruous background tasks: in Watermelon Steven it’s reading the paper, and here it seems to be assembling IKEA furniture. Their criticisms of Steven’s art and unwillingness to help his strange problem highlight Shirt Club’s casual tone, and they get little moments of self-parody without dipping too deep into meta humor: Garnet’s twinkling shades during a pregnant pause certainly counts, but Amethyst and Pearl’s escalating concerns about Steven’s shirt problem takes the cake.

Mayor Dewey is incredibly, but not unbelievably, lame. Between his outdated slang and his blatant desire to connect with youths (without putting in any actual effort) it’s easy to see Buck’s disdain. Bill’s speech about losing his speech is overshadowed by Steven setting up his sniping position, but is worth paying attention to for Joel Hodgson’s masterful meandering.

And despite his selfish and thoughtless intentions, actually seeing Buck and Steven making shirts is a bunch of fun. It evokes Steven and Greg’s adventures in rocket science from Space Race, but with the wrinkle of Buck demonstrating actual knowledge of the craft to contrast with Steven’s silliness. While the distribution and interpretation of art once it’s complete makes up the episode’s conflict, the creation process itself is joyful and pure, as it should be for a kid making art.

Buck comes around at the end, of course, apologizing to Steven and offering to take guitar lessons. But honestly, the nicer he is to Steven, the weirder his behavior here seems, whether or not he’s a mysterious guy. The best thing I can say about Abrams/Jo character-nuke episodes is that there’s only three of them, and finishing Shirt Club, from that lens, is a huge sigh of relief.

Future Vision!

The Good Lars not only shows Buck wearing the Guitar Dad shirt, but showing off what he’s learned! And he’ll continue to play guitar as one of Sadie Killer’s Suspects, a band that will eventually be managed by Greg himself.

I guess you could read it that way…

On the one hand, watching this after Joy Ride makes Buck’s cruelty even stranger. But on the other, getting to know him better there, and Bill better in Political Power, makes an examination of their relationship a nice coda.
Tonally, Shirt Club simply doesn’t fit where it’s intended to go. Open Book and Story for Steven at least have their dramatic moments that fit the simmering tension of post-Marble Madness Season 1, but Shirt Club’s lightness thoroughly deflates the momentum. The Gems casually building furniture makes no sense in this time period, and Pearl and Amethyst’s list of fears don’t even hint at them worrying about Homeworld.
Still, the reordering leaves us with pre-Jailbreak Garnet, which is a little confusing without context. (I certainly prioritize this minor continuity error lower than harming dramatic tension.)
Regardless of your opinions about the order shift, I’m happy to say that Shirt Club is the last of it! No more asterisks!

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

Buck’s strange meanness doesn’t tank Shirt Club down to the bottom, but it does make me less inclined to rewatch what’s an otherwise wonderful episode about art. It’s a shame, but there’s still a lot to love when you get shirt!

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity
The Test
Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Future Vision
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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

Enh

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

No Thanks!

Episode 54*: Story for Steven

“What are you doing here?”

It was never guaranteed that we’d see any more of Rose
Quartz than a videotape. This is Steven’s show, and our perspective has always
been his; even alternate-protagonist adventure Garnet’s Universe is a Steven story (in this case literally). Rose
by necessity doesn’t exist during his lifetime, so the only way to show
her true self outside of recorded messages was an unprecedented
flashback episode.

Fortunately, precedent takes a back seat to character and
plot, and Story for Steven switches
to Greg’s perspective for an episode to allow us a new look into an earlier
world. Despite his past self’s eerie visual similarity with his son, Greg is a
perennial outsider looking in when it comes to magic, which is bound to shape
his worldview in a way we haven’t seen from his drenched-in-magic son. And for
some of the episode, this works! Buuuuuuut…

I have this pet peeve. I’ve always had it, even as a kid. It all began with Batman: The Animated Series,

a.k.a.
the optimal Batman experience, and one of its all-time classics, Heart of Ice.
In the middle of the episode, Batman discovers a video tape documenting the
accident that transformed Victor Fries into Mr. Freeze:

Okay, several questions.

How does the camera pan during this footage? Did Victor have an actual person filming instead of a tripod? If so, why didn’t they help out or say anything?
Why do we cut between Victor’s camera and what seems to be
security footage? Who took the time to edit this thing from multiple sources?
How do we get the shot-reverse shot back-and-forth between Victor and the villainous Ferris Boyle? Has Victor’s camera operator shoved himself between the two? And if so, why doesn’t said operator appear on the security footage segments?
Why didn’t Ferris Boyle destroy the tape that proves he murdered somebody?

These, to me, aren’t nitpicky questions. We’ve been given a very specific lens through which Batman sees
events, and that lens requires certain limitations that the sequence ignores.

This issue is common in flashbacks, where
the audience sees things that the character having the flashback can’t possibly
perceive, and it drives me nuts. Steven
Universe is unfortunately no exception. And to make matters worse, Story for Steven does this to the
detriment of the storytelling! How great would it be if we saw Greg’s entire
story as if he was telling it to Steven (which is the framing device in the first
place) instead of this:

We shouldn’t know that the owl is Amethyst. Not only because Greg doesn’t know, and this is his perspective, but because it ruins the joke! This is our hero’s very first interaction with something explicitly supernatural, but we aren’t allowed to feel his shock because the camera decided to spoil the surprise.

Now, perhaps we see Amethyst because Steven has heard the story so many times that he knows it’s Amethyst, and Story for Steven is stealthily from his point of view after all. But how would he know about other events that Greg wasn’t privy to? What would Greg even tell him? “And then after I left, Pearl said she could sing and the others all laughed”?

It wouldn’t irk me half as much if the introduction to the
flashback wasn’t so amazing. Comet does the impossible by making Greg Universe,
one of the dadliest dads on television, actually kind of cool. Seeing his name in lights as
he rules the stage in a song whose length is rivaled only by Stronger Than You
is spectacular, and the song itself makes the most of Stemage’s fantastic guitar work with Tom
Scharpling’s versatile singing voice: he manages to vividly portray modern Greg’s eternal earnestness, but with far more edge than the likes of Dear Old Dad or Wailing Stone,
to actually sell Mr. Universe’s rock cred.

And then we see the reality, where Greg’s on an empty stage
with a (nearly) empty crowd, cementing the scene as something from Greg’s head.
In his mind, at that moment, he was a rock star. I just wish the rest of the
episode maintained this fun with perspective, because Greg’s mind is a
wonderful new way to see Steven’s Universe.

For comparison, just look at The Answer, where we’re always following
Ruby, Sapphire, or Garnet. The storyboarders have a blast with the style, using
a new color palette and hyper-stylized backgrounds to make Garnet’s story feel
like an actual story instead of a regular episode that happens to be in the
past.

Story for Steven is one of the few times Steven knows way more than we
do, which could’ve easily been used to add some real flavor to Greg’s tale,
whether through Steven interjecting, Greg speeding through “boring stuff” to
taunt the audience, or another idea that the show’s incredibly creative crew could
drum up far better than I could. Missed opportunities
like this are a real drag.

Okay, so does this make me dislike the episode? Of
course not. It could’ve been great, but that hardly means it isn’t good.

Story for Steven is a surprisingly quiet marvel, given the
volume of its introduction and the excitement of seeing Rose for an extended
period of time. The only “villain” is easily vanquished, and the action overall
is minimal. Important information is underplayed or left to implication:
there’s something so sad about seeing the surviving Crystal Gems as childlike
figures, back when they were allowed to be young followers instead of adult
guardians, but these forms are never discussed. Amethyst’s fascination with the
human world and Pearl’s discomfort with it are both seen through their
reactions to Greg, and Garnet’s a delight as always. And even though Greg
crashing through their fence isn’t the subtlest symbolism in the cosmos, his
role in bringing the outside world back to the Gems really is that important.

I’ve said a lot about Pink Diamond’s biggest flaw: her pathological secrecy. But this episode only comes about because of her greatest strength: her curiosity. We’ve seen time and again how
the remaining Crystal Gems are set in their ways, but their leader, ever the
rebel, is fascinated with change. Her specific interest
in Greg’s space-themed set is a cute touch, allowing us a taste of the unintentional
condescension that drives We Need To Talk
as she stage whispers about him to her friends. Even though she’s still a
mystery from Greg’s perspective (which this flashback does do right, despite other flaws) not a second is wasted in
developing her as an individual and a leader.

Like Ruby, Lapis, and Jasper in Jailbreak, Rose’s gem is neatly emphasized in Story for Steven. Our very first image of her frames her gem instead of her face or entire body, and while her final scene in Greg’s shirt obviously showcases her affection towards him and references our previous sightings of said shirt, it also covers the gem as she builds a human connection.

Despite prompting the story, Marty’s mostly in the background, which is good and bad. For a while, I enjoyed his one-dimensional
portrayal, complete with shark teeth, as I figured it was a glimpse into Greg’s
view of his evil manager. But then Drop
Beat Dad came along and it turns out that Marty’s exactly what he seems like
here, if not worse. (I also initially figured the child Gems were part of Greg’s perspective, but he has video footage of them in We Need to Talk.)

It’s a shame to see such a big part of Greg’s life so underdeveloped, but Marty scrapes by through his skeevy charisma
and terrifically gross dialogue: his weird but lived-in chemistry with Greg should come as no surprise when you
consider he’s performed by Tom Scharpling’s longtime comedy partner Jon Wurster.
Even if the craziest part of Marty’s involvement is that we ostensibly find out that
Sour Cream was conceived in Greg’s van (which, yikes, kid’s show), my favorite
is his revelation that Greg’s historically just really into giant women. Marty knowing stuff like this suggests a
close relationship that’s also implied by Greg’s photo, and I do wish we got a
little bit more of that instead of a straight-up villain.

While I felt that the framing device was underutilized, the actual transitions between past and present are marvelous on both ends. Both are eased in with Greg’s guitar, but while the former opts for some rockin’ juxtaposition, the latter quietly gives us a variant Rose’s Theme to take us home. (And considering Greg starts the story by playing the opening of Comet for Steven, we’re allowed to imagine he just sang the whole song in his van if we want.)

Despite its issues, Story For Steven
is a pleasant surprise: we already learned the essentials
of how Greg met Rose from all the way back in Laser Light Cannon, and Steven knows much more than we do on the
subject, so we easily could’ve gone
without a whole episode about it. Rose didn’t have to show up until much later, if at all, but glimpses into the past help round out his world as it grows more and more complicated in the present and future.

Future Vision!

I doubt anyone, in Beach City or real life, could’ve predicted that Comet would get a second life as a burger jingle that somehow turns Greg into a multimillionaire. Is that how jingles work? Write one and you’re set for life?

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

As I mentioned in So
Many Birthdays, the sweet implication that Amethyst copped her modern
hairstyle from Greg back in the day is marred by seeing that hair in colonial times.

I guess you could read it that way…

I’ve already written at length about why I prefer watching Story for Steven in Season 2 that covers all the stuff I usually say in this section.

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

I understand the appeal of Story for Steven and genuinely like it, but its execution bugs me in a way that I doubt is too common among fans. If this is one of your favorites, that’s great, but by my reckoning (which this is) it’s outdone by many of its peers.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity
The Test
Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Future Vision
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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

Enh

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

No Thanks!

Episode 53*: Say Uncle

“Okay, I’m ready for this episode to end!”

Uncle Grandpa is not for me. This doesn’t mean I hate it—I’ve literally only seen its pilot and Say Uncle, which isn’t enough to form a strong opinion—but I’m just not interested in watching anything further. From what I’ve seen, it’s funny in a nonstop madcap visual assault kind of way, one that lends itself to watching one or two episodes then spending the rest of your life letting your eyes rest. But this is in large part thanks to me not being a child; I can imagine plenty of children getting a huge kick out of its Random Humor on Amphetamines brand of comedy.

Crossovers also are not for me, because they tend to really suck. Well, that’s not fair; gimmicks tend to really suck, and crossovers are a prime example of this. It’s easier to swallow when the characters share a world, such as in comics or with Buffy and Angel, but smashing two universes together usually ends with an episode that spends way too much time explaining the situation, shuffling through a collection of meta jokes pertaining to each show, and ending with nothing changed. At least it’s not a clip show?

Considering this, the best thing I can say about Say Uncle is that it should’ve been wayyyyyyy worse. It’s incredible that this isn’t my least favorite episode of Steven Universe, that it’s genuinely enjoyable for stretches at a time. In fact, if not for one early gag ruining the tone for the rest of the episode, it might be something of a classic in my mind.

But alas, they had to introduce Uncle Grandpa impersonating Rose Quartz. Oh man, what a riot! See, this kid going through an existential crisis thinks he gets to reunite with his dead mother, but instead it’s a kooky prankster! It’s funny because we’re really attached to this relationship and it’s one of the emotional cores on the show, so we don’t expect someone to shit all over it. What a surprise! Ha ha! Ha!

I mean really, what the hell? It only takes the first joke for Uncle Grandpa to sledgehammer away whatever goodwill Say Uncle had as a crossover, and the rest of the episode is spent crawling out of the rubble. It’s tasteless in a way that can be comedic in the right context, but in no way has Steven Universe ever provided that context.

It also forces Steven to transform into a character we haven’t seen before, because the one that we know and love would be a wreck at this point. Instead he ignores the serrated knife that Uncle Grandpa shoved in his heart and is thrilled to see him, consistency be damned. And they never speak of it again.

But like I said, I do enjoy the rest of Say Uncle, even if it takes fast forwarding through the first thirty seconds to do so. Declaring outright that the episode isn’t canon, reinforcing it by declaring April Fools, and sinking Lars and Sadie’s literal ship before cutting back to the beach like nothing happened is a perfect introduction (which makes the other introduction even worse by comparison), and from there it’s a ridiculous nonstop romp.

The closest equivalent to such a fully comedic Steven Universe episode is Road Runner and Coyote homage Kindergarten Kid, and even that feels quiet compared to Say Uncle. Reality-bending shenanigans, shifting animation styles, Deedee Magno Hall getting to go full ham, this is really all over the place. And it is funny! Mostly! While most of the laughs rely on random humor, there’s still fluidity in its joke structures that gives it a surprisingly wide comedic range.

I know the death of comedy is overanalyzing why it’s funny, but take my favorite joke in the episode. Wandering Uncle Grandpa’s TARDIS of an RV, Steven says that a million vans could fit inside, to which UG replies that it’s actually more like forty or fifty. We see a pile of forty or fifty vans. It’s sorta funny.

But then Pizza Steve shows up (with a glorious intro sequence that’s also a favorite) and takes issue with Steven sharing his name. He lays out two rules, one of which we know from context will be something along the lines of “I’m the only Steve in this neighborhood.” But his first rule, which could’ve been any random funny-sounding thing, is “No more than forty or fifty vans.” What we thought was one of the episode’s many throwaway gags was actually the set-up of another punchline. It’s a good old-fashioned brick joke, and there’s something about a classic done well that warms my old heart.

Uncle Grandpa as a character is at his best when he actually sounds like an adult, even if these moments are rare: Pete Browngardt’s reads on “Don’t worry kid, I’m wearing a helmet” and “I’m still a rock star, kid” lend a sense of actual paternal/avuncular authority that contrasts nicely with the fog of zaniness surrounding him. Unfortunately, for the most part, he goes full annoying in a way that Steven and Steven Universe haven’t since the very beginning of the series. Ramped up to twenty. Spongebob Squarepants is an obvious influence here, but we don’t get to see UG grounded by a straight man like Squidward or an enhancer like Patrick, so to borrow another sea term, he’s kind of floundering.

Still, the situational humor works more than it doesn’t, and I appreciate that Uncle Grandpa’s powers are intentionally unnerving instead of being played for laughs 100% of the time. There’s a certain discomfort in his spontaneous self-duplication that goes beyond typical cartoon tropes like hammerspace and invulnerability, and this sensation is acknowledged by the Gems (and, occasionally, Steven himself).

I already mentioned Pearl’s hamminess, but it truly is the wackiest breakdown you could hope for from her, full of screaming reads and hilarious animation. And I’m glad she’s the only one that has this reaction; even in this Uncle Grandpa-ized reality, Garnet should be cool as a cucumber and Amethyst should be go-with-the-flow, because this is true to their characters and funny as a foil to the bizarre events (with more screen time, they’d have been the Squidward and Patrick I was longing for). Pearl’s already been prone to freaking out, and her ridiculous reaction makes perfect sense in this ridiculous scenario.

(That said, her apology for attacking Uncle Grandpa is still a bit much.)

Uncle Grandpa and Pizza Steve are the only visiting characters that leave much impact. Mr. Gus kinda comes and goes, waxing meta to the point of revealing Steven’s power source in a way that most viewers are already aware of—it’s a real shame that we get so little out of a character voiced by the incredible Kevin Michael Richardson. Giant Realistic Flying Tiger stands out visually, but in no other way, and…I guess the fanny pack is a character? Yeah, even when we get in the RV, this crossover is clearly dominated by Steven’s Universe, which is honestly fine by me.

Regardless of its strengths, I’m with Garnet on this one: I’d rather move on to the show that I like watching than try out one that isn’t for me. Still, awful beginning aside, Say Uncle is mostly harmless. It’s hard to get too mad at an episode that pulls its moral word-for-word from Princess Mononoke; we would all be better off seeing with eyes unclouded by hate, even if that has to extend to crossover episodes.

I guess you could read it that way…

The non-canon nature of Say Uncle makes it pretty easy to move around in viewing order (or skip), but it was still meant to air in the first season, which meant Steven’s shield woes were written to precede his big summon in The Return. I guess it makes a little less sense for him to be as troubled after such a heroic moment? Not really.

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

I really do enjoy Say Uncle for the most part. Its major flaw sinks it pretty low, and its lack of importance to the series makes it wholly irrelevant, but as I said, it’s nuts that this isn’t at the bottom.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens
Mirror Gem
Lion 3: Straight to Video
Alone Together
The Return
Jailbreak
Rose’s Scabbard
Coach Steven
Giant Woman
Winter Forecast
On the Run
Warp Tour
Maximum Capacity
The Test
Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon
Bubble Buddies
Tiger Millionaire
Lion 2 The Movie
Rose’s Room
An Indirect Kiss
Space Race
Garnet’s Universe
Future Vision
Marble Madness
The Message
Political Power
Full Disclosure
Joy Ride

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

Enh

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

No Thanks!