Steven Universe: Intriguing beyond belief

Cafe Society
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In case you haven’t seen the new shorts, all of this batch are videos taken by Steven or another character, and there is nothing expository or meta along the lines of The Classroom Gems.

As per the previous bunch of shorts, Steven does video blogging on whatever his world’s version of YouTube is called, though he’s gotten a lot more polished. He does a reaction video to a Crying Breakfast Friends episode that lampshades Steven Universe fandom. He does a cooking video with Lion’s “help”. He plays a song he wrote about how he feels about recent events and provides guitar tabs. There’s an adorable video of Steven, Connie, and the Gems singing karaoke to the song from “Sadie’s Song”, and Peridot and Lapis videochat with Steven after Peridot figures out how to rig the barn for wi-fi.

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And a new episode, “Gem Harvest”, airs this Thursday. Another new episode, “Three Gems And A Baby”, airs on December 1.

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Well, I had no idea that “Gem Harvest” would actually be a half-hour episode. It throws a pretty big curveball into what looked to be a straightforward episode about Steven visiting Peridot and Lapis Lazuli at the barn when when one of Greg’s relatives literally drops in from out of the blue. One of the few major episodes of the show where the reveal is not about the gems, but about Greg.

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It was a very different episode than the title suggested.

I LOLed at Steven thinking LeMayo is a cooler name than Universe. Aside from that, I was quite ‘meh’ about the episode…pretty standard ‘Steven breaks through the grumpy character’s hard exterior’ episode, but I didn’t find Uncle Alan interesting enough to want to see that. Or like him even the slightest bit on either side of the softening.

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It was a Thanksgiving holiday episode, down to the thanks at the table, to the estranged family getting together and bonding, to complaining about the loss of traditions, to the bounty of the land shared by newcomer and established inhabitant alike (even though each were both in this case). All the Thanksgiving episode tropes chopped up and stuffed into a bit of a turkey. :slight_smile:

The cutest part to me was the pumpkin’s reaction to Steven’s carving a regular pumpkin. Maybe a bit of a shout out to the Peanuts bit when Lucy dumps out the pumpkin guts and Linus reacts with horror: “You didn’t tell me you were going to kill it!”.

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The politics of this episode were THICK…especially given the election results.
Uncle Alan is absolutely an angry white male who is raging and unhappy with the progress and changes “hippies” have made to what he sees as HIS land. When things stop being about HIM and his feelings and he is no longer the center he reacts negatively and lashes out.

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Yeah, that was quite on the nose as well. Not to say that I didn’t like it, mind.

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Actually, I was kind of thinking that this was one of those situations where the designated bad guy was mostly right- As far as we know, Greg had no more right to the barn than Alan, so even though it wasn’t being used, it wasn’t right to just give it away. And Alan, while abrasive, was not overreacting when he found strangers living there. Once he figured everything out, he was fairly reasonable. Also, makes me wonder about Greg’s history- apparently after he left home, he was out of contact for twenty years. Not indicative of a loving family background.
And again, we see the ease at which humans accept weirdness- upon meeting aliens for the first time, Alan is utterly unimpressed.

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Andy* seems at least as estranged from the family as Greg. After Steven gets through to him, he laments not going to visit everybody, despite the plane meaning he had the means to do so. Also, Greg’s been living in Beach City, near the barn, for 13 years. Greg had settled near at least part of the family - significantly, Andy’s branch - while Andy was off doing Andy things.

  • Just rewatched the last bit of the episode to confirm what he actually said, and Steven called him ‘Uncle Andy’…oopsy on my memory.
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It took me awhile but I finally caught up to this show. Random thoughts:

  1. The gem house is held up to the crystal temple’s womb. Haven’t seen this pointed out anywhere but I can’t not see it. Given all the themes about motherhood and fusion this doesn’t seem accidental.

  2. I’m guessing the finale will be Steven and the rest of Beach City fusing together to fight the big bad.

  3. When I think about or read arguments about the dual nature of Steven or how Rose plays into it I think of early Christian arguments about the nature of Christ and his relation to the Trinity.

  4. I’ve only dipped my toe into the fandom a little, but the amount of political landmines and potential flame war controversies is impressive for a children’s show. The common assertion that the gems are agender is an odd one. Asexual, maybe. They present as female, have female voices, use female pronouns, their ruling caste is called a matriarchy, and though considered unusual Rose was able to give birth. Maybe it’s to dodge accusations of lesbianism, though I doubt moral guardians would make such a fine distinction when female characters are making out or holding hands under a starry night sky.

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Just some thought about the last two episodes:

-I’m not surprised Greg and Steven have a relative like Andy (doesn’t everyone?), but it’s kind of odd that someone travels the world by biplane would be so parochial.
-Pearl wins the episode with “Why don’t we all marry each other?”
-Amethyst with the bad case of heartburn.

-The Gems are a lot more welcoming to Greg staying at the temple than they were in “House Guest”
-So Garnet didn’t unfuse in front of Steven until he was thirteen because she frightened him as a baby?

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A five-episode Stevenbomb has been announced for January 30. Episodes are:

-Steven’s Dream
-Adventures in Light Distortion
-Gem Heist
-The Zoo
-That Will Be All

I’m betting that Steven and the Gems will be using the spaceship they took off the Ruby Squad in this block of episodes.

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Since Steven Universe is on hiatus until January 30, I guess there’s nothing to do but speculate.

Am I the only one who thinks that there is more to Dr. Maheshwaran than meets the eye? Let’s run down some things I’ve noticed about her.

-She was originally shown as a safety-obsessed parent, but “Gem Hunt” hints that the Maheshwarans are survivalists. I doubt that Connie’s rant about peak oil and being prepared for the collapse of civilization is something she came up with on her own.

-Sure, the Maheshwarans are safety-first, but does anyone think it’s a little weird that Dr. Maheshwaran has a specific hangup about Connie playing with swords?

-Connie’s parents are pretty blase about sitting down to dinner with a giant six-armed fusion. Just being polite or is it because they already know what Malachite is?
-Obviously, Dr. Priyanka Maheshwaran is Indian. She doesn’t speak with an accent, so she was either born in the US or emigrated as a child. What has the show shown us about India so far?

–The airplane in “Steven Floats” is a “Dhawar Airlines” plane. Dhawar is a region in India. Interestingly, the airline logo is four diamonds in shades of pink.

–Some of the fusion designs, specifically Opal, Sugilite, and the Temple statue, look to be inspired by Hindu goddesses. Rebecca Sugar said that Opal was originally posed/animated to specifically be reminiscent of Hindu temple statuary when she manifested and made her weapon before dropping the idea.

– Connie’s training outfit (and hair braid) is that of a female practitioner of kalripayattu, and Indian martial art that involves sword training. But wouldn’t that be an unusual thing for her to have? I’m thinking the outfit is from Dr. Maheshwaran’s childhood, and she was actually

I posit that humans in other parts of the world had a very different history with gemkind than the people of Beach City and that gems might be more remembered and understood in different parts of the world. People in India remember the Diamond Authority and have been training and preparing for the possibility of Homeworld’s return (doomsday) for thousands of years. and Dr. Maheshwaran was a part of that tradition in her childhood and left that behind after coming to America.

Thoughts?

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That’s quite a theory, but I don’t really find sufficient evidence for it - Connie is intelligent enough to have worked out the prepping thing herself, and also to be interested in aspects of her own culture like kalaripayattu, without her parents being the direct impetus. Why would the Dr still have a kiddie martial arts outfit for her daughter if she’s so overprotective?

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Connie is intelligent enough to learn from books about survival methods and techniques. I doubt she would have absorbed the doomsday prepper mentality just from reading a book.

I think the kalaripayattu outfit actually was Dr. Maheshwaran’s from her own childhood. Either Connie found it rummaging in the attic or her mom dug it out of mothballs and gave it to her once she gave her blessing for Connie’s training. Even if Connie developed an interest on her own, where would she even get a kalaripayattu outfit in Beach City?

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And Dr. Maheshwaran was right after all about Universe not being Steven’s real last name.

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…and being friends with a guy who, you know, saves the world from total destruction on the regular…

Is there any in-show indication for this?

Yeah, it’s not like she hangs out with people (and lions) who can teleport all over the globe…

…or, you know, can access the internet.

Anyway, the tradition kalaripayattu outfit is like a dhoti or langot, neither of which are actually fitted trousers. They’re more like loincloths and made from a single length of cloth.

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Do you think that’s the mindset she’s picked up from hanging around Steven and the Gems? Anyways, Steven asked her point blank if her way of thinking came from a fear of a Homeworld invasion and she said no, that civilization’s collapse will come from peak oil or environmental catastrophe. Connie might have been scared by reading an adult-level book, but if her family is super-prepared enough to have a home defibrillator, I would suspect them of being preppers in general.

Nope. Which is why I said it was a theory. There is also no in-show indications that it is, in fact, a Kalaripyattu outfit. Connie could just be doing Dragonball Z cosplay.

Connie’s parents were in super-strict mode when she started training with Pearl, so I doubt they gave her a credit card to order stuff off the internet. Lion can get Steven to where he needs to go somehow, but I doubt he would respond to a prompt like,:Lion, take us to India", and Connie wasn’t really hanging out with the Gems before Sworn to the Sword.

Anyway, “Steven Floats” was the episode that got me thinking about this. I don’t think the crew inserting an Indian-based plane with a four-diamond logo in shades of pink can be chalked up to coincidence. IIRC, except for the rancid burrito from Aqua Mexico that Amethyst got sick from, this was the first reference to a foreign country in the show.

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These five episodes have all been leaked. Preview clips were supposed to have been uploaded to the Cartoon Network app, but instead the whole episodes were uploaded. They actually showed up on my Time-Warner On Demand listings, so I watched them.

Won’t spoil, but if you think Season 4 has been slow and lacking in episodes that add to the show’s lore and/or advance the show’s plot, this Steven Bomb will more than make up for it.

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Steven Bomb 5 starts on Monday.