Steven Universe Recap: “Joy Ride”
For all your aliens-taking-selfies needs; ominous foreshadowing included free of charge.
Quick-cap!: After a hard day trying to gather up the wreckage of the crashed Gem ship, Steven is talked into a night of hanging out with local teens Jenny Pizza, Sour Cream, and Buck Dewey. The group finds Peridot’s crashed escape pod in a cornfield (sans the Gem in question), and some harmless fun driving the pod around turns dangerous when Steven gets trapped inside with the weapons system locked on.
It would seem that season 2 will be dividing its time between quirky character antics, Gem history and warfare, and emotional baggage so heavy our lungs will be collectively crushed if we’re not prepared. This episode’s off to a pretty good start in that regard: our trio of teenagers are a nice sidestep of that demographic’s usual sour-pitched portrayal in animation, managing to both voice the generally small-scale, limited viewpoint agonies that make up teenage life while also being compassionate human type people (sure they want to play with the giant space ship, but their desire to do their own version of cheering up for Steven feels equally genuine). Sure, they might be at an age where life seems overwhelming and every problem or encroaching threat of adulthood is The Biggest Problem, but they’re more than capable of recognizing and empathizing with pain in others – Jenny switching off the radio to give Steven’s confession their full attention is the kind of nice little gesture that the show is full of.
On the subject of Steven, I’m not sure I’ve yet given Zach Callison his dues: that kid is absolutely nailing it playing some really, really mature scenes and complicated emotions. His quiet listing of personal issues is my personal episode highlight: Callison’s performance has an almost dissociative quality, the rattling off of terrible things that Steven’s not ready to grasp yet, partly because of his age and partly because…well, you heard, right? And the fantastical kidnapping and ensuing near death experience aren’t nearly so hard to hear as the confirmation that Steven’s realized that his family resents him for being around instead of Rose. That is a heavy blanket of survival guilt to lay on anybody.
Callison sounds almost nonchalant except in the moments when Steven slows down enough to think through the details of what he’s just said, and those words become colored with hints of deep sadness and insecurity. Coupled with the shell-shocked look given by the animators, it really drives home how much we haven’t been considering Steven’s wellbeing in all this. His actions throughout the entire episode reflect someone teetering on a precipice, caught between the things he knows are the “right” things to do or that he abstractly accepts as his Gem duties, and the kind of goofy everyday stuff that the Steven from the first dozen episodes wouldn’t want to miss for even a second. It seems like we’ve been seeing less and less of that kid lately.
On that subject (I swear), I counted two lovely nostalgic homages this episode (caveat: because I am a conspiracy-prone nerd, all homages I name now and in the future run the 50/50 risk of being what people might call “coincidences”). The first is the crashed space pod in farmland, straight out of Dragonball Z, thereby justifying every saiyan joke and fanart I’ve enjoyed pertaining to Peridot and Jasper over the past weeks. The other is the “hold your breath as the pod fills with breathable liquid” bit, which is right out of the first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. And Evangelion’s core mantra was, more or less, “Hey, want to see what the trauma of mecha space battles would look like realistically affecting 14 year olds? I hope you like PTSD!”
I’m really worried about Steven, is what I’m saying – he can train his body and his Gem powers to become a stronger defender of the planet, but there are emotional issues pressing down on him that even the adults in his life aren’t prepared to grapple with (if we take this metaphor far enough Pearl becomes the Gendo to Rose’s Yui and… I am checking out of this theory now). SU as a show has proven that it has the writing and acting chops to handle that kind of emotional weight, so I’m not concerned about the show fumbling the ball when the time comes to hash this all out. But I would wager we’re seeing the seeds of a harrowing arc for Steven in the episodes to come, realizing not just the positive potential of his powers but more about the dangers of Gem society as well. For bonus visual metaphor points, I would point you to Garnet cracking Steven out of the pod – covered in goo, literally like a chick being “reborn” into the world.
The only real downside to speak of is the final few minutes of the third act. The fight itself has a uniquely terrifying edge to it, born not from the idea that Steven poses any real danger to the Gems or that they won’t be stopped from hurting him in time, but the image of Garnet, even mistakenly, training that kind of unadulterated anger and disdain in Steven’s direction. It takes a fairly bog-standard combat scenario and frames it in a way that scratches at a very deep childhood fear: the image of a trusted, admired adult turning on you in anger.
So it’s kind of a shame, in the end, that the moral is delivered in such a conventional way. This is a show that’s proven it can deliver old adages without fanfare or with unique twists in execution, and that increasingly it doesn’t necessarily need to tie up its bigger problems (like grief) in neat packages at all. But here we are, talking about how Steven “needs to be a kid” and that he shouldn’t be put under so much pressure by the adults in his life. It’s a speech you could probably quote back to me without having even seen the episode, and it feels a bit out of place with the incredibly high bar the writers of this show have set for themselves. The Classic Pixar problem, if you will.
By the way, next week is the Uncle Grandpa crossover. Stand strong with me, readers. Better, bring me great quantities of alcohol. I feel like I’ll take things better if I can’t stand.
Vrai is a queer author and pop culture blogger; they’re still pursuing the sugar bowl LS described all those years ago. You can read more essays and find out about their fiction at Fashionable Tinfoil Accessories.
Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
