“That’s me, the nice one.”

Considering Steven’s entire personality revolves around putting others first, I’m amazed that it’s taken this long for a “it’s great to help out others, but remember to take care of yourself” episode to come along. The closest thing we’ve had so far is Sworn to the Sword, but even that was more about Connie learning the concept of prioritizing others too highly above herself than actually practicing it.



It’s a tricky subject, because we should be kind and helpful when we can, and taking time for yourself is something that can come across as selfish or unfeeling in a culture where selflessness is virtuous. Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service handles its lesson beautifully by leaning in hard on the importance of balance, rather than suggesting that focusing on the needs of others or the needs of yourself are the only options. And while I’m sure this is a moral that could be taught with the Crystal Gems (Pearl or Ruby in particular) I think our human protagonist is a terrific choice for two reasons.

The first reason is that Steven’s problem of overextending himself to help others usually involves helping the Gems, the people that should be helping him. This is a whole can of worms that will be talked about way more come Steven Universe Future, but if the Gems were able to see that Steven needs to cool it and take care of himself, they would’ve taught him that a long time ago. It isn’t until What’s Your Problem? that one of them realizes that they maybe shouldn’t be putting so much pressure on him to comfort them, and it’s sad but not surprising that this revelation comes from his sister instead of one of his moms.



The second reason is that giving this lesson to a minor character like Kiki allows Steven more leeway to ignore it. So he does.



I’ve been Kiki. I’m sure a lot of us have. My go-to instinct is to try to help people (I mean I ended up a librarian) but it took me a while to realize that it was exacerbating my own depression to put all the worries of others on my plate. It didn’t mean I stopped caring about people, but I had to learn healthy boundaries to keep my own head above water. Having similar friends means I’ve also been Steven, trying to help others who don’t know how to stop helping others, without realizing until later that we had the same problem.

In that sense, this episode about pizza dreams becomes monumentally important to the series, because it’s Steven’s entire problem in a nutshell. Kiki learns the episode’s lesson in a running sequence that evokes Stevonnie’s joyous sprint in Alone Together, but the ending is undermined by cutting back to Jenny and Steven for one last joke. I hated that cut when I first watched Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, because the episode was funny enough that it was okay to end on a sweet moment instead of shoving another gag in at the last second, but watching it again I’m struck by what it forebodes. Kiki is running free, but Steven is asleep on the boardwalk, because even though he helped Kiki figure out that she needs to stop overwhelming herself with the needs of others, he has overwhelmed himself with her needs. And he’ll continue to try and help everyone he sees no matter what. And the further we go, the unhealthier it gets. We see in the very beginning of this story that he understands the value of me-time, preparing a nice dinner for one in his room, but you get the sense that he stops thinking he deserves it right around the time he hears that his mother shattered Pink Diamond.

Let’s talk about Kiki for a second, because she’s such a perfect lead for this story. We don’t know much about her coming into her debut focus episode, especially compared to her twin. She’s nice, but a lot of people in Steven’s universe are nice. She seems to have a stronger work ethic than Jenny, which may or may not be why we don’t see her as often in social situations. She enjoys wordplay enough to not just tell puns but provide commentary on them, which makes her a winner in my book. And most recently, we saw she was willing to pretend to be in love with Ronaldo to help out in Restaurant Wars. I’m not quite mean enough to say feigning attraction to Ronaldo is a sign of true altruism, but I will say she’s way more open to doing whatever it takes to help others than he was.

It isn’t the deepest background of a recurring character, but it’s enough to make it understandable that she’d do Jenny’s work for her. From there it’s a simple matter of going overboard and bringing Steven with her.

It’s a little weird talking so much about huge character arcs and intricate plotting in Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, because the episode itself is super silly. The dream sequences leading up to the finale are hilarious, showing once again how good this crew is at capturing the wacky nuances of dreams, but this time without the tonal interruptions of Lion 3 or Chille Tid. Steven is an expert dreamer by now, and relishes helping his friend while being a huge dork. This is the second episode in a row where a distinct anime influence is felt, this time evoking more specific inspirations, from the title to the absurd Evangelion reference at the climax, with plenty of shonen gags in between. Steven is ostensibly a consumer of children’s media, and while I hope he hasn’t watched Evangelion at his age, it makes sense that his dreams would reflect that in the same way his story in Garnet’s Universe references the likes of Chrono Trigger and Usagi Yojimbo.

Silliness also pervades the editing; the early cut between Steven beginning his meticulously prepared dinner to snoring on the couch with pizza dripping everywhere is my favorite, but I like that we mix it up with actually seeing Steven immediately fall asleep after declaring himself a dream warrior. The dramatic music and intense closeup on Kiki as she explains that she has the same nightmare every night is a funny way to reveal how bad her problem really is while showing how she’s repressing it,.

Then of course there are the jokes. Steven Universe is no stranger to comedy, but rare is an episode with with this many jokes told by characters, rather than situational humor common to television. This is another reason why I appreciate Kiki’s presence, because again, she’s all about that wordplay, capping Steven’s series of pizza-based gags by pointing out that “time to cut the cheese” isn’t a pun (which is debatable; if you define puns as jokes that exploit homonyms, she’s right, but if you include alternate definitions of identical words in that definition, she’s wrong). The highlight, of course, is “pepperanhas.”

I actually think this much humor sort of hurts the message, though. I understand why it’s so prevalent in a dream episode like this, but Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service has a solid message that can be hard to absorb when there’s gag after gag to keep you laughing. The message isn’t hard to understand—the episode has subtlety, but the lesson itself isn’t subtle—and I don’t think any show should preachily value the moral over the plot, but it makes for a tonally imbalanced outing. I still like this story, but it’s just off enough that despite its many strengths and its surprisingly solid place in the overall story of the series, I don’t love it.

That said, I have no complaints about the character work: this is the second episode with just two voice actors (after Open Book), even if one of these actors is voicing for two, so it makes sense that we get a little extra focus on the characters than usual. I’ve already talked about Kiki’s people-pleasing and inability to quash her self-sacrificial tendencies, but this is also a fantastic snapshot of Steven at this point in the show. He’s still a goofball, and he’s still a good friend, but he’s dealing with more nuance than he’s had to in the past. I love his instinct to panic and apologize for going into Kiki’s brain without permission, considering his good intentions hurt another friend in The New Lars. And I love the tiny taste of teen attitude when he’s exhausted and exasperated and snaps at Kiki with bitter comedy instead of childish anger (which he also apologizes for). For all the silliness, he’s maturing.

Plus, we don’t even get that clean of an ending for Kiki, despite her running free in the last scene. After the big confrontation with Pizza Jenny (full name Pizza Jenny Pizza) clears Kiki’s mind up, we see that her problem isn’t fully gone. While looking around the landscape of her brain, she has to follow up “All the cheese is gone!” with “…well, most of it.” You can’t snap your finger and fix everything, and Kiki is bound to have lingering issues when it comes to helping herself versus helping others. It’s truly challenging to overstate how prescient this small townie episode ends up being to Steven Universe Future.



This is Jenny’s third episode in a row, and it finally addresses a strange character beat of hers that’s been mentioned, but never seen: that she’s “the evil twin.” She’s more social, a Cool Kid who bends the rules with the freedom that comes with her car, and she apparently conflates liking metal bands to being bad (come to think of it, it’s weird she doesn’t bring any metal influence to Sadie Killer and the Suspects’ sound), but none of those traits qualifies as “evil.” She’s dismissive of Lars at times, but who wouldn’t be? And remember, Jenny was the one who stepped in front of Garnet’s fist to save Steven in Joy Ride, and Jenny was the one whose instinct was to help Stevonnie when their car stalled in Beach City Drift. So it’s about time we actually get some evidence that she’s any sort of bad twin.

It’s pretty tame, which I appreciate given her consistent depiction as a good person. At worst, she’s taking advantage of her sister’s nature, but seeing how the situation resolves it’s more likely that she’s just being selfish and thoughtless than cruelly manipulative. Which isn’t great, but she’s a teenager, which explains not only her behavior here but her desire to exaggerate how bad she is to define herself, especially as a twin who’s bound to be compared to her kind sister. And when Kiki stands up for herself, Jenny is fine picking up the slack (despite the perfect teen reasoning that Kiki likes running so there’s no reason not to run and deliver pizzas).



Was Kiki named so that this episode’s title could eventually work? I have no idea. But I wish we saw more of her than we do: it took ninety-one episodes for her to get a focus episode, and she won’t have another speaking role until Pool Hopping, which is an absurd fifty-two episodes away. Townies in general are intermittent figures in the show’s balancing act of the magical with the mundane, but she’s a remarkably ancillary despite her similarities with Steven. They both work hard, care hard, and joke hard, and I feel like there are more stories to be told from their friendship. Kiki ends up going to the prom with Stevonnie in the non-canon comics, but I wish these kinds of stories had more room in the show. Do I prefer Gem shenanigans? Sure. But Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service is a fine example of how Beach City shenanigans are still worth exploring, and ends up being perhaps the most important townie episode in the series when it comes to sheer thematic resonance.

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



Again, the tone here is a little too varied for me to like Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service as much as I wish I did. There are a ton of great elements to it, but in terms of just being an episode I enjoy rewatching, this doesn’t quite make the cut. I obviously don’t hate it, but my feelings aren’t as strong as my gushing about its individual strengths might lead you to believe. Thematic resonance can only do so much!



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