“I know what the Diamond means.”



Ronaldo Fryman is annoying.

This is on purpose. Actor Zachary Steel exaggerates his voice to that of a classic airhead surfer, albeit one that prefers the web to the waves. He’s known to top his fiery Fieri shirt with a fedora, easily the internet’s most loaded hat. He’s obsessive and socially oblivious, and while neither trait makes him a mean guy, both make him thoughtless. I don’t buy any argument that he’s a bad character, as he does exactly what he’s supposed to do, and he fills a fascinating niche in Beach City. But that doesn’t mean he’s likable.

At his best, Ronaldo evokes a stock character in my favorite Animaniacs segment, Chicken Boo, wherein a gigantic but thoroughly non-anthropomorphic chicken (he can’t even talk) wears terrible disguises to pass as human, but somehow manages to fool everyone. Well, almost everyone: in every episode, there’s always just one person who notices that Chicken Boo is a chicken, and is made to feel like a lunatic for pointing it out. That’s Ronaldo, except he’s living in a world where everyone sort of knows Chicken Boo is a chicken and they just don’t care.

Ronaldo is fine as a side character, where he does his shtick and then goes away before it wears thin. But when he’s the focus of an episode, his intentionally grating nature, uh, grates. Even at his tamest, Ronaldo is saddled with Steel’s performance: a terrific match for the character, but not one I enjoy listening to for extended periods. It’s how I imagine certain people feel about long-term Gilbert Gottfried exposure (although I actually love that voice so much he could just read names and I’d be satisfied).

But lord help me, I just can’t stay mad at Keep Beach City Weird. It’s inherently funny to see a conspiracy theorist function in a world where magic is a known quantity, and this is Ronaldo’s greatest trial as a true believer. His childishness puts Steven in a unique position of maturity this early in the show: Steven initially takes the conspiracies seriously, but soon realizes how silly they are and humors Ronaldo in the same way the Crystal Gems and Greg have humored him. This episode blends deep character study with Steven’s continued growth, and that makes it really hard to knock.

Here more than anywhere else, Ronaldo’s irritating nature works to his benefit, allowing Steven to have the intellectual and emotional high ground (this same high ground is afforded to Peedee, whose entire relationship with Ronaldo hinges on flipping the older/younger brother dynamic). While Ronaldo’s enthusiasm has never been in doubt, this episode excels at showing how it helps and hurts (mostly hurts) his relationships with people and reality, making his behavior a bit more endurable by grounding it in realism. It’s just as refreshing to see a conspiracy theorist actually admit the core beneath their beliefs: it isn’t about weird stuff, it’s about the believer wanting to be special for noticing.



Don’t get me wrong with all this introspection talk, this episode is goofy. There’s fanservice galore, with Ronaldo subbing in—but not dubbing in—for the anime nerds in the audience. His speeches about reality (“Truth is searching for anything that proves you’re right no matter how small, and holding on to that, no matter what!”) may be great commentary on the myopic nature of conspiracy theories, but they’re also funny. And as far as visual puns go, it doesn’t get much better than Ronaldo using the lighthouse overlooking the Temple as his base: all the answers are right under his nose.

I’m still not Ronaldo’s biggest fan, so some of the humor falls flat for me: as with Steven all the way back in Gem Glow, “____ powers ACTIVATE!” jokes always make me cringe. It’s still a given that annoying characters are annoying, and much of the episode is spent tolerating his antics rather than enjoying his company; as with Lars, I get where the show is going with it, but that doesn’t mean I always like it.



The Gems’ presence looms large throughout, despite their relatively low screentime. They give us Steven Tag, complete with Garnet fully shapeshifting, which is honestly worth the price of admission (Pearl’s fierce reaction to Steven’s cry for help is a great little moment, but I’d still prefer to see her playing along; however, A Single Pale Rose lends credence to the theory that yeah she’s not big on shapeshifting anymore thanks to a traumatic past). Their no-nonsense reaction to Ronaldo’s theories speeds up Steven’s revelation that all the weird stuff is obviously Gem-related, and leads to Pearl’s hilariously bleak commentary on the brevity of humanity and our need to find meaning. Each scene with Gems in this episode highlights their powers or ages, and this focus on Gems-as-aliens only amplifies the irony of Ronaldo’s wild inaccuracies.

Early in the episode, Steven gets some nice moments where he just acts like a kid, from distractedly popping his finger in Pearl’s mouth to playing with his binoculars while walking around Beach City; the verisimilitude of his youth is always welcome as the show gets into headier territory. This childishness is as important as the Gems’ otherness here, considering Ronaldo’s juvenile antics appeal to Steven’s playful side. It’s such clever writing to make our focus character pop by subtly contrasting him against the Gems and Steven.

(Steven also scores for “Snake men are real and we’re puppeting the go’ment.”)

And of course, that ending. After putting snake people to bed once and for all, Ronaldo’s next theory proves eerily accurate. The joke is obvious in the first viewing, as we know at that point that “Polymorphic sentient rocks!” is a decent definition of the Gems, but it was unclear how far the show would take it. Sure enough, not only are the Diamonds a big deal, but they’re literally called the Diamond Authority and planned to hollow out Earth. While Ronaldo usually fluxes between ironic smugness while trying to be cool and unabashed glee when geeking out, Steel’s dead-serious read on the header quote, after the camera zooms in on the strange diamond seal on Delmarva’s money, is honestly a little chilling.

Thus ends the first and last Ronaldo-centric episode where I can actually stand the character all the way through. I don’t hate the guy, but much like the standard Lars affair, there are so many more enjoyable personalities to hang out with in Beach City that it’s a slog to spend time with the ones that purposefully aggravate. Keep Beach City Weird is a diamond in the rough, and if anyone could appreciate that, it’s Ronaldo.

Future Vision TRUTH VISION!!!

We see a snake-themed message board during Ronaldo’s speech, which initially looks like a joke. HOWEVER, Disney’s 1996 non-classic First Kid, in which a Secret Service agent must protect the president’s rambunctious son, shows the titular First Kid (henceforth “FK”) using a similar snake-themed chat service. The villain uses the aptly named “Snake Chat” to lure FK into getting kidnapped—keen viewers will note that our baddie’s username (sorry, “Screen name”) references a mongoose, the primal antagonist of our hero’s snake avatar:

Who portrays the heroic Secret Service agent tasked with saving FK? Sinbad. That’s right, the voice of Mr. Smiley in Season 1 of Steven Universe before being mysteriously replaced by fellow comedian Colton Dunn. Who’s to say that Sinbad isn’t an actual government agent and the events of First Kid actually happened, but an unknown force erased it from our consciousness, leaving its only remaining documentation an obscure 90′s film. Keep Beach City Weird’s snake sequence (or snakequence) jolted Sinbad’s memory, but before he could expose the truth, he was unpersoned and usurped by Dunn in hopes that nobody would notice?



You just read all about it on my blog!

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

The ranking here will probably make it seem like I oversold how much I enjoyed Keep Beach City Weird, but I can’t pretend that I love it. Unfortunately for the episode, but fortunately for us, “good” isn’t enough to make it stand out on a show that sets such a high bar for itself.

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