“Maybe I should be trying to fix my life.”

The Good Lars is a massive bummer, and it makes me so, so happy.

Lars has always been a character with a ton of potential that, in my mind, is muted by his inability to learn. Pretty much all of his focus episodes have been about him taking a big step towards his character growing, but then resetting to his typical jerky self in his next episode instead of actually continuing that growth. On a rational level I can appreciate the realism in a stubborn character’s inflexibility, but even if it’s by design, it’s super frustrating to watch. The Good Lars shows that he still has a long way to go, and pointedly lacks the Lars Learns conclusion that Lars episodes like to bait us with, but this is where it finally feels like his story is going somewhere.

The New Lars was apparently the first step that stuck: seeing everyone, including his parents, prefer Steven-as-Lars to Lars-as-himself must’ve been a wake-up call. I love his final speech in that episode about hating how weird Beach City is, as it casts a surprising new light on his surly attitude, but after so many false starts we need some follow-through to make that speech fully land, and The Good Lars fits the bill.

Right off the bat, we see Lars take a genuine risk and put his food out there for Steven to try. We’ve known since all the way back in Lars and the Cool Kids that Lars’s apathy is a practiced act, and it’s hindered him again and again and again in every relationship he has. And we’ve known since Island Adventure that he’s a skilled cook, so it’s not a stretch that his abilities extend to baking. That he’d hide just how much he likes making food is totally in line with what we know about him, so it’s gigantic that he opens up about it here.

Steven is a terrific test subject for Lars’s food, as beyond his general kindness and enthusiasm, we’ve already seen him praise Lars’s food before in Island Adventure. The problem is that Lars is aware of this, which allows his self-destructive nature to undermine his sense of accomplishment in seeing someone love his baking. There’s not much critical value in praise from someone who only ever provides praise, and when presented with an opportunity to take an even bigger risk by letting the Cool Kids try his food, Lars flounders.

He may be growing, but he’s still cagey and irate. He takes a big step, but he’s too afraid to leap. But because he might move forward at last, because he might change his status quo on a show where the status quo is more than capable of changing, Steven and Sadie and the audience are given room to hope. Just enough room to hurt us when he can’t go through with it.

That fragile sense of hope radiating throughout The Good Lars is amplified by its status as the calmest episode in the show’s third act. It’s just so quiet compared to its surroundings, with no major confrontations by virtue of Lars’s pivotal moment of cowardice occurring off-screen. Our happy scenes are tinged with melancholy, and our sad scenes have glimpses of joy, and it’s the perfect tone to set for our last moment of peace before Steven’s life falls apart again.

All of my issues with Lars over the past 120-odd episodes are given new meaning as we see him waver back and forth in The Good Lars. Yes, it’s annoying that he refuses to retain lessons he learns throughout the series, but we see here that his dismal self-confidence doesn’t allow him to trust that he’d be accepted for who he is, so of course he falls back on prickliness over and over again.

To be fair, it’s hard to tell where he stands with Buck, who seems to enjoy messing with Lars but who also seems to genuinely appreciate Lars, but who also might only genuinely appreciate Lars out of irony because that’s totally a thing Buck would do, but who also might love irony so much that his ironic appreciation of Lars might wrap back around to genuine appreciation. It’s awesome that we see Buck in his Shirt Club tee showing off the guitar skills he picked up from taking lessons with Greg; referencing an episode that explored the downside of Buck’s allergy to sincerity paints Lars’s own attempts to hide how he feels in a damning light. Even we the audience can’t be sure if Buck thinks Bingo Bongo is “transcendent” because he likes it or he thinks it’s dumb and that it’s funny to say that it’s great. I’m pretty sure it’s the former, but from the episode alone there’s just no way to be sure.

So it makes sense that Buck, whose mastery of the detached facade is undeniable, is an aspirational figure for Lars, who’s uncannily bad at playing it cool. As much as I’ve praised the Cool Kids for being far more delightful than the Cool Kid trope often allows, they’re not without their flaws: it’s a little stinging that they still use terms like “Donut Kids” and “Donut Girl” instead of real names with their ostensible peers (but then again, they’re often referred to as “The Cool Kids”). Nobody, not even Lars, is fully to blame for Lars’s insecurity, but Buck’s affected demeanor sets a poor example for a kid who puts him on a pedestal.

Lars’s wavering consumes the first half of the episode, and throughout the baking montage we get shots like the above, where Steven and Sadie are capable of relaxing but Lars is obsessed with getting things right. It’s refreshing to see him so passionate, but this obsession is just another manifestation of his insecurity, his need to be perfect so that he’ll fit in. There’s a subtle cultural element to his ordeal, as ube is a traditional Philippine dessert that Lars writes off as “my family’s weird purple cake”—while I somehow doubt the Cool Kids are racist against Filipinos, it tracks that a kid who’s desperate to fit in would fear anything that sets him apart.

Still, it’s a pleasant sequence where Lars lets his guard down, first in the joy of baking and then as he opens up to Steven. His opinion that baking is lame is perhaps the most adolescent aspect of this very teenagey episode, because it’s an absurd notion which he believes so strongly that he can’t seem to fathom that it’s about the coolest skill you can bring to a group whose idea of a good time is a potluck. Lars thinks he’s lame, and he loves baking, thus he thinks baking is lame. His lack of self-worth even extends to people who like him, as he casually asserts that nobody knows he likes to bake when Sadie and Steven are right there; it’s a rotten thing to say, sure, but it comes from a severe confidence shortage.

Lars’s attitude is simple to understand early the series: he’s insecure, so he acts like a jerk to hide his soft interior. But The New Lars and now The Good Lars thrive by diving deeper and showing just how bad his self-esteem issues really are. This isn’t run-of-the-mill teen angst, it’s the kind of depression he describes in Island Adventure, and when we understand how much he’s suffering he suddenly fits right in with Pearl and Lapis Lazuli at their worst. This is what we needed of him for his big moment in space to hit home, so thank goodness we get it right on time.

Steven’s pep talk seems to do the trick, and we move into our third act with that bubble of hope just waiting to be popped. It becomes clear pretty quickly that something’s gonna go wrong when Steven excitedly amps up the ube, and seeing Sadie alone hammers the hard truth home, but before we make it official there’s a lovely moment of Sadie, who’s no stranger to awkwardness herself, quickly winning over the Cool Kids. I’ll never get tired of how great these kids are, and even Sadie will talk about it soon enough.

The search scene is a fascinating montage, showing Steven failing over and over but accompanied by a jaunty score that keeps our hopes alive despite what’s now an obvious conclusion. Steven’s leap into the air is the first big moment of the episode that involves weird Gem stuff, and its sudden appearance highlights how down-to-earth our little adventure has been; in the same way, his instinct to use mind powers is soon trumped by the human pragmatism of just calling Lars. It sets the stage for an all-too-human resolution to Lars’s story, as Steven’s phone call ends with him finding the ube in the trash right outside Buck’s house, right as he’s imagining aloud a reality where Lars lets himself be happy.

Which leads to our story’s greatest trick, the aspect that cements it as one of my favorites: despite the name and the deep focus and the new insights we gain from that focus, The Good Lars was never a Lars Episode. It’s a Sadie Episode, and it’s a beautiful one.

Sadie, like Lars, is afraid to branch out. But unlike Lars, she’s brave enough to try anyway, and shares her hidden love of singing with the Cool Kids. She’s so invested in helping others that she forgets that she’s allowed to help herself, and if that sounds familiar it’s because it’s Steven’s entire character arc. When the mood dips to its lowest point with the ube in the garbage, we could’ve had an ending that matches the sadness of a hurting kid failing even when his friends believe in him. But instead, we get a scene of quiet grace as Sadie shares her voice and is praised in the way Lars strove for. She hears that he’s not coming, and takes a deep breath, and lets it be. She can’t control his night, but she can control hers, and she chooses her own happiness instead of letting his issues ruin her evening.

She and Steven have both accepted Lars for who he is, and while both want him to move past the barriers he’s set up, the lessons of Sadie’s Song return with a vengeance in a way that makes me wish so badly that I liked Sadie’s Song. Steven has traces of his worst self from that story by wondering if they should’ve pushed Lars even harder, but as Sadie starts to agree with him, she realizes that no, they shouldn’t, because it’s not up to them to make Lars happy. They can try, and they should, but friends aren’t failures if their friends can’t take steps for themselves. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but it’s one last reminder that Steven shouldn’t put the world on his shoulders before Steven goes and puts the world on his shoulders.

I call this a Sadie Episode because she’s the one that grows in it. Lars is in his rut of inaction, just as Steven is in his rut of misplaced responsibility, but Sadie gains the confidence boost of new friends and a new perspective into her relationship with a guy who came this close to admitting that he loved her to Steven. Lars is about to fail her through his cowardice in the same way Steven is about to fail Connie through his hubris, and like Connie, Sadie will use the opportunity to stand up for herself. And let’s not forget that this is the episode where Sadie Killer meets the Suspects.

The cliffhanger from Doug Out goes unacknowledged until the very end of The Good Lars, especially because Sour Cream seems unfazed by Onion’s disappearance for now; perhaps some viewers watched the episode waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I imagine such a lens colored the whole story in a way it didn’t for me. I wasn’t surprised by the reappearance of the two Gem silhouettes, but it remains a spine-chilling way to end such a human-centric tale. And even this provides us with hope, allowing us to imagine that Lars didn’t bail after all and was simply kidnapped by aliens. Stuck Together soon snatches that hope away, which is par for the course for Lars’s arc, but it’s a powerful episode that can make a character’s kidnapping seem like a good thing.

I understand the irony of me saying that an episode about Lars going nowhere is the episode that finally sees Lars going somewhere, but as Mindful Education (and therapy in general) suggests, acknowledging the problem is the first step towards solving it. Lars is about to become a major player, and Sadie is about to earn a new arc of her own, and I can’t think of a better way to set up both of these threads than The Good Lars.

Future Vision!



Beyond the reveal that he trashed the ube before his capture, Stuck Together generally acts as a direct sequel to The Good Lars.

generally acts as a direct sequel to “Bingo Bongo” was magical from the start, evoking Root Beer Guy’s equally magical “Bingo Bango” from Adventure Time . But seeing Lars own it as a badass space pirate is great shorthand for how much he’s grown.

. But seeing Lars own it as a badass space pirate is great shorthand for how much he’s grown. Steven’s pep talk to Lars about going to the party is echoed in his pep talk to Lapis about returning to Earth in Can’t Go Back . Not only because both speeches are good advice, but because unfortunately neither succeeds to make the listener move past their anxiety by the episode’s end.

. Not only because both speeches are good advice, but because unfortunately neither succeeds to make the listener move past their anxiety by the episode’s end. A story about Steven trying to help someone hellbent on sabotaging themselves and hurting others? That sounds like a good idea for a movie!

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



As always, I’m a sucker for tone, and The Good Lars gets that feeling of teenage dreams grappling with the nightmare of depression just right, both for the victim and for friends of the victim (some of us got to be both!). It’s not overwrought, and we’re still allowed some joy, but it sucks to be so stuck in your head that you can’t move, and this episode captures that sensation way more succinctly than, say, Hamlet. Am I saying it’s better than Hamlet? Not really. But I heard somewhere that brevity is the soul of wit, and it’s certainly briefer.

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6. Horror Club

5. Fusion Cuisine

4. House Guest

3. Onion Gang

2. Sadie’s Song

1. Island Adventure