“Everyone needs a break once in a while!”

It’s easy to take for granted how crazy a character’s life can get in serialized television, and the toll that it might take on an actual person. This goes double for cartoon characters, whose medium gives them an extra layer of separation from reality than their live action counterparts. Full Disclosure, which was written to immediately precede Joy Ride, revolves around the aftermath of one crazy event. Now it’s time to see how the rest of Season 1B has affected Steven Q. Universe.

And who better to sit down and reflect with than the realist humans this side of Ocean Town? The Cool Kids make a triumphant return to bring a much-needed outside perspective and help their unlikely friend, just in time to remind me how much I’d love to see more of them. It might be unrealistic for three teens to go through such lengths to chill with a much younger kid, but their dialogue flows so naturally that it balances right out. This is extra impressive when you consider that Buck is portrayed by storyboarder and then-rookie voice actor Lamar Abrams and Sour Cream is just Brian Posehn using his regular grown man voice. These kids have no business lugging around this much verisimilitude, but I never get tired of watching them shoot the breeze.

Joy Ride wisely keeps its focus on Jailbreak’s destruction at its onset, showing just how monumental the finale was (we already had an entire aftermath episode, now this!) and how much work it takes to get things back to normal. We’ve dealt with some of the emotional fallout, but now it’s time for the legwork; Steven even gets to show off his casual super-strength as he shovels a massive chunk of debris from the sand.



Despite my aforementioned hesitance to believe how much they want to hang out with a child, even a child as great as Steven, it does make sense for the Cool Kids to show up. The beach is the epicenter of a cosmic disaster, of course teenagers want to check this out. That they see how hard Steven is working and shift gears to help him out speaks to the kindness they exude in Lars and the Cool Kids, and that their idea of help involves throwing someone else’s pizza at his window and sneaking him out speaks to how wonderfully dumb teenagers can be.

Most of the episode from here is the four of them chatting, and there’s really nothing more we need when the writing’s this good. The venting sequence is a thing of beauty. Sour Cream feels that his passion is being stifled by a parent figure that doesn’t understand him. Mayor Dewey, who we know from Lars and the Cool Kids has been stingy with his daddy kisses (ugh, that phrase sounds so creepy when Lamar Abrams isn’t saying it), continues to be stern with Buck. And while we know from past and future episodes that Jenny gets along with Kiki, she also seeks an independent identity from her twin. These are all valid concerns!

In fact, Steven’s initial complaint is the one that seems pettiest: that he’s grounded from television. A huge deal for him, sure, but pretty tame compared to adolescent family tension. Yet the Cool Kids nod with sympathy and don’t try and belittle his situation.

The reason I love this writing is that I can easily imagine a situation where the teen’s problems are trivial, or they follow Steven’s complaint with another “oh please” or “you think that’s bad?”, and it would still be a decent scene! There’s nothing wrong with teenagers griping about nothing and trying to one-up each other, because teenagers do that all the time. But the crew puts in the work to give our Cool Kids real issues, and remembers that they brought Steven along to help him out, and they’re all the more lovable for it.

Then of course Steven gets to unload about the Gems, beginning with things we know and ending with the brilliant reveal that Steven is more aware than he’s been letting on. He knows that in some dark way, the Crystal Gems blame him for the loss of their leader and loved one. And that’s exactly why he’s never mentioned it before, because how do you even broach that subject?

Again, the Cool Kids are nothing but helpful, not only sympathizing with him but praising his resilience. But because these are still realistic teens, they then get distracted by a weird glow in the fields and scramble to investigate. As in Lars and the Cool Kids, Steven is wary of humans messing with Gem stuff, and the teenagers still don’t care. Their escape pod antics escalate naturally, stopping at the all-important selfie stage before Steven is coaxed into getting inside (the use of Jenny’s photos to show the pod screen closing is a neat visual touch).

There’s peer pressure here, sure, but the Cool Kids are still trying to help. Steven entering the device doesn’t make him the butt of a joke, it makes him awesome, and like Jenny says, he really needs to have some fun like this after episode after Gem trauma, dreading a Homeworld attack, and the attack itself. Even if they discourage him from being responsible, they never resort to tropey negativity (calling him a buzzkill, etc.) while egging him on.

All this kindness is great, but conflict has to arrive sooner or later, and as amazing as it would be to see these four fighting Peridot, it’s the Crystal Gems who crash the party. We’ve only seen bits and pieces of their lives without Steven around (or rather without them knowing Steven is around) prior to the invasion, and for the bulk of the past ten episodes they’ve been working their way through intense fear. Here instead we have a glorious moment of Garnet in full badass mode, her righteous fury unrestrained by Steven’s tempering nature. Does it make sense that her future vision didn’t inform her that Steven is inside? Nope! But getting these new perspectives on established characters is worth a little suspension of disbelief.

I love that it’s Jenny who stands up to Garnet, for three reasons. First, she’s the only one of the Cool Kids who has actually met the Crystal Gems on the show before (give or take an infant Sour Cream), so it makes sense that she’s a little braver around them than her friends. Second, she’s the Cool Kids’ mirror of Amethyst (just as Buck resembles Garnet and Sour Cream resembles Pearl), so who better to argue the merits of fun? And third, she knows the value of taking a break far better than Buck and Sour Cream; she’s the only one of them with a job, and we usually see her when she’s on the clock. Her work ethic might not be terrific (see: shirking deliveries in Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, that time she let her friends throw a customer’s pizza at a kid’s window like five minutes ago), but the pressure of helping a family business stay afloat is sure to make her relate the most to Steven’s situation.

And really, how great is Jenny? She throws herself in front of a punch that could sink a friggin battleship and initiates a talking-down of all three Crystal Gems without a second thought. Buck and Sour Cream might get more laughs with their more extreme personalities, but between her boldness and her facilitating both of the episode’s titular joy rides by driving the car and prompting Steven to enter the pod, Jenny is the real hero here. Reagan Gomez-Preston, the only Cool Kid actor with experience portraying realistic teen characters prior to Steven Universe, more than earns the spotlight here.

Steven’s ungrounding is a long time coming, and I appreciate that its impact isn’t immediately felt; his ability to watch television again won’t be all that important until Cry for Help. It’s just one last moment of kindness in a surprisingly upbeat episode about teens working through their problems (and remember, at age thirteen Steven is technically a teen here!). After so many episodes about fighting, it’s just nice to relax a little.

Future Vision!

Jenny isn’t kidding about metal concerts, which become a weirdly important plot point in Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service .

. You really wouldn’t think that the diamond-shaped impact crater of Peridot’s pod would matter too much outside of Homeworld symbolism, but you’d be wrong! How else could you used a crashed ship to play baseball?

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?



Another case where the High School AU gives us the main promo image, but Hilary Florido generously provided another image for the episode that now doubles as a wonderful tribute to the late Prince.

I guess you could read it that way…

Probably the biggest change in the order shift is moving Shirt Club behind Joy Ride ; I definitely remember being confused about how cold Buck was to Steven so soon after being buddy buddy. Buuuut this behavior is essentially just as confusing before Joy Ride, considering how nice Buck has been regardless, and it’s nice to see more of him and his dad individually before bringing them together for Shirt Club .

behind ; I definitely remember being confused about how cold Buck was to Steven so soon after being buddy buddy. Buuuut this behavior is essentially just as confusing before considering how nice Buck has been regardless, and it’s nice to see more of him and his dad individually before bringing them together for . (Still, I can imagine a lot of folks don’t like the shift for this reason.)

Sour Cream’s reveal that Yellowtail is his stepfather backs up the hint from Story for Steven that Marty and Vidalia are his parents. This isn’t affected too much when Joy Ride is watched first, but it’s worth noting.

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

An episode with Cool Kids and no Lars? Sign me up! As a breather episode it’s not quite as memorable as its bombastic brethren, but it’s important to appreciate the value of hanging out.

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