WARNING: This review contains negative opinions. If you're one of those people who gets pissed off at the sight of any sort of criticism, turn around now.

I am trying something a little different today. The "Townsfolk" arc in Steven Universe was wrapped up last night. I consider the "Townsfolk" arc to be the episodes between "Drop Beat Dad" and last night's episode, "Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service". I have decided to review the Story arc as a whole. This will NOT be a review of the individual episodes. If you want to see those (that I've already done), here are the links provided below:I am not counting Steven Floats as part of this story arc, because it is technically a more gem-centric episode. It's also debatable whether to include Mr. Greg and Too Short to Ride as part of this arc.Also, I am sorry I have to put this warning, but some people are quite immature about this stuff.Yeah. Sorry about that. Some people think this show is perfect and can never go wrong, and so get annoyed when they see any negative opinions about this show. To clarify, I STILL LOVE THIS SHOW. I STILL THINK IT'S ONE OF THE BEST SHOWS I'VE EVER SEEN. Negative opinions about Steven Universe DON'T GIVE POINTS TO ADVENTURE TIME, or any of that nonsense.Anyway. On with the review.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The bulk of these episodes are PURELY about the townsfolk, and many of them are about Steven helping them with various issues they're having. The gems are totally absent in all of these except for Mr. Greg, Too Short to Ride, and Restaurant Wars. Restaurant Wars being the only episode in this entire arc of 7 episodes to feature the whole team.Now, Steven Universe has always had a human side to it as well as the gem side. The gem stuff is very interesting, and is ultimately the plot of the show, but Steven is also half-human. He also has many human friends that all have their own lives and issues. The human episodes tend to feature a "slice-of-life" format, where these humans have very down-to-earth issues (such as nightmares, business competitions, parent dramas etc), and the episodes play out with little to no gem stuff in them at all. Whilst the lives of the Beach City residents can be interesting in their own right, they can never really be as interesting as intergalactic sentient rock aliens from space who have all these physics-bending abilities. As a result, the gem side of this show does dominate considerably. The human episodes often just aren't as interesting or full of action, and as they don't advance the main plot of the show, which is built on gem action, they are often deemed filler.Human episodes have usually been sprinkled throughout the show. There were many more of them in season 1 than in season 2. However, in this arc, we have a whole bunch of them in a row. Now, with good writing and handling, this arc could turn out to be just as good as a gem-based arc, like the Barn Arc.Unfortunately, and it's a BIG unfortunately, this is not the case.I don't think this arc was handled very well.Sorry. But I don't.Early human episodes often had SOME gem action in there too. For example Frybo, Watermelon Steven, and even Nightmare Hospital. Episodes like Shirt Club featured all the gems, and Onion Trade had some gem lore in there too. With this run of episodes, it almost seems like the writers went out of their way to include as little gem stuff as possible. The obvious exception being Too Short to Ride, which was a good case of mixing gem and human stuff like they used to.The rest made a point of using no magic whatsoever. Human episodes don't have to be throwaway and fillery. But they made almost ALL of these episodes like that. Drop Beat Dad wasn't needed except for the ending. The New Lars we could've done without. Beach City Drift was really bland. Restaurant Wars was fun but was total filler. And the same can be said with Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service. Character interactions and development do occur in these episodes, but apart from that, they weren't really needed.Human episodes could be very good episodes. They could be feelsy, they can be a real trip into another person's psyche... yet none of this happened. It felt with every episode they could have done so much more than they did. In Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service the cheese monsters could have been much more creative than just cheese hands. Beach City Drift's race was very bland - where were the crashes, dirty cheating plots, driving off cliffs, cars getting smashed up etc.? The New Lars could have had feels put in there, as could Drop Beat Dad. All in all I think Restaurant Wars was the best human episode of this run, which is amazing considering the low expectations I had.The fact they wasted so much potential naturally lead to most of these episodes just being bland and uninteresting. This is because the writers chose to make these episodes throwaway, and obviously less effort was put into them. I get that they're saving up for some REAL shit that's about to go down in the back-half of season 3, but these last few episodes really have been almost total throwaways.I feel the writers did this because they felt they had to. In between the intense and exclusively-gem Barn Arc and whatever is going to happen at the end of the season that is so big the Crewniverse have begged us not to view any leaks, they felt they needed to include loads of light-hearted low-key human episodes. And when you have so many episodes of that quality back to back to back to back, it leads to a rather bland and uninteresting story arc that could have been so much more.Also, Peridot was only in ONE of the episodes in the entire arc. Yes. ONE. After the show went to the trouble to write her as a main character over FOURTEEN FREAKING EPISODES, the show decided to make her a secondary character again. I am really disappointed about that. I can only hope they re-introduce her as a main character in the back-half of season 3. And don't even get me started on the lack of Lapis Lazuli and Jasper. These gems weren't even mentioned because as I said, this arc tried to be exclusively human stuff and zero gem stuff. I get that this show is taking a break, but it could have been done so much better in my opinion. They could have made these episodes much more interesting.Now, of course, the exception to ALL of this is Mr. Greg. Mr. Greg is exempt from just about everything I've said in this review. It was a FANTASTIC episode, FULL of feels, and had a CRAPLOAD of effort put in. And it mixed human and gem stuff MASTERFULLY. This episode is an absolute masterpiece and shines like a class O star through this run of blandness. I can't stress this enough - NOTHING I've said in this review applies to Mr. Greg. If you want to see me write over 2200 words about how great that episode is, go read my review on that episode.Overall, I don't HATE this story arc. I think most of it was fun and entertaining ENOUGH. It just about floats. It's passable. But not much more. Most of these episodes had wasted potential, and I didn't like how they decided that all human episodes have to be throwaway filler. It could have been so much better, but it's alright. It wasn't BAD or anything, but it's not a run of episodes I'd go out of my way to re-watch over and over (except Mr. Greg of course).And here's to hoping things will improve with tonight's episode, MONSTER REUNION. We've all been looking forward to this episode for months, and it's finally coming tonight!