Steven Universe Episode Collection: Frybits and Cat Fingers

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUutNmL37Mk]

Welcome back to the Steven Universe episode collection! Are you ready to rejoin Steven on his journey to be a hero and all the other strangeness that comes with it? Good! Let’s jump right in.

Frybo (1×05)

Summary: When Steven sees his friend Peedee not enjoying his job as Frybo the Fry Mascot, Steven puts a crystal in it that brings it to life. He might be getting more than he bargained for though.

Rating: ?????

I didn’t really enjoy this episode. Not because it was weird or creepy. It was just boring and grey as the weather in the episode.

Steven is looking around the house for his pants at the same time Pearl is looking for a crystal shard. She explains why she needs the shard, but Steven zones her out thinking about his pants. DAMMIT STEVEN, LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER FIGURE. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Still, he at least catches to come find her if he finds the shard, which he eventually does.

In his pants.

That were moving around on their own accord.

Steven manages to grab his pants and secure the shard to go find Pearl in town. However, he’s distracted by his friend Peedee Fryman, who’s working as the Beach Citywalk Fries mascot Frybo. Which usually means being attacked by birds. He’s doing to make his dad happy, but he himself is miserable wearing the costume and just wants to be a kid. Steven tries to wear it, but it ends with him being attacked by birds as well. That’s when Steven decides to use the shard that made his pants come to life on Frybo. The dancing Frybo seems to make Peedee’s dad happy and the two friends run off to play at the arcade.

Of course, Peedee isn’t as happy as he used to be and goes on this huge speech about how when you start working, you can never go back to your innocence or something like that. Geez kid. Are you 35? Steven doesn’t quite get it though because he likes his job of protecting people.

Just then, they hear screaming from the shop and run to find Frybo attacking people with fries and being extra creepy. As people run screaming from the shop, Pearl walks by and asks Steven if he even listened to her when she mentioned the shards, the living armor armies and the massive amount of death. He of course says he didn’t and Pearl just sighs, going right into battle mode. However, when she attacks Frybo, she’s blinded by his ketchup for blood, causing her to drop the shards. This gives Steven the idea to use the shards on his clothes and use them as his own army to defeat Frybo and take out the shard.

I wanted to like this episode, but I found it hard to get into. I loved Steven zoning Pearl out and using his clothes as weapons, but everything else seemed kind of meh. Maybe it was Frybo, maybe it was Peedee, but I don’t imagining myself rewatching this episode any time soon.

Cat Fingers (1×06)

Summary: In an attempt to master his shape shifting abilities, Steven ends up turning all of his fingers into cats.

Rating: ?????

Okay, never has a prospect of a character turning into an adorable bunch of kittens been so… creepy!

Steven and his dad are hose fighting at the car wash when Amethyst joins in while in in the shape of a cat. Steven is impressed and wishes he could do the same. She informs him that he probably can since all Gems can. Pearl elaborates that shape-shifting can be anything from living object to changing specific body parts. However, just because he can doesn’t mean he should.

Still, Steven wants to learn and asks Amethyst to show him how. She tells him to imagine what he wants to be and shake it out. Steven struggles with it, but after some time, he manages to turn one of his fingers into a tiny white cat.

Proud of his accomplishment, he starts to go around Beach City showing off his cat finger. He first shows it to his dad, who freaks out a little and sprays it with water, causing the cat to hiss. He then shows it off to Sadie and Lars at Big Donut. The cat finger likes Sadie, but bites at Lars. Steven thinks it’s because it’s lonely, so he shakes it out again and turns the rest of the fingers on his hand into cats. Finally, he takes the cat fingers to the fry shop so that they can have fry bits. Peedee and his dad become completely entranced by the cat fingers, and Steven shows them how easy it is for them to turn by shaking it out one more time and turning the rest of his fingers into cats. Peedee’s brother Ronaldo takes a picture for his Keep Beach City Weird blog, but the cats hiss when Steven tries to look at it.

Back at home, Steven is figuring out that having cats for fingers makes things a lot more difficult. However, it becomes hard to ask for help or even leave the house when the Gems are going on a mission to a living island and the cats are hissing at every attempt Steven has to get close to water. Pearl tries to stop and help Steven, but Garnet tells her the mission is urgent. Pearl tells Steven to wait for them to get back and blames Amethyst for everything that’s happened to him.

Not patient enough to wait on Pearl to get back in a day, Steven tries to figure out how to make his fingers go back to normal. However, it backfires completely when various other body parts begin to turn into cats and cause cat heads to sprout all over his body. Cutest body horror ever.

Since he currently has nowhere else to turn to, Steven makes his way to his dad, begging for help as his body further mutates. Greg really doesn’t know what to do though since magic is out of his realm of knowledge. Steven starts to get upset, lamenting over all the things he won’t be able to do now, including have hose fights with his dad. Suddenly, that’s when he has the realization that water could help. He asks his dad to hose him down, but that’s not powerful enough and he begs to be put through the mega wash.

After the most suspenseful and dramatic car wash scene I’ve ever seen, the cats are finally rid of, even after one scare when the first cat finger returns. How does Steven celebrate? By greeting the gems with ALL the terrible cat puns. Once again, Garnet proves to be my pun reaction patronus.

This episode was a pretty solid upswing from ‘Frybo.’ It managed to be cute in that perfect Steven-y way, but it was also kind of scary and dramatic. I actually worried that Steven was going to turn into a giant mutant ball of cats! If the show is showing this potential now, I can’t wait to see what they do in the future.

Bubble Buddies (1×07)

Summary: Steven’s attempt to impress a girl he’s never met goes a bit strange when they get trapped in a bubble together.

Rating: ?????

This episode is so teeth http://premier-pharmacy.com/product/celebrex/ rotting cute that it could have been an episode of a mid-90s shojo anime.

During a strange outburst of earthquakes, Steven takes his bike down to the beach to try and find a way to introduce himself to a girl he’s seen around town, but has been too afraid to introduce himself to. He fails yet again and runs away back into the house. Amethyst and Pearl ask about who he was talking to and Steven skirts around the question. Amethyst asks if Steven likes her and Pearl gets excited about setting a play date, but Garnet just tells Steven to talk to her. Steven decides to do that, but asks the Gems not to watch since it will mess with his “funky flow.” Amethyst and Pearl look confused, but Garnet agrees. Steven grabs a glow bracelet from the freezer and runs out.

Down on the beach, Steven keeps practicing his greeting, but right as he’s about to approach her, an earthquake hits and causes a piece of the cliff above to break off. Steven sees it hurtling towards her and immediately dives to protect her. This makes his gem activate, causing a solid bubble to develop around them and protect them from the rock. Well, that makes it a good enough time for Steven to introduce himself. The girl introduces herself as Connie, the daughter of a private security guard who works at a lot of different beaches.

Not really sure of where the bubble came from or how to turn it off, Steven decides to ask the Gems. Except, of course, they were’t watching the exchange and it’s too steep to get up to the house. Steven doesn’t panic though and decides to roll into town to get some help from friends.

Of course, when your friends are Sadie and Lars and a mute kid named Onion, it will go about as well as you’d expect. Sadie tries her best to bust open the bubble as Lars teases Steven and Connie about being stuck together. This leads to the two donut shop employees into having a screaming match over how useless Lars is. As for Onion down at the docks, it takes forever to communicate to him that they need a harpoon gun and when they finally get it, it bounces off the bubble and sinks a nearby boat. Well, trawler, as Connie identifies it.

In a last ditch effort, Steven has them roll the bubble to the local amusement park and has the bubble sit on the kiddie coaster to bust them free. How he thought that was a good idea, I don’t know, but he doesn’t have time to realize how bad that idea was because due to a mix of momentum and brakes, the two are flung out to the bottom of the ocean. As they start to roll back to shore, they spot a giant worm that scares Connie. Steven assures her that it’s okay, but the thing breaks through the ocean floor, causing both an earthquake and having the two of them fall through the crack. Steven tries to concoct a new plan, but Connie gets upset and worries that she’s going to die at the bottom of the ocean without making a single friend.

Cue the cuteness because right here is when Steven gives her the bracelet back and offers to be her friend.

It turns out Steven has been holding onto it since a parade in town the previous year when he saw her drop it. He wanted to give it back to her sooner, but couldn’t find her and kept it in the freezer until then to preserve its glow. Connie remembers him from the parade as the kid with soap bubbles in his hair. Steven apologizes for everything and Connie assures him that everything is okay and that she’s been having a good time.

And that’s when the bubble pops. HOW DOES THIS EVEN WORK, ROSE?

The two swim back to shore, but are chased by the worm who wants Connie’s glow bracelet. Steven asks for Connie to let him use the bracelet because, for once, he knows what he’s doing. Using the pillars on the pier and an ability to outrun the creature, Steven manages to get the creature to tie itself up and get the pier to crash on it as Steven and Connie hold hand. The Gems run down and check on Steven, but Connie tells them about what Steven did. Amethyst and Pearl get excited to meet Connie and ready themselves to embarrass Steven, but Garnet grabs them and warns them not to mess with Steven’s “funky flow.” Which embarrasses him more, but hey, Garnet is the best wingwoman ever for that!

This was such a painfully sweet episode. Maybe I’m a sucker for puppy love, but seeing Steven and Connie interact was so cute and makes me excited to see where their friendship and/or relationship will go. Plus, Connie is SO CUTE.

Serious Steven (1×08)

Summary: After an incident involving a teacup ride at Funland, Steven is bound and determined to prove to Garnet how serious he is on a rather intense mission.

Rating: ?????

This is probably going to be the episode I don’t rundown the plot of just because I really want people to watch.

Two weeks before, Steven gets sick while sitting on a teacup ride at Beach City Funland and bails out in the middle of the ride, landing on the operator and breaking the ride. Which gets him banned from the park and causes Steven to fear that Garnet doesn’t take him seriously.

Steven ends up joining the Gems on a mission to prove how serious he is. Which doesn’t fare too well when he lands on strawberries and gets butterflies in his eyes and causes the four of them to get stuck in a temple where they essentially have to go through puzzle rooms to find the gem.

This episode was great for two reasons. One was the action. The scenes in the puzzle rooms were suspenseful and super well animated. I could see a full blown gem battle like this sometime in the future and it would be awesome. The second was seeing the relationship between Garnet and Steven. At this point, we had only seen the motherly relationship between him and Pearl and the very sibling like relationship between him and Amethyst, but not really how he interacts with the stoic Garnet.

In this episode, we see that she isn’t extra chatty or anything like that around Steven, but she does care very deeply for him. It’s a weird mix between Pearl and Amethyst in that way. She protects him the entire way through the puzzles, but they also share jokes. If you don’t giggle at the gun show line, I don’t want to know you. She also trusts Steven to do what needs to be done on the mission, which the other Gems really haven’t done so far. Which says a lot about how she respects him. Perhaps it’s respect for Rose Quartz too.

If you’re on the fence about Steven Universe, I feel like ‘Serious Steven’ could be a real game changer for that.