Review: Steven Universe “Back to the Kindergarten”

Going, going…back to, back to.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

In an effort to cheer Peridot up after the events of “Raising the Barn” Steven & Amethyst take Peridot to Earth’s “Beta Kindergarten” to cheer her up. (For those of you who don’t know, “Kindergarten” refers to birthing facilities that created & incubated Gems thousands of years ago with the “Beta” branch also being the birthplace of Amethyst.) When they get to the “Beta” location, Amethyst begins to think about the other Amethyst’s she previously met from the episode “That Will Be All” and where they were possibly birthed at but it only makes Peridot feel worse as she now realizes how much she herself changed.

As Peridot reminisces, she talks about how she once believed that life for Gems as a whole began in Kindergarden but compared to living in a barn and the wonders of earth she’s experienced, she now views Kindergarden as a place devoid of life until they encounter a random flower growing from the ground that gets their attention and decides to test the ground to see if plants can actually be grown from this wasteland which spends most of it’s running time on a montage of all three of them attempting to grow plantlife which is easily the most fun scene so far in the episode and a welcome change from all the bad stuff that’s happened recently on the show.

By the third act they decide to check back on Peridot’s plants but, much to their shock, the flowers are completely dead and Peridot proceeds to go on an angry tangent about everything that’s made her feel like crap until she discovers that the flower they saw earlier turns out to be part of a corrupt Gem in which Steven & Amethyst fuse into “Smoky Quartz” to put a stop the creature and save Peridot. Afterwards, as the three travel back to Steven’s house, both Amethyst and Steven admit that Peridot was right about the Kindergarten being a wasteland, but the episode ends on a positive note when they notice a large field of sunflowers, while explaining to Peridot that while the Kindergarten is just one patch of land that’s unable to produce life, the rest of the world isn’t.

Our Take

This was a nice filler episode that served as a decent continuation to “Raising The Barn” while it had some little action near the end, the focus was primarily on Peridot trying to recover from having everything taken from her. It even reminded me of a classic quote from Foamy The Squirrel: “people are broken shells constantly trying to put themselves back together” while the other lesson I took from it is while some things can’t be fixable, it doesn’t mean all hope is lost. It’s all about cutting your losses and moving on to something that works for you.