Review: Steven Universe “Gemcation”

Shiny.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

As Steven feverishly waits for a phone call from Connie after the events of “Dewey Wins”, Greg expresses concern for Steven’s unusual behvaior with Greg getting a “Vacation House” with just Steven, Greg and the Gems staying for a week or so with the first half of this episode primarily spent on Greg trying to setup scenarios with Steven and the Gems hoping Steven would actually tell them why he’s behaving so oddly to the point that instead of wearing shorts before going into a hot tub, he wraps his damn smartphone in a plastic bag. As Greg and the Gems are out of solutions, they can’t figure out how to get Steven to open up and tell them what’s really going under the pretense that it’s a Gem Homeworld-related matter until Steven finally spills the beans that for the past week, Steven has completely lost all contact from Connie and hasn’t responded to any text’s or phone calls after the shit that went down in “I Am My Mom” as being the reason for all of it.

Greg decides to have a heart to heart with Steven about this matter as Steven feared that if he opened up to them about why Connie’s been giving the cold shoulder, they would hate him also for giving himself up to Aquamarine. Thankfully Greg being a real supportive father, deeply understands how much of stress-inducing predicament it must’ve been for a kid his age with Greg assuring him that he isn’t mad, and believes that Connie possibly feels the same knowing that him surrendering to Homeworld must’ve been a stressful & scary scenario that’ll be hard to get over with Greg himself realizing that taking Steven to a vacation house far from civilization was his way to deal with it and Connie keeping her distance is possibly her own way too.

Steven is worried beyond measure because of the plethora of random texts he sent Connie after she left, but Greg points out that those texts he may not have come through as there’s no wifi service in their current location. They decide to drive Steven so that he can pick up wifi service for a rather mundane reason. Greg shows then explains to Steven that while it hurts now, give it some time and let it go with the hope that everything resolves itself and the episode ends with Steven, Greg and the Gems enjoying the bright & shiny stars above the sky.

Our Take

Damn! Even I know when to put the damn phone down. It’s easy to assume that this entire “Steven Bomb” is built around a small arc of Steven doing things without Connie in the mix, but I’d be more concerned about what the hell Connie is actually doing with Lion as that Animal Gem creature was never her’s, to begin with. While the episode lacked action scenes, it made up with character growth and humor in places in the form of random Texts that play with the audience’s expectations, especially the hot tub interaction with Garnet.

Overall, it was an ok episode but I’m glad Greg loves his son enough to understand how heartbreaking this is for him at the moment.