In the twenty-eighth episode of the first season of Steven Universe, SPACE. S P A C E. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Steven Universe.Â
Oh my god, I love this episode. A LOT. It’s got themes of friendship, it’s got Steven caring so much about Pearl that he recruits his dad to build her a spaceship, and it’s got a love of space. I LOVE SPACE, even if it terrifies me a little bit. There’s a bittersweetness to “Space Race,” though, and I admire that the show is willing to do shit like this.
It’s not overwhelming, is what I’m trying to say. I’m overwhelmed, but that’s because I’m a sappy fool, but the writers manage to achieve a perfect balance between this sad backstory for the Gems and their current stories. It is unreal to imagine that Pearl and the Crystal Gems have been on Earth for thousands of years, but that’s the truth. With all the warp pads to their home world (and other Gem-controlled planets) broken, they’ve been stranded. And they’ve made the best of it! They had a system set up to save all corrupted gems, and I’m guessing Rose was a huge part of that until she gave up her body for Steven.
So we can only imagine how badly someone like Pearl must be longing to do something she was able to do all the time. How many worlds has she traveled to? How much time has she spent in the cosmos? Where does she dream of traveling to again? I’d argue that the format of Steven Universe episodes allows the audience to fill in things with their own imagination, and that’s precisely what I did here. I got a sense for her longing, and it helped me to understand her behavior in the subsequent scenes. The only reason I’m making a note of this is because this whole story lasts just eleven minutes, and yet it feel so much longer than that.
Bravo, Steven Universe. That’s not an easy thing to pull off, you know? But this comes off as an epic, a story of Pearl’s desire to travel again and Steven’s dedication to making that happen again. He and Greg build the first prototype, which is endlessly adorable and clearly not actually going to work. It’s here that the writers stick the important moral of the episode: there’s no shame in bailing. As someone who used to skateboard all the time, THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE. And it’s so cool to me that this show repeatedly says that it’s okay to fail, to delay your goals, and to get things wrong. It’s not something I expect from… well, pretty much anything! As ridiculous as Steven Universe is, it can feel fairly realistic at times, and this is how. We don’t always win. We don’t always get what we want. Sometimes, we have to accept that it’s just not the right time!
That’s a very difficult thing for Pearl to accept, though. Until Steven put the thought in her mind, she never considered that she could build a spaceship to get off of Earth. And as she goes through each round of construction and testing, she begins to convince herself that she’s closer than ever to travel through space. In short, she counts her eggs before they hatched, and she set herself up for disappointment. It’s such a horrible thing to experience, but I bet that most of us have done this. We get excited about something, we plan for it happening, and then we’re utterly crushed when it doesn’t happen as we wanted. That’s not to say that Pearl can’t ever build a spaceship. The problem here is that her prototype wasn’t ready for flight and she refused to accept it. She was so close to success, and instead of viewing that as a step in the right direction, she nearly killed Steven. She just wanted to keep going, which, by the way, gave us one of the most heartbreaking sequences in this whole damn show. AND STEVEN KNEW SHE WANTED TO TRAVEL BUT HE TOLD THAT THERE WAS NO SHAME IN BAILING ANDÂ HELP ME, I WASN’T READY FOR THIS. Nor was I ready for Greg’s wails of anguish when he thought that his son was in the ship when it exploded. WHEW.
It’s a lot, but the show doesn’t ever feel grim. That’s an achievement all by itself, and I’m thankful for it. I might be full of emotions, but I also don’t feel drained after watching Steven Universe. I end up wanting to watch more.
The video for “Space Race” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
Mark Links Stuff
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