In the fifteenth episode of the second season of Steven Universe, Pearl becomes over exuberant in her attempts to make things right with Garnet. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Steven Universe.
THIS ARC IS SO GREAT AND THRILLING AND JUST FULL OF FANTASTIC WRITING AND VOICE ACTING. The show never seems to take the easy way out of anything, and I admire that. I’m thirty-three years old and this is rough to watch sometimes, which means that the people behind this show are willing to create stories like this, knowing that a younger audience might be left uncomfortable by what they’re watching.
So, let’s talk about Pearl. Intentionally or not, this fits really well after “Historical Friction” because it shows Pearl not giving up… and going completely overboard with it. Over these sixty-odd episodes, I’ve gotten the sense that Pearl is an all-or-nothing type of character. Here, we see how she takes her issue with Garnet seriously. Unfortunately, that means she rushes to “solve” the problem as soon as possible. It’s not that catching Peridot is a bad idea or that Garnet wouldn’t be relieved by it. The problem is that it’s a quick fix, one that doesn’t address the deeper issue at hand. Thus, Pearl ends up doing more damage than she intends to by being too willing to address why Garnet is upset with her. That manifests in a cringe-worthy display of mistakes where she forgets the dynamic of the team and concerns herself with being the sole person to take down Peridot.
That’s a bad technique. She’s distracting. She gets in the way. And then she rushes right into a trap, never taking the time to stop and think about why she got into this predicament in the first place. The message for this episode fits in well with everything else I’ve seen this week, since it’s about accepting that fixing mistakes can take a long time. There is no instant fix here for Pearl, and capturing Peridot wasn’t going to allow Garnet to move on. Instead, she ends up irritating Garnet more!
Pearl needs to be accountable for her actions, and part of accountability involves accepting that things may be awkward, uncomfortable, or downright miserable for a while. She can’t expect Garnet to instantly get over her anger; she can’t expect Garnet to think of things as simply as she does, either. The sign of true friendship is someone willing to do the work to repair damage.
Re-building trust is one of the hardest things to do, too! It’s not an overnight thing, nor is it something that can usually be repaired with a single action. It involves starting over and working together to get back to where you were. And you know, I wonder if Garnet would have been quicker to forgiving Pearl if Pearl hadn’t gone so hard in this episode, you know? She wanted this to be over, too! Yet Pearl’s behavior made it seem like she didn’t really want to live with the consequences of what she’d done; she just wanted to solve things as quickly as possible.
I must also admit that I am super into the trope invoked here to help solve the immediate issue Pearl and Garnet were having. They both got stuck in a confined space and had to talk about their problems. YES, I LOVE IT, IT’S ONE OF MY FAVORITES. Having Steven and Amethyst watch them work out this issue was a nice touch, too, and then SARDONYX BURSTING OUT OF THE FLOOR WAS LIKE THE CHERRY ON TOP OF A SUNDAE OF EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS. YES, THANK YOU.
It feels like Garnet and Pearl are both in a better place after this episode, and I’m eager to see how they’ll continue to work on repairing their relationship. Y’all, what is this show.
The video for “Friend Ship” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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