In the twelfth episode of the third season of Steven Universe, RESTAURANT WARS. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Steven Universe.
Oh my god, I love it when Steven Universe goes full on ridiculous. This episode parodies a lot of things, contains one of the most absurd bits of animation in the whole show (that shot of a boardwalk littered with remnants of food and people who ate too much), and features Steven doing what he does best: getting people to understand one another and be friends. FRIENDSHIP EVERYWHERE.
It’s also just… so much. I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course. I was very pleased to get more of the Pizza family! (Where was Nanefua, by the way?) The feud that erupts between Kofi and Mr. Fryman is petty, but I found it meaningful that it only involved the parents, not the children. If anything, the Pizza kids and the Fryman kids desperately wanted this war to end as much as Steven did. They all had to work extra hours or, in Peedee’s case, had to wear even more embarrassing costumes than normal.
If anyone “won” from this war, it was my tastebuds salivating over this imagined foods. Well, I’ve had deep fried pizza once (thanks, Texas State Fair!), but everything else? Pizza bits sounded amazing. BUT THAT FRENCH FRY CRUST SOUND LIKE THE BEST THING EVER. Like, I know it wouldn’t be objectively “good” or anything, but I would eat the hell out of that. The same goes for the incredible food items that Steven comes up with. Seriously, can he actually open a restaurant that doesn’t compete with anyone else in Beach City??? That’s such an intriguing concept, though; this episode resolves its central problem by saying it’s bad that these restaurants competed with one another, which is… not very capitalist or free market at all? Like, I’m not going to try and claim that the show is intentionally telling kids to overthrow capitalism, but I still didn’t expect the writers to have a message in one of their episodes quite like this one. And honestly, it’s not even that Fryman and Kofi competed; it’s that they took it so absurdly far.
I do wonder what the fate awaits Jane, who seems to get the only short stick in this whole episode. I didn’t even know Ronaldo was seeing someone, and it feels very strange to me that no one tries to help Ronaldo repair his relationship with her after she witnessed Steven’s plan to get the Restaurant War to stop. This show doesn’t casually hurt people like this and then not deal with the ramifications of it, but Ronaldo is still sad at the end of “Restaurant Wars.” So… what gives?
Anyway, this episode was a lot of fun, and that Bagel Bites reference was worth the whole affair. BLESS.
The video for “Restaurant Wars” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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