Steven Universe episode review: "Back to the Barn"

Season 2 episode 20

This week's Steven Universe provides considerable world building and a decent amount of depth, but is ultimately tangential to the main plot and weak in the humour department. 

At long last, Steven Universe is starting to pick up a little. Peridot has joined the main Crystal Gems, and they're now working to stop the Cluster. This main story of the season has been slowly building up to this, and finally things are getting on track. With that said, though, "Back to the Barn" doesn't show us much that we haven't seen before, as it takes a detour to explore the social dynamics of the homeworld through interactions between Peridot and Pearl. To stop the Cluster, the Gems need to drill to the centre of the Earth, a project which both Pearl and Peridot want to take charge of. Unfortunately, Peridot is unwilling to cooperate with "a pearl", revealing that most Pearls are servant robots.

Yes, "Pearls". Apparently, there's several of each gem, and they're actually created rather than born as humans understand it. There's previous evidence that this was the case, but "Back to the Barn" confirms this, and in doing so helps us understand gem society just a little bit more. Going forward, it's likely that we'll encounter more homeworld gems, so the facts we've learned here are likely to be important later. In any case, Pearl and Peridot ultimately decide who gets to lead the project through a giant robot competition. This is ultimately just a distraction from the main plot, however, and being honest, I didn't find it particularly entertaining. 

This might be in part because of the humour, which is broader here than before, with a lot of silly sight gags and humour that's lacking in creativity. I mean, they have a joke where Peridot doesn't give Pearl credit for an idea, for crying out loud. That's one of the oldest jokes in the book. The competition itself feels, by and large, like a waste of time, as well. It's not really all that exciting, and while it's not horribly dull, it's only really worthwhile to lead into the episode's typically strong ending. 

While the ending isn't necessarily as deep as some of the others this season, it's a welcome return for this show actually having endings at all. Steven mentions that Pearl is more than just an ordinary Pearl, considering all the great things that she's done. It's a nice, lovely scene that reinforces Pearl's characterization. Still, it'll be great if we can really get on with the main story some time soon and stop wasting time. 

What we have here is a fairly standard episode of Steven Universe that's elevated primarily by its world building. It's not particularly exciting or funny, and nothing important really happens in it, but the revelations about gem society prevent it from being completely throwaway, and are ultimately probably it's primary reason to exist in the first place. That's ultimately a strength of this show: Despite how long the seasons go on for, it's light on filler, with even lesser episodes expanding the world in some way or pushing something important forward. "Back to the Barn" may be the last episode before the real story gets underway, and despite its strengths, I think I'll be grateful for that.