Yikes
(This review contains
spoilers!)
I’ve had a hard time deciding in the
past whether Horror Club or Drop Beat Dad is my least favourite Steven Universe
episode. Both are weak for very different reasons, but I usually group them
together at the bottom of the barrel.
It seems today is my lucky day,
because I have to deliberate about what my least favourite Steven Universe
episode is no more! Future Boy Zoltron has run away with the unwanted title,
because wow, was this ever painful to get through.
The premise is simple: Mr. Smiley
hires Steven to work as a fortune telling robot at Funland. Steven starts
giving people wacky, far out fortunes. Then, a random sad guy shows up and
Steven tries to tell him a fortune that’d make him happy.
Turns out, said random sad guy is Mr.
Frowny, Mr. Smiley’s old comedy partner. Steven reunites the two, and…that’s
it.
So what went wrong here? Well, first
and foremost, this episode is straight up boring.
Nearly the entire episode takes place outside of Funland Arcade, with no moving
from place to place at all, while a bunch of non-speaking Beach City resident
cameos walk past. The fortune teller shtick gets old as Steven tells his first
fortune, and never recovers. At one point, Garnet even shows up to help, but
instead of being a fun cameo, it just reminds us that we’re watching Steven
Universe, a show that’s produced groundbreaking episodes like Jail Break, Mr.
Greg, and even last week’s Mindful Education.
Secondly, who ever wanted to learn
more about Mr. Smiley in the first place? I always thought he’d gotten enough
backstory when we saw the old Big Donut commercial he did. Turns out that
giving side characters that we’ve seen so few times that they changed the voice
actor between Season 1 and 2 and nobody
noticed a starring role in an episode isn’t a good idea. It doesn’t help
that Mr. Frowny is little more than a caricature with no personality for
himself.
There were a couple of good jokes, like
Steven’s reaction to Onion’s latest scheme and the fortune he gave to that
weird guy with the suitcase and the eyepatch. Other than that, though, this
episode is 100% skippable. In fact, I encourage it. Future Boy Zoltron shows
none of the writing finesse we’ve come to know from Steven Universe. This
episode was cliché, boring, and just plain shallow. I guess this was just a bad
week for them, but at this point, I expect better.
FINAL SCORE
2/10
Awful
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