Tuesday, 9 May 2017

Steven Universe Review: “Doug Out”

Watched over
(This review contains spoilers!)

          I’ve made my dislike for the Beach City episodes of Steven Universe fairly obvious over my reviews of the last few seasons. For me there’s always two reasons why they don’t work. The more common of the two is that the townsperson the episode is focusing on is extremely obnoxious and hard to relate to (see every Lars or Ronaldo focused episode). The other issue is that many of the episodes feature no gem stuff whatsoever, making them feel like entirely different shows (Sadie’s Song and Onion Gang are prime examples).

          I was fully expecting one of these two things to happen going into Doug Out, but ultimately the episode proved to be a complete delight to watch, thanks in good part to the title character.

          Connie’s dad, Doug Maheswaran, has received a tip off that someone’s breaking into Funland at night, and he takes Steven and Connie with him on a stake out to try and catch the culprit.

          I’ll just say it right now: Doug might be my new favourite town character. It helps that he’s voiced by the same guy who does Winston in Overwatch, but his character is super fun to be around.

          This is easily the funniest episode in this bomb, with plenty of physical humour involving Doug. The poor guy is really put through the wringer by the end of it. They also employ some clever suspense throughout, as it’s never clear exactly what they’re pursuing through Funland, although it’s made obvious early on that it can’t be anything human.

          In a perfect world every townie episode would be like Doug Out. The main townsperson was a lot of fun to spend time with, he provided a lot of excellent humour, and the story incorporated gems extremely well, having them be a source of suspense even if you never see them onscreen. I really hope the crew takes the formula used here and applies it to the inevitable future town episodes we’re going to get, because they really struck gold.

FINAL SCORE
8/10

Great

No comments:

Post a Comment