"Baby! Dance with me!"
"My name is Lapis Lazuli, and I am not your baby."

"Jasper" is a male given name, for what it's worth.

This reminds me of being eight on the playground:

I feel pretty terrible for Lapis. In two appearances she went from "you can't keep me trapped anymore!" to "let's stay on this miserable planet forever!"

I actually really love how much they've left hanging. This show has left so many fertile plot threads open: Lapis and Malachite, Steven's relationship with Connie, Homeworld, the Crystal Gems' long history…

I've had this impossible dream for a few weeks about a Gem fusion involving Pearl voiced by Kate Bush.

I loved how that portion of the episode was animated just in green, calling back to the scenes of Laser Light Cannon with the Red Eye up close that were shot with only orange.

Steven has Lion as a phone contact:

This episode shows us something we should really have known all along: that what DBZ really needed was 3-minute R&B musical numbers to soundtrack its fight scenes.

The real "male" archetype there is the whole "blood warrior" thing. Not caring until she got a chance to prove herself against "Rose Quartz", browbeating Lapis into fusion. All honor and glory and crap.

Jasper was suuuuch a shounen character.

My favorite part of the episode (aside from the song): "We were waiting for your birthday!"

My problem with that is while I liked Megan well enough, I thought the only really interesting part of her character was the way they used her to contrast with Don. I don't think I'd get much out of a show with her as lead.

I think it's mostly because an episode is being reviewed literally every day. A fair proportion of comment-volume is made up of the sort of news or little thoughts that build up gradually over the course of a week, and this wasn't an especially notable episode to begin with.

I feel like we need an Onion-starring episode in Season 2 that's basically a Steven King homage.

I think the moral of this episode kinda hinged on the idea that Mayor Dewey was lying to the Beach City citizens "to protect them", in analogy with the Crystal Gems, who may have the wrong idea but definitely do mean well. The fact that this is a strained comparison makes the episode not work as well as it should.

I've always loved how Mayor Dewey's van says his name in exactly the way a bully would to mock him. I agree that this episode wasn't particularly successful in humanizing him, but I think he and his van are funny enough to make me happy whenever he shows up in a bit part.

I expect we'll see Connie (through Stevonnie) come on missions at some point before the end of Season 2.

I kinda wonder if that's commentary on any specific previous episode.

I kinda prefer it that way. School's such a focal point of so much children's media that it's nice to see a show, especially one that's escapist in a goofy way like this one, that doesn't bother with it.