Yeah, I think that's part of the reason why some of the recent episodes have felt a bit weird. They did a great job of fleshing out Beach City in the first half of season 1, but a lot of the new environments feel like nothing more than sets inhabited by one or two extras.

"Keep your hands off my Connie!" is both more striking than saying "friend" or some word for romantic partner and maintains the ambiguity of their relationship. She means too much for him to think about her in terms of what role she performs in his life.

The ending was a bit of a retread of the one in "We Need To Talk", but it's such a lovely emotional beat that I don't mind.

This way works better from a storytelling perspective, but I've always found the cavalier way the show treats risks to Steven's life weird, especially given his clear incompetence in the beginning and the Gems' ability to regenerate from almost anything.

This is the only place I've heard 6:00.

Eh, Bill's better served when the show has time to let his sense of humor and menace shine. I've come around to the show's recent tendency to drop large chunks of exposition, but Bill is the one character who really isn't served by it.

I feel weird how much light they're making out of a kid (with maybe some form of latent mental illness) getting sent to maximum-security adult prison. Isn't that making too much light of things? I can see how they're trying to justify it: Gideon seems to be beloved by all the inmates, all his complaints are of trivial…

Adventure Time yes, but I never really got the feeling that Over the Garden Wall was doing anything new, except maybe in terms of format: it's a Disney movie in miniseries form. It's really pretty and definitely succeeds on its own terms, but the characters and plotlines are pretty standard all around.

The appearance of Misters Vagina and Goldenfold seem to imply the show is trying to find new ways of using the school characters without actually committing to use the school as a setting (which is good, because that was the weakest area of S1).

I don't think it's developed enough to really qualify as satire. It's mostly a little pop-cultural riff.

Roiland and Harmon are great, but it's worth singling out from the rest of the creative staff Ryan Ridley, who wrote this episode and a bunch of fan favorites from S1 (Lawnmower Dog, Meeseeks and Destroy, Close Rick-counters).

He is. My problem was more that the show was eliding some of his immaturity by placing it in a montage calculated to get a specific emotional response.

Well, it was a pretty short appearance, all things considered. His rant about Beth and Jerry stuck more in my mind.

I liked it, but it's definitely not for everyone. They foregrounded the character work on this one and left the humor a little muted, so it definitely doesn't play like any other episode of the show. The B-plot was literally Beth and Jerry yelling at each other for five minutes and that's the joke. Still, it's neat to…

tbh, I think it's less a tribute to anything and more just a tic that naturally shows up in improvisation. (It makes me think of Home Movies, which was similarly improvised.)

I'm eager to look on the bright side with most of the evil characters, even the ones that are unapologetically hypocritical heels.

Well, I got to thinking about Lennier's last appearance in the show and how it's a lot like that Pearl moment in "Rose's Scabbard".

Matt Burnett's been pretty upfront that he can't.

I dunno. What sticks out about Jasper's personality in "The Return / Jail Break" is that she's adaptable: she claims that fusion is a "cheap tactic to make weak gems stronger" and then, immediately after her loss to Garnet, tries to get one over on them by fusing herself. So she's clearly pretty pragmatic and has no…

I'm not sure how it would happen, but I wouldn't say no to a Jasper redemption arc. Garnet needs a foil.