Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 15 Review: Pool Hopping

This Steven Universe review contains spoilers.

Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 15

Steven Universe episodes never quite go how you’d expect. At first I thought “Pool Hopping” was a nice return to the more simple episodes of the first seasons. One where we just see Steven and the Gems having little adventures in Beach City. Then the cats happened. 

Not only were they adorable but they brought out something in Garnet we haven’t seen before. That she doesn’t know how to deal with uncertainty. She’s faced a little of that before but now it’s ever present. Her world is changing. Everyone’s is. Steven says as much in the intro and we’ve seen it the past two episodes.

How do you deal with this much change in your life? What happens when the expected turns unexpected? In Garnet’s case she tries to get ahead of it. It doesn’t work and she only becomes more overwhelmed. 

How Steven helps her here is a direct mirror to “Mindful Education” where Garnet sang Stevonnie the ultimate mindfulness song, “Just a Thought.” Now Steven is the one to dish out some advice. It isn’t in a song sadly but it some great advice. 

“Instead of thinking of all the things that could happen, let’s just pick the thing we want to happen and do that.”

It’s true. We can become so overwhelmed with all the decisions we want to make in life. We might not have future vision but we all have things we want to accomplish. Sometimes too many things, so we just need to focus on one thing at a time and do that. It can be small, like Steven simply helping to get the cats out of the rain, or it can be big like Garnet adopting Cat Steven.

Steven getting Garnet through this mini crisis demonstrates how much Steven has grown up. Now he’s helping the most put together of the Gems with her problems instead of the other way around. Steven is slowly slipping into the role of Rose without being exactly like her. He’s not becoming a carbon copy, he’s just carrying on her legacy. Thankfully Garnet isn’t relying on Steven, she’s just taking his advice and going her own way.

This episode was a nice slow outing that while not super impactful on the overall story (at least from what I can tell, who knows with Steven Universe) it did give us some nice one on one time between Steven and Garnet. In all the madness that’s been happening in the series lately I’ve been missing that.

Shamus Kelley is a pop culture/television writer and official Power Rangers expert. More of Cat Steven please. No Cat Fingers though. Follow him on Twitter!