The Steven Universe Podcast: Steven Selects episode 5, hosted by McKenzie Atwood, covers the episode “Last One Out of Beach City.”
It’s the fifth of an eight-part series of spotlights on fan favorite episodes. The guests are Matt Burnett and Ben Levin. The official description:
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“Last One Out of Beach City” is all about Pearl’s own self-discovery and awareness, and features a great guest shot from musician Mike Krol, a very cool car chase with Pearl behind-the-wheel, and a tip of the hat to everyone’s favorite teen movies! That’s why Steven Universe writers Ben Levin and Matt Burnett return to the pod to not only explain how all of these magical ideas originated, but to also offer insight into how they made them work together! Plus, Ben and Matt field more of your questions as they speak to continuity and building Steven Universe stories from a single sketch or feeling.
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Outline:
McKenzie’s first question is about how the writers handled Pearl’s balance between being such a rebel and being a total stickler for the rules. Matt and Ben say that even though Pearl’s leather-jacket-wearing “rebel” image is a caricature, she really is a rebel where it counts and she really is cool (and accepted by her friends). Plus Pearl was “following” Rose a lot more than she was rebelling on her own, and she dug into rules and regulations after Rose left, but now she’s discovering the rebel really is part of who she is.
McKenzie points out that Steven as “the voice of reason” is set as opposite Pearl as the rebel, and they say it’s something you can only do once the audience really knows the characters. They watched a lot of teen movies for inspiration, like Dazed and Confused, to figure out what the archetypes were. (The personality cards at the end were a last-minute addition Rebecca wanted to do.)
Originally, the story was supposed to be about Pearl wanting to know more about humans and deciding to create a reason to talk to them, but as it evolved it was about Pearl wanting to shed her “square” image, and then finally it changed from that to Amethyst and Steven encouraging Pearl to go talk to Mystery Girl and coaching her–but in the final version Amethyst insists Pearl is already cool and doesn’t need to be pushed into talking to Mystery Girl; it’s something she chooses.
Now, about Mystery Girl: The idea was to make someone who sort of looked like Rose (Pearl has a type!) and show Pearl has changed and moved on, and it wasn’t supposed to imply that she would have a relationship with her past this episode. Having her getting interested in another pink-haired woman was character growth. They also wanted to do something with Pearl at a show trying to get up the courage to talk to another person.
McKenzie brought up Pearl not having a license, and it’s discussed how magical alien beings won’t really fit into the established laws–plus they have deliberately kept themselves ignorant about human ways, since Rose was really the one who wanted to interact with them and they didn’t care to do it until Steven came on the scene. They again brought up how old concepts of the show and early boards had the Gems trying to blend in with humans or hide their differences, and this episode brought back an element from those old boards: Pearl driving Steven around in a car.
Then they discussed Mike Krol, who’s a real musician. The Crew is friends with Mike and they decided to make him the person they go see in concert. They made it like a mini-music video to time the car chase to the song they chose. (They also discuss the joke with Pearl misunderstanding “Mike Krol” as “My Krol” and referring to him as “Your Krol.”)
And they brought up Ocean Town, which is a throwback to “Political Power,” and in this episode a sign said Ocean Town is “no longer on fire.” They haven’t really decided whether they should explain it more.
Fan Questions:
Question: How do you connect storylines and plot lines between the different writers and storyboarders, or is there someone who’s in charge of maintaining continuity?
Answer: In movies, that happens a lot, but on the show, not really. They collaborate a lot and tend to help each other stuff. Storyboarders get to give on episodes and they can make suggestions or catch continuity glitches. Everyone’s a fan of the show so they each other in making everything flow.
Question: Do you guys work more bottom up or top down?
Answer: Rebecca would have scenes or images as concepts, and then they’d build on it to get story beats, or bones developing into a story skeleton. They’ll have ideas like “let’s have the characters in baseball uniforms!” that will develop into an episode, but then other times they’ll have a specific thing to write an episode about. As a writer, you might have an image you want to see, but other times you have to you don’t have to know everything at once. You can take it step by step into a three-act story, then an outline, then storyboards.
Next week was announced to be about the episode “Steven’s Dream,” with Matt and Ben as guests again.
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