Original airdate: November 11th, 2013
Production code: 1020-004
It's a quiet morning in Beach City, and Steven is alone in the house, wondering where the Gems are. To pass the time, he begins to make himself a breakfast, gradually adding more items as the Gems don't come back. Soon, he has a plate full of waffles, popcorn, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream, all with a strawberry on top. Steven decides that such an amazing treat deserves the title of "Together Breakfast" and decides to share it with Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst to prove they are all "best buds."
Garnet is the first Gem to arrive, having recovered a mysterious scroll covered in bizarre images. She immediately declares her intention to burn it, despite Steven thinking it's cool and even snapping a photo of it (prompting Garnet to confiscate his phone so she can burn that, too). She vanishes into the Temple, using the gems in her palms to open the door to her specified room. Steven tries to follow by using his own gem, but it won't work. As he's sighing, a cop bursts into the house armed with a water pistol, saying he's the "Dumb Patrol." Given that the "cop" is bright purple, Steven quickly realizes it's just Amethyst playing a prank. Before he can explain Together Breakfast, though, Pearl emerges from Amethyst's chamber in the temple, where she'd been looking for a sword from her collection. The two Gems fight over how the sword got into Amethyst's junk pile; when Pearl remarks that she reorganized, Amethyst panics and rushes back to the room. Steven hopes that Pearl will be more receptive to Together Breakfast, but she shrugs him off to put the sword away. Determined not to lose another Gem to a sealed door, Steven hurries after her with the waffle plate in hand, just managing to squeeze through before it shuts.
Steven finds himself in Pearl's private chamber: a series of giant water flumes. Pearl herself dances on top of one and summons her massive sword collection to put away the newly-found one, much to Steven's delight. When she spots him, she starts scolding him for trespassing, but he claims it will be OK—he'll just swim over to her. Unfortunately, the water flumes are not connected to one another, and Steven goes flying downward on a wild ride that ends in a pool. Said pool is actually a part of Amethyst's room, which is a glittering cave full of tons of random objects. Steven is grateful that he managed to save the Together Breakfast. Amethyst, upon finally getting to hear what the phrase means, immediately tries to steal the whole plate for herself. This prompts a merry chase through the Temple's hallways, with Steven saying that the whole point of Together Breakfast is to eat together, like true best buds. The two soon find themselves in the Crystal Heart, a giant room in the center of the Temple that connects all other chambers. Pearl discovers them there, but before she can get to Steven, he slides down one of the crystalline tubes of the Heart toward the Temple's depths.
At the Temple's base, Steven discovers Garnet burning the magical scroll in a cauldron of boiling magma (and throwing his phone into the magma as well). As the scroll incinerates, a strange, seemingly-sentient cloud of smoke emerges from it, prompting Garnet to seal the fumes in a magic bubble. Pearl and Amethyst catch up to Steven and try to tell him to leave quietly, but he loudly shouts that they're finally all together, so it is breakfast time! This outcry breaks Garnet's attention long enough for the bubble to crack open and the Smoke Monster to escape. The Gems produce their weapons and fight back against the creature as it tries to flee the Temple. Though they land a few solid hits, they are unable to keep it from bonding with the first organic matter it senses...namely, Steven's plate of Together Breakfast! After a few tense moments, the Smoke Monster transforms the platter of delicious food into a giant new body for itself.
- Garnet: Now it has all the power of a breakfast. We have to destroy it!
The Gems find themselves at a disadvantage against the beast, as it traps Pearl in a thick cocoon of whipped cream and seals Garnet and Amethyst behind a giant waffle. As it next attempts to suffocate Steven, he angrily declares that he created Together Breakfast to unify the Gems, not hurt them. He manages to overpower the Smoke Monster and shove the entire creature into the boiling magma, which destroys it. The Gems free themselves from their prisons and join Steven, who apologizes for the whole mess.
Some time later, the Gems team up to create a brand-new Together Breakfast, this one even bigger (and, in Steven's words, "more together") than the last. As they prepare to eat, though, ominous music looms as the Gems realize that the waffles, popcorn, and whipped cream did try to kill them and escape to wreak havoc on Beach City. Suddenly no longer hungry for breakfast, the group decides to order a pizza instead.
We Iris Out over Garnet remarking that the Together Breakfast "did try to kill us".
Tropes:
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Garnet gently tussles Steven's hair.
- Big "NO!": Steven delivers the biggest one on record while shielding the breakfast from Amethyst.
- Bizarrchitecture: This is the first episode that shows off the Temple's truly strange inner workings: namely, that each Gem has a private chamber which can only be accessed by their own personal gemstone resonating against the main door. The individual rooms are incredibly different, but all connected in some way. And in general, every room is much, MUCH Bigger on the Inside.
- Don't Look Down: Steven jumps onto a pole the temple's "crystal heart" rests on. Pearl tells him not to look down and when he does so, he notices he's above a deep shaft, and starts sliding down it into Garnet's room.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The episode depicts the Gems actually intent on eating the breakfast and later deciding to send out for pizza. Later episodes establish that the Gems don't need to eat at all, and the only one who does is Amethyst, just because she likes the novelty of it.
- Compared to the gem monsters usually fought, the Monster of the Week this episode is utterly bizarre and inexplicable. It's initial form is a painted scroll whose image is implied to be a Brown Note, when burned the smoke produced comes alive, and it has no gem.
- Gravity Screw: As Steven is running away from Amethyst, the path he's on suddenly twists so he's running on upside down, and the breakfast he's carrying almost falls "down" and off the plate.
- Heroes Gone Fishing: We see what the gems do in their rooms when they aren't on a mission. For Garnet, though, that means "still working".
- Inevitable Waterfall: Steven tries to swim in Pearl's room to bring her breakfast, but fails to notice the waterfall a short distance from the edge.Steven: I'll swim it over to you. See, doggy paddle, forward. Oh, gosh! Wait, uh, doggy paddle reverse! Reverse!
- Lame Pun Reaction: Steven claims that his breakfast isn't exactly healthy, but being in a stack makes it a "balanced breakfast". Garnet just stares wordlessly.
- Montage: The episode opens on a montage of Steven making breakfast while trying to find Garnet, Amethyst, or Pearl. It ends with the same montage, except the Gems are there with him to make an even bigger breakfast.
- Mundane Made Awesome: As Steven is making breakfast, the music changes from a lighthearted ditty to dubstep bass drop (officially titled "Drop the Strawberry") as he precisely places a strawberry on top.
- Never My Fault: Pearl finds one of her swords in Amethyst's room and accuses her of stealing it. It actually fell there because Pearl dropped it (Pearl's "room" is a body of water floating above Amethyst's room), though Amethyst knows this and gives a smartass comment instead of an explanation.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Steven's attempt to get the Gems together for breakfast ends up causing an evil spirit to possess said breakfast. Steven at least fixed this one by destroying the spirit.
- Parental Obliviousness: The plot is driven by the Gems' missing or outright ignoring Steven's desire for everyone to eat breakfast together. In particular, Pearl asks Steven what he's holding and when he tells her that he made a breakfast for everyone to enjoy together, she says "That's nice" and walks off as if she wasn't paying attention to his answer.
- Serious Business: During the montage where Steven is making the breakfast, placing the strawberry is treated like this, with the music suddenly shifting to intense dubstep as he focuses.
- Skewed Priorities: After Steven starts falling down a stream of water, he keeps using up one or both arms to keep the breakfast dry instead of using them to save himself.
- Stock Sound Effects: The vocalizations of the evil spirit are stock "monster" effects from the Hanna-Barbera sound library.
- Taking the Bullet: Steven protects the breakfast he made from Amethyst's water gun by diving in front of the water.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: After making the bigger together breakfast, Steven and the Gems decide not to eat it because it reminds them of the breakfast monster made from the last one. So they get pizza instead.Garnet: It did try to kill us.
- Title Drop: After finishing breakfast but not finding anyone, Steven comments "That thing's too good for me to eat alone. It's a... together breakfast."
- Trauma Button Ending: The episode ends with the team making a new together breakfast. Since the previous one ended up possessed, they realize that they aren't in the mood for it and go out for pizza instead.
